City skylines game horizon distant lights

#City skylines game horizon distant lights plus#

We see that very clearly in the video, and then we see it 'rise up' and fluctuate quite a bit. Remember that we already know from the video, that one possible observation is that Chicago skyline is completely obscured (indeed, this is the normal observed condition). But we don't know the exact values for the moment that first picture was taken (which was ), so what we're going to do is calculate an estimate based on 0% refraction, 10% refraction, and 20% refraction and that will give us a range of values so we can compare them against our observation. We know for a fact from the video above that there are very strong refraction effects that bring Chicago all the way from being 100% obscured to being somewhat visible over the horizon.

Now we come to the most difficult part, estimating the refraction.

#City skylines game horizon distant lights plus#

We also note that we are at about ~15.5 meters over the water, plus ~2 meters for tripod, so 17.5m overall for the elevation of our observer, over 'ground level'. It helps that we are viewing over a lake that is at a fairly constant level so we don't have to worry about hills in between. So we find that Lake Michigan is at about 175 meters elevation which is our elevation bias - this is the amount we need to add to the Earth's Radius to get our 'ground level' for this observation ('ground level' meaning the lowest point we could possibly 'see over'). You really must understand what these values mean so you can measure properly and get proper results. NOTE: if you use sea-level, even with zero refraction, you find only 136m hidden so we would think we could see almost all of Chicago if you use the wrong values. We can't use sea-level because we have 175 meters of water and Earth between the surface of the Lake and sea-level that we can't see through. Next we need to check our elevation profile to #1 verify nothing would be blocking our view (it isn't) and #2 to find the lowest-point between us, this is our elevation bias (or 'ground level'). But we are in the ballpark sufficiently to get a good estimate of what we would expect to see, given an oblate spheroid Earth model. CAUTION: there is a danger here of thinking we are 'exactly 90,933 meters away', that is not true, we don't know this value exactly because we don't know exactly where Joshua was standing, so we need to keep in mind that we could be somewhat closer or further away. So we're at about 90,933 meters (~56.5 miles) distance. But at under 60 miles the difference is negligible so I'll just stick with these values - but if you were working with hundreds of miles you would need to take that into account. NOTE: Google Earth gives you GREAT CIRCLE distances along the oblate spheroid of the Earth, so these are NOT straight-line distances. (aside, I welcome corrections on anything throughout this post, especially from Joshua who might have better information than my estimate of elevation and location, however, I attempted to be fairly conservative)ДЇrom here we draw a path from this location at Grand Mere to the base of the Willis Tower (I measured all the way to the base of the actual building, not just shoreline) - the upper line here is to Grand Mere, for comparison the lower (and only slightly shorter) line is to Warren Dunes.

Using Google Earth we find a plausible viewing location on the Dunes overlooking Lake Michigan and we get our viewing altitude (190m) and latitude 42.003712. The first thing we need to do is locate Grand Mere and get the geographic details for that location. The image in question hereВ was from Grand Mere State ParkВ ( source), so we will use the details for that location. He is a very good photographer and you should definitely check out some of his work ( facebook) ( smugmug). Joshua has many (awesome) pictures and videos of Chicago from various locations along the Michigan shoreline, Warren Dunes State Park,В Grand Mere State Park, and Michigan City Pier just to name a few. Height of Distant Objects Obscured by Earth Curvature = hв‚Ѓ = в€љ])ВІ + RВІ] - R (when в€љhв‚Ђ в€љ is LESS THAN dв‚Ђ)

Note: D should actually point towards center of Earth as shown in my post on This is measure (B) from the following image, not distanceВ (D) since the camera here is clearly not submerged half-way under the water of Lake Michigan at '0' elevation. Once again, I refer the reader to my page with the details for the relevant mathematics I will be using here: Derivation for Height of Distant Objects Obscured by Earth CurvatureДЄnd for quick reference, I remind the reader that what we want to know is how much of the distant Chicago buildings should be obscured by the Earth's curvature on a spherical model. How can they ignore the missing half of the Chicago skyline that remains below the horizon? Well, they aren't famous for allowing facts to get in their wayВ :) But I digress. The response,В however, has been everything from claims that this is NASA tricking usВ to just completely ignoring the evidence and claiming ' Flat Earth PROVEN!' with this picture.