Moon Phases (they work I think)

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cjr3559

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Has anyone paid any attention to the moon phase feature on time variable tracks? I just ran a free run at Willow Springs with a midnight time setting and it was dark. Well, like just about pitch black. So there would be no cloud obscurity, the weather setting I used was clear with '0' variability. Basically the sky was all stars, no moon. Lo and behold, I looked up the moon phase calendar for Lancaster, CA and they had a new moon on Jan 30.

http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/moonphases.html?n=846

Just wanted to see if this is just a coincidence or if anyone else had any experiences.
 
Huh thats interesting.... They did say they accurately mapped the whole sky with constellations and what not, so you could be right. Nice find 👍
 
Isn't the moon small in GT6, Only on La Sarthe Circuit, I actually saw it large, but it wasn't a clear moon, :confused:
 
Isn't the moon small in GT6, Only on La Sarthe Circuit, I actually saw it large, but it wasn't a clear moon, :confused:

Well, not sure if my theory is valid. I ran a lap around Nordschleife and there seems to be a small looking moon. The current moon phase is also new at Nurburg Germany, so it shouldn't be visible there either. Maybe what I saw is Venus, but it seems kind of large to be the planet. I can spot Mars, though.

At first I thought maybe the moon phases were accurate since I couldn't find it at Spa either. However, the more I think about it, since the time variable tracks all have set sunrise and sunsets perhaps it's not possible to recreate the moon phases accurate to the present day. I'll check this again in a week when the moon is at half and see what I find.
 
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I think that the accurate local conditions thing hasn't fully rolled out yet, ie: it will come with one of the updates, but maybe that'll mostly be weather.

Having said that though, I was surprised when running a rew photomode races in arcade last week. I saw how sunrise is far later for a number of tracks than I expected, almost like it's winter in the game too...I think Motegi was the only one where sunrise was around 04:30. I should test Mt Panorama again and check the local sunrise times.
 
The moon is way too small, though. I did some laps at Streets of Willow at dawn and only the moon was visible, but it was too small. Smaller than real life.
 
The moon is way too small, though. I did some laps at Streets of Willow at dawn and only the moon was visible, but it was too small. Smaller than real life.
I think this was explained in a thread early on about how the human eye sees at a different focal length to a camera...or somesuch.

I hope this gets attention in a patch at some point as the option for a big moon would be great for photomode.
 
Huh thats interesting.... They did say they accurately mapped the whole sky with constellations and what not, so you could be right. Nice find 👍

Haha, they did, but as many people pointed out immediately after they didn't really. You can go online and get to-the-second sky data for any point on the Earth at any date. The data is very low in weight and all you need to do is hook up a skybox... and that's in the first year of most reasonable game-design courses.

Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic looking feature but it was a (comparatively) easy hit for PD ;)
 
Ok, my moon phase authenticity idea isn't true. Like the PD website says, "From the longitude/latitude of the track, the sunrise/sundown hours at the 2013 Le Mans 24 hours, Nürburgring 24 hour race, and the Goodwood Festival of Speed are represented accurately." So far from what I've noticed at Le Mans, the moon is in the correct phase (full or nearly full) for June 22, 2013. As for Nurburgring, Spa, et cetera, not sure yet.
 
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