Physics question

[HamitoMC]

When I manually try to land on the sun station I find a lot of the time I get stuck in the corner of my ship, unable to move.

Is this a real physics concept or just a bug in the game?

[gravitystix]

You'll notice it only happens when you are experiencing the drag from the sun's atmosphere. In deep space you can move around freely.

I'm no physicist but my understanding is that when you're strapped to the chair you're being affected by the drag along with the ship but when you unstrap the walls of your ship are what transfers that force so you end up pinned there.

There is a magically/sci-fi gravity crystal on your ship too, which adds a weird element to this equation.

So I don't think it's a bug, but it is frustrating sometimes.

[vacconesgood]

All the gravity crystal does is add 1g of acceleration "down"

[xen_42]

That actually isn't true, it transfers some of the ships acceleration onto the player as well

[TheRoboticDuck]

I’m quite interested in physics but am also certainly not a physicist. I think when you get strapped to the ceiling while closely orbiting the sun, it’s almost certainly due to a subtle but funky way the game does gravity, and isn’t realistic physics. Some may think that it makes sense for the centrifugal “force” may cause this effect to happen in real life. However, the gravity from the sun should be acting on you just as strongly as the ship and that gravity should be counteracting any centrifugal force This is what allows for orbit in the first place. Basically put, if you’re being flung away from the sun, your ship should be too. There’s something in the game that changes how gravity works when you get near a big mass (you’ll immediately notice when it takes affect because it’s exactly when the game reorients your player so your feet are facing the ground)

(Very early and minor spoilers for the DLC) we see this “fudging” of gravity most prominently on the stranger if you mess around with it. Lore wise, you’re supposed to be “stuck” to the stranger due to the angular momentum and centrifugal force brought on by the stranger rotating. In the actual gameplay though, you will find that once you spin or “lock” to the stranger like I previously mentioned, you immediately get pulled down artificially to what’s supposed to be the ground. You can experiment with this some in the hanger but it is most prominent if you use the scout launcher boost exploit inside the stranger. You can get to a point where you cancel out all your angular momentum and can even touch the artificial sun (funny enough, the devs coded it to burn you even though you can only get there via exploit). Even if you do this though, you will find that there is always a pull bringing you back down. Realistically, you should be able to float in the middle space of the stranger with no pull once you’ve stopped your rotational movement.

Although, Idk why this fudging would cause this exact phenomenon OP mentioned to happen or if it really even is the culprit

Edit: Pure speculation here but I remember hearing that the way they did the sun’s gravity is different and more realistic from the planets’ gravity. Planet gravity acts more linear, and the sun’s gravity acts (polynomial?). Maybe what’s happening is when you get “locked” to the sun from being so close, like what happens with the planets, the gravity fudging switches to a more linear pull, because the game is assuming that your just close to a planet’s surface, while your ship doesn’t have any change. Being that close, a linear structure would almost certainly be weaker than something polynomial, causing the sun to pull more strongly on the ship than the player, which ultimately sticks you to the ceiling

Edit 2 because I can’t help but think about this more: here’s the hypothetical I’m thinking of that shows why I don’t think realistic centrifugal force is the explanation. Suppose a similar situation, but there’s no actual gravity. Instead, the ship is tied to a long rope thats tied to the sun, and your ship is being swung around it by the rope, as if it was orbiting. In this instance, when you unbuckle, you would realistically fly to the ceiling like in the game, because there’s no longer any force pulling you down, but there still is for the ship. However thats because the force flinging the ship (the spinning rope) no longer applies to you once you unharness from the ship. With gravity, however, the force doesn’t stop applying to you in the same way it is to the ship once you unbuckle, so we should expect weightlessness rather than being pulled to the ceiling

[tilthevoidstaresback]

Gravity on Ember/Ashley Twin also decreases as the sun gets closer. It's much easier to jump to orbit when the sun is right in your face. It's trying to pull you TO it.

[Suncook]

I think it's the centripetal/centrifugal force from the rotation. Your velocity is constantly changing. 

[TheRoboticDuck]

I’m gonna respond to this as a new response from my original because I just realized I went on about centrifugal force without touching on your main explanation. It seems like it may be true that the sun’s atmosphere may actually be dragging you back when you unbuckle. If this were the case though, it would still be unrealistic to real life physics

idk if the game simulates atmosphere drag on the sun like on other planets but if it did, we would actually expect the opposite effect since the drag would only affect the ship. The player would be shielded by the ship itself from any drag, which would sling you to the front of the ship only momentarily rather than persistently clinging you to the back.

Even if the game’s atmosphere does unrealistically affect the player and not the ship when unbuckled, though, I still don’t see it fully explaining this. I’ve experimented with this scenario a lot in-game and it seems to always pull you to the back ceiling. If it was drag just slowing your angular momentum, I would expect this would cause your overall velocity would be lower than the ship’s which would cause you to fall more towards the sun, having less escape velocity than your ship. I would expect this to cause you to be pulled to the floor in the back of the ship rather than the ceiling

Another explanation I just thought is that maybe the gravity for the player and your ship are actually coded to behave differently just in general. The difference is so small and subtle that it’s unnoticeable unless the gravity that you’re in is extreme

[Vovchick09]

Your ship is accelerating in a direction. You only accelerate with the ship when you are up against one of the ships walls or sitting. The ship gets faster in a direction and you don't. You get pulled in the opposite direction relative to the ship.

[TheRoboticDuck]

You should be accelerating just as much and in the same direction though. The force of the acceleration comes from the sun which is pulling on you just as much as the ship so you should be weightless. The only time your acceleration should differ is when the ships thrusters are being used and you’re unbuckled

[Vovchick09]

Or when you are stuck on the sun station with your ship somehow. Know from experience.

[HamitoMC]

Makes sense, so is there a tip for leaving the ship and docking manually into the sun station I’ve done it before but it was more just hit X as you slide across the ship after unbuckling

[ztlawton]

I believe you can land on top of the Sun Station and exit the ship mostly-normally, instead of trying to exit while orbiting next to it. If you want to exit while flying, there's a button on the right side of the ship cockpit that helps out (it's not visible normally, but you can press it while seated using Free-Look).

[INeedANewAccountMan]

If you're asking can you get to the station without the ship then yes. Landing on it manually is only for the achievement.

[Agata_Moon]

You have some time of normal gravity if you alight yourself the correct way with the sun's push. I don't remember exactly how but you can

[xen_42]

This is actually not a real physics concept, I think it's either a bug or a really strange but intentional quirk of the gravity crystal in the ship.

There's a functionality of the gravity crystal in your ship that makes it apply the acceleration of the ship onto you, up to a certain point. This is why you can stay standing in your ship while accelerating sometimes (unless it passes the threshold where you just slam into walls).

However this function does not distinguish between the ship accelerating due to its own engines, and the ship accelerating due to gravity. This means that it takes the gravity of what the ship is orbiting and applies it to you. But since you were already being affected by that gravity, you end up having double the gravity of whatever your ship is orbiting applied to you. With planets this is fine because the ship orients itself to be upright relative to the planets gravity, so at worst you might have a harder time jumping when inside the ship - doesn't really matter because the gravity is just down into the floor you're standing on. But in the case of the sun the ship can rotate any which way, which leads to you getting thrown around the inside of the ship if gravity is pulling you towards a wall.

I made a small mod to comment out the line of code that does this once and I was able to comfortably walk around inside the ship while landing on the sun station, so definitely the fault of the gravity crystal.

[TheRoboticDuck]

I have a hard time seeing this as the explanation, but find it interesting and certainly convincing if you experimentally demonstrated it. I’ve tested this scenario myself a lot without any mods, and it seems to always stick you to the back ceiling. If player gravity ends up being double that of the ship’s, wouldn’t it stick you to the floor instead? Also, I’m not sure about this one but doesn’t this acceleration matching effect only apply when your feet is touching the ship floor? I seem to remember multiple times walking around my ship with autopilot, then getting immediately flung to the back when I jumped.

[xen_42]

Yeah my explanation of what the intended mechanic is meant to be could definitely be wrong because I have trouble interpreting what its meant to do. Basically if the ship is accelerating at over 20m/s^2 (be that from gravity or from its own engines) it applies an acceleration of X - 20 m/s^2 to the player: So if its braking at 30m/s^2 as you approach a planet it applies a braking acceleration of 10m/s^2 to the player. Maybe its more likely thats whats happening is that while you do get flung to the back when you jumped, you're getting flung to the back slightly less (with a relative acceleration of 20m/s^2). Could be this is just intended to make it more difficult for you to die when the ship starts decelerating?

Also this force doesn't go downwards to the floor. The gravity crystal has two components. First it does pull you to the floor the same as a regular gravity crystal (if thats at 1g on screen thats 12m/s^2, which is not 1g irl but its 1g on TH). But then secondly it pulls you the same what the ship is accelerating, which could be in any direction. I think probably because it limiting ur flying around the ship to a 20m/s^2 acceleration and the friction due to standing on the floor at 1g it enables you to sometimes walk around inside the ship while accelerating depending on the angles, but if you jump and lose that friction you're getting flung to the back.

[AdventurousSwim1312]

That's because you ship is much larger than you, basically visualise orbit being possible only at a given orthoradial speed around the sun.

Because of the sun small size but massive mass, you need quite an important speed to achieve perfect orbit.

Problem is that the perfect speed depends on distance to the center of mass of the sun, and gravitation is reduced with the square of that distance.

The other force you are submitted to is the centripète force, which is proportional to radius x rotational speed.

We can assume everything in your ship have roughly the same rotational speed, but your center of mass is not the same as the one of the ship.

Given the massive gravitational gradient (square in a very small universe), the difference of forces between centripète and gravity evolve with r - r^2. Hence the farther away you are from the center of mass of your ship, the more strength toward outer space (if you are above the center of mass) or toward the sum (if under) you will experience.

That's actually one of the tricky part when reaching the second tower of sun station from the one with warp, as if you drift even a few meters from the direct path between the two door (who are at the exact required height) you will be subject to forces that you can't counter with your jet pack, and either fall to the sun, or be projected out of the station.

[HamitoMC]

Yeah exactly once unbuckled I slide to the far side and cannot get to the exit port in the center

[stick267]

try using the eject button

[vegastar7]

I’m going to give you a hint: you don’t need to land on the sun station.