Disney's Gargoyles in GURPS

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

A wizard did it.

Hellooo, suspension of disbelief! :)

[Phoenix_Dragon]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

Sorry, I meant slope soaring. I don't think dynamic soaring applies on land at all.

Ahh, I see. But...

(From my understanding of the subject...)

It should apply anywhere that you have adjacent windflows of different directions or speed. Ocean waves are the most well-known because of sea birds exploiting them for long-distance flight, but you can do the same thing off terrain that obstructs or redirects windflow, or even take advantage of wind shear or inversions that result in large differences in air-flows across a small distance.

In fact, you'd probably be able to use dynamic soaring off that downward-flowing air behind an obstruction generating slope lift. Use the slope lift to climb over it, follow the wind-flow as it starts descending (By aerodynamics, it should be flowing quite fast at this point), but pull out and hit the much slower (Or level-flowing) air beside or further behind the obstruction, effectively hitting a higher air-speed, and use that to gain more altitude. That said, I couldn't imagine that flying in an urban environment using such tricks would be in any way simple or easy, and you'd likely need a lot of experience to do so well, but it seems like it should be possible. It's the same principle glider pilots use at times, just in a much more complex environment were you may be facing dozens or hundreds of different air-flows instead of just a couple.

But that's probably far more thought than the makers put into flight in the show :>

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

Yeah... they had, what a couple of weeks for each episode? In the days when the internet was a wee tot? And I think the philosophy was the same that goes into the superhero genre: it looks cool, so go with it. I just personally prefer more plausibility for things that are explicitly non-magical (like the gargoyles).


Anyway, in a city environmet, and especially with a place like downtown Manhattan where lots of skyscrapers are next to each other, sometimes separated only by one street, how will the airflow be? Realistically, it seems unlikely there will be any upward slope lift on any but the skyscrapers closest to the sea. Further inland there should just be much weaker winds running down the streets but not really up the sides of buildngs, right? Now at higher altitudes, near the tops of buildings, there might be some dynamic soaring opportunities if you're right, and it sounds like you know more than I.

[Daeglan]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

Yeah... they had, what a couple of weeks for each episode? In the days when the internet was a wee tot? And I think the philosophy was the same that goes into the superhero genre: it looks cool, so go with it. I just personally prefer more plausibility for things that are explicitly non-magical (like the gargoyles).


Anyway, in a city environmet, and especially with a place like downtown Manhattan where lots of skyscrapers are next to each other, sometimes separated only by one street, how will the airflow be? Realistically, it seems unlikely there will be any upward slope lift on any but the skyscrapers closest to the sea. Further inland there should just be much weaker winds running down the streets but not really up the sides of buildngs, right? Now at higher altitudes, near the tops of buildings, there might be some dynamic soaring opportunities if you're right, and it sounds like you know more than I.

Quite a bit actually. My understanding is there is quite a lot of wind pushing those buildings around.