Sunrise/sunset changes dependent on latitude?

[AlconburyBlues]

Not sure what the correct spot is to post this question. It may or may not have to do with improving ProMods.

Generally, I thought this game used your latitude to determine sunrise/sunset times. I could have sworn I read about it somewhere. But to my experience (without mods affecting this), sunset/sunrise DOES indeed change depending on what country you are in. i.e. the sun coming up at a fixed time, even without ProMods, of 4am in the UK (no matter where in the UK), 6am in other places. Seems exaggerated, but proof that something is there.

So my question is why does it not do that in the Scandinavian area (close to, but not exactly, Polar Night in the winter and Midnight Sun in the summer)? Or more 50/50 days/nights the further South you go. I know the base map doesn't really go far North or South enough to implement this. (Or for it to even be a concern.) But it should in ProMods. Especially when you go to the far Northernmost points of Norway/Finland/Russia, Longyearbyen, and Iceland. You should see some kind of effect.

So I ask is this something that is already in the game but not working correctly? (Is it indeed doing it by country as I stated earlier, instead of latitude, but the countries are not set correctly?)

Or is this something that could be implemented into ProMods? Or created with a separate mod?

[R3L3NTL3555]

Not sure what the correct spot is to post this question. It may or may not have to do with improving ProMods.

Generally, I thought this game used your latitude to determine sunrise/sunset times. I could have sworn I read about it somewhere. But to my experience (without mods affecting this), sunset/sunrise DOES indeed change depending on what country you are in. i.e. the sun coming up at a fixed time, even without ProMods, of 4am in the UK (no matter where in the UK), 6am in other places. Seems exaggerated, but proof that something is there.

So my question is why does it not do that in the Scandinavian area (close to, but not exactly, Polar Night in the winter and Midnight Sun in the summer)? Or more 50/50 days/nights the further South you go. I know the base map doesn't really go far North or South enough to implement this. (Or for it to even be a concern.) But it should in ProMods. Especially when you go to the far Northernmost points of Norway/Finland/Russia, Longyearbyen, and Iceland. You should see some kind of effect.

So I ask is this something that is already in the game but not working correctly? (Is it indeed doing it by country as I stated earlier, instead of latitude, but the countries are not set correctly?)

Or is this something that could be implemented into ProMods? Or created with a separate mod?

There's already a mod on steam for this.

[erbkaiser]

Sunset/sunrise is indeed dependent on latitude. But the game is fixed to the longest day of the year, June 21st. You will need a mod to change the day of the year. Viss Valdyr maintains a regularly updated mod for ETS2, I have that mod for ATS. I update mine every weekend to keep it in the same week as real life.

It's also possible to use another static date, for ATS I have the one where the date is set for 21st December, the shortest day as well as the one where the date is set for the vernal equinox, 21st March, where day and night are of equal length.

I believe Viss has similar mods linked from his main ETS2 mod.

Ultimately though it also depends on the map. If cities are on the right spot at the map it will mostly work as expected, but some mods use the wrong locations for cities and will never work right. If you want to see a polar day you'll need a city placed above the arctic circle and be near the shortest day of the year. Off the top of my head, only Murmansk is included in ETS2 (and of course Spitsbergen). Iceland is south of the polar circle.

I never tested it myself so I don't know how accurate SCS is with emulating the sun. Would be cool if they really did implement permanent night or permanent day.
If they did implement it, in the game WITHOUT any day time mods, you should now never see night above the arctic circle as the game is set for midsummer.

Edit: you should also be able to see it from Honningsvåg and Kirkenes.

[Shiva]

Actually, north of Rovaniemi in ProMods, should be Midnight sun.
Kandalaksha and north, for RusMap.

British Isles, north part is too north, due to different scale used by SCS.

[TruckingDutchman010]

AlconburyBlues, if I do understand you right, you ask why sunrise/sunset times in Scandinavia are not like they are in reality? Well, to my experience, they are. There is just one parameter in the game for this as far as I know and that is 'day of year', which contains a value within the range from 1 to 365. SCS's default value is 172, which is June 21st. So wherever you are on the map, the sun times depends on your latitude AND longitude and according to the real solar cycle of June 21st. There are some mods in the steam workshop that can change the 'day of year' to another value. So, if a mod changes the value into 279, all sunrise and sunset times are according to October 6th. Also it's not true that the sun times depend on which country you're in, no matter where in that country you are. It depends on latitude and longitude only. Also in the UK the sun rises earlier in London than in Fishguard and in Northern Scotland it will not get completely dark at night around June 21st. When you go to Svalbard (in ProMods), you'll experience the midnight sun on June 21st, as well as the polar night on December 21st. If a mod changes the date to a day between the end of October and the end of March, you'll always have to activate a winter time mod to correct the sun times with an hour due to daylight saving time which applies by default in the game.

SCS has made a very realistic solar cycle system, which is 100% accurate for every day of the year. The only question I have is: Why on earth did SCS not implement a date selector in the options screen? They built a fantastic feature, but you'll have to write or download a mod to be able to use it... Strange, isn't it?

[AlconburyBlues]

@R3L3NTL3555 and erbkaiser, I guess I should have been more specific. I am not talking about time adjustment based on day of year (seasonal). I am referring to the more specific (secondary) adjustment based on latitude.

i.e. During the summer, the days are much longer the further North you go. And at some point past the Arctic circle, you experience a Polar Day (no night). And during the winter it's the opposite of these effects.

I already know about Viss Valdyr's mod and it's part of my mandatory usage list, and I am grateful for it. But sunset/sunrise times are still unrealistic in some areas that ProMods opens up to us. Currently those areas are Iceland, Northern Scandinavia, and Longyearbyen.

The sun (during the summer) should be coming up several hours earlier than Central Europe, and setting several hours later. But with or without Valdyr's mod, the the sunsets/sunrises happen still at the same time no matter where you are. i.e. If the sun is setting at 7pm in Germany, it should NOT be setting at 7pm in the areas I mention above. It would be more like 9pm in Northern Scandinavia and Iceland, and 11pm in Longyearbyen.

I have recently found and old mod that was loosely tied to Grimes Frosty Winter mod, and made by someone else. (He talked about it at some point, but the link is no longer on his site.) The file is named JourPolaire.scs I don't believe this is the original thread (because I first discovered this mod a few years ago), but it's a start: viewtopic.php?t=37150

I have found that it still works perfectly in 1.41. And it works together with Valdyr's mod perfectly. It does not nullify it. I tested it by adjusting some of the times given by the ADNT mod and the "Polar Crest" (The peak point at which sunset and sunrise come together) changes accordingly. (I have yet to test it in ATS, but I'm sure it works.)

The point of my post though, was to state that this kind of adjustment dependent on latitude should be automatic (while driving North or South) and moddable.

As evidenced by what I mentioned earlier about SS/SR times being seemingly country dependent in the vanilla game. (Why else would you get a 2-hour earlier sunrise in the UK than everywhere else?) So it should be possible to make a mod that will auto adjust based on latitude. Even though the JourPolaire mod is enjoyable in the appropriate places, you have to take it out of your mods list if you drive South and put is back in if you go North.

There's got to be a way....

[TruckingDutchman010]

The SR/SS times are quite accurate. I just tested it out: June 21st, midnight at Longyearbyen: quite high midnight-sun. Then, in Kirkenes, much more South: low midnight sun. Then I went further South, to Sodankyla: midnight sun, just at/above the horizon. That's right, because it's not that far above the Polar Circle and remember: the Polar Circle is the latitude on which the sun only one day a year doesn't set, i.e. on June 21st. There you see just one beam of the sun coming over the horizon. In theory at least, not taking into account the refraction of light. So I don't see what's not right about this in the game. You mentioned Iceland. Please keep in mind that most of that country is situated below the Polar Circle, which means that the midnight sun is never seen there, only a clear dusk. You also have to take into account how much to the East or West a specific location is within the applying time zone. As for Iceland, this is the westernmost country in ProMods, and from April until October the time in Iceland differs two hours from Central Europe, during winter (if you also use the winter timezones mod) the difference is only one hour, due to the fact Iceland doesn't apply daylight saving time.

You see, there are a lot of things to take into account, but based on my findings, I can only conclude that the solar times are (almost) exactly right, all over the map. And you don't need a mod to auto-adjust the solar times based on your lat/lon, the game itself does that already. It's not based on country borders at all. Unless you have a mod that affects those things, only things that matter are your actual latitude, longitude, day of year, time zone and DST (yes/no).

One last thing to keep in mind when testing such things: when teleporting in free cam mode (by goto-command) the sun light will not be adjusted to your new location. Only if you place your truck overthere (by using Ctrl+F9), you will see the sun in it's correct actual position.

[AlconburyBlues]

@TruckingDutchman010, I agree about Iceland it shouldn't have a midnight sun during the winter. But the sun should still come up incredibly late and go down really early. I was stationed in Reykjavik in the military both during the summer and the winter. And I remember only about 5 hours of daylight during the winter and about 5 hours of night during the summer.

After your findings I did another little test I took out Valdyr's mod and found that it does indeed change depending on latitude so you are right it is built into the game. I guess that mod adjusts the day of year but then in turn it fixes the times all over the map so I guess that was the problem.

[OfficialDOWL]

The sunrise/set times are calculated by the game based on position. The only problem areas should be the nothern part of Iceland (Where it still behaves like summer since the game is set on 21st June), and UK/Ireland (Which are out of scale and the game's latitude calculation will be off). Everywhere else it should work perfectly regardless of mods used (Assuming maps are in the correct position), which from my experience it does.

[AlconburyBlues]

Thanks Dowl for clearing that up. So I guess I have to make a choice. Either play with the Actual Day/Night Times mod and have the latitude effect disabled. Or take the mod out and be fixed on 21 June, but see the daylight changes going North or South. It's a toss-up! I just wish they could both work together. I guess that is what I was really hoping for.