Light Speed

[Warboy]

I haven't seen much about people going this fast so I figured I should post it.

I wish something special would happen if people go this fast...

[sporkafife]

Yeah, nothing happens when you approach light speed (except that the Kraken begins to devour your ship) because KSP only models your ship according to Newtonian mechanics instead of according to relativity, and in Newtonian mechanics light speed is just another number that your speed can reach with enough force. Personally I think it's a bit outside the scope of KSP to need relativistic effects, but well done for having the patience this must have needed

[simonh]

I wish something special would happen if people go this fast...

It would be nice. But I suspect the universe collapsing into a 2 dimensional plane from Lorenz contraction and your ship's mass reaching infinity might be a tad outside the scope of the PhysX engine's design parameters

Simon Hibbs

[Crush]

Geometry changes due to relativistic changes might be hard, but I think it wouldn't be that hard to simulate red-shift and blue-shift with a shader effect...

Still, the only way to reach relativistic speeds is by cheating. Either through overpowered mods or by activating infinite fuel through the debug menu. When playing normally, this shouldn't occur, so the developers don't really have a reason to plan for it.

Edited May 8, 2013 by Crush

[Warboy]

Yeah, nothing happens when you approach light speed (except that the Kraken begins to devour your ship) because KSP only models your ship according to Newtonian mechanics instead of according to relativity, and in Newtonian mechanics light speed is just another number that your speed can reach with enough force. Personally I think it's a bit outside the scope of KSP to need relativistic effects, but well done for having the patience this must have needed

I don't even mean that, Something could happen at the speed of light tho, like you get a rainbow trail, time starts going backwards or something lol.

Or things like minecraft, when you use to get to the far lands.

It would be nice. But I suspect the universe collapsing into a 2 dimensional plane from Lorenz contraction and your ship's mass reaching infinity might be a tad outside the scope of the PhysX engine's design parameters

Simon Hibbs

Nah, just smudge the numbers Not asking for that lol.

Geometry changes due to relativistic changes might be hard, but I think it wouldn't be that hard to simulate red-shift and blue-shift with a shader effect...

Still, the only way to reach relativistic speeds is by cheating. Either through overpowered mods or by activating infinite fuel through the debug menu. When playing normally, this shouldn't occur, so the developers don't really have a reason to plan for it.

Still curious about the dev's warp drive, and if someone can make a warp/jump drive.