POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.binaries.images : Sky simulation : Re: Sky simulation Server Time
30 Jul 2024 00:19:50 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Sky simulation  
From: scott
Date: 9 Jun 2013 05:19:24
Message: <51b4489c@news.povray.org>
> For the visible Sun, you give: #local SunRadius = vlength(sp)/214.8;
>
> I seem to remember that Cousin Ricky evaluated the apparent size of the
> Sun as to be twice as much, i.e.: #local SunRadius = vlength(sp)*2/214.8;
>
> I don't know who is right or wrong but personally I prefer the larger
> size :-) Somehow, it looks more like the natural aspect of the Sun, but
> that may very well not be at all objective.

For my sun radius calculation I used the values from wikipeda, distance 
to sun is 1.5e8 and radius of the sun is 6.96e5, dividing those two 
gives the 214.8.

IMO it also depends heavily on the angle/focal length of the camera you 
are using, you can easily make the sun or moon look way too big or way 
too small (IRL and in POV). In Stellarium there's even a toggle to make 
the moon 4x realistic size because it just seems more "natural", it may 
be a similar reason why Cousin Ricky put in the factor of 2.

Note that if you increase the size artificially and are using the sun 
sphere as an accurate light source for radiosity (or mcpov) you probably 
want to reduce the emission value accordingly (if making the radius 2x 
bigger the area will be 4x bigger, so reduce the emission by a factor 4).


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