With Codex 5.5 High, my black hole interactive experience — which had been stalled for years without turning out quite how I wanted — got a serious polish in Fable 5, following the lifting of U.S. government regulations. It’s now so close to my ideal that I can't help but admire its true capability. It really does a fantastic job of balancing actual space atmosphere with gorgeous graphics.
GPT-5.5
After adjustments by Fable 5
The prompt I threw at it for the fixes was something like this:
Audit and list everything in the current visuals that still feels like an awkward mock-up, contradicts actual science, or serves as explanatory add-on — these should ideally be made movable and hidden by default unless needed. Also, flag elements that blend into the background in dark or light mode. Since the theme is space, light mode might not work well for a black hole specifically, so we should probably drop it and consolidate into dark and dim modes.
In response, Fable 5's current state assessment and improvement proposals (excerpted) looked like this:
The investigation and analysis are complete. Here is the audit and proposals based on the current implementation (black-hole-scene.tsx), screenshots, and the theme architecture (lib/store.ts / app/layout.tsx with global data-theme switching for dim/dark/light).
A. Elements still feeling like mock-ups
Rear/Bottom Arc (rearDiskArc / frontDiskBand): Uniform color and width ring segments with abrupt, cutout-like ends that persist to the end. In actual lensing, arcs connect continuously to the apparent edge of the disk, looking D-shaped. -> Replace with a CanvasTexture that tapers width and brightness along the arc, visually connecting the endpoints to the disk's edge.
ISCO Inner Ring: A uniform white torus giving a "placed wire" look. Physically, it's the bright edge of gas, not a line. -> Replace with a wide gradient band, integrated as the inner edge emission of the disk.
Patchiness of the Beaming Halo: Patchiness is visible when zoomed in due to blob composition rendering. -> Increase texture resolution and overlay angular Gaussian blur.
Uniform Fade on Disk Outer Edge: Gives a "drawn circle" look. -> Add turbulence noise cuts to the alphaMap to make the outer edge irregular.
Rigid-Body Rotation of Turbulence Streak Layers: Same speed across all radii looks stiff. -> Split into inner and outer layers for differential rotation (which also better expresses Keplerian motion).
B. Points contradicting science
Constant Emission of the "Event Horizon Rim" (horizonRim, r=0.84): Most critical. The event horizon does not emit light and cannot be observed. Constantly drawing a glowing ring at the horizon directly induces the misconception that the "event horizon = a glowing structure." -> Stop constant display, demote to a shadow-step-only toggle for "Estimated Event Horizon Position (Guide Line)," or remove.
Beaming Direction World-Fixed: The brighter side should be fixed relative to the observer, so orbiting 180° creates a contradiction where the "receding side is brighter" (a trade-off of dropping billboarding). -> Move the halo (the main body of the boosting effect) to the lens image plane group (azimuth-tracking), and weaken the vertex color gradient of the disk itself. This keeps it mostly correct even when orbiting around.
Exaggeration of the Triple Ring (rim 0.84 / subring 0.94 / photon 1.02): Actual subrings cling tightly to the shadow edge, and seeing 3 of them constantly makes it read like "machine parts." Exaggeration is acceptable as an educational representation, but constant display is the issue. -> Move to Item C (step-limited display).
No Gravitational Lensing Distortion of Background Stars: Stars pass straight through, with distortion applied only to the explanatory arcs. As a medium-term task, implementing an approximation formula to shift star positions near the shadow would be lightweight and feasible.
[Omitted below]
Reading through this gives me the feeling of a fog finally lifting. Starting July 7th, it looks like it will move to an additional credit-based system separate from the Claude monthly subscription plan, but as long as the Trump administration doesn't step in to block it again, the quality makes me want to keep using it anyway.