Re: Planet 'Terrain'

On Thu, 18 Jul 1996 18:25:58 -0700 (PDT) schoon@aimnet.com (Sean Bayan
Schoonmaker) writes:
><snip>
>>So, what I'm going to do is the following:
>>
>>Glue a half sphere to the center of an old (crappy) vinyl record. 
>Then paint
>>the whole thing black.  Splash some paint on the planet and finish 
>off by
>>painting a ruled orbit in white so when a starship gets in orbit the 
>player
>>merely moves the starship around the painted ring.
>>
>>You won't need to measure the distance to the center of the planet 
>everytime
>>you're close enough to hit the atmosphere either.
>>
>>Comments?...
>>
>>Pete
>
>Another idea would be to mount a spherical planet on a wide base, as
>suggested above, which would give you both an orbit line AND a nice 
>"whole"
>planet.
>
>
>Schoon
>
>
>

Looking at this, it causes me to ponder... planetary gravity wells
affecting movement actually puts a linear DISTANCE SCALE to the game
then does it not? I don't know the specifics (but I am sure that you
physics majors out there do) but we can calculate the gravitational pull
effect of a planet based on its mass right? In FT, the radius of
gravitational pull is  equal to the diameter of the planet. By strange
math, we can then deduce a tabletop scale (ie. 1" of space = so many
thousand meters). And if a ship travels so many thousand meters a turn,
then we can deduce TIME ... and the whole thing comes into perspective
.... I hate that!  ;)

Paul