P0-A1: Part 378: Orbital Mechanics
by PhoenixGames on May.27, 2018, under Astral Realms, P-0, Software and Games, Spiritus Astrum
I am making some progress with the Gravity Engine system.
Initially, I wanted to integrate the Gravity Engine completely into my own system, so that I would need to change my existing code very little.
However, this doesn’t seem to be possible. Instead, I may need to create a separate physics simulation, containing all of the gravity objects in the world, and then map that back to the main objects in world space.
This has several advantages. Firstly, I can move the objects in world space in the same way that I am moving them now (which means that the floating origin system will not need to be changed). Secondly, I can scale down the gravity simulation to avoid having to use realistic numbers. This will make it easier to work with.
I can then move the worldspace objects by multiplying their position in the physics engine by the scaling factor.
I do not quite have proof of concept for this system yet, but I think it should work. At the extreme distances that I am working with, small inaccuracies in the gravitational forces won’t be noticeable, so there shouldn’t be any major issues getting this to work.
