Day and Night Question

Devildog73

Devildog73

SOH Staff
Staff member
Is there a way to correct the sunlight at times in the evening?

Many of my missions happen in the 1600 to 1900 time frames.
CFS2 see that as late evening, early nightfall instead of the more accurate early evening lighting.
As I remember from being in the SE Pacific, evening in March is not twilight until about 1930 to 2000 hours.
Brothers from down under, is that about right?

I do not see the north coast of New Guinea (Tadji) being dark at 1745 in March.

Do I just need to back off my times by an hour to have the proper lighting?
 
DD,

I had the same problem with the Beaufort torpedo mission in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. I finally gave up and just used times that looked correct in CFS 2. I guess CFS 2 doesn't take into account the curvature of the world and its effect on twilight durations. CFS 2 does seem to change the Sun's position in the sky and thus shadows at different times of the year when making missions. As you remember from back in the day, dawn and dusk are rather abrupt events in the tropics, so a few minutes one way or the other might make a difference.

A neat tool you can use to confirm your suspicions is the shadow feature of Google-earth. Look for the little icon with the sun behind a mountain in the tool bar above the main window or view of the Earth. You can set both date and time to see sunrise and sunset shadows on the earth.

Getting back to those days of yesterday in SE Asia, I don't think I've ever seen more beautiful sunrises than those over the South China Sea or sunsets over the Anamise Cordillera.

Screen Shot: Looking west towards Laos over the Anamise mountains in I Corps, circa 1970.
 
Devildog73 said:
As I remember from being in the SE Pacific, evening in March is not twilight until about 1930 to 2000 hours.
Brothers from down under, is that about right?
Click to expand...

Hey DD,

Where I live sunset is around 18.30 but most other states it's around 19:30. In Western Australia this time of year sunsets around 22.00 hrs.

Cheers :ernae:
Lindsay
 
Devildog73 said:
Is there a way to correct the sunlight at times in the evening?

Many of my missions happen in the 1600 to 1900 time frames.
CFS2 see that as late evening, early nightfall instead of the more accurate early evening lighting.
As I remember from being in the SE Pacific, evening in March is not twilight until about 1930 to 2000 hours.
Brothers from down under, is that about right?

I do not see the north coast of New Guinea (Tadji) being dark at 1745 in March.

Do I just need to back off my times by an hour to have the proper lighting?
Click to expand...

This might shock the pants off a lot of you with my obsession with night fighters and all but I don;t fly night missions, I don't like staring at a black screen and like to see what I shoot at, I fly dawn or dusk missions. I got a night mission get's me above the clouds with a little moon, good for Wilde Sau but the bombers fly off in all directions as if in a dogfight, I fly moslty QC.

I'm gonna back off night operations, keep collecting airplanes, and get more into ground attack.

Bones
 
I think there is more to it than just time of day. I've noticed a bias toward the Northern Hemisphere, where it stays lighter much farther north than it does to the south. You can fly missions very far north in Alaska and have good daylight all day. However, if you go far south, you'll find that your "daylight" is limited to just a couple hours either side of noon. Even then, the sun is low in the sky. I discovered this when designing a fictitious campaign flying out of Heard Island in the southern Indian Ocean. I had to set all my missions around noon to get enough light to fight.

I've tried flying in all seasons and it doesn't seem to matter, CFS2 seems to favor the northern latitudes with longer hours of daylight. This northern bias could be why the sun seems to set too early in the South Pacific.

In the cfs2.cfg file there are two lines, NORTH_SEASONAL_LAT=nn and South_SEASONAL_LAT=nn. I experimented with changing the latitude numbers in both of these in an effort to add more daylight to the far south but haven't seen any change in the game. I haven't figured out what those two entries do, but they don't seem to control the position of the sun.
 
Cody Coyote said:
In the cfs2.cfg file there are two lines, NORTH_SEASONAL_LAT=nn and South_SEASONAL_LAT=nn. I experimented with changing the latitude numbers in both of these in an effort to add more daylight to the far south but haven't seen any change in the game. I haven't figured out what those two entries do, but they don't seem to control the position of the sun.
Click to expand...

Hi CC,

My understanding is that would control the seasonal N/S bands for summer/ winter/spring /fall textures. If you have CFO_Weather installed and gave it a tweak you may see some changes but I've never looked that far into it.

Cheers :ernae:
Lindsay
 
A fix for the bombers to keep them in formation is family 2 Cat 2 and they should stay in formation.
 
leroy10 said:
My understanding is that would control the seasonal N/S bands for summer/ winter/spring /fall textures. :ernae:
Lindsay
Click to expand...

I never thought about that. I do have cfo Weather and sets of seasonal textures installed. I'll have to tinker with that and see what happens. Thanks Lindsay!

:salute:
 
I just came up with an idea and tried it. To check the time of sunrise and sunset just go to your surch engine and type in sunrise and sunset and the location you are flying in.I typed in Guadalcanal and it said 6:22 sunrise and 6:45 sunset. Vis 6.12 miles humity 94% clouds light temp. 88*
 
bobhegf said:
A fix for the bombers to keep them in formation is family 2 Cat 2 and they should stay in formation.
Click to expand...


Ahh Tony

This has been posted about 3 or 4 times in the last 2 weeks by Bob and I. This fix has been known for many years.
 
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