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A title screen, and a first look at a black hole: v0.4.0-dev.22

Sunholo
Stapledon's Voyage team

The game now opens on a menu. Meanwhile the black-hole milestone is two-thirds built: the first renders of Sgr A*'s lensed sky are in, checked against general relativity to a fraction of a pixel.

The title screen

The title screen​

A double-click opens a menu over the real Milky Way: Board the ship, the Guided voyage, the Galaxy map, Settings (Realistic or Auto view, text-only AI) and Credits, read from the repository's own citations. Esc in the ship returns to it.

Black holes (in progress)​

Sgr A* at 5 Schwarzschild radii

M3 brings general relativity:

  • The maths is in the package first. sunholo/relativity 0.10.0 adds a geodesic integrator, cross-checked against the exact solution to 3e-13.
  • The sim reports what you would feel. Clock rates, tides across the bubble, and the thrust to hover, all at Sgr A*.
  • A GPU shader bends the sky. It reads lens tables generated on the AILANG VM.

The shadow matches Synge's formula to within 0.01 px at 10, 5 and 3 r_s. A star directly behind the hole becomes an Einstein ring at the predicted angle; just off-axis, it splits into two images.

The playable trip is next: hover at 10, 5 and 3 r_s, then orbit, from the bridge. The HUD reads the sim, so "1 ship-hour = 1.41 home hours" in orbit at 3 r_s.

Release: v0.4.0-dev.22-title-screen · Gallery.