Other flat worlds and the implications for Earth

Hi all,

This might all seem a little irrelevant but please bear with me.

To get straight to the point, Special Stages from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 may look spherical but are actually flat.


A video of a special stage in action:

It looks spherical (I will get to this later) but cannot be. The floor has a squares pattern which is consistent throughout, and you would be unable to fill a sphere with perfect squares, the squares should narrow and meet at a single point as you get to one of the poles of these worlds, as you see with the longitude lines of the spherical Earth model. Furthermore, the stages are set in perpetual daylight (or night time depending on the stage), with no change in light levels as Sonic travels to the other side. If these worlds were round, the light source would only hit one side of the world.

As for looking round, I think there are a couple of things at play here. Firstly, this game would have been mostly played on a CRT screen considering it was released in 1994. These screens have a curve which I believe warps the perception of the viewer to see more curvature. Also, If we say for instance that Sonic can see for 300 pixel lengths in all directions, this would draw a circle of viewing field with him in the centre, I think the curve of this circle is what we are seeing on this world.


Yes this is a video game with a fictional "globe" of collecting blue spheres (which I have no argument against are in fact spherical, they can be readily observed as such), but I think some of the observations can have meaning for the real world as well, because games are still bound by the laws of mathematics. Here we see a world which absolutely must be flat and yet we see a curve on the horizon which I believe can be explained.

I don't really intend to get into the real world counterparts, I posted this to see other peoples thoughts, but this shows that observations might not always match what maths dictates and a similar thing may be happening here on Earth?

It looks spherical (I will get to this later) but cannot be.

Then feel free to contact the programmers of that game and find out how they programmed the map.

In games, you have a couple of choices
1. Use an infinite flat plane.
2. Use a spherical map like in the Sonic game.

For case 1, of course, it isn't truly infinite since there is a limit to RAM. You just make a really big world and limit your rendering (rendering takes GPU cycles). As the character goes straight, generate and place new items on the flat plane while the stuff behind you are deleted from RAM (They aren't truly deleted. You just need to position them in front of the character at random locations).

The floor has a squares pattern which is consistent throughout, and you would be unable to fill a sphere with perfect squares

The angles of a square don't add up to 360°. Therefore, they aren't technically square.
It is also possible to draw a triangle on a sphere whose angles add up to 270°. So, it isn't technically a triangle, but it looks like a triangle projected on a sphere.

FAIL!

It is a video game. 

It's call rendering.  I can create a square swatch and have it render the pattern on any object within the construct.  The squares will no longer be perfect squares.

I can also defy physics and create objects that could not exist in real life.

A square, by definition, is an equal length rhomberateral with adjacent 90 degree subangles, all derived on a flat, 2D plane. You cannot, will not, should not, and most importantly cannot, place a square on top of a round surface. It just can't be done. Have you ever tried balancing a toaster on a basketball? Of course you have, that's why we're all members here. This is irrefutable proof that the earth is an infinite plane.

Thanks for the thoughts.

I think the illusion of the spherical world is distorting the squares a little, Sonic does appear to make strict 90 degree turns to travel new paths. But whether they are perfect squares or just very close, you could not get them to match up on a sphere like that, something must give.

I know this is a game world, but my thoughts are more along the lines of how easy an illusion can be created; the special stages are flat. For hundreds/thousands of years people have dominantly looked at the evidence to see a spherical Earth, just how you would see this special stage and initially see a spherical world. I'm more looking into the idea of do flat Earth believers think this could be an example of how people can see the world as spherical before really looking into the details.

Thanks for the thoughts.

I think the illusion of the spherical world is distorting the squares a little, Sonic does appear to make strict 90 degree turns to travel new paths. But whether they are perfect squares or just very close, you could not get them to match up on a sphere like that, something must give.

#1. Video cards, GPUs, or software renderers can't render TRUE curved surface.
#2. How do you render a sphere, cylinder, cone? You break it down into multiple triangles because GPU algorithms are highly optimized for triangle rasterization.
#3 Very few GPUs can render TRUE squares. They prefer triangles.

You can see the triangles in wireframe renderings like this:
https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&authuser=0&biw=1440&bih=722&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=yOjgWqr0A6zSjwTo9YWgDw&q=sphere+%2B+opengl&oq=sphere+%2B+opengl&gs_l=psy-ab.3...280141.280536.0.281219.2.2.0.0.0.0.79.157.2.2.0....0...1c..64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.Gk5zWC6b0Ig

So, that is what the programmers for that Sonic game are doing. It is a pseudo sphere, rendered as squares (quads), that are actually broken down to 2 triangles and colored.

Why are we only talking about Sonic? I clearly see Tails (aka Miles) running behind him as well. Why would you purposely leave this information out?

#1. Video cards, GPUs, or software renderers can't render TRUE curved surface.
#2. How do you render a sphere, cylinder, cone? You break it down into multiple triangles because GPU algorithms are highly optimized for triangle rasterization.
#3 Very few GPUs can render TRUE squares. They prefer triangles.

You can see the triangles in wireframe renderings like this:
https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&authuser=0&biw=1440&bih=722&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=yOjgWqr0A6zSjwTo9YWgDw&q=sphere+%2B+opengl&oq=sphere+%2B+opengl&gs_l=psy-ab.3...280141.280536.0.281219.2.2.0.0.0.0.79.157.2.2.0....0...1c..64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.Gk5zWC6b0Ig

So, that is what the programmers for that Sonic game are doing. It is a pseudo sphere, rendered as squares (quads), that are actually broken down to 2 triangles and colored.

Your link shows what I'm saying about distorted sizes. 3D rendering does indeed work with triangles, I know as I have worked with it. You can see that as you get to the top of the spheres, the "square" segments narrow and meet at one point, this is what has to compromise because you cannot put a full set of squares/almost squares on a sphere while the edges are all lined up (the paths Sonic and Tails traverse along), Whether this is computer graphics or real life. The special stage is made of equally sized segments throughout showing that the special stage cannot be a sphere.

Also no 3D rendering is used in this game.

Why are we only talking about Sonic? I clearly see Tails (aka Miles) running behind him as well. Why would you purposely leave this information out?

I felt Tails had no relevance to the subject. Poor Tails again eh?

I felt Tails had no relevance to the subject. Poor Tails again eh?

Well that's cause for concern. If you voluntarily left that detail out, what else did you leave out? What if I left out one of the sides of a square? Now it's a triangle. That's a pretty big flaw in this experiment.

Well that's cause for concern. If you voluntarily left that detail out, what else did you leave out? What if I left out one of the sides of a square? Now it's a triangle. That's a pretty big flaw in this experiment.

I'm not intentionally trying to leave out important information. Some things to clarify so we can try to have transparency on this issue.
* Sonic may enter the stage without Tails and it changes nothing.
* Tails or Knuckles may play the stage alone and it behaves the same.
* A chaos emerald may be won by completing the stage.
* Touching a red sphere fails the stage. Incidentally this also shows the stages are flat, because some stages have red on the floor and would cause the stage to fail immediately because the character has touched a red sphere.
* The music for this stage may or may not have been written by Michael Jackson (he wrote some of the music for this game but which ones isn't well known last I knew)

Your link shows what I'm saying about distorted sizes. 3D rendering does indeed work with triangles, I know as I have worked with it. You can see that as you get to the top of the spheres, the "square" segments narrow and meet at one point, this is what has to compromise because you cannot put a full set of squares/almost squares on a sphere while the edges are all lined up (the paths Sonic and Tails traverse along), Whether this is computer graphics or real life. The special stage is made of equally sized segments throughout showing that the special stage cannot be a sphere.

Yes, at the poles of the sphere, one of the edges of the square will have 0 length. In other words, just render that as triangle. Yes, all along the surface of the sphere, each square will be distorted (not all edges are the same length and angles aren't 90°)

Also no 3D rendering is used in this game.

Like I said, no idea how they did it back then. Perhaps it is a series of bitmaps. Perhaps it is 3D but rendered with a software rasterizer.
These days, you could render it as textured sphere and just move the texture around. It is easy. Anyone can do it.

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Well that's cause for concern. If you voluntarily left that detail out, what else did you leave out? What if I left out one of the sides of a square? Now it's a triangle. That's a pretty big flaw in this experiment.

I'm not intentionally trying to leave out important information. Some things to clarify so we can try to have transparency on this issue.
* Sonic may enter the stage without Tails and it changes nothing.
* Tails or Knuckles may play the stage alone and it behaves the same.
* A chaos emerald may be won by completing the stage.
* Touching a red sphere fails the stage. Incidentally this also shows the stages are flat, because some stages have red on the floor and would cause the stage to fail immediately because the character has touched a red sphere.
* The music for this stage may or may not have been written by Michael Jackson (he wrote some of the music for this game but which ones isn't well known last I knew)

Yeah but what happens when Sonic attains 7 chaos emeralds, and can no longer go back to this world? Are our experiments void or can we work around this?

Yeah but what happens when Sonic attains 7 chaos emeralds, and can no longer go back to this world? Are our experiments void or can we work around this?

This has very interesting implications. It raises the age old question; if a special stage is there but nobody is around to enter it, does it really exist? If the very existence of them is tied to Sonic then that does indeed make Tails very relevant to the subject, as he is a non-Sonic entity. I can see now why you were questioning the Tails secrecy earlier.

The only way. The ONLY WAY one could maintain that there is a true debate about the shape of the earth is by accepting that almost half of the world is lying to the other half. Scientists of various disciplines, surveyors, government staff, astronauts, astronomers, pilots, sailors, google maps staff (and those of other map makers), soldiers supposedly guarding the ice wall, logistics units and departments supporting those soldiers and so on and so forth.

This is because the earth has been seen in its fullness and it has been seen to be a sphere. Both by eyewitnesses and be unbiased instrumentation. We KNOW the earth is a sphere. We as a species are not still considering the evidence and wondering about it. It is a fact.

Only if the universe is built in such a way that the physics of it is illusory and in that case, it still doesn't matter because to all intents and purposes, the illusion of a sphere is woven into the physics said universe

The only way. The ONLY WAY one could maintain that there is a true debate about the shape of the earth is by accepting that almost half of the world is lying to the other half. Scientists of various disciplines, surveyors, government staff, astronauts, astronomers, pilots, sailors, google maps staff (and those of other map makers), soldiers supposedly guarding the ice wall, logistics units and departments supporting those soldiers and so on and so forth.

This is because the earth has been seen in its fullness and it has been seen to be a sphere. Both by eyewitnesses and be unbiased instrumentation. We KNOW the earth is a sphere. We as a species are not still considering the evidence and wondering about it. It is a fact.

Only if the universe is built in such a way that the physics of it is illusory and in that case, it still doesn't matter because to all intents and purposes, the illusion of a sphere is woven into the physics said universe

I know I have proof in my own house (a goto telescope; could not work if the world was flat) even if I chose to ignore everything else.

I was testing what level of ridiculousness can pass here. Argue a virtual world as flat and give a nudge to link it to Earth, it wouldn't be the first time video games have been used to "prove Earth is flat". Was also wanting to see if my absurd arguments about CRT screens and field of view would pass as well.

Well I only attracted intelligent people to this, ah well Either it was too stupid, not stupid enough, or they too busy dodging the important questions like explain a lunar eclipse.