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A Slower Speed of Light

gamelab.mit.edu

11–20 of 108 posts

Re: A Slower Speed of Light

#13
Once you get all 100 orbs and you get close to the speed of light you're in for a treat. It gets rid of the funny color saturation effects and you only see the Lorentz transformation. I'd like to know the secret incantations to be able to modify the speed of light manually. (Once you walk fast as light, the game abruptly ends)

Re: A Slower Speed of Light

#14

The site seems to be suffering a bit. Here's the cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...

In case you're not able to download the mac version because the speeds are slow, here is a magnet link for it.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:1828bafc3135e0b326d31c5030003d7004a86433

Re: A Slower Speed of Light

#15

This is both very interesting and a little painful for me. It's one of those ideas that I've always wanted to try, but never got around to. In a way it's nice that someone tried it anyway.

With 0x10c around and discussions on space combat realism I was thinking about some form of semi-realistic space "naval battle"/wargame.

So the first thing I thought was, well low-scale speed of light giving wonky graphics is both cool and help getting the feel of relativity, but what about some Homeworld or a Master of Orion type of game with relativity ingrained inside the game rules and mechanics? Probably the music sounding Homeworld-esque helped.

Re: A Slower Speed of Light

#16

I may be off-base here, but isn't the length contraction backward? Things should appear closer as you approach the speed of light, not farther away. And, it should not matter if you move backward or forward to observe that effect, yet it does (try moving backwards). Also, relativistic motion doesn't appear to affect the movements of the other actors, though it's kind of hard to tell for certain.

With my very limited understanding, my impression is this:

As you move in relativistic speeds, your eye hits more photos, even those going sideways (or backwards), because the photons at an angle are slower than your eye (imagine a car moving fast through the rain, even drops that go in the other direction will hit your windshield).

Therefore, your field of vision grows (you can see things behind you), but only when walking forward.

I haven't read anything about going backwards, but I imagine that your field of vision would shrink, as you are now faster than photons that would previously hit your eye. My guess is that you would only see photons coming directly to you from your front, until you reached the speed of light and went blind (or could see 360 degrees, moving forward).

Re: A Slower Speed of Light

#18

It's Motion Sickness Simulator 2012! No, seriously, I've never had motion sickness from FPS games but this one made me feel pretty uncomfortable. Those who do get motion sickness should consider themselves warned. That aside... it's not the first game/toy about illustrating relativistic effects that I've seen before, for instance there's http://lightspeed.sourceforge.net/ and a funny little Flash game that I've tried…

Is there a way to change the field of view angle? That usually causes/prevents motion sickness in FPS games.

Re: A Slower Speed of Light

#20
post #15

This is both very interesting and a little painful for me. It's one of those ideas that I've always wanted to try, but never got around to. In a way it's nice that someone tried it anyway.

With 0x10c around and discussions on space combat realism I was thinking about some form of semi-realistic space "naval battle"/wargame. So the first thing I thought was, well low-scale speed of light giving wonky graphics is both cool and help getting the feel of relativity, but what about some Homeworld or a Master of Orion type of game with relativity ingrained inside the game rules and mechanics? Probably the mus…

I imagine it would be quite difficult to have working multiplayer relativistic mechanics. So far, I can only see single player mechanics working, which would restrict the appeal of such a game.
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