What is it?

Real Time Relativity is a computer program running on PCs that allows the user to interactively experience a virtual relativistic world. See screenshot at right. You can view movies of it in action.

It was developed at the ANU by Lachlan McCalman and Antony Searle. It follows on from our work on the Backlight relativistic ray tracer, and the Through Einsteins Eyes web site.

Learning and teaching special relativity

Real Time Relativity is the centrepiece of the project Teaching Physics Using Virtual Reality. The idea is to learn some relativity by experiencing it in a virtual world. We have published a paper on this in the American Journal of Physics.

How does it work?

It uses the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to do the calculations necessary to fly around in a world obeying relativistic optics. We have written a short paper about it. HTML version.

How can I get it?

Download it. Note that it is available for Windows systems only, and that it requires a graphics card with a programmable GPU.

OK, I've installed it. What do I do now?

Read the instructions. Put yourself on our mailing list so we can keep you up to date about RTR, or give us feedback. We are using RTR in a first year physics course at ANU. You can get some ideas for how to use it from the manual for a 3 hour "experiment" and from our paper.

How can I find out about the physics behind all this?

Detailed information and explanations are available on the Through Einstein's Eyes web site. Descriptions of the physics of RTR are being progressively added to the manual. The physics is summarised in our paper.

Can I get involved?

We are seeking Ph.D., honours and other research students to work on this project at The Australian National University.

Version history

Current version: 0.9. Released 3 March 2008. Version history.

Feedback

Please contact us with any questions or feedback you may have.

Copyright and License

The copyright to Real Time Relativity is held by The Australian National University and by Lachlan McCalman and Antony Searle. Please contact us if you wish to use it for anything other than reasonable academic purposes.


Unless otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.