Could relativistic effects be 'partially' simulated in Orbiter?

[hypersonic]

Hi all,
Having only a loose knowledge of things relativistic . - I may be completely wrong with this...

I've noticed with Orbiter that, because it is solely based upon Newtonian physics, one can easliy creep up to & exceed light speed, if a craft has either sufficient non-realistic fuel & impluse... Or some form of Bussard Scoop..

Anyway.. during crusing along at 1.3c the other day LOL ... it got me thinking.

Whilst Orbiter is not currently capable of simulating time-dilation, mass increase (viewed from observer perspective) & other relativistic properties etc.

What 'could' be simulated surely, as it would simply be an arithmetic function, is the exponential bleedoff off of the ships accelleration, in inverse propertion to the energy being used to keep the ship accelerating, especially as the 'point of transition' is gradually approached, & noticeably seen at 99.9c

Meaning.. . Say a ship uses X energy to get to 90% of c ... To get to 95% (50% of the remaining velocity to c) will require the square of ALL the energy expended in getting to 90% c ..
To get to 97.5% would require the square of ALL the energy required to attain 95% c .. 98.75% requires the square of ALL the energy used to get to 97.5% & so on & so on.... thus you're exponentially requiring energy to a point of infinity to get to Light speed - you'll never do it...
Now surely this could be translated into a feature of orbiter?

TO visualise it... simply do a zoom out then zoom in on any object in Orbiter.. The way the zoom works gives a nice 'curved' slow down until you get to 0 meters (or in this comparison .. that would be light speed).. Now imagine that effect in your ships accelleration as it gets closer to c, whilst using the same constant energy expence..

Make sense? Am i completely wrong? or is this indeed what would be experienced?
Could it be incorporated in a Orbiter 2010 Patch?

Thoughts?
Cheers
Hyper

 

[Nithrer]

There is already a MFD that simulates time distortion and visual aberrations caused by traveling at (almost) the speed of light, it's called "relativistic warp MFD", you can find it in the Orbiter hangar

 

[Moach]

hmm...

what if...


we could simulate the near-C effects by using orbiter's built-in time acceleration feature...

when about .9C, the relativistic simulator come alive, then as you continue to accelerate, orbiter speeds time UP (as it would appear to happen from your point-of-view) - meanwhile, your vessels thrust capabilities are dimmed down in an inverse ratio, giving you the feeling that time didn't really "change" at all...

also, that would make you unable to possibly contunue accelerating, since you'll exponentially require more and more fuel to logarithmically speed up (i think this is correct, or is it?)


what happens is that to YOU, F-T-L flight will appear possible - but you're not going that fast, really, it just appears so because time is dilating around you...


the theory for this is based on what i understood of Stephen Hawkin's Discovery Channel series... particularly, the episode about relativistic effects of near FTL travel (forgot the name)

 

[hypersonic]

Hi, Does this MFD, physically inhibit you from exceeding c? - & possibly model the exponential energy requirments to maintain a constant accelleration rate or inverse square depletion of accelleration if energy is constant, as mentioned in my 1st post?

Or does the MFD only provide 'eye candy' & play with time?

 

[Moach]

yeah, i think the MFD only does the latter unfortunatelly, that is...

 

[fireballs619]

For not having a lot of relativistic knowledge, that was a very good post. I have little to contribute to this, since my understanding is also lacking. I just want to clarify, however. what I understand.

x=amount of energy required to reach 0.9c
2x= amount of e required to reach 0.95c
4x [2(2x)]= amount of e required for 0.975c

If it is really a simple arithmetic function as above, I'm sure it could be implemented. This could be very useful for Orbiter Galaxy, so Warp Drive MFD doesn't have to be used all the time.

 

[Columbia42]

A while ago, (Not sure if it's still in developement) Artlav had a thread about simulating relativistic effects in Orbiter. (Particularly black holes and worm holes.) I'll see if I can find it.

 

[T.Neo]

Artlav had a thread about simulating relativistic effects in Orbiter. (Particularly black holes and worm holes.) I'll see if I can find it.

A black hole can easily be simulated in Orbiter, as a massive planet/star with a very small radius.

Are you sure you're confusing any Orbiter project with the relativity raytracer Artlav was working on?

 

[Moach]

visual aberrations aside, i'd really like to see something like this...

with the Orbiter Galaxy thing coming along, this would make terrific sense...


if it were to work in thhe way i described, it would be particularly interesting...
imagine, as you continue to accelerate past .9C towards the "almight speed limit", the simulation rate starts speding up, whislt your actual velocity and potential acceleration gets damped exponentially...

this has to happen in a manner such, that from your vessel's point of view, the limit itself goes unnoticed... you simply appear to be able to go past it without problems... all acceleration gauges should read the same, and the intertial speedometer continues to increase, marking well above the great barrier:blink:



simulating this can be tricky... time must speed up to everything except your own vessel, which experiences normal time onboard, due to dilation...

i reckon this would involve actually accelerating time in the sim, but then scaling the target vessel's thrust(?) in inverse proportion... in such a way that when you reach exactly 1.0C (which is impossible BTW), time acceleration would be infinity :uhh:


noticeably, there are a number of implementation potholes to be dealt with before this would work... but it would just be SOOOO awesome if it did!

 

[fireballs619]

I would like to see infinite time acelleration

 

[Columbia42]

A black hole can easily be simulated in Orbiter, as a massive planet/star with a very small radius.

Are you sure you're confusing any Orbiter project with the relativity raytracer Artlav was working on?

Yeah, I think that's what I was talking about and I think there was some discussion about implementing it in Orbiter.

Yes, a black hole can be simulated that way but minus the relativistic and/or visual effects.

 

[donatelo200]

A black hole can easily be simulated in Orbiter, as a massive planet/star with a very small radius.

Black Holes have no radius. There radius is absolut zero. Example below.

 

[T.Neo]

Black Holes have no radius. There radius is absolut zero. Example below.

Yes but the event horizon does have a radius.

It's impossible to have a planet or star in Orbiter with a radius of 0, AFAIK.

 

[donatelo200]

I just made one and i was speaking relative to the singularity because the event horizon could be 1 LY accross if the black hole is massive enough

 

[hypersonic]

There is already a MFD that simulates time distortion and visual aberrations caused by traveling at (almost) the speed of light, it's called "relativistic warp MFD", you can find it in the Orbiter hangar

Am i being dumb here?-
After installing the MFD...

To quote the manual
"In all ships except Dan Steph’s Arrow Freighter, the Warp Drive requires fuel. This is accomplished by loading cargo with the string “RWarpCap” as part of the name. Multiple RWarpCap cargos can be loaded. The mass of the cargo over 2000 kg’s (this is adjustable in the config file) is used to determine the distance that can be warped. "

If i fly a ship like Vespucci D for example. ... WHERE & HOW do i load the cargo with "RWarpCap"?
However once in the ship i CAN select & potentially use the MFD, except it says NO fuel, due to the above.
If i'm being restricted from using the MFD because it is relying on ASSUMING that all ships contain certain configurable parameters like 'cargo'... Yet could potentially run the MFD anyway, is a bit of a floor?
The MFD should be made to be completely SELF contained & NOT rely on assuming that a ships 'config' is just going to automatically allow it?

Or am i being dumb & missing something obvious?

Cheers
Al

 

[computerex]

The MFD requires that you have UCGO installed...

 

[hypersonic]

Hi computerex.
Which i DO have, therefore where do i make the config entries in order for the MFD when runnnig in 'any other' ship show Fuel that can be used etc?
Cheers
Al

 

[Artlav]

A while ago, (Not sure if it's still in developement) Artlav had a thread about simulating relativistic effects in Orbiter. (Particularly black holes and worm holes.) I'll see if I can find it.

You mean this thing?
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=15343
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showpost.php?p=165820&postcount=32

It's a relativistic raytracer, aka the slowest fast way to make it.

It can simulate light propagation within a wormhole or neighbourhood of black hole, but no flight physics.

Unfortunately, it's quite useless for a game, needing a killer GPU to run, but there should be better and less expensive approaches to get simple effects like Doppler and Lorentz contraction.


Curious effects it give never the less:
Wormhole:

(red) Black hole: