Simulating Gravity

Since the Physics system doesn't accurately simulate gravity in any sort of way, is there any other way to simulate gravity accurately to measure relative weights/materials? Point the way if you know, thanks in advance.

What do you mean? A physical object has a mass and will fall to the ground. If that is not gravity what is it?

I'm assuming you mean that everything has the same 'plywood' mass/density when created? Something with a greater volume is assumed to have a greater mass, isn't it? There is no way to indicate density for a given volume, if that's what you mean, to attribute an arbitrary mass to an object, for instance, to indicate that it's made from lead instead of expanded polystyrene.

On the other hand, as Dora said, gravity is a constant - something Galileo demonstrated - so a polystyrene ball will accelerate downwards, affected by gravity, at exactly the same rate as a lead ball. Drag and aerodynamics are not calculated by the physics engine and it would have to be mind-boggling complex to do so. Chaos and all that - supercomputers can't predict where a feather will land if dropped from the leaning tower of Pisa.

(If you DO want to try to model things more accurately you'll have to script the dropped object so it works out its own path to ground)

As a side note, I'm a bit worried that we'll get a lot of the new academics LL want to bring to SL asking similar things. Will we be asked how to model protein-folding next? SL is not, and can't be, a modelling-tool for the real world in the physical sense. At best the platform can provide a simple simulation of, eg; inertia. Even that's really limited and not much use. Interestingly, the 'soft' sciences might find it much easier here.

Well let's see, it's not gravity and gravity is not a constant value as some scientists think it is, it all depends on mass/material used, for example, a person can throw the same baseball but each person can throw it at a different rate of speed but yet is the same force. So, just a mere question on variables is all.

Well, if you want to get technical about it, it's not gravity that's constant, since the force of gravity is F = GmM/R^2. The force of gravitational attraction between two objects is proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The proportionality factor, G, is what's constant and equal to 6.673 x 10^-11 N m^2/kg^2. That aside, for most practical purposes the force of gravity acting on objects near the Earth's surface is essentially constant since M>>m and R is very nearly the same everywhere. Small variations are interesting and very informative, but they make no real difference to the behavior of, say, baseballs.

I totally agree with Rolig. For every day use a more simple approach is more than satisfactory:

For a small body of mass m at the surface of the earth the force of gravitation is F=m*g

where g=9.81[m/S^2], F is measured in [Newton] and m is measured in [kg].
You hopefully don't suffer from the conception that gravity will make a ball of led fall faster than a feather? In vacuum they fall the same distance at exactly the same time, so the acceleration: g does not vary with the density.
What makes a difference is the air resistance. The air resistance will create a force on a moving body that has a direction opposite the velocity of the body.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)

Most people do not believe this, and it is dreadfully hard to convince them.

What the OP is asking for is friction and mistaking it for gravity. More accurately, resistance due to the atmosphere. (^_^)

Even though SL has "wind" that can be followed by flexible objects, physical objects with high buoyancy, particles, and scripted items. SL doesn't have "air" to reduce the rate of fall of high volume objects. (^_^)

So, while gravity is actually VERY correctly calculated. We're in a vacuum here. And there's no friction from the atmosphere to slow things down. (T_T)

I think LL would sooner make the SL world a globe before giving us native atmospheric simulations. (^_^)y

The Exploratorium in San Francisco has a rotating tube hooked up to a vacuum pump. It contains a fishing weight and a down feather. It's a fun demonstration. (^_^)y

Simulating friction is best done in a script (consider scripted parachutes, for example). There *is* a terminal velocity in SL, but it effects all objects equally.