blackhole_renderer 0.1.1

Real-time GPU black hole renderer with gravitational lensing and accretion disk simulation
Documentation

🕳️ BlackHole Renderer

Real-time GPU black hole renderer with gravitational lensing, accretion disk simulation, and interactive orbit camera — built with Rust + WGPU.

Rust WGPU License

✨ Features

  • Schwarzschild geodesic ray marching — photon paths bent by GR gravity in real time
  • Volumetric accretion disk — Keplerian differential rotation, plasma turbulence, orbital streaks
  • Relativistic Doppler beaming — approaching side blazes, receding side dims
  • Photon ring — sharp bright spike at the innermost stable photon sphere (r ≈ 1.5)
  • Einstein lensing — stars behind the BH warp into arcs; secondary disk image wraps over the top
  • Procedural starfield — 3-layer lensed starfield, sampled from the final bent ray direction
  • Interactive orbit camera — orbit, zoom, and mouse-look around the black hole
  • Filmic tone mapping — Reinhard + gamma correction, no blowout

🖥️ Platform & Requirements

Platform Status Backend
Linux ✅ Full support Vulkan / OpenGL
Windows ✅ Full support DirectX 12 / DX11 / Vulkan
macOS ✅ Full support Metal

GPU required. The shader runs 400 ray-march steps per pixel every frame.
A dedicated GPU (GeForce, Radeon, Intel Arc, Apple Silicon) is needed for real-time performance.
WGPU will technically fall back to software rendering (WARP / lavapipe) without a GPU, but expect < 0.1 FPS at any usable resolution.

🚀 Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/gaurav13407/BlackHole_Renderer
cd BlackHole_Renderer
cargo run --release   # use --release for best performance

🎮 Controls

Input Action
Left-click Capture mouse
Mouse drag Orbit around black hole
Scroll wheel Zoom in / out
W / S Zoom in / out (keyboard)
A / D Orbit left / right
Q / E Orbit up / down
Escape Release mouse

🔬 Physics

Parameter Value Meaning
Schwarzschild radius r = 1.0 Event horizon
Photon sphere r = 1.5 Innermost unstable photon orbit
Disk inner edge r = 1.1 Near ISCO
Disk outer edge r = 8.0 Outer accretion region
Integration steps 400 Per pixel, at dt ≈ 0.025

Gravity formula (Schwarzschild null geodesic approximation):

a = -ray_pos / (r³ + ε)

Keplerian orbital speed used for disk turbulence:

speed = 3.0 / (r + 0.3)   →   inner plasma rotates faster

🏗️ Architecture

src/
├── main.rs                  Entry point
└── renderer_gpu/
    ├── mod.rs               Event loop, orbit camera, input handling
    ├── state.rs             WGPU state, uniform buffers, render pipeline
    └── shader.wgsl          Fragment shader — all physics + visuals

Uniforms sent to GPU each frame:

  • Camera (80 bytes) — position, forward, right, up, resolution
  • time (f32) — drives plasma animation and Keplerian rotation

📸 Gallery

Run the renderer and orbit around with your mouse for the best view.

📄 License

MIT © Gaurav