[Mike@1023]

Originally Posted by Bongle

Re: Height limit.

I posted this in the main game thread: A sphere supported by rails 32" apart would still dangle far enough below the rails to be accessible by robots limited to 6ft tall. The bottom of the ball would be 5'10" off the ground, I think.

given a trackball center at (0,0)
given a trackball contact point with a rail at (16,y) (the rails are 32" apart)
given the trackball is 20" and assuming it remains approximately spherical, then...

x^2 + y^2 = r^2
16^2 + y^2 = 400
y^2 = 400 - 256
y = 12

So the contact point for the rails will be 12" below the center of the ball. This means that between the rails, the bottom of the ball should be 8" below them, and thus 2" below the maximum allowed height of a robot in the opponent zone. However, this is in an ideal world where the rails are infinitely thin and the ball is perfectly sperical. Since the rails are 1.5" wide and the ball will deform some, the ball may be slightly higher (or lower if it deforms a lot) than where I computed it to be, and the contact space for a robot will be small.

Obviously this is an easy test to run and I'm sure somebody will post their real-world results soon.

thats much too complicated. we just made an overpass mock-up and measured. you were correct. 8 inches. 5 minutes tops our way though, and no headache...