I haven't received any bites all day, so I figured I'd also copy the thread into General Discussion.

I have a question regarding the maximum speed and acceleration values for Halo's vehicles.

In what way are these values measured? I know they are apparently represented as a sort of ratio between 0 and 1, but how does one go about figuring out what each of these speeds translate to in regards to actual real-world measurements?

For instance, the in-universe maximum speed of a generic M12 Warthog is 125 km/h. How would one go about appropriating this speed accurately into the warthog's maximum forward speed? I assumed that the velocities may or may not have had something to do with world units per second, but that doesn't seem to be the case:

1 km/h = 0.277773 m/s
125 km/h x 0.277773 m/s = 34.72225 m/s
34.72225 m/s ÷ 3.05 m (which is the equivalent to 1 Halo world unit) = 11.384344 wu/s

Instead of being something easily decipherable, like a velocity measurement in world units per second, the value actually reads as "0.275" for the stock warthog.vehicle, which isn't anywhere close to the converted ~11 wu/s.

Does anyone have any information on what these maximum speed value ratios represent, and how they could be accurately measured? It would be very helpful.

Let's have some fun with this:

Why not make a boxmap with a road in the middle, and texture that road with numbered markings at every 100 3DS-max-standard-units (1.0 units in Halo of course of course). Then use the dev camera and fraps to measure the travel time ?

Do it for science!

edit: would prolly do this for myself since I don't have a testmap after wiping and need another one anyways(I just can't use 3DSmax today, A/C rationing), plus race track in a test map !
Edited by OrangeJuice on Jul 22, 2015 at 11:30 PM

Pretty sure 1 max unit is 1 inch by default.

I don't think it's that simple, there are a lot of factors in physics tag that also affect maximum speed of the vehicle.

Ah, I never noticed. Physics tags are one of those few things that I'm not all that familiar with. I don't think I've ever really given them an in-depth look before, and they're still a bit of an enigma to me. I'll probably dig around in the default warthog's physics later this evening and see if I can find anything out.

I really wish it were that simple :(

@OrangeJuice:

unfortunately i'm pleb and don't have modelling software, and i just refuse to get any lol. even if i was that inspired to find out, i still wouldn't. Nick thought it might be a good idea for us to "try and figure it out, and have fun while doing it," so he might take you up on that idea. we'll see where that goes
Edited by Bungie LLC on Jul 23, 2015 at 06:19 PM