Yesterday, your Editor and I were lucky enough to be present at a scientific First. Whilst monitoring the Independent State of Caledon chat channel, I chanced upon an announcement from Miss Emilin Nakamori that she had invented what she believed to be the first non-scripted mechanism in a virtual world. She invited us to view the results of her experiments, and a small group of us duly assembled at Whitmyre Island to view a demonstration.
What we found there was astonishing. Two pillars were mounted on a plinth on the ground. Between them, hanging in space, was a collection of objects: a gold axle, a pendulum bob near the ground, a ring of pins with two pawls on the outside around a small cogwheel sharing a common second axle, and a vertical row of pins.
The arrangement was so skeletal, it turned out, because actually joining things with rods and discs simply adds to the prims, and you need all the prims you can get when making cogwheels: no object can have more than 32 prims. Better to simply – and invisibly – link the objects.
The upper axle was in fact sheathed by a tube (kept away from the axle by avoidance) linked to the pendulum bob – thus enabling it to swing back and forth. The pendulum thus created was linked to the two pawls. Similarly the cogwheel was part of the sheath over the lower axle, and was also linked to the ring of pegs, forming an escapement wheel.
The vertical row of pegs was linked to two tubes that slid down inside the vertical supports on either side. They engaged in the teeth of the smaller central cogwheel part of the escapement wheel. What we were looking at was the beginnings of a clock mechanism.
“I believe,” said Miss Nakamori (pictured left), “that I have created the first self-regulating, non-scripted mechanism in a virtual world!” She is probably right, too. This mechanism indeed had not one script driving it. Instead, in-world physics allows it to operate. And operate it did, if a little shakily at times. Physics objects are notoriously unstable and once or twice the mechanism did actually come apart.
The system is operated by lifting the row of pegs and associated rods and releasing them from a height. The first peg hits the central cogwheel and attempts to rotate the escapement wheel, which causes whichever pawl is in contact with an escapement peg to be kicked away, thus starting the pendulum swinging. This in turn releases the escapement wheel, only for it to be stopped by the pawl engaging on the opposite side, which is then kicked off by the wheel… and so on. Thus the pendulum swings and the escapement wheel rotates step by step until the vertical rods reach the ground and the movement stops. For more detail of the escapement, see below (the falling rods have reached the bottom of their travel in this image):
The weight that falls is determined by how hollow the sliding tubes are. Too much weight and the whole assembly is kicked off its bearings. Too little, and the pendulum does not move enough to free the escapement wheel. It’s a finely balanced device, made all the more difficult to fine-tune by the foibles of SL and its physics.
Almost certainly, this mechanism would have been impossible before Havok 4: Emilin noted that others had tried cogwheels in the past and failed. Even now, there is a lot of vibration and the assembly can shake itself to bits – but it’s early days yet.
Those of us who are interested in the development of Science and Technology in our world congratulate Miss Nakamori on her wonderful discovery. She tells us that she intends to build a clock based on this escapement, driven by a water-wheel-like device, and we hope we can report on this in more detail in the future as the project develops.
Prim Perfect 