Constellations and the Night Sky

[Anonymoose]

That leaves us with the uncomfortable choice then that Menphina orbits retrograde compared to Hydælyn's rotation which is physically unlikely, or that the phases are mismatched and go in the reverse order that they should be.

Being in a linkshell (soon-to-be company) that has a steady subcommunity of Mumble users, I've had the pleasure of hearing murf rant about this one at length, which can get hysterical. Companies that like to world-build simply don't often have realistic celestial bodies. I wonder how hard it would be to fix the moon program...

Wonder if Ferne is regretting the creation of the lore forum yet <...> Either that or he and the Loremasters are relishing the fact we care so much about their world.

Probably a little bit of each, lol.

The two major points of the lore forum are met, however. We have a place to talk about this stuff and the Localization forum is now free of grammatically correct ambiguities. What vagueries they intend to clarify for us is up to them - but I'm sure anything the community at large is interested enough in to keep a thread going will at least get a nod someday.

That said, it's been a quiet week. The LOC squad is probably drowning in beta phase two Grand Company content and phase three city preparation.

[Myranda]

Would it not be possible to gleam a rough latitude by locating the celestial pole (either north or south, and assuming it properly exists), and finding how many degrees it sits off the horizon? [Again, I'm an amateur, so I'm not 100% sure how it works.]

Yes, this would be one method (altitude of pole = latitude), and as it turns out is equivalent to Kenmei's statement about the arc of the Sun's daily path. Both are direct consequences of latitude causing the rotational axis to tilt with respect to the local horizon, regardless of how the axis is tilted to the orbital plane. So we really can unequivocally say Eorzea is in the northern hemisphere, no doubt at all.

Being in a linkshell (soon-to-be company) that has a steady subcommunity of Mumble users, I've had the pleasure of hearing murf rant about this one at length, which can get hysterical. Companies that like to world-build simply don't often have realistic celestial bodies. I wonder how hard it would be to fix the moon program...

Man, I wish I got to know you guys more during 1.0, our lore-hungry Excalibur server... My own LS/FC is yet to decide on what we'll do for 2.0 server since that information hasn't been released to us, but if we end up on the same server still I might have to hit you guys up for the /flist, or maybe get a pearl if your FC will be operating an LS arm as well (I will of course, be loyal to my current LS for joining a FC, considering I'm now an officer for it).

Back on topic and responding to both of you, I definitely also don't expect every last detail to be accurate in any game's night sky. It's just not feasible from a programming standpoint for very little return on investment, as we all recognize. The moon phases thing should be fairly easy to deal with though, it's basically just sliding one texture over another, how hard can that be?