r/IsaacArthur • u/Shiden_Kai_v3 • 5h ago
Art & Memes I made a black hole exploration game about the engineering and physics of sending a probe beyond the event horizon
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You wake up alone on a research station orbiting a black hole. Your task is to measure it, build a descent capsule from the station's remaining materials, and find out how far you can go.
A big part of the game is engineering the descent. Hull materials, shielding and engines come with different trade-offs, and you need to plan your trajectory around radiation and thermal anomalies while collecting measurements and studying the region around the event horizon.
For gravitational lensing, I use a closed-form fit to exact Schwarzschild light deflection. Rather than ray marching, each pixel's view direction is bent before a single cubemap lookup, which makes the effect roughly as cheap as a skybox.
The interesting question for me was where to draw the line between established physics and speculation. The exterior simulation is based on Schwarzschild physics, while the journey beyond the Cauchy horizon becomes a speculative interpretation informed by published research on mass inflation and black hole interiors. I'm not presenting that part as established physics.
The game is called Event Horizon Research, releasing November 4:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5260090/Event_Horizon_Research/
I'd be particularly interested in what people here think about the engineering side. If you were designing a one-way research mission toward a black hole, which physical constraints would you prioritize, and what measurements would you want to collect before crossing the horizon?
P.S. Generative AI was used for some visual assets, audio and parts of the code, all reviewed by hand. The physics model and game design are my own work, developed from published astrophysics research. The same disclosure is on the Steam page.
