Talk:Unit
hi am working on a school project and was wondering how these conversions to real world numbers were determined. was this just set as an arbitrary number or were these determined in an interesting way? if it was an arbitrary number do we know why these ratios were chosen from a game design perspective if there were determined i would love to know the process of how it was done (if this is the wrong place to ask this i am sorry and would love to be redirected to the right place) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.35.81.129 (talk • contribs) 07:27, 26 February 2024
Unit research[edit source]
For the purposes of this comment, I will define the following suffixes:
- hk
- Havok units
- wu
- World units
Assume that existing unit suffixes (m, in, etc.) are also in play.
As far as I am aware, 1hk = 69.99125wu. I got curious as to why that is the conversion factor, so I started digging into unit relationships.
Here are my findings based, initially, on random guesses, and then on pulling at the thread I found:
| A | u | = | B | u | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | hk | = | 69.99125 | wu | |
| 0.0142875 | hk | = | 1 | wu | The Havok value is just 1 ÷ 69.99125 |
| 64 | m | = | 69.99125 | yd | Hm. Isn't that a neat coincidence? |
| 1 | m | = | 1.09361328125 | yd | |
| 0.9144 | m | = | 1 | yd | |
| 0.9144 | m | = | 36 | in | |
| 0.0142875 | m | = | 0.5625 | in |
I checked the original article afterward, and this matches the table in the article, which in turn is based on the Glossary's entry for Exterior Cells. The conversion factor listed there comes from the article's original revision, by a Bethesda employee. Exterior cells are 4096x4096, which (per both the table in the article and the table above) works out to 2304x2304in or 192x192ft.
Let's continue our table, though:
| A | u | = | B | u | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4096 | wu | = | 32 | vertices | Exterior cells' heightmapped terrain is a 32x32-vertex grid. |
| 192 | ft | = | 32 | vertices | |
| 128 | wu | = | 1 | vertex | |
| 6 | ft | = | 1 | vertex | |
| 1.8288 | m | = | 6 | ft | 1.8288 × 69.99125 = 128 |
My guess is that Bethesda wanted 128wu to equal 6ft, and Havok wanted 1hk to equal 1m. That's the rationale for Skyrim's world units, and everything else — the strange Havok conversion factor included — fell out from that.
DavidJCobb (talk) 16:51, 23 July 2024 (EDT)