Variable Speed of Light

[larikang]

Controlling the flow of time seems to be all the rage these days in video games. But what if instead the speed of light was variable?

So for example if the speed of light was lowered sufficiently, then when you see someone running in the distance you would actually be seeing where they were a few seconds ago. Enemies would appear to accelerate as they come nearer to you and decelerate as they move further away. Maybe even the redshift and blueshift would be visible. If you move fast enough you would experience a weird lensing effect as your speed approaches the speed of light. Basically you would be able to experience all of the stuff you hear about relativity first-hand.

The hardest part of making such a game is that I think you would need to use a raytracer in order to render everything correctly. It would also probably be really hard to play, but maybe you could learn how to get good at it.

I haven't really thought about all the repercussions of such a mechanic. Time dilation and such would also be a part of it. I think it would be really cool at least as a proof-of-concept.

[gReplay]

Speed of time?

Actually seeing the speed of light would be pretty cool.

You can see an after image of the person you're fighting and it can either show where he was last, or where he's going to be in a few seconds.

[Evil_Toaster]

Wouldn't that be like playing a game with lag?

[Confused111]

No, with lag, you teleport.

[DiscoBiscuit]

If you can maneuver whilst going the speed of light then you must be really awesome.

[Da Big Man]

[img]http://filesmelt.com/downloader/speedoflight.png[/img]

[Lord Ivan]

[QUOTE=DiscoBiscut;17186559]If you can maneuver whilst going the speed of light then you must be really awesome.[/QUOTE]

Not if the speed of light is about 10 miles an hour.

[gbtygfvyg]

[QUOTE=DiscoBiscut;17186559]If you can maneuver whilst going the speed of light then you must be really awesome.[/QUOTE]

Going the speed of light would pretty much be moving as if time slowed down... a lot.

[gReplay]

[QUOTE=gbtygfvyg;17186630]Going the speed of light would pretty much be moving as if time slowed down... a lot.[/QUOTE]

So if somebody actually did this, it would turn into another Timeshift game.

[Slasha00]

[QUOTE=gbtygfvyg;17186630]Going the speed of light would pretty much be moving as if time slowed down... a lot.[/QUOTE]

That's only if the human brain could think at the speed of light (By that I mean something comparable to it) Otherwise you would not be able to process anything while moving so fast.