🚀 go-pugleaf

Ross Ridge <rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>Xocyll  <Xocyll@kingston.net> wrote:
>>Uh Ross, the only person who said _anything_ about asteroid collisions
>>is YOU.  All I said is that CPUs and GPUs have become powerful enough to
>>be able to model asteroid belts realistically.
>
>It was implicit, if you don't have them colliding then you don't need
>modern CPUs or GPUs to model them.  A Commodore 64 could do it.

It's not implicit at all, you're reaching.

A lot of distinct, detailed asteroids you can land on - each one of
which would be modeled and require a hefty GPU to do so.
It's not just a round rock.

Keeping track of hundreds (or thousands) of individually distinct
asteroids, their condition, their resources, their orbits etc would
require a hefty CPU as well.

Not ot mention that the act of mining an asteroid would change it's
orbit.

>What then is unrealistic in your mind about existing asteroid belts in
>space-sim games?  Indeed, what basis do you have for saying they're not
>already being realistically modelled in space-sim games?  Other than
>the fact that they're not like the only real asteroids we know about,
>of course.

Most Games' asteroid belts (or fields) are made up of nothing but the
exact same rock (or 2 or 3 different rocks) randomly placed over and
over again as obstacles you can run into.  
They often cannot be damaged, and in the few cases where you can damage
them, when you come back to the area, they're all back again since they
aren't tracked.
In the case of Freelancer the main asteroids/junk can't be damaged at
all (nor can the "mines" (explosive)) they do this AND have the
occasional tiny rock in some fields you can shoot and "mine" - it blows
up and leaves resources behind.

Most of them are there as nothing more than an obstacle for you to have
to weave through at speed, sometimes under fire.
Wing Commander did it, Privateer did it, Freelancer abused the hell out
of it.  It's been long enough since I last played that I can't recall if
Tachyon did it.  The X-games tended not to.

>>As far as we know - it's not like we've been out of this system to
>>*know* for sure that what we think of as the natural LAWS of physics are
>>indeed universal and not just a local condition.
>
>Ok, then this discussion is completely pointless.  If you honestly
>believe the laws of physics can change like that then anything anyone
>imagines about how asteroids behave in other solar systems could be
>considered realistic.  If Chris Robers implements asteroid belts in his
>game completely different than you're asking for you can't say they're
>unrealistic because his imaginary physics are just as real as your own.

It's a big universe Ross and we've only seen one tiny corner of it.
Might as well extrapolate how the entire planet works based on how
conditions are in my kitchen closet.

We're just assuming that conditions are the same everywhere and Science
is full of those kinds of assumptions that were later proved wrong.
I'm keeping an open mind.

That's science, hypothesize, then test.  We haven't tested yet since we
haven't managed to leave the system yet.

>I should also say that there's not much point to your "realism" argument
>because given Chris Roberts track record he obviously doesn't care about
>realism in his games.  If you get a chance to sumbit actual feedback,
>I suggest something more along the lines how cool and awesome your vision
>of how asteroid belts is.

That is unfortunately true.  I was just pointing out that modern CPUs
and GPUs could enable things that simply weren't possible before, not
that Chris "I want to be a movie director" Roberts would use them for
those things.

Xocyll
-- 
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of 
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably, 
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So 
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr