Free from the MIT Game Lab, the PC game A Slower Speed of Light explores relativistic physics through a smaller and more localized (and familiar) medium: the fetch quest.
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Using a “[c]ustom-built, open-source relativistic graphics code [that] allows the speed of light in the game to approach the player’s own maximum walking speed,” players slow down the speed of light by collecting 100 glowing orbs. As more orbs are collected, the scenery warps and distorts in reaction to character movement representing the Lorentz transformations while infrared, visible, and ultraviolet spectrums are all visible and shifting. There’s more science that a handy “what happened?” button explains, like the difference in play time/game time.
Why does science look like a bad drug trip?
Inside of a small town with squat, round huts and a surrounding wall of rock, groves of giant mushrooms litter the level along with other tall obstacles ripe for running past, fast as light. A Slower Speed of Light doesn’t offer much difficulty, or really any obstacles at all, but it presents a goal-oriented simulation of relativistic physics in an environment that encourages exploration and discovery.
Hey, I found my marbles!
The team is also working on OpenRelativity, “a set of tools for simulating the effects of traveling near the speed of light” as an open source (free) package for the Unity3D game engine. Slowing light introduces the concept beautifully, but now all I can think about is a fast-paced RTS that would blow M. C. Escher’s mind. Remember, the free download is here.
Time wizards happened.
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