Celestia Forums

As i understand the closer you approach light speed the shorter the passage of time for the trip relative to the clocks on your origin. So in effect, if it were possible to travel at light speed, it would take 0 time to get to one's destination. so if one were to travel to an object 4 light years away at lets say .99999% the speed of light it would take only .0178884991 years.

My suggestion is that Celestia have some sort of relativistic travel added to it so a user could type in the percentage of light they wish to travel and see how time passes for them and there origin as a result. because to get to a distance in a short time you dont need to travel (this only applies to celestia as the energy requirement to reach c is infinite enegy) at a number closer and closer to c.

Relativistic effects have been suggested before. It would be interesting to observe, but only for novelty value. Eg you can't move the camera position at relativisticallly-limited velocities and get anywhere very quickly - it might be interesting to see Saturns rings distorting as it slides past at .99c but it would take an hour or two to get there in the first place...

the point is, the user is not part of the simulation in Celestia. Celestia is a 3D atlas of the known universe and the POV of the user is not supposed to represent any physically possible entity - spaceship or whatever. So there's no 'movement' as such - the POV changes. Sure, it changes smoothly to get a better sense of 3D layout and scale, but it's just not part of the design philosophy (judging from what I've observed in these forums) to simulate a physically realistic 'embeddeness' for the user - that was the reason the 'gravity please' request was rejected. So I can't see relativistic effects becoming a high development priority...

anyway. Just my 2 cents.

thanx