The sun, the moon, and the stars

[Torvald Von Mansee]

I was wondering: how extensively/precisely are the cycles of the sun, moon, and stars modelled in SH3/4? I know that there must be some modelling of the seasons and day vs night, for example, but what if you were located at 6 degrees 8 minutes South/2 degrees 14 minutes West at 00:01 GMT on November 3rd, 1941, would the stars/moon you see in the sky be precisely what you would see if you could go back in space and time to that location?

Of course, this could actually get even more complicated, because then you could get into tides and so forth w/the moon's location, etc.

Anyway, my guess is no.

[ichso]

Just look for the threads about the Real Navigation mod like this one: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=116837. We had this discussion all along already ;).

The stars seem to be pretty precise in position so that shooting solaris gives away relatively good latitude measurements.
So far we used the sun only for getting the sunrise/sunset times and compared it to the calculated one (by date and latitude, from an almanac). So we measure the real time difference to GMT and get longitude from that.

It works surprisingly well for a subsim which don't seem to be intended for such complicated navigation issues. But from time to time it's a little bit inaccurate. It really differs and the reasons for that are sometimes hard to distinguish.

But it's fun playing this way nonetheless :up:

[Mooncatt]

well i dunno bout that tbh. but for all u star gazers out there, if you look up at night all the stars are in the right place. if u look closley you can see the plough etc........another amazin GWX touch.

[divingbluefrog]

Unfortunately for GWX, it has absolutely nothing to do with that...It's pure Stock feature...Well, I know only the rich are loaned, but nonetheless....:)

[danlisa]

LOL, that's right, GWX has not changed/moved the stars but we do aim for them.:arrgh!: