Visualisation of special relativistic effects

This a screenshot of an OpenGL program I wrote in my spare time during my undergraduate course to draw scenes with special-relativistic effects.

In this scene the spheres are orbiting clockwise around the centre sphere which is stationary (relative to the camera). The scene is illuminated with two black-body lights from behind the camera, and one green light from the top to show off the Doppler effect (red and blue shift).

If you are interested I have put the program on GitHub.

28 points · 4 comments · view on lemmy.world

4 Comments

unexpectedprism@programming.dev · 6 pts · 105d (3 replies)

It makes me think of https://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/ a game where colors and shapes respect relativistic rules of light propagation.

jarrydac@aussie.zone · 3 pts · 104d

I've really done a similar thing. The main inspiration for me was my special relativity class at university. I have done my lighting differently to a A Slower Speed of Light, because I've used spectrums instead of RGB: I found this stack exchange answer afterwards which outlines why that makes more sense.

Danitos@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 104d

lol same game came to my mind.

Cocodapuf@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 104d

Thanks for sharing that, that's cool as hell.