Intersecting Bodies in Outer Wilds (Includes Tutorial)

[@blanper724]

It's so nice to see how the physics are so well made that even after a massive bug like this the movement is still smooth and feels almost intentional

[@redpz]

it makes sense, the devs said the origin of the world moves with the player which would get rid of almost any floating point errors, on the far planets/places far from the center. However because he moved so unbelievably far away (something the devs specifically coded to be impossible but he bypassed via bugs) the planets positions lost their accuracy due to aformentioned floating point error and how the center moves with the player. Upon returning the floating point errors disappeared as the player was close once more = no more floating point errors however the positions of the planets had already lost their accuracy. For example lets say i have a number that is: 12.5 and then floating point error causes the number to get rounded down to 12, the .5 is lost and cannot be recovered even when floating point error is no longer a problem

[@Kavukamari]

I THOUGHT T HE FUEL WAS INFINITE hahahahaha

[@Macabresque]

SAME LOL 😂

[@weinereater-wm6qm]

I learned that the hard way haha

[@Kavukamari]

@@weinereater-wm6qm I boosted for the entire loop once trying to mess up the floating point error by flying really fast away and back so I seriously thought it was infinite

[@Sylfa]

Normally the only way it matters is if you rupture the fuel tank, the fuel gauge drops fast then and if you don't repair it thinking the fuel is infinite… Well, maybe you can use a Nomai shuttle instead?

[@constantlyphil]

I made my suits oxygen infinite by hitting interloper rlly rlly rlly fast in a nomai shuttle while teleporting back (I still don't know how) and I aligned with some unknown planets gravity while leaving the system at 10000km

[@maruwapofilms815]

This happens because in Unity (the engine Outer Wilds was made on) things further from the 'origin/center point' of the level/map often have math as the numbers get bigger, especially when complicated motion or physics is being applied (such as the celestial bodies and their gravity). The devs knew that with a game like outer wild's complexity and size that players visiting planets that were on the other side of the solar system from the 'origin/center point' the calculations could break in front of them. To fix this, they made the player the origin point, so you can never get away from it. The shocking thing to me about this is that this means that the player never ACTUALLY moves. If you jump on Timber Hearth, every single object in the solar system moves instead of you. If you fly to a planet, the planet is actually flying at you. If you get in your ship, your ship is actually the one moving and picking you up. When this guy flew away from the sun, the sun was actually flying away from him as he sat still in his ship. And so was everything else. But there's no way to tell the difference so they've never needed to change it. I don't know how well known that is, but it blew me away when I first heard it.

[@slenderMax28]

The player (or more accurately, the camera) being at the literal center of the game world at all times is how all 3D games work.

[@maruwapofilms815]

​@@slenderMax28woah that's crazy, i never knew that. do you know how online games work? like a third person shooter like CSGO? just out of curiosity

[@WillowLiv]

@@slenderMax28No no! There's a difference here! The camera is usually never the center of the game world! It is the center of the renderer, where the image is generated, but for the calculations, all objects are given a position based on a fixed imaginary point, the world origin, as coordinates. Outer wilds is unique in having the world move around the player, instead of the other way around, which is what is described on this comment, which is amazing. It's a hard feat, because this way all position descriptions are a bit roundabout and everything is relative.

[@jaylebo2025]

@@WillowLivthat last part is the whole point. In real life, motion is ALWAYS relative. In Outer Wilds, the same is true. All of the planets and objects move relative to each other.

[@summerblossom7804]

Sorry Mate I think that guy is pulling your leg, physics goes through a similar process as LoD in rendering where they may skip updating every frame in order to save on resources. so moving the world or moving the player means naught and if anything would probably cause more issues for the physics engine. its usually based on the camera as that's what the user is seeing. Unless people telling you shit that is unbelievable backs it up with trustable sources best to take it with a grain of salt.

[@Voltie_]

the development team stated that if you let the simulation run, even without going thousands of meters away to expedite the process, after a few hours things start to get out of sync, essentially stating the loop is needed to keep things in-line and in orbit, because the planets are not necessarily on a guided path, they are all physics objects

[@Michael-cb3uw]

It would have been an awesome ending of the sun would have remained alive and stable but the planets end up spinning out of rotation thats some cosmic horror/Planetary tragedy shit. Planets and celestial bodies would collide and spread space debris near hospitable planets. Outer wilds 2?

[@erikelmfors7311]

Now it’s REALLY like Majora’s mask

[@MMedic23]

Fuck the Vessel I'm finding the Eye myself

[@PoRRasturvaT]

Anything to not got to Dark Bramble, yes.

[@misterfau985]

I feel like the statue skip would be easier to do if you waited until attlerock is above your head as the gravity would be a bit lighter and you could jump higher for a few attempts

[@trom_my]

ah yes, the only game you can rely on astrophysics to help you with a weird bug ingame

[@ehrensto]

holy crap that would actually make it a little bit easier

[@Pratanjali64]

I believe that it does, but things moving as fast as they do in Outer Wilds, I've discovered you might as well just keep jumping until you get it. I swear, it normally doesn't take me this many jumps.

[@Crust_Crease]

I feel like the sun would influence the gravity too, is that the case?

[@sparkydoggo8691]

@@Crust_Creasenot likely. the equation the probably use is mass 1*mass 2/distance between squared. that distance squared means that the further away things are the gravity becomes less really quickly. its why jupiter can be so massive and still float around the sun, and why the planets get smaller the closer to stars you get (generally of course)

[@onha-3904]

Ok FINALLY I see a video talking about this bug, I made hours of travel in the frozen universe and I have a lot to say about it. -The easiest and obviously faster way to do the statue skip is by doing the speedrun strat, by placing yourself very precisely you can use the geyser to go directly on your ship, its REALLY not as random as the jump over the museum (although before this strat what I was doing is that I get on a spawning place of the crystal in the backyard of the museum, and jumped by looking away, the crystal spawned below me and SOMETIMES it didnt kill me by projecting me too high or by throwing my self in the wall at light speed and just got me out of the museum, really dumb but you can try its fun) -The max speed I got was 95842m/s before going out of fuel (The quantity of fuel might be calculated to not let you trespass the 100 000m/s for reasons I dont know, just a theory based on how stranged that it got dry just before it. -The max distance I got from the sun was nearly 500 000km before testing if there was air in the void -After some dozens of km away from the sun, the ship stop to work, you cant access to the computer, cant heal or anything, and further enough even the map isnt accessible. -Also after xx thousands km, you start floating and sliding in your ship, probably not because of the speed as it go back to normal when going back in the system. You cant walk on the ship, you dont touch the ground, you are just like on ice, gliding in the seat as it's the lower part of the interior -not shure but I think I remember that even if the fuel indicator is completely functionable, the oxygen one doesnt move, but not shure. -At some point the orbit starts to go wild as you show, but more than colision, objects start to get further away, the twins get separated, the planets looses their moons, (fun fact with time, brittle's orbit is just saturated with lava from the lantern before it getting away) SO FAR, that the last time I could use the map, the planets were too far for the camera to see them, there was just timber around the sun, and the lantern some hundreds of km away, the rest was unreacheable on the map -My last big trip was going 60 000km away and getting back, I overestimated my fuel so the only planet I get to see was Giant, the biggest tornado was gone, the island were gone (rip gabbro) the sky was completely black, and black and purple when looking at it from under the water, really scary. Then I tried to get to Timber, who at this point was +200km away from Giant (normally they are around 20km from each other I think) but got out of fuel on the way and never got to see it. -The sun starts cligning after a certain distance, it just looks yellow and translucid and the map, the letters etc get so crazy that they start mixîg with each other and forming new words SO THAT WAS IT. Some fact and tips about travelling way beyond the system of Outer Wilds. Oh next time I will try to go in the direction of the probe as it is the first loop it is suppose to look to the eye, probably nothing but I will do it sometime. Just a last thing, does anyone has any idea why the planet are loosing their orbit and getting really far frome each other with time and/or when going away I have theories, if they get separated only with time, then the devs might have coded the expansion of their universe.... or the planets accelerate and then dissipate with speed forces Or its the travel distance that cause it, and the only possibility I see is that their univers has a limit, for you to not reach it, the universe has to elongate, and so the planets go crazy. Just few things from another traveler o7 Sorry for the english its kind of long to explain for a non native speaker

[@zhugnachaz8709]

"does anyone has any idea why the planet are loosing their orbit and getting really far frome each other with time...?" If you do calculations with big numbers you run into the problem of numerical instability. This is because a number in code can only be represented by a finite amount of digits. I remember the devs explained that to counteract this problem the player is always the origing (0,0,0) of the map, to keep the numbers that are most relevant small. If you move left in Outer Wilds, in actuality the whole map is moving right. So if you move really far away the numbers of the objects like coordinates get bigger and bigger until you get rounding erros big enough to break calculations. That's my guess.

[@ZedJay23]

Yeah, you can actually make it more precise, but it uses a lot more memory. Unity will round numbers down of distant, moving physics objects as I guess the engine devs concluded that such distant objects weren’t worth tracking because of the performance drop of doing so P.S. the probe doesn’t find the eye on the first in game loop, it does so the one before. It sends the coordinates through the Ash Twin Project then at the start of the look the computer goes “oh I have the coordinates now” so it activates the statues for the first time

[@leedlelel2373]

​​@@ZedJay23negative. the first loop is when it finds the eye, remember that it sends information back in time, not the next time.

[@CorruptedCorbok]

Really interesting research you've done! Thanks for sharing 👍

[@onha-3904]

@@CorruptedCorbok 🫡

[@Because_im_lulu5094]

Alternatively, you can use the geyser skip setup used in speedruns to directly access the ship without going to the observatory and doing the mask cutscene skip shown in video.

[@Indiscrimi]

...So what happens to the balls in the museum when the Attlerock is literally phasing through Timber Hearth?

[@Polydueces]

You cans statue skip (and launch code skip) by riding the geyser up to the launch platform. Just takes timing and good aim and youll survive the fall. It's much faster.

[@idris4587]

But also alot harder

[@SuperTux20]

It's a shame they don't have collision with each other, that'd be wild to see unfold

[@sethvizel]

This is awesome! I've seen people mention this is possible, but no one I've seen has actually made a video like this on it. Fascinating!

[@pizzainc.1465]

This could be easily solved by having the star system in its own coordinate plane, the ship in another, and using a floating point offset whenever the ship location’s variable is close to overflowing. That way the solar system always renders because it is static, and the ship always renders, because it is also technically static, but you can also go as far as you want without breaking the game

[@pizzainc.1465]

And it only requires adding two variables, modifying the code slightly, and replacing distances with a short calculation. However, it may be a unity problem, so they should probably fix that because it would make almost all games better.

[@pizzainc.1465]

The reason I say that is because unity itself may have the hitbox and visual system reliant upon an absolute location, and it would be pretty bad for performance if they had to bypass unity’s hitbox and visual system and use their own. It would also be a lot more work, just to fix a fun, difficult to reproduce glitch.

[@TheOnlyOne516]

Timber Hearth getting the Termina treatment

[@crazyjaybe]

"Hull breach! HULL BREACH!!" -that guy on the Hiigarian frigate

[@SinceFall]

6:19 It scared me!

[@PitiNasri]

Very zen planet surfing sesh, thanks for sharing

[@Pratanjali64]

I had a buddy over watching me, and I was cackling the entire time.

[@ennard9638]

Fuel of the ship can run out ? I went 30k away from the sun full boost on and back to giant deep without running out of fuel

[@Pratanjali64]

The fuel is finite, but takes longer than 22 minutes to deplete. You can shorten that time if you accidentally puncture the fuel tank. My next experiment will probably be to time how long a full tank lasts. My best guess is 30 minutes.

[@ennard9638]

@@Pratanjali64 oooh ok

[@Ringcaat]

Imagine that you're just standing there minding your own business, and suddenly you get conked on the head by AN ENTIRE PLANET. What is wrong with the cosmos??

[@OrionTheHunter098]

For some people, they don't have to imagine. You falling and hitting your head is the exact same as the whole planet rushing up to meet you. If you've fallen on your face before (I have), a whole entire planet has conked you on the head.

[@123890antonioj]

The cosmos is minutes away from dying. I'd say it's to be expected

[@hellohi2516]

I wonder what it would have been like to be inside the interloper when it went inside Giant’s Deep

[@Ahnock]

probably an instakill due to colliding objects

[@DartMonke123]

Finally! Chert can go to the ash twin to go on other planets!

[@cinfdef]

What happens to the metal balls when the Attlerock is closer to the surface like that? Are they legitimately physics bodies or are they simply an animation?

[@LeLeDeLaGeo]

It’s actually possible because in outer wilds, the pler is never moving from origin point, if that was the case, then the solar system would be fine, and player would be the one affectee by floating point error, but to prevent this, the player stay in 0,0,0, and the planets are all moving asay from him, really smart

[@abridgesa80]

With enough of an error, would it be theoretically possible to separate the sand layer from ash twin and beat the game before starting a loop? Or would that be stupid for multiple reasons I haven't thought of

[@starwie]

If you do this statue glitch and go to the sun station. What time untill supernova shows up??

[@cynthiaclementine4757]

It will never show up. The solar system is fixed until you interact with the statue, at which point all the time-sensitive events start (the sun getting larger, sand moving onto ember twin, brittle hollow decaying, etc)

[@kylebricker9505]

@@cynthiaclementine4757starwie probably meant the text in the sun station that says ‘time until sun station is destroyed by expanding star:’ I’m curious to know too!

[@seekvapes9641]

@@kylebricker9505 It would probably stay at 20-ish minutes. Though getting there would be very hard, you would have to no-statue glitch and land manually on the sun station in the same run without dying.

[@callhimtim3188]

@@seekvapes9641 Not so. When I was performing the precision-loss glitch, I noticed the Sun Station getting further away from the Sun. Landing on it would probably be pretty easy if you time your return correctly (you can't just wait it out as long as you want because the station will still crash into the sun eventually. It went through weird cycles of getting closer and further until it went inside the sun and ceased to exist).

[@seekvapes9641]

@@callhimtim3188 I was only talking about doing the no-statues glitch and going straight to the station. And how the timer would look like (all timers are frozen at 0 until you activate the statue) Sure you could also do the precision-loss glitch to make the landing easier I guess.

[@Wxyvs-]

you can get your suit without activating the statue meaning you can do that statue skip much easier

[@trentmager4852]

5:00 I love majoras mask‼️❤❤❤

[@vm20709]

You saved the universe, but at what cost 😅

[@callhimtim3188]

A warning: BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL TRAVERSING THE HOURGLASS TWINS WHILE THEY ARE GLITCHED. I observed drastic and unpredictable velocity changes while they were far apart. I got bucked off the planet and died in outer space. Don't be stupid like me. Also, it's possible to see a low-poly resource-conserving version of Ember Twin if you land on it while it's far away from the quote-unquote "center of mass" (I put that in quotes because that point doesn't seem to align with the actual middle point between the twins). Just make sure to never ever leave the ship, else you risk the celestial rodeo.

[@Deathstorm501]

5:00 Man the majoras mask conparisons are just getting less and less subtle arent they

[@mmpMultiversalMagicPolice]

Not the hourglass twins colliding with eachother

[@kennycarter5682]

the game needs more randomness built into it, it be fun to have random collisons making some areas impossible\destroying stuff. and i was always bummed the hourglass twins did not get swallowed up by the red giant.

[@callhimtim3188]

Okay, so if you've been reading the comments for a good minute now, you've probably figured out that the player is always the origin point of the map, and this is why distance never glitches things out near the player. But what if you use a projection stone to see a location WAAAAAAAY far away from you? Y'know, like looking into the ATP from the other side of the galaxy? Speaking as someone who did exactly that, you won't be disappointed...

[@craigisapunk]

What would happen if after returning to the system, you went back to Timber Hearth and activated the statue? I bet you could see tons more cool things on the Hourglass Twins, and even beat the game! Maybe the Eye of the Universe has been thrown off course too

[@GeassEnabler]

The eye is a secondary level. But I wonder if the dark Bramble portals might have broken

[@craigisapunk]

@@GeassEnabler So I ended up doing a little experimenting on this myself. I flew way out, let everything get way out of wack, and flew back. Got back and the Hourglass Twins had drifted way apart, probably twice as far apart as they're supposed to be, and Ash Twin was colliding with the sun at times. The Interloper had also disappeared completely. Lots of other things off track. So first thing I went to Timber Hearth to shoot my Scout into the Bramble seed. This should activate the big black orb near the sun that houses the Bramble dimensions. After shooting the scout in, I did confirm the black sphere seemed to be in the same spot. I then flew to Dark Bramble and into the seed, and I was transported into the usual dimensional area, so looks like that is normal. I then wanted to see about the Brittle Hollow Black Hole, so I flew into that and it did transport me to the WHS (Though I think the WHS may have moved a bit? Not sure) I then flew back to Timber Hearth so I could activate the statue and see if anything else was weird during the actual story. Mainly, I was curious to see if any of the other Black Hole teleporters on Ash Twin would be impacted. So I landed at Timber Hearth, got out (in my space suit) and went to the statue. Normal animation played out. But after the animation suddenly I no longer had my space suit on. I went back to my ship and looked at my map to find the Solar System had returned back to complete normal. So I guess that answers that!

[@maruwapofilms815]

i bet it creates a whole new level when the statue animation plays, ensuring all the planets are lined up and everything is timed right. this is very cool @@craigisapunk

[@codebracker]

The system resets when you activate the statue

[@callhimtim3188]

​@@craigisapunk Oh yeah, I forgot the statue resets the solar system. It has to return to its configuration at the start of a normal loop

[@MisterPikol]

awesome discovery dude

[@MortimerKerman]

If your ship has fuel, does it have oxygen too? I'm asking because you can break the oxygen tank

[@theorixo]

what happen if you make the loop start again after that

[@callhimtim3188]

The Solar System gets reset to normal

[@theorixo]

@callhimtim3188 thanks

[@Zaddis]

THE SHIP HAS FUEL?

[@siddharthrao5158]

Can you finish the game without starting the loop

[@Dan0RG]

Not unless you use cheats. Normally you need the Ash Twin towers to be accessible, but time-limiting mechanics like Brittle Hollow's destruction and the Hourglass Twins' sand transfer don't activate until you've interacted with the statue on the first loop (for gameplay reasons).

[@PloverTechOfficial]

You can however finish the game while in a specific dlc state. It just requires good timing, positioning, practice and ability to fly in space using jetpacks.

[@andrewleach1667]

​@@PloverTechOfficialWhat do you mean?

[@PloverTechOfficial]

@@andrewleach1667 you can’t finish the game without starting the loop but you can start the game while lucid dream glitching

[@andrewleach1667]

@PloverTechOfficial Oh word. I thought you might have meant there was an official ending I missed. I appreciate the regard for spoilers, but do you mind saying what you mean by timing, positioning, and jetpacking?