Show HN: Physically accurate black hole simulation using your iPhone camera

This is not a simulation of a black hole, but rather an image filter that emulates one particular effect.

Yes, agreed. We thought it would be fair to call it a "simulation" of what your surroundings would look like if a black hole were within your FOV, but as you say we do not take into account all effects (time delays in particular would require a lot of buffering and we decided this would be impractical to implement, and not that illuminating).

You're right that the time delays and redshifting wouldn't add much to a toy app, but some of us are here for the physics.

Honestly it's not so far-fetched (to me) that in a few years someone will have GRRMHD simulations running in real time on a portable device.

Are you familiar with A Slower Speed of Light? It's a game which has some nice special-relativistic effects.

http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/

Yes, such a great game---it's a fantastic visualization of special relativity and also fun to play!

I think we're still a ways off from real time GRMHD sims, but CK Chan from UArizona had a working VR simulation (on the Oculus iirc, but now deprecated) that allowed you to explore a pre-existing GRMHD simulation in real time and in 3D. I think he might be working on a new version of this.

That's awesome. It's extra crucial to have engaging outreach when your research is so far from application. There's so much scope for wowing people with astro and if you can enrich our culture and justify funding at the same time that's a win-win.

(Just for clarity the second R in GRRMHD is for radiation. I know it's typical to just push some photons through the GRMHD results to produce renders, bit since I'm dreaming let's treat the radiation self-consistently.)

Hahaha, I half-expected a plasma physicist to complain that GRRMHD is not self-consistent and we need to include non-ideal fluid effects :D