Jump to content

General Relativistic Time


Raising

Recommended Posts

I'm not sure many people here truly understand how relativity works, this is no insult, its not an easy subject to learn about and most quick and simple explanations will be watered down enough to be incorrect. Going at relativistic speeds would require everyone else who is moving slower than you to experience time faster or the reverse with you experiencing a speed up and most everyone else on a normal speed (more likely) all to account for the required result. The servers would, therefore, be required to calculate everyone's frame of reference. Then there's also dilation from mass, which if we're including dilation from speed but not mass some weird things would happen. As well as the perspective of observers, which is it's own much larger can of paradoxical worms.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I mean, from a technical standpoint i think it won't be that hard to implement: Just calculate an object's speed and slow the calculations being performed on it according to relativistic equations. It gets even simpler in DU since it treats a ship as a single object (its dynamic core) and weapon ballistics are not calculated with real-time physics. So, there are relatively (pun intended) little extra calculations being done, and it is possible under certain circumstances that it reduces server load since there may be less calculations done per second due to dilation.

 

In terms of practicallity, I am not sure if the engine would support such a thing, if it would be worth the development effort since very little things are going to be traveling at relativistic speeds, it looms like a source of extra bugs, and it probably will just annoy players (REEE WHY IS EVERYTHING ON THIS SHIP SO SLOW I WANNA DO STUFF) without real gameplay benefits.

 

I do respect the OP's effort for SCIENCE however.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

While General Reletavity would be an intriguing component in the game, I fail to see how it could possibly be implemented. To my understanding of time dilation based upon special relativity, the closer your velocity is to the speed of light, the slower your perception of time. So for this to be put accurately into the game, The player(s) closer to the speed of light will experience time slower than players who are accelerating slower or are not moving at all. It's a mind boggling concept for both the mechanics of the game and in real life. In order for this to be possible from my understanding, say for example a player is traveling to a distant planet say from Alioth and it takes about 20 to 30 minutes minimum to travel to that planet from Alioth assuming you're accelerating at the average speed of a spaceship. However, if you're traveling close to the speed of light it feels as though only about 30 seconds to a minute has elapsed as soon as you reach the planet. Now apply that to RL time and things get weird. The player moving close to the speed of light will feel as though only 30 seconds to a minute has gone by, while for everyone else 20-30 minutes. To put that in a actual time scenario:

 

Player going close to speed of light:

Left Alioth-12:30:00AM

Arrives at destination at 12:31:00AM (But it's actually 1:00:00PM)

 

Players not moving or going much slower:

Left Alioth-12:30:00AM

Arrives at destination at 1:00:00PM (Actual time)

 

Hopefully that made sense. But essentially what I'm getting at is it's as if the player going close to the speed of light is not only experiencing time dilation in the game, but in the real world aswell. Now I could be missing something here, overthinking it, making this way too complicated than what it needs to be or all of the above. But I'll say it again, this is based off of my understanding of how time dilation and general relativity is supposed to work from a theoretical standpoint, and as such I don't see how it can possibly be implemented in this fashion. If general relativity does become some sort of component in the game, I can imagine it'll be simplified or altered in some way to make it feasible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...