Yaw Pitch QW Roll Space Forward B Back AS Slide ZX Up/Down 123456789 Throttle (slow → fast) 0 Adaptive J Jump to selected F Focus selected M Find I Info Tab Camera: Orbit ,. Time P Pause O Orbits L Labels C Constellations R Relativity D Display K Controls U Units: mi H Help
TIME1000×
THROTTLEADAPTIVE
SPEEDSTOP

Help

Navigation

· Drag
Yaw
Pitch
QW
Roll
Space
Forward (hold)
B
Back (hold)
AS
Slide
ZX
Up / Down
Wheel
Forward / back
Tab
Toggle camera mode

Time & speed

1
0.0001c
2
0.001c
3
0.01c
4
0.1c
5
1c (light speed)
6
10c
7
100c
8
1,000c
9
10,000c
0
Adaptive (no cap)
,.
Step time multiplier
P
Pause time

Bodies

Click
Select body
M
Find body
J
Jump to selected
F
Focus selected
I
Toggle info panel

Display

O
Orbits
L
Body labels
C
Constellations
R
Relativity
D
Display readouts
K · Right-click
Show / hide controls
U
Units (mi / km)
H
This help
Esc
Close help / back to intro

Relativistic effects

With R on and the throttle near the speed of light, three things appear on screen: stars bunch into the forward direction (aberration), the forward view brightens while the rear dims (relativistic headlight), and stars color-shift — blue ahead, red behind, eventually shifting out of the visible spectrum entirely (Doppler).

The throttle shows your target rest-frame speed; the SPEED readout shows measured speed in units of c. In classical mode they match. In relativistic mode the measured speed caps at 1c (matter can't exceed light speed), but adding throttle past that keeps increasing γ — the time-dilation factor shown in the HUD. γ = 2 means time on board ticks half as fast as outside; γ = 10, one-tenth as fast.

Attribution

Star catalog data from the HYG Database v3.8 by David Nash, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5.