Features

Real-time interactive viewing

With the click of a mouse, the camera can be moved around, allowing the viewpoint-dependent relativistic effects to be observed from any angle and position.

3D object importer

Interpreters for 3D Studio and LightWave 3D objects are built-in, allowing any among thousands of quality 3D models (readily available on the 'Net) to be brought into the simulation space.

Snapshot exporter

The camera view may at any time be saved as a PNG or TIFF file.

Special Relativity Scene (SRS) exporter

SRS is the format used by BACKLIGHT, a specialized raytracer developed by Antony Searle also for the purpose of illustrating relativistic effects. This feature allows any scene from Light Speed! to be written to an SRS file, which can then be formally raytraced by BACKLIGHT to produce a much higher-quality image. As an added bonus, the exporter can also produce a left-eye/right-eye SRS pair, to make nifty stereograms!

Reference geometry

Including the all-important xyz coordinate axes!

Independent toggles for the four relativistic effects

The overall distortion of a high-speed object is caused by four phenomena working in concert: the Lorentz contraction, the Doppler red/blue shift, the headlight effect, and optical aberration. Any subset of these may be more closely studied by switching off the others.

Numerical camera location + target readout and input

Camera parameters may be checked and adjusted to millimeter precision, if so desired. Two input modes are supported: xyz location/target points, and xyz location with phi/theta (heading/elevation) angles.

Switchable background color

It is black by default, but grey and white are available, to afford better recognition of very dark objects. Also, with a white background, snapshots may be printed out without wasting toner.