document updated 16 years ago, on Apr 16, 2008
Google bait: (since "Portal" by itself is ambiguous / arduous to search for)
Half Life 2
Orange Box
orange blue
Yes, Malinda, the presence of portals means that you can experiment with orbital mechanics from solid ground.
TODO: get screenshots of these. (unfortunately, doing this in stock 360 games seems to be unpossible, so we may have to buy the PC version to do this?)
Lab exercise #1 - Visual orientation
- Place one portal on the ground.
- Place the other portal immediately adjacent to it on the ground, but first walk around to the other side before creating it. (so that you're facing the opposite direction when it's created)
- Walk down the midline.
You should be able to see yourself in both portals.
- Re-place the two portals, but this time, create them while facing the same direction. Walk down the midline again.
You won't be able to see yourself in either portal.
(TODO: do this again with a weighted storage cube or obvious wall on the far side, so that it's clear exactly what's happening here)
Lab exercise #2 - Physical orientation
- Setup two adjacent portals on the ground, oriented opposite ways. (confirm you're able to see yourself in both)
- Walk — slowly, with as little momentum as possible — into one of the portals.
you should be bobbing up and down, with only a very slight physical rotation induced by the portals themselves. (if it was possible set them up in the exact same orientation, I suspect there'd be no noticable edge effects)
- Re-place the two portals, while facing the same direction for both. (confirm you're not able to see yourself in them)
Lab exercise #3 - Thruster orientation
- Setup two adjacent portals on the ground, oriented opposite ways. (confirm you're able to see yourself in both)
- Walk slowly into one of the portals. (confirm you're bobbing without direction changes)
- Press forward, and hold it down for several cycles.
You should be in an elliptical orbit. While on one side of the portal,
your thruster is oriented one way. While on the other side, your thruster is oriented the
opposite way, even though your visual and physical orientation don't change.
- Press backwards, and hold it down for several cycles.
You should be in the same orbit as step#3, but rotating the opposite way.
TODO: explore this further
See also
TODO: all of the Google searches for this seem to be useless... Surely someone has explored this already. Find them, and list them here.