Doobes' update on his blog (here) about the Descent got me thinking. And I am trying to estimate the dimensions of the full Descent, just to see how impossibly big this whole thing would be in Uru.
Which got me diging into my archives..
A while ago (late 2008 according to the files date) I did a quick 'scale' study of the Descent. And I ended up with this:
Unfortunately, as far as I can see, using Aitrus' map doesn't work because the scale is totally off. I used the size of the Shaft as my main reference point, using the dimensions of the imported meshes from Myst V. But that doesn't work, because then the main Cavern ends up wayyy too small. (like 20x too small). Also the volcano is way too big on the map compared to what we have in Uru (but we already knew that).
So I just did a quick update and tried to rescale that using the Cavern as my reference point. But I don't know the exact dimensions of that either. I thought it was mentionned in some canon source (BoA? one of the old Cyan DRC site?) but a quick Google search didn't bring anything.. The City age files from Uru give me a size of ~2400x3400 ft for Ae'gura. But then again; the Aitrus map is not precise enough to properly use that: Aegura's silhouette is too different from what is in Uru.
Anyhow I used that and estimated best as I could and I ended with these dimensions for the Cavern: ~29,000 x 24,000 ft. And for the whole Descent I get ~110,000 x 67,000 x 40,000 ft.
(In metric that's around 8.7 x 7.2 km for the Cavern, which sounds pretty big to me, and 33 x 20 x 12 km for the whole Descent. which is kind of insane).
Finally, a very rough estimation of the length of the journey along the 'main path' gives me around 160,000ft (48km) The whole journey down is supposed to take around 3 days right? I'm not sure that would be enough.
(for those who want to take a look: here is the Blender file.)
TLDR; I estimate the whole Descent Age to be ~110,000 x 67,000 x 40,000 ft ; which is huge.
Can Plasma even *store* such large dimensions for an Age ? 110,000 x 67,000 ? What's our upper technical limit there ?
Does anyone have more accurate dimensions for the Cavern?