Horizon: real-time black hole renderer
A GPU renderer that traces light around a spinning black hole. A physics experiment built for fun, pair-programming with an AI coding agent.
Key decision
Trust, but verify: the analytic shadow outline is drawn over the ray-traced image, and 68 physics tests check the GPU against the CPU.
My contribution
Built a physics renderer as a side project, pair-programming with an AI coding agent.
The constraint
A convincing image must also agree with the underlying physics.
How it works
C++20 and GPU shaders trace light through the equations of a spinning black hole, producing the shadow, lensed starfield and Doppler-shifted disk. An analytic shadow outline and 68 physics tests compare GPU results with CPU calculations.
The result
A real-time renderer with a reported throughput of 170M rays/s and explicit physics checks.