MIT Slows Down Speed of Light In New Game

MITT slow? by mcgrew · 2012-11-07 04:51 · Score: 3, Funny

Maybe if he'd been faster he'd have won.

Meh, bad joke, mod me down :(

However, this does sound like a pretty fun game. I haven't played anything in years, I might just try this one.

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Re:MITT slow? by Anne_Nonymous · 2012-11-07 05:55 · Score: 5, Funny

That whole red shift/blue shift thing always confuses me too.
Re:MITT slow? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 06:38 · Score: 0

Slow or not, this will save me some cash on my regular hallucinogen purchases.
Re:MITT slow? by DriedClexler · 2012-11-07 07:34 · Score: 1

Not just a joke: a woman was turned away from polls because her MIT shirt was interpreted as electioneering for MITT Romney. Source

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First Post echoes by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 04:54 · Score: 5, Funny

First in my reference frame that is :)

Re:First Post echoes by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 09:28 · Score: 0

Nope. This post beat yours.

About time by readin · 2012-11-07 04:59 · Score: 1

I've often wished someone would do something like this. I've suggested on slashdot an interstellar military/trading game that would take relativity into account as a way to give people a more intuitive feel for it. I've wondered about the difficulties of a 2D game that would use a slow speed of light. But to have a 3D game that considers all the effects, including red-shift, is beyond my wildest dreams. I look forward to downloading and playing it.

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Re:About time by f3rret · 2012-11-07 05:11 · Score: 4, Interesting

I've often wished someone would do something like this. I've suggested on slashdot an interstellar military/trading game that would take relativity into account as a way to give people a more intuitive feel for it. I've wondered about the difficulties of a 2D game that would use a slow speed of light. But to have a 3D game that considers all the effects, including red-shift, is beyond my wildest dreams. I look forward to downloading and playing it.
Have you actually *tried* this game? Cus' it's a long way off from a big-ass 4x sorta game. I mean the game is fun, interesting and trippy and all that, but it is kinda rudimentary.
Would be fun to play on a large screen while in an altered state though.

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Re:About time by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 06:04 · Score: 0

Have you actually *tried* this game? Cus' it's a long way off from a big-ass 4x sorta game. I mean the game is fun, interesting and trippy and all that, but it is kinda rudimentary.
Would be fun to play on a large screen while in an altered state though.
Answer :

I look forward to downloading and playing it.
Re:About time by elfprince13 · 2012-11-07 06:08 · Score: 2

Like Velocity Raptor?
Re:About time by Michael+Woodhams · 2012-11-07 09:09 · Score: 1

I agree - I've often suggested such a game in the past. Part of the reason relativity and quantum mechanics are so hard to learn is they are so counter intuitive. Games like these could train our intuitions.

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Re:About time by duk242 · 2012-11-07 10:19 · Score: 1

Or perhaps a really large screen and go an Oculus VR ;) Bonus points: Oculus VR already supports Unity
Re:About time by turgid · 2012-11-07 10:28 · Score: 1

That is so cool... but I'm stuck on level 24.

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open source but only for Mac and Win. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 05:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

Somehow bragging about the open source nature of the project but not making it available on an open source OSes begs the question: WTF?

I wonder if it has anything to do with the current status of video graphics on open source OSes.

Re:open source but only for Mac and Win. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 05:46 · Score: 0

It's open source. If you want it on another operating system, compile it yourself.
Re:open source but only for Mac and Win. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 05:49 · Score: 0

Making your code open-source is easy. This just makes your code accessible to people, for them to do with as they wish. People are free to try and get it working on their own systems. Making any software -games especially- is often more complex than most people think. Even if your own code is clean and works everywhere, the same is not necessarily true for the game engine, which needs to connect with platforms specific input, graphics and audio systems.
I totally understand their decision to go with Unity as it allows them to actually do what they want to do instead of getting bogged down in boring game engine internals writing their own engine. With valve strongly towards Linux, I expect Unity will also be supporting it in the near future. Failing that you could also use Wine, or extract the code and rewrite it for use in your own game engine.
Re:open source but only for Mac and Win. by wisnoskij · 2012-11-07 05:58 · Score: 1

It is, or will be, open source code.
Code is not OS dependant. They have just not spent time testing and tweaking it on Linux.

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Re:open source but only for Mac and Win. by blazer1024 · 2012-11-07 08:02 · Score: 1

Unity 4 (which is now in beta) supports Linux. This might be what they're waiting on as far as open sourcing it.
Re:open source but only for Mac and Win. by flimflammer · 2012-11-07 09:40 · Score: 1

Really?

I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by Dr.+Manhattan · 2012-11-07 05:08 · Score: 1

Maybe set it in the world of Redshift Rendezvous by John Stith.

Main problem is simulating time dilation. Single-player, you could do it, I suppose. But you can't give multiple players their own individual time rates.

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Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by mcgrew · 2012-11-07 05:14 · Score: 1

But you can't give multiple players their own individual time rates.
Why not? It's on a computer, you can make time go as fast or slow as you want. The faster you're supposed to be going, the slower the game goes for everyone else. It's just a matter of timing loops, not hard at all.

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Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by f3rret · 2012-11-07 05:18 · Score: 2

It's just a matter of timing loops, not hard at all.
Would be a complete nightmare to keep synchronous across multiple computers and server though.

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Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by Millennium · 2012-11-07 05:28 · Score: 1

Once you do that, it's only a matter of time before the playerbase starts clamoring for the banning of ultrafast engines as a form of griefing (which, to be fair, it would be). Get one person going at a respectable fraction of c, and no one else will be able to do anything until time "catches up" for the traveler.
Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by Bengie · 2012-11-07 05:29 · Score: 1

Sounds like a great way to grief other players. Approach the speed of light and everyone else's systems effectively stop.
Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by MozeeToby · 2012-11-07 06:00 · Score: 4, Informative

There is no such thing as "synchronous" when you're talking about relativistic effects.
Getting around that would be a very interesting problem to try to solve in multiplayer. At first blush, it seems impossible: player 1 won't be experiencing the same moment of time as player 2 at any given time. However, whenever two players interact in any way, whatever caused the interaction has to have happened for both players and that includes even just seeing them. If you can keep a log of what player 2 did in the past, you can figure out what instant of player 2's timeline player one should be seeing (of you could just simulate the actual flight of the photons, but that seems computationally impossible). And you can do the same for player 2's screen drawing player 1.
As long as, just like in the real world, no one can travel faster than light you'll always have all the information you need. If you allow FTL though, everything breaks, you can set up situations where you simply won't have the information about player 2 that you need to draw player 1's screen, which is awesome because it maps directly to breaking causality in the real world.
Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 06:09 · Score: 2, Interesting

Actually, not even that is true. The effects of relativity aren't due to photon flight time. Imagine one player running at even a tenth the speed of light. When they stop, they would have only experienced say, a minute, but a stationary player should have been experiencing many hours. You'd either have to know what the stationary player is going to do in the future, or artificially slow down the travelling player, which sorta defeats the purpose.
Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by pscottdv · 2012-11-07 06:15 · Score: 1

That's not how relativity works. Everyone else's clock appears to be slow to you while your clock appears slow to everyone else's.
Actually, it's more complicated than that, because your clock appears to run fast to an observer watching you approach and then extra slow as you pass and retreat from the observer. It's not clear to me whether the "signal delay" due to the finite speed of light is taken into account in the simulation because their appears to be no animation on anything in the arena. They should have made the "orbs" clocks so you could see the time dilation effect.

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Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 06:15 · Score: 3, Insightful

It's not possible to accurately simulate special relativity in a multiplayer setting. Just consider the twin paradox: two players are near each other, one accelerates away to a relativistic speed, and then accelerates his way back. The two players are back near each other, but the stationary player must have experienced more local time pass than the traveling player. That cannot be simulated while maintaining the invariant that each player experiences time as if they were their avatar. In other words, the "avatar clock" (I'm trying not to call it the game clock since relativity means there's no single clock) cannot match real time.
It works fine for a single player game, of course (and you can add any number of NPCs as long as you can speed up their simulation by the appropriate ratio and still have your CPU keep up - there would be a hard limit due to CPU usage here unless the NPCs' state can be computed at a given instant in time instead of requiring simulation step by step).
Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by Mister_Stoopid · 2012-11-07 06:30 · Score: 1

For 1/10 C it's more like 1 minute to 1.05 minutes, but your point stands :)
Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by f3rret · 2012-11-07 06:35 · Score: 0

There is no such thing as "synchronous" when you're talking about relativistic effects.
There, however, is such a thing as "synchronous" in PC-based multiplayer games.

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Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by Cinder6 · 2012-11-07 07:03 · Score: 1

There are NPCs that move around. Their subjective speed doesn't appear to be affected by the orbs.

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Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by tinkerton · 2012-11-07 07:13 · Score: 3, Interesting

A small enhancement to the game to make time dilatation more obvious would be making the balls bounce. I think.
Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by pscottdv · 2012-11-07 07:38 · Score: 1

It's not clear it would be affected. The ratio of their walking speed w.r.t the speed of light would increase by the same amount as the players.

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Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by pscottdv · 2012-11-07 07:40 · Score: 1

That would be a good way to make them into clocks, but any constant (w.r.t the orb) periodic animation would work.

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Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by xandroid · 2012-11-07 21:27 · Score: 2

Yeah, that would be great.
First time through, I was disappointed that I couldn't see objects that were behind me appearing in front of me when traveling quickly, but maybe I'm missing something about how light aberration works with other relativistic effects?
Before I read the description after the "game" is over, I was confused about why behind me didn't turn black any more when I got that last orb. That's a dramatic modification, maybe there should be an in-game message about the change.
Also I still don't quite get why certain things were still visible in the blackness behind me while looking backwards -- is that infrared traveling faster than visible light?

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Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by HagraBiscuit · 2012-11-08 01:32 · Score: 1

It would be awesome as a shooter, where your projectiles travel significantly faster than the speed of light, go back in time and shoot you in the back of the head before you've fired off the round... oh, wait... or, un-wait... err... guru meditation: The operation is attempting circular causality. Re-boot now? Y/N.
Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-08 02:11 · Score: 0

Sure you can. The players experience baseline time. Only the avatars can reach a fraction of c. Therefore, the controls get lagged. If your avatar experiences 5 minutes for every hour of the player, it will seem to be moving (and aging) at 1/12th normal speed.
For playability, just introduce an ansible communications link and make all the avatars drone-capable remotely-operable robots.
Re:I'd love a FPS with relativistic effects. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-09 10:14 · Score: 0

I doubt that the engine handles this. They could easily give each object a clock and set its animation based on proper time. I am *guessing* they don't just based on how the ghostly figures appear to move around at consistent rates.
However, they would also have to handle relative simultaneity, and travel time of light to the camera. Usually in games you have one global time, but here the time of anything that is displayed would have to be adjusted based on how far it is from the camera. Now that I think about it, it's probably not that difficult to do (each object would have a proper time, as well as a simple adjustment for relative simultaneity and delay of light, which could be easily updated per frame).
I'm sure the MIT team is smarter then me so someone has probably thought of this, and if it's not in the game it's probably on someone's "Do me/wishlist" for something to add to the engine later.

Licensing by neminem · 2012-11-07 05:09 · Score: 1

Apparently, for each copy of the game we download, we're only allowed to install it on one computer, and optionally one other computer assuming we only run it on one of those two at once. Despite the fact that we're totally free to instead just click download again, and then that second download becomes a primary copy, and we -are- allowed to install them both and run them both at the same time. Is it just me, or is that a really odd bit of licensing for something that's being released completely free?

Re:Licensing by Nyder · 2012-11-07 05:17 · Score: 1

Apparently, for each copy of the game we download, we're only allowed to install it on one computer, and optionally one other computer assuming we only run it on one of those two at once. Despite the fact that we're totally free to instead just click download again, and then that second download becomes a primary copy, and we -are- allowed to install them both and run them both at the same time. Is it just me, or is that a really odd bit of licensing for something that's being released completely free?
it's wasteful licensing, imo. We need to be green, recycle files please!
Of course, the other thought is that is how they are keeping a track of how many people/computers are running it. If each download only represents 1 computer, it's easy to keep track. Of course, you are probably the only person who read the licensing agreement, i know i didn't.

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Re:Licensing by davewoods · 2012-11-07 08:54 · Score: 1

Yeah, my thought was "License agreement? Whatever, this thing is free".
Re:Licensing by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 12:39 · Score: 0

It's the MIT Cocksucker License.
Re:Licensing by tehcyder · 2012-11-07 22:59 · Score: 1

Yeah, my thought was "License agreement? Whatever, this thing is free".
It's free as in beer, but so is a pirated copy of Windows.

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Re:Licensing by tehcyder · 2012-11-07 23:01 · Score: 1

Of course, the other thought is that is how they are keeping a track of how many people/computers are running it. If each download only represents 1 computer, it's easy to keep track.
I'm not sure how, but I'm convinced that is infringing on my basic human rights.

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Just played it, going to puke now. by Nyder · 2012-11-07 05:11 · Score: 0

omg, I got serious motion sickness from that "game". But I collected all 100 orbs in 4:33 it said. But now i have a headache, and i feel like i'm going to puke.

If that is how it is when you get close to the speed of light, I'm glad I'm a slow ass human, I couldn't take moving around.

The effects are weird, the controls are weird, and if it didn't make me feel like crap, I'd play it again, it was cool.

If you get motion sickness, be prepared to get sick, otherwise, it was pretty neat to check out.

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Re:Just played it, going to puke now. by mcgrew · 2012-11-07 06:38 · Score: 1

Smoke a joint before you play, that's far better than Dramamine at combatting motion sickness. Actually, for alleviating any kind of gastrointestinal queaziness including food poisoning and alcohol hangovers.

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Re:Just played it, going to puke now. by HeckRuler · 2012-11-07 08:06 · Score: 1

Headaches and puking your guts out. A not-often explored side effect of fantastical super powers. (But props to Watchmen for vomit-inducing teleportation.)
Re:Just played it, going to puke now. by LordLimecat · 2012-11-07 09:28 · Score: 1

Ditto on the motion sickness, and I cant remember having experienced it before. Gamers be warned.
Re:Just played it, going to puke now. by Nyder · 2012-11-07 12:15 · Score: 1

Smoke a joint before you play, that's far better than Dramamine at combatting motion sickness. Actually, for alleviating any kind of gastrointestinal queaziness including food poisoning and alcohol hangovers.
I was stoned. =)

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Sadface by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 05:20 · Score: 0

I think they are artificially slowing down my download :(

Re:Sadface by maxwell+demon · 2012-11-07 09:21 · Score: 1

No, the download only seems so slow because it is sent with almost light speed, and therefore you get relativistic time dilation. ;-)

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It's not merely technically challenging. by Dr.+Manhattan · 2012-11-07 05:28 · Score: 5, Interesting

Would be a complete nightmare to keep synchronous across multiple computers and server though.

And everyone in the real world still thinks at the same rate. With turn-based games, you can do a little better - e.g. chess clocks that give dissimilar players different amounts of time - but for a continuous game it's rougher. And picture, you're walking down a hall, and suddenly things go slower because someone all the way on the other side of the map starts sprinting. It adds a whole new layer of lag-like behavior on top of the relativistic effects you're trying to simulate.

The key thing about relativity is that, no matter what speed you're moving at, you feel the same. It's just that everything around you behaves differently. Slowing the game clock down because other people are going fast doesn't simulate that at all.

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Re:It's not merely technically challenging. by mcgrew · 2012-11-07 07:59 · Score: 1

The key thing about relativity is that, no matter what speed you're moving at, you feel the same.
But the speed of light makes communications difficult over long distances, like the 10-20 minutes to get a signal to Mars. In a REALLY realistic game, when you call someone from Venus to Jupiter, it will be a while before they get your message. There's a lot of lag between planets.

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Re:It's not merely technically challenging. by maxwell+demon · 2012-11-07 09:17 · Score: 1

I don't think a realistic space travel game will be much success. Travelling from Earth to Mars: Put your space ship on course, and then wait half a year, maybe making a small course correction every now and then ...

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Re:It's not merely technically challenging. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 13:42 · Score: 0

This is a game called "Orbiter." Turns out the most popular key is the one for time acceleration.
Re:It's not merely technically challenging. by tehcyder · 2012-11-07 23:04 · Score: 1

I'm not going to disagree with anyone whose user name is Dr. Manhattan.

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Re:It's not merely technically challenging. by tehcyder · 2012-11-07 23:06 · Score: 1

I don't think a realistic space travel game will be much success. Travelling from Earth to Mars: Put your space ship on course, and then wait half a year, maybe making a small course correction every now and then ...
Sounds like most realistic flight simulators. Christ they're dull.

Ten minutes of fun taxiing and taking off, a ten hour flight over the featureless Atlantic and five minutes of terror landing. The only good thing is that with autopilot you can sleep during the middle bit, much like real pilots. .

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Re:It's not merely technically challenging. by Thumper_SVX · 2012-11-08 04:08 · Score: 1

Of course; they're simulators. That's exactly what real flight is like. Of course, in the real thing the terror is a bit more palpable because you're ACTUALLY in danger...

Though there are aspects that are tricky to simulate; the taste of horrible coffee, the smell of a first officer with terminal flatulence, and the horrible shiver that goes down your spine when your finger happens to find a blob of some unidentifiable substance that has scraped off the fingers of the previous pilot onto the seat adjustment controls. The only advice I can give there is not to sniff it...

I am sure these things are also able to be simulated... sort of glad they're not.

Why yes, I am a pilot; how did you know? :)

Awesome! You need artists... by poly_pusher · 2012-11-07 05:29 · Score: 1

The concept is great, mechanics are clever, and anything that helps people particularly kids gain a better understanding of the physical world deserves to be promoted. You might be able to snag some talented artists to work on this. There are many 3D software communities on the web. Blender forums is of course a great place to start. However, I would recommend the Luxology forums. The makers of Modo. Lots of talent over there, great community attitude and I know there are many people there would like to make their name artistically with a project like this. Also, since Unity is used, Modo and Unity work beautifully together, direct import of Modo's native format is already available in Unity.

Check it out!

Re:Awesome! You need artists... by poly_pusher · 2012-11-07 05:33 · Score: 1

maybe I should give a link... http://forums.luxology.com/

Michigan State University FTW by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 05:38 · Score: 0

Gerd Kortemeyer (the professor from the trailer on the site) is an awesome lecturer! So glad to have had him for physics with Lyman Briggs at Michigan State!

Overflow? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 05:40 · Score: 0

If you go fast enough blueshift suddenly overflows to red.

Re:Overflow? by ClickOnThis · 2012-11-07 08:45 · Score: 1

If you go fast enough blueshift suddenly overflows to red.
Yeah, I noticed that too. Could it be simulated black-body infrared from the objects, blue-shifting into the visible spectrum?

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Speed of dialup by PsyMan · 2012-11-07 05:43 · Score: 0

Anyone know what happens when the download from MIT exceeds the speed of dialup?

Re:Awesome! You need artists... by ColdWetDog · 2012-11-07 05:45 · Score: 1

And if they're looking for commercial support, I might humbly suggest the makers of Dramamine(Tm) motion sickness pills.

I mean, wow....

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NO LINUX??? by bacon.frankfurter · 2012-11-07 05:57 · Score: 1

C'mon. Windows and Mac only?!

crashes by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 05:59 · Score: 0

this keeps crashing on my laptop, i'm really disapointed i wanted to play.

Gameplay footage by FlynnMP3 · 2012-11-07 05:59 · Score: 4, Informative

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SxWMI9zg3s

Re:Gameplay footage by xandroid · 2012-11-07 21:35 · Score: 1

Too bad that player didn't know anything about relativity before playing it. Kept complaining about "sliding around".
"Did I slow down the speed of light?" Yes you moron, that's the name of the goddamn game.

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Re:Gameplay footage by xandroid · 2012-11-07 21:41 · Score: 1

I find the trailer to be a far better video for showing what this project is all about. It shows some gameplay and gives an explanation of the goal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu7jA8EHi_0

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There's a book by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 06:01 · Score: 5, Interesting

This stuff is explored in Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland, by George Gamow. The title character has various dreams which illustrate aspects of modern physics. For example, he dreams about riding a bicycle while the speed of light is 30 mph, and playing billiards with Planck's constant = 1. It's an interesting read; I recommend the omnibus Mr. Tompkins in Paperback, which has Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland and Mr. Tompkins Explores the Atom

Re:There's a book by Quirkz · 2012-11-07 10:53 · Score: 2

'Einstein's Dreams' also explores a series of worlds where the properties of relativity are slightly different or slightly more pronounced than in our world.

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Multiplayer by elfprince13 · 2012-11-07 06:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'd be even more impressed if they managed to make it multiplayer. Maybe merge this with the Resequence Engine? Not for time travel necessarily, but because they've already worked out how to run multiple reference frames at once, and I suspect you'd need an event buffer for every pair of players, and possibly to introduce a preferred reference frame as well for simulating the environment.

Re:Awesome! You need artists... by cvtan · 2012-11-07 06:17 · Score: 1

Glad I'm not the only one who approached nausea while playing this.

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This is begging for a space sim by Iamthecheese · 2012-11-07 06:34 · Score: 1

Realistic sublight space battles? shut up and take my money!

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red/blue shift by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 06:44 · Score: 2, Informative

That whole red shift/blue shift thing always confuses me too

Here is red/blue shift (to my understanding) in a nutshell:
First, remember that the frequency of light determines what color it will be. In the visible light spectrum, red is at one end and has the lowest frequency of visible light. Blue light has a higher frequency and is found towards the opposite end of the visible spectrum. Also, remember that the speed is a constant. When you see something, you see the light bouncing off of it. If an object is coming towards you, the light does not go 'the speed of light' + the object's velocity. The speed of light remains a constant. So instead, that extra energy shifts the light to a higher frequency. This is blue shift. When an object is moving away from you, the light bouncing off of an object does not go 'the speed of light' minus that object's velocity. The speed of light remains constant. Instead that energy is taken from its frequency. This is red shift.

Re:red/blue shift by lister+king+of+smeg · 2012-11-07 06:50 · Score: 1

i thought red/blue shift had to do with states switching political allegiances or am I still stuck with election induced stupor.

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Re:red/blue shift by Fned · 2012-11-07 11:28 · Score: 1

I hate that annoying Anonymous Coward and his blatant karma whoring.
Er.
Re:red/blue shift by ColaMan · 2012-11-07 15:53 · Score: 1

Hmm. I think a better explanation is ripples on a pond from a rock.
You are stationary on a boat on a pond. You throw a rock into the pond some distance away, the ripples move towards you across the water at a set speed and slap against the hull of the boat at a certain frequency.
You repeat the process, this time moving your boat towards the origin of the ripples after you throw the rock. As your boat passes over the ripples as they travel towards you, they slap against the hull at a higher frequency = blue shifted.
Similarly, you move your boat away from the origin of the ripples - the ripples slap against the hull at a lower frequency = red shifted.

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Re:red/blue shift by Guignol · 2012-11-07 21:05 · Score: 2

What you are describing is correct, but it just is the classical doppler effect
For relativistic speeds, time dilation also enters the scene
For example, if the source moves in circles around you, you are not to expect any classical doppler effect, but there would be a relativistic one completely due to the time dilation effect
More about it here

Awesome by kiriath · 2012-11-07 06:46 · Score: 1

Just tinkered with this for a few minutes, and aside from feeling slightly dizzy, this was an interesting physics demonstration.

*spoilers*
I particularly enjoyed strafing left or right and seeing the color spectrum (as you get closer to 100 orbs).

The sound / music is pretty relaxing... neat game(relatively speaking of course)!

Great idea, annoying controls by sinnergy · 2012-11-07 06:54 · Score: 1

It's definitely an interesting game, but I found the controls particularly horrible. I understand why they are the way they are. Going from near light speed to a dead stop without any deceleration is rather unrealistic and vise verse. However, from the perspective of it being a "game" it was downright annoying.

Great concept, though, and definitely an interesting learning tool. It'd be even more fun if one could adjust the variables directly and and explore the consequences of those variables more deeply.

i have always wondered, never got an answer... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 06:57 · Score: 0

the speed of light is roughly 186000 miles a second. great. what kind of light? infrared is slower, changing the speed of light. since that is light. but ultraviolet is also light. theres alot of diff types, but no one seems to be able to say what kind of light. even wiki, the last time i looked. visible light is also a broad spectrum. eithere way, light is not the fastest speed possible. thats like saying the speed of sound is the fastest speed possible. then we went faster. we have already accelerated particles (while i was in high school 20 years ago) to 200,000 mps. thats faster than 186,000 mps i thought. that was at the facility near where i lived at the time called CEBAF. in Va. i dunno, maybe it was in a diff spectrum.

that sounds like a neato game.

Re:i have always wondered, never got an answer... by tinkerton · 2012-11-07 07:24 · Score: 2

The speed is the same across the spectrum.
Re:i have always wondered, never got an answer... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 09:12 · Score: 0

Wow. Are you actually retarded?
Re:i have always wondered, never got an answer... by Jonah+Hex · 2012-11-07 09:41 · Score: 1

To amplify on the previous answer: It's the wavelength that is different, not the speed. I'm not well versed in this but light, electricity, all "waves" and "rays" move at the speed of light. - HEX

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Re:i have always wondered, never got an answer... by hasdikarlsam · 2012-11-07 10:09 · Score: 1

The speed of light in a medium, such as air, however.. is not.

The Necessity of Math for Physical Intuition by tinkerton · 2012-11-07 07:07 · Score: 4, Interesting

I think immersion in the right simulating environment can give people a level of physical intuition that many physicists never achieve.

Maybe they'll simplify by bugs2squash · 2012-11-07 07:51 · Score: 1

the explanation of special relativity to the point where even people with no scientific background can start denying it and petitioning schools to represent alternative views in the curriculum. Intelligent magnetism perhaps ?

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Nullius in verba

Re:Maybe they'll simplify by EmagGeek · 2012-11-07 12:35 · Score: 1

Intelligent Magnetic Monopoles.

Variation on a theme by doug+szathkey · 2012-11-07 07:52 · Score: 1

On a smaller scale, the same thing is done on this relativistic re-skin of Asteroids about 5 years ago:
http://playthisthing.com/relativistic-asteroids

Re:Awesome! You need artists... by HeckRuler · 2012-11-07 08:10 · Score: 1

anything that helps people particularly kids gain a better understanding of the physical world deserves to be promoted.

Hell, forget the kids, I've contemplated making games with relativistic effects (albeit more of a Asteroids clone) and I never considered that the Doppler effect would shift non-visible spectrums into something we could see.

My mind, it's blown.

Obligatory XKCD by ClickOnThis · 2012-11-07 08:40 · Score: 3, Interesting

http://www.xkcd.com/1125/

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More annoying: wrong speed computing by advid.net · 2012-11-07 08:47 · Score: 1

If you try to move forward in a corner or facing a rock, you won't move but it looks like you were accelerating !

They just don't use the speed of the player but compute speed with your intent of acceleration...

This is a huge mistake, I wonder if there is more: I'd like to see how the relativistic effects really look like.

Re:More annoying: wrong speed computing by Jonah+Hex · 2012-11-07 09:36 · Score: 1

After playing for a bit I think this is a side effect of the distortion effect used to create the sliding when you try to turn at speed. It is a bit disconcerting to see it happen when your not actually moving however. - HEX

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Watched it... by CODiNE · 2012-11-07 10:31 · Score: 1

Excuse me while I go vomit.

Very neat effect but... yikes.

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Velocity Raptor by kallisti · 2012-11-07 14:01 · Score: 1

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/585990

This is a game showing 2D relativistic effects that happens to be an actual game. You use time dialation to dodge bullets and try to turn different colored objects the same with Doppler. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any kind of skip-ahead (and I suck at it) so I could never see what the later levels added to the mix

failure by FalseModesty · 2012-11-07 16:01 · Score: 1

This was a bad demonstration of relativistic effects. All it really does is demonstrate the Doppler effect, and it does that poorly. People are evidently not warm, because they do not glow when infrared light becomes visible. Chimneys do, but so do shadows under roofs.

The huge mushrooms emit what, gamma rays? They emit light that is visible even when enormously red-shifted.

There is no Sun or sky. No campfires. No warm machinery. No radios. No flowers with UV patterns. Nothing familiar that will illustrate something interesting about the Doppler shift and the world of invisible light.

It's a nifty idea, but finish it before releasing it.

They forgot something by loosescrews · 2012-11-07 17:36 · Score: 1

The other moving spirits should be Doppler shifted after light is slowed. Even if you are "still," the other spirits continue to move relative to you. After light is slowed enough that Doppler shifts are noticeable at low speeds, the light bouncing off the other spirits should be Doppler shifted because they have a component of velocity moving towards or away you at a large fraction of the speed of light.

Something missing or did I miss it? by GrpA · 2012-11-07 17:36 · Score: 1

What about the contraction of angular distance around the axis of the direction of motion? As you approach the speed of light, shouldn't the field of view contract so significantly that as you're moving forwards, it appears you're moving backwards?

I didn't see that effect in the video, or did I miss it?

(eg, as you move forward at the speed of light, objects at 90 degrees to your direction will appear to be at 45 degrees to your direction )

GrpA

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As seen on /.2005:Excursions at the Speed of Light by D4C5CE · 2012-11-07 19:35 · Score: 1

Previously in this frame of reference: ;-) http://science.slashdot.org/story/05/05/16/0036207/excursions-at-the-speed-of-light
A relativistic first-person bike ride simulator.

Length Contraction by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 19:55 · Score: 0

Isn't length contraction missing?

Flaw in physics by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 21:40 · Score: 0

I wanted to make this kind of game too, but I'm not that skilled in programming, I just write python scripts from time to time. But there is flaw in their engine, intensity around the middle of viewing center goes up noticably and viewing angle is very distorted. Nice explanation is in this ancient video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQnHTKZBTI4

INFORMATION TRANSMISSION PROBLEM by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 21:47 · Score: 1

When people will stop to talk about this in the wrong way ?

There is no such thing like "twins paradox" or time slowing down....

Einstein, in his time, was trying his best to talk about a INFORMATION TRANSMISSION problem.

There's is a limit , the speed of light. If you are travelling in the speed of light and sending information back, let's say your position, gps, whatever. It will take more and more time to reach his destiny. Period. There is no such thing: time goes faster, time goes slower, twin go older, twin stay younger. Wrong, wrong , wrong.
For general relativity, same thing. Super strong gravity is pulling everything, making the information sent back to his destination going really badly or broke, like bad tcp packets.

ENOUGH, with those people still earning money spreading this huge mistakes!
This is what we learn in Russia.

Mimimum System specs by tehcyder · 2012-11-07 22:39 · Score: 1

Why are they so high for something that looks like the original Doom?

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Not a big deal. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-07 22:49 · Score: 0

Nice but not very impressive as for MIT. I did something similar for my Bachelor's thesis in 2007. Lorentz transformations and Doppler effect were implemented in vertex and fragment programs. Vertex program was actually very trivial.
Add it was running on lower specs.

Finally. an interesting FPP by HagraBiscuit · 2012-11-08 01:17 · Score: 1

Definitely the most awesome thing I've seen this lunchtime. The first FPP game I've considered loading onto my system since Portal.

Strange colour effects... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-10 13:58 · Score: 0

Interesting game. However, as you collect more and more orbs, the FORWARD direction/view changes from a blue/green shift to a red shift(!) Any one explain why? Shouldn't it only go deeper and deeper into the blue end of the spectrum instead?
Also the rear view (as you move forward) gets increasingly darker, eventually turning black - as expected.
HOWEVER, as you collect even more orbs, the trees in the rear view become lit up(!) (bright green) and all else stays black. Again, why doesn't everything just stay black?

Similar program - lightspeed by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-12 07:45 · Score: 0

There is a nice old program giving similar insights. http://lightspeed.sourceforge.net/

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MIT Slows Down Speed of Light In New Game

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