[robertfw]

I remember a car trick (do a barrel roll) in GTA San Andreas that for the life of me I could not accomplish. I found out that this variable physics was likely the problem - I dropped the graphics settings to minimum, and I was able to do the trick.

This is on a quad core, 8GB ram, 1GB video card machine - it's no slouch - but the subtle difference was enough to make my task impossible.

[pfisch]

Is this worth making the whole game run slower all the time for everyone? That is what you are talking about here.

[ncallaway]

This is incorrect. The suggested approach makes the game significantly more accurate adding 3 multiplications and an addition. This does not make the game noticeably slower. If you're concerned about 3 multiplications and an addition you're going to need to show me some profiler data that shows this as a specific bottle-neck in the game-logic.

[pfisch]

No, you are talking about adding all of these operations per object in the game world.

It doesn't stop at gravity either. Virtually everything in the game world is moving via acceleration. If you were going to do this in a consistent manner you would need to do this for every single physics calculation for every single game world object.

You are correct that you would have to profile it to determine how much of an issue it would be but it sounds like potentially a lot of deadweight to add to the game. Especially since when games slow down it is often due to having a lot of objects in the gameworld simultaneously.

[stcredzero]

Just between two save points. :)

[teamonkey]

On the PS2 you could adjust the roll and pitch of your car in midair. It was possible to do backflips.