
Captain Einstein – Experience Relativity in Virtual Reality - lainon
http://captaineinstein.org/
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messe
A slower speed of light [1] is the only game that has ever given me motion
sickness, and that was without VR. I'm struggling to imagine what this would
do to me.

The paper [2] (pdf) has some neat visualizations and introduces the math
behind the VR visualization in the form of exercises, left to the reader to
work out (thankfully, there are solutions at the end, for the lazy).

[1]: [http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-
light/](http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/)

[2]: [http://captaineinstein.org/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/2018...](http://captaineinstein.org/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/2018/01/1806.11085.pdf)

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thunderrabbit
A slower speed of light made me sick as well, but this did not. Possible
factors:

* On this video I was watching on a tiny screen. * On this video, I cannot control the direction of motion. * The change in speed here is very slow and incremental * This video is relatively^^^ha short

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goldenkey
Thirded. Slower speed of light made me feel seasick though I've gone to sea
multiple times and never had motion sickness like from the game. Egh..thinking
about it now just makes me feel loopy.

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stcredzero
If you want to understand relativity, I highly recommend this Minute Physics
series! Watching the space/time globe actually gives you an intuitive sense of
how it works! All the paradoxes disappear!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh0pYtQG5wI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh0pYtQG5wI)

~~~
sjcsjc
Thank you. This is brilliant. I now know what Lorentz transformations are.

Also, I love the line: "Suppose the speed of cats is constant"

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ahelwer
I remember a while back there was a post by one of Prof. Sussman's grad
students on books he (Sussman) recommends[0]. One of the books (improbably[1]
prescribed for high school students) was _Space and Time in Special
Relativity_ by David Mermin. Does anyone have experience reading this book as
a way to learn special relativity?

[0] [http://aurellem.org/thoughts/html/sussman-reading-
list.html](http://aurellem.org/thoughts/html/sussman-reading-list.html)

[1] One of the other books recommended for high-schoolers - _Quantum Computing
Since Democritus_ by Scott Aaronson - I found very dense despite having a
bachelor's degree (and no small amount of extracurricular interest) in the
subject matter.

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emiraga
I would point out that this is not completely accurate. Those houses should
not be length-contracted, but instead twist-rotated.

Rotation that I am referring to is the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrell_rotation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrell_rotation)
which comes from a paper "Invisibility of the Lorentz Contraction" by James
Terrell.

However, to implement this accurately, one would have to combine pixels from
multiple frames in order to "see" these houses from different angles and
combine those into a current frame. I am not sure how technically feasible
this is, especially since those bridges might obscure visibility of some
houses from certain angles.

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everdev
Looking behind, the landscape turns to black as the light can't catch up to
the boat. I didn't think about that effect, but it would create a huge
blindspot for a spacecraft. So it wouldn't be much of a dog fight at a
fraction of light speed, just get behind the enemy ship and follow them until
they slow down enough you can shoot.

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garmaine
Light behind is red-shifted. It would not be black, that is an error in this
video, but rather you would begin to see UV and higher wavelengths that are
now shifted into visible. And a spacecraft would presumably have multi-
spectral cameras that can see in more than just the visible anyway.

~~~
jacquesm
And you'd assume that a species that has figured out how to travel at those
speeds is able to show a display in 'false color' showing it as it should have
been rather than the redshifted image. It's a pretty trivial correction if you
have the sensor capability.

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mrfusion
I think this would make a cool augmented reality app for your phone.

I’d also suggest showing a clock that slows down relative to real time.

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mrfusion
I’d be curious why it was downvoted? I think it would do this same effect
overplayed on a camera view. You’d need the speed of light to be something
like 4 mph and it would do the same effects as the video plus a clock that
slows down.

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feiss
Why they say Virtual Reality when it's just a 360 video?

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baby
Bevause you can play these with a VR headset and it looks like a rail
experience.

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hrasyid
Why did the boat can't stop "becoming light" at the end? Is there a point
where you can't decelerate?

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mirimir
Wow. Very cool.

And especially cool that they provided video, rather than requiring WebGL.
Which I can't risk enabling.

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googlemike
Why? What is the risk of WebGL?

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Hydraulix989
Exposure to GPU memory.

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Hydraulix989
[https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/13799/is-
webgl-...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/13799/is-webgl-a-
security-concern)

~~~
mirimir
This is an _alarming_ Q&A!

