Interesting Stuff

Take a classic game that makes heavy use of a simple physics engine (such as Asteroids), and add in general relativity to the physics engine (and set the speed of light so that the game has very noticeable relativistic effects). For the Asteroids example, asteroids traveling at high speeds relative to you would exhibit Lorenz contraction, asteroids coming towards you would be bluish and those going away would be reddish, firing your gun would propel you backwards a little, etc. I’m not sure if accelerating would have different behavior than in the usual version (sure, the asteroids would age faster, but that wouldn’t be noticeable in-game). Stuff displayed on the screen would be what the spaceship pilot would perceive “now.” I suspect it would be an interesting twist on a classic game, and give people a better intuition for relativity (assuming people like it and play it a bunch). I can’t find such a game already created on the internet, but I haven’t looked too hard.

Any thoughts?