ED's Black Holes are close...

[Titus Balls]

Very interesting article came up in my feed today: http://io9.com/the-truth-behind-interstellars-scientifically-accurate-1686120318

View attachment 15827

The second and third images show what the accretion disk would look like, given the increasingly intense color-changing effects of Doppler and gravitational frequency shifts. (I'm simplifying, but these shifts characterize how light moving quickly toward and away from an observer affect the perceived color and intensity of that light.) The third and final image, write Thorne and his colleagues "is what the disk would truly look like to an observer near the black hole."

Turns out the original Wired article about Kip Thorne's work was a little - overexcited - about "new discoveries". Bit in reading that, this article was also linked to:

http://dneg.com/dneg_vfx/blackhole/

What was fascinating are the videos and how close Frontier HAVE got the black holes, but that there is still work that can be done to make them more accurate (and prettier)

All these movies entail a black hole with spin 0.999 of maximum and a camera at radii 6.03 GM/c2 or 2.6 GM/c2, where M is the black hole’s mass, and G and c are Newton’s gravitational constant and the speed of light. The observer is moving in a circular geodesic orbit.

View of a starfield under the influence of gravitational lensing. The camera is at radius r=2.6 GM/c2

[video=youtube;CbW2jKXq3gE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbW2jKXq3gE[/video]

View of a starfield under the influence of gravitational lensing. The camera is at radius r=6.03 GM/c2. The primary and secondary critical curves are overlaid in purple and the path of a star at polar angle 0.608 pi is overlaid in red.

[video=youtube;mKmHD7v9Qt8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKmHD7v9Qt8[/video]

At the moment, as far as I can tell they are merely rendered as spheres with an environment mapping from the background, and does not capture any "foreground" objects such as nearby stars - nor does looking through lensing effect have any effect on bending these around. They also don't appear to be of any particular genus - rather all static and no spinning ones, so they have no accretion disks, which should also surely be visible from nearby systems in the background images.

Anyway just thought it might be of interest to some of you and a nice discussion point instead of constantly bickering about community goals.

 

[Armante]

Thanks for sharing - have some rep

I saw my first black hole the other day and quite liked it. No 'hole' as such, but the light bending seemed quite abit like what is shown above.

As we progress through version numbers I'm sure this sort of thing will undergo tweaking

 

[darshu]

That thing is a star gobbling machine.

Unable to rep, apparently the rate at which you post cool stuff surpasses my ability to rep.

 

[Janichsan]

What was fascinating are the videos and how close Frontier HAVE got the black holes, but that there is still work that can be done to make them more accurate (and prettier)
[…]
At the moment, as far as I can tell they are merely rendered as spheres with an environment mapping from the background, and does not capture any "foreground" objects such as nearby stars - nor does looking through lensing effect have any effect on bending these around. They also don't appear to be of any particular genus - rather all static and no spinning ones, so they have no accretion disks, which should also surely be visible from nearby systems in the background images.

The problem with making black holes (especially rotating ones) look more or less realistic is that the required calculations are extremely complicated and time consuming. You might have read that the rendering farm used to calculate the VFX for Interstellar took up to a hundred hours to calculate a single frame.

 

[Cmdr Pli55ken]

The problem with making black holes (especially rotating ones) look more or less realistic is that the required calculations are extremely complicated and time consuming. You might have read that the rendering farm used to calculate the VFX for Interstellar took up to a hundred hours to calculate a single frame.

Well, they are going for an accurate picture. A game can get away with a lot less accuracy and still look close.
E.g. just calculate a dozen representative rays and deform a single, stock texture based on the outcome. Slap on a LUT for the colors and you can get something that very much 'feels' like the images above with a manageable amount of processing power (without catching the subtle particle fraying, etc. of course)

I think no one is going to complain if Hawking radiation isn't modeled (as that is so incredibly weak that it wouldn't be observable in any case)

 

[friendship drive charging]

The problem with making black holes (especially rotating ones) look more or less realistic is that the required calculations are extremely complicated and time consuming. You might have read that the rendering farm used to calculate the VFX for Interstellar took up to a hundred hours to calculate a single frame.

hundred hours to calculate a single frame





oh right. this explains why they aren't fully in the game yet

 

[Titus Balls]

hundred hours to calculate a single frame

oh right. this explains why they aren't fully in the game yet

Yes but like explained above, the difference in quality and resolution needed for a game vs an IMAX movie is vastly different. Also a lot of this stuff can be pre-baked and cheats can be applied with shaders. All ED needs is an approximation, not a full scientific model.

 

[torc]

the massive calculations made in Interstellar have been done for apply Thorne's equations in the Computers for CREATE the black hole...

Now that people knows how it ''would'' look like, there's no need massive process...just a layer that renders the black hole as close as possible to the Interstellar one.

Space engine moves on this way ant the effect is more prominent and realistic than the Elite one.

 

[Shizuka]

I have visited a few black holes, still nothing like Sagittarius A its like an evil eye, wathign at you. the second photo looks like the infinity simbol.

Spoiler

Jon Snow is a Targaryen.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

Yes but like explained above, the difference in quality and resolution needed for a game vs an IMAX movie is vastly different. Also a lot of this stuff can be pre-baked and cheats can be applied with shaders. All ED needs is an approximation, not a full scientific model.

Yah. Beat me to it. This is the way games have been done for years. You think shadows in games are based on actual measurements about the light source blah blah blah. No they're just a patch applied to the surface of the object that you are sitting in front off with the light source behind you.

Have you ever asked the question why there's no moon shine in Elite Dangerous? Hm?

 

[micky1up]

black holes prove that light speed cannot be limited because if light cannot escape it something must be pulling the photons of light in faster than they can escape ergo faster than light

 

[micky1up]

As I understand it the light still travels with the speed of light, but space itself gets gobbled in beyond that speed. which means the limit of speed in space is lightspeed.

But I'm a widdle fuzzy about the whole thing

im not saying that light stop traveling at the speed of light im saying what ever is pulling it in ( gravity ) must be pulling it faster than the speed of light or the light would still escape

 

[Seonid]

black holes prove that light speed cannot be limited because if light cannot escape it something must be pulling the photons of light in faster than they can escape ergo faster than light

It's not that they are being pulled in, it's that the photons of light can't escape the gravity in the first place.

 

[Jake Zane]

Amazing stuff. ED does a great job with the graphics. Found another Black Hole video I thought was interesting and thought I'd share it.

[video=youtube;QgNDao7m41M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgNDao7m41M[/video]

Stars

[video=youtube;HEheh1BH34Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q[/video]

 

[Surly_Badger]

As I understand it the light still travels with the speed of light, but space itself gets gobbled in beyond that speed.

We say that gravity "pulls" but it's easier to think of it as an incline where gravitation has warped space-time so that light falls in. The light still moves at light speed but the slope is too steep for light to go anywhere but in.

If the universe continues to expand due to dark matter/energy, and that expansion is accellerating (it is!) eventually the galaxies will be moving apart from eachother faster than the speed of light because space-time itself will be expanding outward faster than the light can go. In which case distant galaxies will vanish over time, leaving each one, cooling and alone (probably in-falling into the supermassive black holes at their centers)

When I was a teenager I read Pohl's "Gateway" and was mind-boggled by the relativistic effects of falling into a black hole. As the object falls in, it accellerates toward the speed of light. Which means that, for the object, time in the universe outside slows down to nearly stopping. There is no external reference-point from which that would be observable, but the physics says that death in a black hole looks like being instantaneously ripped apart, forever.

The other cool thing about black holes is that many of them appear to be spinning at nearly the speed of light, because as things in-fall, the black hole's angular momentum increases a tiny amount from the matter thats hitting it sideways as it swirls down. After a few billion years even the angular momentum of stray atoms is enough to impart an incredible spin. (I think the words "incredible spin" hardly apply to something spinning at nearly the speed of light, but what does? Think about your poor table-saw that only spins 10,000rpm... Now imagine a black hole spinning with a surface velocity that's 99.9999% C. The mind boggles.)
Edit: that probably only applies to black holes with an accretion disk, since otherwise whatever falls into them is going to fall from all directions and cancel out the angular momentum.

The name "black hole" does not adequately convey their awesomeness. I think they should be called "motherf!*@#&^#$er!" instead.

(the bit about universal expansion is explained well here:
[video=youtube;EjaGktVQdNg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjaGktVQdNg[/video]
)

 

[Janichsan]

Yah. Beat me to it. This is the way games have been done for years. You think shadows in games are based on actual measurements about the light source blah blah blah. No they're just a patch applied to the surface of the object that you are sitting in front off with the light source behind you.

Actually, game engines have been calculating rays from light sources to check whether they get blocked somewhere for almost a decade. Sure, the algorithms use some tricks to speed things up. The most modern engines even use actual ray tracing or slightly simplified variants of that (UE4 for instance uses cone tracing).

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

Actually, game engines have been calculating rays from light sources to check whether they get blocked somewhere for almost a decade. Sure, the algorithms use some tricks to speed things up. The most modern engines even use actual ray tracing or slightly simplified variants of that (UE4 for instance uses cone tracing).

Fair enough... point is: once measured, many times cut. All you need is a couple of models and some simple ways of varying them and there's your uncle Robert...

 

[Cargobane]

Didn't the guy make the black hole image for the movie by just swinging a light ball around in time lapse?

 

[edd]

We say that gravity "pulls" but it's easier to think of it as an incline where gravitation has warped space-time so that light falls in. The light still moves at light speed but the slope is too steep for light to go anywhere but in.

But what's the explanation for the force that pulls things down the slope? It can't be gravity because that's what you're trying to explain

If the universe continues to expand due to dark matter/energy, and that expansion is accellerating (it is!) eventually the galaxies will be moving apart from eachother faster than the speed of light because space-time itself will be expanding outward faster than the light can go. In which case distant galaxies will vanish over time, leaving each one, cooling and alone (probably in-falling into the supermassive black holes at their centers)

Recession velocities like that that go over the value of the speed of light aren't quite the same thing as going faster than light, as light still goes past everything involved at the speed of light. Also, when that happens it doesn't mean that things become unobservable either (it happens in our universe currently for objects with redshift above 1.46, and I've observed plenty of things past that redshift myself).

 

[micky1up]

We say that gravity "pulls" but it's easier to think of it as an incline where gravitation has warped space-time so that light falls in. The light still moves at light speed but the slope is too steep for light to go anywhere but in.

If the universe continues to expand due to dark matter/energy, and that expansion is accellerating (it is!) eventually the galaxies will be moving apart from eachother faster than the speed of light because space-time itself will be expanding outward faster than the light can go. In which case distant galaxies will vanish over time, leaving each one, cooling and alone (probably in-falling into the supermassive black holes at their centers)

When I was a teenager I read Pohl's "Gateway" and was mind-boggled by the relativistic effects of falling into a black hole. As the object falls in, it accellerates toward the speed of light. Which means that, for the object, time in the universe outside slows down to nearly stopping. There is no external reference-point from which that would be observable, but the physics says that death in a black hole looks like being instantaneously ripped apart, forever.

The other cool thing about black holes is that they appear to be spinning at nearly the speed of light, because as things in-fall, the black hole's angular momentum increases a tiny amount from the matter thats hitting it as it swirls down.

The name "black hole" does not adequately convey their awesomeness. I think they should be called "motherf!*@#&^#$er!" instead.

(the bit about universal expansion is explained well here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjaGktVQdNg
)

i understand what your saying but do you understand me if light speed was the limiting speed then it couldnt fall into anything it would always escape ergo it falling in faster than it can escape which must be by definition faster than light


also during the first moments of the big bang everything was moving faster than light and even to this day that has not been explained properly its brushed aside in fear of contridicting einstien ! either way scientist are coming around to the conclusion that the speed of light may not be the fastest speed

dont even get me started on quantum entanglement