[vos-d] Online Space

[Karsten Otto]

First off, I'd say the limit is really the coordinate system you use.  
Assuming you have a 4-byte integer value measuring meters, then you  
already can go roughly 2.000.000.000 meters in any direction, which  
well exceeds terrestial distances, but isn't quite enough to take you  
from the Sun to Pluto (iirc, my numbers may be wrong). That is why  
Java3D for example has a 256-bit HiResCoord data type, which "is  
sufficient to describe a universe in excess of several billion light  
years across, yet still define objects smaller than a proton." If  
that is still not enough, you could use an arbitrary number of bits,  
which is theoretically limitless.  In practice it will be restricted  
by the amount of bits supplied by your main memory, though :-)

However, people do not like to work with large numbers. It is much  
more convenient to have the coordinates of your world closely around  
(0,0,0). You have that in your pyramid world, and the little penguin  
will want it for its iceberg too, probably on the spot where he keeps  
his bucket of fish. Then you *link* the iceberg into your pyramid  
world, just like a web hyperlink, but with attached coordinates: It  
states that the iceberg is at (x,y,z) in your pyramid coordinate  
system. The peguin does the same for its iceberg world, indicating  
where the pyramid is located in relation to its fish bucket. These  
two numbers should be inverses of each other if you want realism, but  
they don't have to be; it could be much closer from the iceberg to  
the pyramid than vice versa, or not possible at all to go in one  
direction. This kind of free linking is just one possibility however;  
some people may prefer a fixed sized grid for this sort of thing, or  
a more restricted scheme for who may link to what. In any case, there  
should be some halfway point at which the seagulls stop using the  
pyramid server for position tracking and switch over to to the  
iceberg server. This kind of handover is more or less what you do to  
make cellphones work.

Hope this helps a bit!
Karsten Otto (kao)