RealSun

Normally the sun moves according to its own day/night cycle. RealSun replaces that with the real thing, calculating where the sun should actually be in the sky based on real-world location, date, and time.

Sunrise, sunset, solar noon, daylight length, azimuth, and elevation are all calculated locally using the same equations behind NOAA's Solar Calculator.

RealSun is completely standalone and doesn't require RealTime or RealWeather. If you do use them together (I highly recommend), each mod handles its own part of the world:

• - RealTime keeps the game's time, date, and season synced with real life. RealWeather keeps the game's weather synced with what's happening outside.- RealSun keeps the sun itself where it should actually be in the sky.

Real solar position

• []Calculates the sun's real azimuth and elevation from your latitude, longitude, date, and time.[/]

  []Calculates sunrise, sunset, solar noon, and total daylight length locally.[/]

  []Handles locations around the world, including Southern Hemisphere seasons, polar day, and polar night.[/]

  []The Mods settings page shows the current azimuth, elevation, sunrise, solar noon, sunset, and day length live.[/]

Location

• Auto (default): Finds approximate location using IP geolocation.

• Manual: Enter a city name or exact latitude/longitude. If both a city and coordinates are entered, the coordinates take priority.

• Hide City Name hides the city from the settings summary and only shows the country.

Your last successfully resolved location is cached, so RealSun can continue working if you're offline later.

Smooth sun movement

RealSun recalculates the sun's target position every 2 seconds by default, with an adjustable interval from 0. 25 to 60 seconds.

Instead of visibly snapping between those positions, the sun smoothly moves between them. The end result is a slow, natural drift across the sky rather than little jumps every time a new position is calculated (I personally can't stand the jitter from instant changes. Though you can turn the smoothing off in the mod's settings.

Real solar intensity

• []Real Solar Intensity (RSI) is optional and enabled by default.[/]

  []This adjusts sunlight brightness based on how high the real sun is above the horizon. Sunlight gets weaker near sunrise and sunset and drops away once the sun is far enough below the horizon.[/]

  []It does not replace the game's lighting or force its own brightness values. RealSun only scales whatever sunlight intensity the game is already using, so clouds, storms, and other weather darkening still work normally.[/]

  []This is especially useful if you're using RealSun without RealTime, since the game's normal brightness cycle can otherwise disagree with where the real sun currently is.[/]

Multiplayer

• []The host's location and time are used for everyone in the session, so every player sees the same sun instead of each PC calculating a different sky from its own location.[/]

  []Clients sync against the host's timestamp instead of trusting their own system clock, so a client's clock being slightly wrong won't put their sun somewhere else.[/]

North offset

• []North Offset Degrees is an advanced calibration setting and defaults to 180°.[/]

  []While digging through the game's assemblies, I couldn't find anything that clearly exposes the island's actual compass orientation. Testing the sun in-game against its real-world compass direction showed it appearing roughly opposite where it should with no correction applied, so 180° is the default used by RealSun.[/]

  []If the sun still appears slightly off for your setup, check it around sunrise or sunset and adjust the offset a few degrees at a time until it lines up.[/]

Usage