
A Slower Speed of Light (2012) - rbanffy
http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/
======
tristanj
Another speed of light game is 'Velocity Raptor'. Depending on how fast the
dinosaur is moving, nearby objects appear to slow down, change size, and
change color. The author says it is an "accurate and mathematically based
depiction of the world at high velocities".

You can play it here in your browser.
[http://www.testtubegames.com/velocityraptor.html](http://www.testtubegames.com/velocityraptor.html)

Or read how it works here
[http://www.testtubegames.com/srel101.html](http://www.testtubegames.com/srel101.html)

~~~
Steuard
When I teach relativity, I offer my students extra credit for playing each of
these two games. They capture rather different aspects of the structure of
spacetime, and I think both are interesting and worthwhile.

(As an aside, I fairly consistently wind up feeling a bit dizzy after playing
all the way through "A Slower Speed of Light". It can be disorienting in a way
that messes with my inner equilibrium somehow. Velocity Raptor isn't immersive
enough for that to be a problem.)

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smaddox
Nice. Coincidentally, I was thinking just the other day about implementing a
real-time (or near real-time) ray/path tracing renderer with relativistic
effects. Looks like they beat me to it, although using raster graphics. I'm a
bit surprised by the result, though. I wonder how accurate it is, or if they
had to make significant approximations due to the raster graphics constraint.

~~~
IIAOPSW
In college I did a project where I added a speed of light delay to a game of
Asteroids. I didn't implement a proper Lorentz transform per se, but the
effect was still pretty cool. Just for fun I added some faster than light
particles and FTL jumps and wormholes. Notable side effects:

FTL particles appear as if they teleported to a location then split in half
and leave in two directions.

You can sometimes see an object leave a wormhole and then enter it.

When you FTL jump, you can see yourself from a few moments ago about to FTL
jump.

If you fire your laser and then FTL jump in front of your laser, you're in for
a bad day.

~~~
abstractbeliefs
Where can we see it? It sounds fun!

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4731749](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4731749)

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earenndil
It doesn't work for me. Segfaults, just prints the following:

Set current directory to /home/elronnd/slower_light Found path:
/home/elronnd/slower_light/A Slower Speed of Light.x86_64

Mono path[0] = '/home/elronnd/slower_light/A Slower Speed of
Light_Data/Managed'

Mono path[1] = '/home/elronnd/slower_light/A Slower Speed of Light_Data/Mono'

Mono config path = '/home/elronnd/slower_light/A Slower Speed of
Light_Data/Mono/etc'

zsh: abort (core dumped) ./A\ Slower\ Speed\ of\ Light.x86_64

Same thing for the 32-bit version. Windows version seems to work in wine,
though.

~~~
rhn_mk1
Same here. Maybe it's hte Intel crash mentioned here:
[http://memolition.com/2013/03/04/a-slower-speed-of-light-
mit...](http://memolition.com/2013/03/04/a-slower-speed-of-light-mit-game-
lab/)

~~~
earenndil
But then, why would it work fine in wine?

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elihu
ANU made a relativistic ray tracer quite a while back and animated some videos
of what would happen if you set the speed of light to ordinary human-scale
speeds, which sadly seem to have vanished from the Internet.

[http://people.physics.anu.edu.au/~cms130/TEE/site/tee/learni...](http://people.physics.anu.edu.au/~cms130/TEE/site/tee/learning/raytracing/raytracing.html)

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htor
vivid colours, morphing objects, fantasy creatures.. would also be an accurate
description of a real psychedelic trip.. wonder why they put in so many
mushrooms..

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ncmncm
It takes infinite energy to achieve a walking pace? Where do playets get that?

~~~
rbanffy
Iddqd, idkfa

