WebGL demo sets c at 5 km/h to render real-time Lorentz contraction, Terrell rotation and transverse Doppler shift

The page loads a first-person WebGL environment where WASD keys accelerate the camera toward 5 km/h while mouse input rotates the view. Objects visibly compress along the motion axis, clocks on moving surfaces slow, and light from forward surfaces shifts blue while rear surfaces shift red. Spacebar halts motion and resets velocity. The implementation follows the standard Lorentz boost matrix for position and velocity updates plus a post-process shader for Doppler and aberration.

MIT Game Lab’s 2012 “A Slower Speed of Light” used similar parameters but pre-rendered ray-traced frames and omitted Terrell rotation; the current demo computes both rotation and transverse Doppler in real time on the GPU. arXiv:2003.09833 on relativistic visualization confirms that correct Terrell rotation requires the full aberration transform rather than simple length contraction, matching the shader logic shown in the page source. The demo therefore supplies higher frame-rate verification of the same equations.

Operational value lies in immediate testing of Lorentz-invariant rendering pipelines for future XR or scientific visualization tools. The source remains closed, yet the exposed uniforms for boost velocity and light speed allow direct measurement of frame-rate cost versus boost magnitude. No CVE or security incident is attached; the page runs client-side only.

Next measurable milestone is public release of the shader source or a follow-up build supporting variable c below 1 km/h with quantified GPU timing data.