Karsten and Chris are both right and have insightful comments. There's no real computational or memory restriction on the size of a volume of space *as a volume of space* Chris is talking about the representation of coordinates.
[[I.e. the only reason that a 1x1x1 kilometer space is different from a 1x1x1 meter space is that the 3 numbers are bigger. It's not like every 1x1x1 m cube within the 1x1x1 km space needs N bytes of RAM or anything :)]] In the past we've talked about the problems of resolution of large floating point numbers but never came to any solution for that per se, but perhaps to someday do automatic subdivision of the space into multiple sectors, whenever a need for a tool like that comes up. So you enter new subbordinate or "nested" coordinate systems as you move around. If you want to be able to see that whole galaxy in the rendering all at once that might be a bit of a challenge, but should be possible to figure out. (My guess is that graphics research has already discovered some solutions to this?) Reed S Mattison wrote: > This might seem a haphazard or poorly thought out question, but it has > been long begged by science fiction, and I'm very intrigued to hear > answers from people who might know how it would be possible... > > Forget everything you know about the COD format. > > Say, I have a small online world, which looks something like a pyramid > on top of a hill. Consider the center of the base of this pyramid as > "The Origin Point". Say the extent of the square-shaped land area in > my world ranges from the virtual X/Y values of +1 to -1. (I know > nothing about the values of the current "pyramid" map, but follow me > on a tangent here...) > > After that, say I allow avatars into my world, maybe they look like > birds of some sort. > > Now... and this is where it gets tricky... Say I give them a command > that allows them to 'fly', or, retain the same Z value, while they > navigate across the X and Y axis... > > Would it be possible to allow my world to have near-infinite values > for X and Y (At least, as high as modern floating-point variables go)? > Say; If two avatars float in an opposite direction for hours on end, > for the span of eight, sixteen, thirty-two hours... How would the > world need to be programmed so that, assuming they turn around 180 and > float back, it would take them both exactly the same amount of time to > get back to their original meeting place? > > If Penguin A created his own land-mass 28 hours from the meeting > point, how could I store it and retain the data in the server, > assuming said Penguin is capable of finding this point again? > > -Steve > > _______________________________________________ > vos-d mailing list > vos-d@interreality.org > http://www.interreality.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vos-d _______________________________________________ vos-d mailing list vos-d@interreality.org http://www.interreality.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vos-d
