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Creating a Black Hole With OpenGL

Posted by Hemos on from the catchy-title dept.

There's a cool article on O'Reilly Net concerning using 3D graphic software to emulate black holes. Interesting article - with a lot of information about OpenGL and what you can do.

4 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Black Hole EMULATOR? by Tassach · · Score: 4
    Simulate, OK. Emulate? I think not.

    This brings up an interesting idea of applying the horsepower of video cards to other purposes. A modern 3D accellerator is basically a dedicated co-processor with it's own RAM that's optimized to do specific math tasks really, really fast.

    I wonder if there are any serious scientific applications that could use this. If you are running a Beowulf cluster, you could possibly improve the performance of the entire cluster very easily. Of course, it would require custom software, but then Beowulf already needs that anyway.


    "The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'

    --
    Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
  2. This is lame by cperciva · · Score: 5

    Come on, this is just a classical gravitational model piped into an OpenGL model. There are no visual distortion caused by the black hole, and no relativistic physics anywhere.

    If you're going to call it a black hole simulation, do it right. Otherwise, call it a solar system simulation.

    --
    Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
  3. Black Holes on the desktop... by ackthpt · · Score: 5

    I already have a black hole simulator on my desktop. It's called a computer, defined as a black hole in the desktop which continually sucks money out of my wallet, at the speed of light, and is never seen again. I assume done there is a mass of pennies so dense that very few practical value rays fail to escape. Such is a hobby...

    The logical path for this is to: Laptop, palm and then some pocket computer which could directly interface to the wallet and shorten the path the money has to move.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  4. why this story? by [verse]Eskil · · Score: 5

    Why do Slashdot keep posting stuff like this on computer graphics? Any one how reads openGL.org knows that there are about a zillion particle demos out there.

    Some time ago there was a story about AGP 8X and who ever wrote the story asked why we would need it since we already got firewire.... Don't even know were to start complaining about that one.

    And its not like there hasn't been any graphics storys to cover. The advancements in hardware accelerated programmable shades has fundamentally changed the way people think of graphics hardware, softimageXSI for Linux, Linux on onyx3, the alternative to openGL SMASH, rendering whit natural light, new 3D displays....the list goes on and on.

    I think that slashdot is one of the greatest sites on the net but every time i read some thing regarding my area of expertise that is wrong I start to question the credibility of slashdot on areas i don't know much about.

    Please, if you what to cover graphics please do so, but get some one who works whit graphics to do it. A "ask slashdot" on how to improve the site may also be a good idea.

    Sorry about the rant, i just could not get my fingers of the keyboard.