Britannia Map

On Tue, 06 Nov 2007 08:10:18 -0600, Polychromic <macecil.DeleteThis@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:48:04 -0000, Boa Dragon <ulf.astrom.DeleteThis@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On 2 Nov, 21:25, Hai-Etlik Dragon <hai-et....DeleteThis@shaw.ca> wrote:
>>> That said, a southerly position is appealing as
>>> it justifies giving the Den a warmer climate.
>>
>>I have always been somewhat perplexed how climate is supposed to work
>>in a torus
>
>I suppose it would be much like a globe although ocean currents would be
>radically more complex. The outer portions and the top and bottom "ends"
>of the torus would have weather as expected but the inner portion of the
>torus, the dark zone as it were, would be a never-ending frozen wasteland.
>
>Makes me think of Ring World, but without a sun in the middle, I guess.

That depends on where the axis of rotation is. If it is through the
center of the donut

axis
-------|-------donut

then the inner ring wouldn't get any sun and the north-south poles
(such as they are) would get similar sun to Earth's poles.


However, if the axis is through the body of the donut (e.g., the donut
is perpendicular to the sun)

axis
|
__|__
/ \
| /\ |
| | | | donut
| \/ |
\_____/
|
|

then most of the inner ring would get some sun as the planet rotates.

Arguably, the former is the more stable of the two permutations, but
I'm not sure I'd want to live on either planet; they'd probably
shatter from the stress before too long.

Of course, since in Ultima 9 we could (finally) look up and see the
sky, we can conclude that neither postulate is accurate, since at no
point on Britannia do we see the arc of the inner ring in the sky
above us. And even in earlier games, the moons were *always* visible
in the sky no matter where you were on the surface (which wouldn't be
true on a torus, since at some points the opposite arc would occlude
the moons). So Britannia can't be a torus.

Hmmm... for some reason I really could go for a bearclaw about now...

On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 03:31:30 +0000, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:


> Of course, since in Ultima 9 we could (finally) look up and see the sky,
> we can conclude that neither postulate is accurate, since at no point on
> Britannia do we see the arc of the inner ring in the sky above us. And
> even in earlier games, the moons were *always* visible in the sky no
> matter where you were on the surface (which wouldn't be true on a torus,
> since at some points the opposite arc would occlude the moons). So
> Britannia can't be a torus.

It's also explicitly shown as a sphere in U7 (The Orrery) and UO (The
opening movie). I've assumed that the area covered by the map is just a
section of the surface. Probably each of the four continents now
occupies a globe the same size as the original, but with the other three
replaced by ocean.

--
Hai-Etlik Dragon | Kevin Michael Smith
-==UDIC==- -=(TNET)=-
http://draconian.ca/
hai-etlik.DeleteThis@vasanspam.shaw.ca