The Sun, The Moon, The Ecliptic Plane

[SuperDud]

I miss night. For those who didn't get to experience it.... yea it was as fun as you imagine it to be.

[kvuo75]

I don't really think that's a what the wiki article says. It says tons of people have researched it, it is observable, but that nobody can agree as to the WHY of it.

Regardless of the physics of it, it looks bigger. That end result is observable. I've seen moons low in the evening just rising that were 2x larger than when they're high in the sky. I personally think a large part of it is the cooler air. Cool air makes things look closer. I've also seen it low (low-ish) when it's clearly up but still low enough to hang behind a building and it looks "normal" (or "small" compared to the examples people bring up of it being larger than normal), so it isn't perception only.

I have a view of the front range mountains here (foothills of the Rocky Mountains) and there's this one area where Excel Energy set up 3 giant windmills to study wind farming technology. They are way way out at the base of the mountains, but you can still see them. On a cool morning you can quite clearly see them towering over the tiny valley they reside in. On a hot day (driving home later in the day) they are very small and harder to see. The cooler days they look about twice as big, and the hotter days they look very small.

We know cold air already bends sound waves. It's not much of a stretch it can also affect light waves. Even if the moon doesn't change, for whatever other reasons it looks a lot larger in certain atmospheric conditions. I wouldn't say no to replicating that effect in AH.


(Although it doesn't really add anything to the game, so I wouldn't make a fuss about it either way)

A popular belief, stretching back at least to Aristotle in the 4th century B.C., holds that the Moon appears larger near the horizon due to a real magnification effect caused by the Earth's atmosphere. This is not true: although the atmosphere does change the perceived color of the Moon, it does not magnify or enlarge it.[2] In fact, the Moon appears about 1.5% smaller when it is near the horizon than when it is high in the sky, because it is farther away by up to one Earth radius and also because of atmospheric refraction, which makes the image of the Moon slightly smaller in the vertical axis. (Note that between different full moons, the Moon's angular diameter can vary from 33.5 arc minutes at perigee to 29.43 arc minutes at apogee—a difference of over 10% .[3] This is because of the ellipticity of the Moon's orbit.)
 
The angle that the full Moon subtends at an observer's eye can be measured directly with a theodolite to show that it remains constant as the Moon rises or sinks in the sky (discounting the very small variations due to the physical effects mentioned). Photographs of the Moon at different elevations also show that its size remains the same. [citation needed]
 
A simple way of demonstrating that the effect is an illusion is to hold a small object (say, 1/4 inch wide) at arm's length (25 inches) with one eye closed, positioning it next to the seemingly large Moon. When the Moon is higher in the sky, positioning the same object near the Moon reveals that there is no change in size.

it's an optical illusion. Just because people don't agree on which optical illusion doesn't make it not one.  it's all human perception.

[crazierthanu]

WHY DOES THE MA'S NOT HAVE A NIGHT CYCLE???????????  Imagine how much more fun the game would be if it didnt go from 6am to 6pm then start over, you know, use the black underside of the Lancs for a reason, plus you would need more skill to land all of those spawncamp GV kills at night, headlights on jeeps/tanks anyone?  Also be harder to HO unless you knew right where you are from your enemy, but then people would just go 900 gamma so it was like high noon again..i just shot myself down  crap....

If you want, grab a few friends and head to a custom arena, it would allow you to experience night fighting without changing the MA's. Do it for squad night or something, might be a lot of fun.

[ImADot]

If you want, grab a few friends and head to a custom arena, it would allow you to experience night fighting without changing the MA's. Do it for squad night or something, might be a lot of fun.

I usually have a custom arena up...at least 3-4 nights a week. Depending on who's in there and what we're doing, I've turned it into night for 10 minutes at a time (or as long as they're having fun with it).

[crazierthanu]

I usually have a custom arena up...at least 3-4 nights a week. Depending on who's in there and what we're doing, I've turned it into night for 10 minutes at a time (or as long as they're having fun with it).

Cool, might have to grab a few friends myself and stop by. It brings back memories from the old H2H days.

I think it was Peabody who constantly had a historically themed arena, was good fun.

[ImADot]

Cool, might have to grab a few friends myself and stop by. It brings back memories from the old H2H days.

I think it was Peabody who constantly had a historically themed arena, was good fun.

I'll have it up shortly...just got home.  It will be the BOB09 terrain, set for FSO practice. If nobody else is there, or everyone agrees, we can have nighttime for a while.

[pytho2]

i do agree with that and the fact that you can change the gamma to make it appear to be night time if you want to fly that way dont make a diffrence because you and i know the other guy aint going to have it set that way and you would be an easy target for the other person