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This is super cool. I think it's funny how Quanta writes, "It is expected because JWST was built, in part, to find the ancient objects." "Ancient" is equivalent

This is super cool. I think it's funny how Quanta writes, "It is expected because JWST was built, in part, to find the ancient objects." "Ancient" is equivalent to "distant" because of special relativity. It's an odd thing, astronomy - it's a real world time-traveling observation, except we're limited in resolution and we can't look here only there. If it was a game mechanic I'd call it a cunning way to impose internally consistent limits on what the player can know.

ijidak 3y ago
> internally consistent limits on what the player can know Interesting thought. Can you expand? What do you mean by this?
- r2_pilot 3y ago
  Not the original author but my first interpretation is that this means, if it were in a video game, it would be a way to self-reinforce "fog of war" where you can only have extremely local information and you don't want extra information to leak to the players.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    Has anyone re-written a classic RTSG with a slower speed of light? Like, Red Alert, but with time dilation.
    - r2_pilot 3y ago
      Not to my knowledge, but there is a game called A Slower Speed of Light, which probably needs no further clarification. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Slower_Speed_of_Light https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Slower_Speed_of_Light
    - mekkkkkk 3y ago
      Wouldn't that be incredibly hard, considering that the players perspective is disconnected from the units? I observe my base and order a group of units to go to some place on the minimap. I see them moving along on their way, and decide to scroll to them. Only to realize that they already arrived and got massacred by the enemy. I go back to my base only to realize that it was destroyed ages ago (in its frame of reference) and I'm dead. Game over. Thanks for playing SR Red Alert.
      - vient 3y ago
        In ordinary strategies you already have an assumption of immediate information transfer from unit to player - you see what each unit is seeing. This can be kept so you will see you units moving in real time but as things get further from your units on the map, the older info about them you get.
        mekkkkkk 3y ago
        That's interesting. Wouldn't it lead to paradoxes where enemy units are shown at multiple places at once, observed from different frames of reference? Would be incredibly confusing, but confusing games can be fun too. EDIT: Also if a unit traveled close to C away from a friendly unit, and then back, whos reference is real?
        vient 3y ago
        Observations merging is interesting question. Simplest thing to do may be to show enemy unit as it is seen by our unit closest to them (here we just use "real" distance in internal game's coordinates). In other words, Voronoi diagram is built with our units as seeds, and enemies are shown as seen from their cell center. This would evade enemy "phantoms" but enemies can suddenly "teleport" as they move closer to other friendly unit (or can't they? I don't really know). In lore it may be explained like "our units know distances to objects and choose closest one among all units" since we already use "units can communicate instantly" magic.
      - xwdv 3y ago
    - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      I don't know about an RTSG, but I have seen it in a novel: Redshift Rendezvous.
  - jancsika 3y ago
    Wouldn't it be slightly easier to just, you know, visually obscure the opponent's base?
- javajosh 3y ago
  Sure. I expanded in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37128472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37128472
nomel 3y ago
> Ancient" is equivalent to "distant" because of special relativity This is from the finite speed of light, not special relativity [1]. Light is very slow, compared to these distances. Heck, it's slow compared to distances in our solar system, taking 8 minutes for the Sun's light to hit us. [1] https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/10/23/how-does-looking-at-distant-galaxies-allow-us-to-look-back-in-time/ https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/10/23/how-does-looking...
vagab0nd 3y ago
> If it was a game mechanic I'd call it a cunning way to impose internally consistent limits on what the player can know. But if you assume it's a multi-player game, wouldn't it be easier to implement a global space-time? The reality is that you have to keep an internal clock for each player.
- throwuwu 3y ago
  Partition them by velocity
  - vagab0nd 3y ago
    Velocity relative to what?
    - devoutsalsa 3y ago
      Me. I am at the center of my observable universe :)
    - oneshtein 3y ago
      Relative to CMB.
    - throwuwu 3y ago
      If it’s a simulation then there is a fixed point. Any proper game developer would also fake it for the most part e.g. culling things the players aren’t looking at, making distant objects static billboards and they’d also fudge the numbers with something like the cosmological constant.
- javajosh 3y ago
  In practice you need a global coordinate system. For example, you'd create a "spawn point" for all players, and then, before the game starts, move them to their starting positions at a fraction of c. The game is still keeping track of units within this initial coordinate system, and transform those coordinates for the player. The reverse is done for player decisions. There is effectively an in-game "star network" that mediates between player. Each player/unit has a unique light cone associated with it. Nothing stops us from arbitrarily designating a particular reference frame as "preferred" in a simulation; SR merely says that such a choice is truly arbitrary. Note also that this system could work recursively, such that new units must always spawn at the spacetime location of older units, and do information management (behind the scenes) in a similar way. This would turn the network into a tree - and the transforms are relatively cheap (and we could use a Spacetime algebra library!) Note that I don't think this works for a traditional RTS like C&C or Supreme Commander. But rather a game like Civilization, but galaxy spanning (and spanning very long periods of time), where the smallest objects are something like "suns" and "fleets". The individual lives of humans would come and go as these vast battles took place over thousands of years. You'd only need to add magic like a 1g constant acceleration drive - and a strong rule against using this to directly kill planets - and assume that the fleets are actually large-ish asteroids fitted with the drives and a human and/or robotic crew. The spawn point would then be, fittingly, Sol.
antonvs 3y ago
> "Ancient" is equivalent to "distant" because of special relativity. You don't need special relativity for that, all you need is a finite speed of light - a fact which was known before special relativity was developed.

ijidak 3y ago

> internally consistent limits on what the player can know Interesting thought. Can you expand? What do you mean by this?

r2_pilot 3y ago
Not the original author but my first interpretation is that this means, if it were in a video game, it would be a way to self-reinforce "fog of war" where you can only have extremely local information and you don't want extra information to leak to the players.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  Has anyone re-written a classic RTSG with a slower speed of light? Like, Red Alert, but with time dilation.
  - r2_pilot 3y ago
    Not to my knowledge, but there is a game called A Slower Speed of Light, which probably needs no further clarification. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Slower_Speed_of_Light https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Slower_Speed_of_Light
  - mekkkkkk 3y ago
    Wouldn't that be incredibly hard, considering that the players perspective is disconnected from the units? I observe my base and order a group of units to go to some place on the minimap. I see them moving along on their way, and decide to scroll to them. Only to realize that they already arrived and got massacred by the enemy. I go back to my base only to realize that it was destroyed ages ago (in its frame of reference) and I'm dead. Game over. Thanks for playing SR Red Alert.
    - vient 3y ago
      In ordinary strategies you already have an assumption of immediate information transfer from unit to player - you see what each unit is seeing. This can be kept so you will see you units moving in real time but as things get further from your units on the map, the older info about them you get.
      - mekkkkkk 3y ago
        That's interesting. Wouldn't it lead to paradoxes where enemy units are shown at multiple places at once, observed from different frames of reference? Would be incredibly confusing, but confusing games can be fun too. EDIT: Also if a unit traveled close to C away from a friendly unit, and then back, whos reference is real?
        vient 3y ago
        Observations merging is interesting question. Simplest thing to do may be to show enemy unit as it is seen by our unit closest to them (here we just use "real" distance in internal game's coordinates). In other words, Voronoi diagram is built with our units as seeds, and enemies are shown as seen from their cell center. This would evade enemy "phantoms" but enemies can suddenly "teleport" as they move closer to other friendly unit (or can't they? I don't really know). In lore it may be explained like "our units know distances to objects and choose closest one among all units" since we already use "units can communicate instantly" magic.
    - xwdv 3y ago
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    I don't know about an RTSG, but I have seen it in a novel: Redshift Rendezvous.
- jancsika 3y ago
  Wouldn't it be slightly easier to just, you know, visually obscure the opponent's base?
javajosh 3y ago
Sure. I expanded in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37128472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37128472

nomel 3y ago

> Ancient" is equivalent to "distant" because of special relativity This is from the finite speed of light, not special relativity [1]. Light is very slow, compared to these distances. Heck, it's slow compared to distances in our solar system, taking 8 minutes for the Sun's light to hit us. [1] https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/10/23/how-does-looking-at-distant-galaxies-allow-us-to-look-back-in-time/ https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/10/23/how-does-looking...

vagab0nd 3y ago

> If it was a game mechanic I'd call it a cunning way to impose internally consistent limits on what the player can know. But if you assume it's a multi-player game, wouldn't it be easier to implement a global space-time? The reality is that you have to keep an internal clock for each player.

throwuwu 3y ago
Partition them by velocity
- vagab0nd 3y ago
  Velocity relative to what?
  - devoutsalsa 3y ago
    Me. I am at the center of my observable universe :)
  - oneshtein 3y ago
    Relative to CMB.
  - throwuwu 3y ago
    If it’s a simulation then there is a fixed point. Any proper game developer would also fake it for the most part e.g. culling things the players aren’t looking at, making distant objects static billboards and they’d also fudge the numbers with something like the cosmological constant.
javajosh 3y ago
In practice you need a global coordinate system. For example, you'd create a "spawn point" for all players, and then, before the game starts, move them to their starting positions at a fraction of c. The game is still keeping track of units within this initial coordinate system, and transform those coordinates for the player. The reverse is done for player decisions. There is effectively an in-game "star network" that mediates between player. Each player/unit has a unique light cone associated with it. Nothing stops us from arbitrarily designating a particular reference frame as "preferred" in a simulation; SR merely says that such a choice is truly arbitrary. Note also that this system could work recursively, such that new units must always spawn at the spacetime location of older units, and do information management (behind the scenes) in a similar way. This would turn the network into a tree - and the transforms are relatively cheap (and we could use a Spacetime algebra library!) Note that I don't think this works for a traditional RTS like C&C or Supreme Commander. But rather a game like Civilization, but galaxy spanning (and spanning very long periods of time), where the smallest objects are something like "suns" and "fleets". The individual lives of humans would come and go as these vast battles took place over thousands of years. You'd only need to add magic like a 1g constant acceleration drive - and a strong rule against using this to directly kill planets - and assume that the fleets are actually large-ish asteroids fitted with the drives and a human and/or robotic crew. The spawn point would then be, fittingly, Sol.

antonvs 3y ago

> "Ancient" is equivalent to "distant" because of special relativity. You don't need special relativity for that, all you need is a finite speed of light - a fact which was known before special relativity was developed.