3D game with special relativity effects

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a computer games lab (MIT Game Lab). It would seem, why is she there? What games can doctors develop during working hours? And so they showed which ones: meet the surreal 3D action game A Slower Speed ​​of Light . The player moves through 3D space at a speed close to the speed of light and collects spherical objects, each of which slows down the speed of light by fixed values. At the same time, visual effects are calculated in real time, in accordance with the special theory of relativity.

Considered effects:

Doppler effect : red and violet shift of visible light, as well as a shift of infrared and ultraviolet light in the range of the range visible to the human eye.

Light aberration : increasing light intensity in the direction of movement.

Relativistic time dilation : the difference in the perception of time for the player and the world, the ability to see objects as they were in the past.

Lorentz transformations : the distortion of space at a speed close to the speed of light.

The game combines accessible gameplay and a serious scientific base in the field of theoretical physics. In a way, this is a unique game with such a combination of qualities. It can be shown to students in physics classes in high school and, probably, at the university. In general, wherever one studies the special theory of relativity.


The game was tested on the following configurations:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T9900 and Core i7 (2.8 GHz)
• Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)
• AMD Radeon HD 6970M, AMD Mobility Radeon HD 4850, Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT
• 8 GB RAM

Some users report that the game also launches under Windows XP with 2 GB of RAM.

Download: Windows │ Mac



MIT developers are currently working on a set of OpenRelativity tools to simulate the effects of a special theory of relativity for the Unity3D game engine. Together with the documentation, it will be released in 2013 under a free license.