Felarya Seasons

Sean Okotami wrote:

Also, trying to make sense out of gwada's lines is the equivalent of playing Sudoku while blindfolded, hanging upside down in a pool full of needles and listening to Slayer non-stop. I have never once understood one word he said.

I thought I was the only one. I only get half of it, if I'm lucky.

Jætte_Troll wrote:

Sean Okotami wrote:

Also, trying to make sense out of gwada's lines is the equivalent of playing Sudoku while blindfolded, hanging upside down in a pool full of needles and listening to Slayer non-stop. I have never once understood one word he said.

I thought I was the only one. I only get half of it, if I'm lucky.

Et si tu essayais le français tu auras peut être plus de chance

gwadahunter2222 wrote:

Jætte_Troll wrote:

Sean Okotami wrote:

Also, trying to make sense out of gwada's lines is the equivalent of playing Sudoku while blindfolded, hanging upside down in a pool full of needles and listening to Slayer non-stop. I have never once understood one word he said.

I thought I was the only one. I only get half of it, if I'm lucky.

Et si tu essayais le français tu auras peut être plus de chance

peut-etre, peut-etre pas.

mais, je prefere a parle en englais. Mon francais est tres tres mal. XD

Archmage_Bael wrote:

gwadahunter2222 wrote:

Jætte_Troll wrote:

Sean Okotami wrote:

Also, trying to make sense out of gwada's lines is the equivalent of playing Sudoku while blindfolded, hanging upside down in a pool full of needles and listening to Slayer non-stop. I have never once understood one word he said.

I thought I was the only one. I only get half of it, if I'm lucky.

Et si tu essayais le français tu auras peut être plus de chance

peut-etre, peut-etre pas.

mais, je prefere parler en englais. Mon francais est tres tres mauvais. XD

T'was not too bad.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

peut-etre, peut-etre pas.

mais, je prefere a parle en englais. Mon francais est tres tres mal. XD

Je peux dire la même chose pour mon anglais. Mais je n'ai pas le choix contrairement à toi. Je pense qu'avec un peu de pratique tu pourras y arriver. ça ne te coûte rien d'essayer

Mu ha ha ha, time to resurrect this thread and get the flames roaring again!



The question "Does Felarya have seasons?" has different answers depending on what assumptions you choose to make about Felarya, and so at the current time does not really have a correct answer; it is still an interesting problem.


Firstly, lets define a season. For my purposes I am going to define a season as simply being a portion of a cycle of change in the daily heat influx. That is to say that a season is a change in how hot and cold the days are, and that this change occurs over and over again as part of a cycle of some sort. On Earth, the season of "Winter" is one with low daily heat influx (on Earth, caused by few hours of sunlight), and it occurs once a year, every year. I have chosen "heat influx" because the change in temperature is the driving force behind the effects we all see as part of the seasons; ice, snow, heat-waves, etc.

Assuming that "heat influx" is the driving force behind the seasons, then the question "Does Felarya have seasons?" becomes two simpler questions "Does Felarya experience changes in the average daily heat influx?" and "Does this change occur in a cyclic manner?".

If we assume that the only significant source of Felarya wide heat is the sun, then the question of changing average daily heat influx becomes one of how does Felarya connect with the stars it uses as a sun.


Not much is known about how Felarya does this, so here are some situations and if they have seasons or not.

Situation 1 - Pan-Felaryan Seasons
Assume that Felarya is a flat plane of finite size (but it might "loop" from one edge to another, and the size, while limited, might still easily be hundreds of times the surface area of the earth without causing significant problems with this setup). Assume that it connects to the space around stars via a flat plane (imagine a piece of paper with one side marked as Felarya and a lightbulb as the sun). One side of the plane is the "planet side" that connects to the surface of Felarya; this side needs to towards the light for the things on the ground to get any sun. For there to be a day and night cycle would require that the plane rotate around some axis that is roughly perpendicular to a line running from the connection point to the center of the star, or for Felarya to connect to some other place where it is dark.

Does this Felarya setup experience changes in the average daily heat influx?
No and yes. As described there is no "wobble" in the "day" axis rotation, and so there is no change in average heat flux over multi-day periods. But if there is a wobble (induced perhaps at the source of whatever causes Felarya's skies to connect to different stars?) then there would be changes in the average daily heat flux over multi-day periods.

Does this change occur in a cyclic manner?
Obviously, if there is no change then it doesn't occur in a cyclic manner. If there is change, however, it may or may not be cyclic. If the source of the wobble in the "daily" axis is based on some sort of angular momentum of some sort, then the wobble would likely be cyclic (just as it is on Earth), and thus the change in average daily heat influx would be cyclic. If the change is based off of some other phenomenon, it might or might not be cyclic, depending on the source. For example, if the "wobble" was controlled by some sort of atomic decay, then it is very likely that the wobble would not be cyclic, unless some care was taken when designing the "system" to ensure that it would end up being cyclic. Some possibilities would be psudo-cyclic; exhibiting cycles that don't quite loop all the way 'round again, or that have "seasons" of wildly varying and inconsistent lengths. A god playing with "season" dice would probably exhibit psudo-cyclic behavior.


Whatever the case, a Felarya setup like this would experience the same season all at the same time, since the "connecting portal" is flat and the heat influx hits every square meter of surface area equally.






Situation 2 - Localized Seasons
Consider a rotating connecting plane as described above, with no wobble. A day and night cycle exist, but without a wobble there are no seasons... or are there? It is possible to theorize a situation where there are either global seasons or local (and perhaps vastly different) seasons, if you allow for the opacity of the connecting plane to vary, either overall or locally. Or in other words, pretend that the connecting plane is a sheet of glass. If its transparency can vary over time, it can let more or less heat pass through it (with the remainder traveling to the stars "behind" the portal, assumable). If the transparency can vary over small distances, then it would be possible to have the heat influxes of two nearby areas be rather different from each other.

Does this Felarya setup experience changes in the average daily heat influx?
Yes.


Does this change occur in a cyclic manner?
Yes and no. If the "global transparency" of the connecting plane varies based on some cyclic phenomenon, then it itself is cyclic; otherwise it isn't. The "local transparency" of the connecting plane may or may not be cyclic, and in fact could be psudo-cyclic, depending on what exactly is driving the transparency changes. It is possible for this method to have a very large number of seasons, to the point where it appears to be random to everyone but statisticians and historians; consider a giant slide projector with every slide being the "connecting plane's transparency over every location" for a day, and having thousands of slots in said projector. Unless you kept track the seasons for a particular location would appear to be random, but would actually be repeating over a thousands day long "year".




Situation 3 - Flora enforced seasons

Plants (and animals, to a lesser extent) have a tendency to significantly modify the reflective characteristics of the land they are on, along with modifying how much water the land stores and emits. This can have a stabilizing effect (See the Daisyworld simulation), but it could also have a semi-stabilizing effect, if each plant tended to create conditions that were inhospitable for itself but hospitable for one of the other plants.

For example, consider a fixed area of land with three major types of plants on it: the Hot plant, the Cold plant, and the Wet plant. The Hot plant absorbs most of the light that falls on it, making things hotter, but it doesn't like hot conditions, instead preferring humid conditions. The Cold plant reflects most of the light that falls on it, making things colder (and causing the water to rain out of the now less dense air), but it doesn't like the cold, preferring hot conditions. The Wet plant "breathes" a lot of water into the air from the ground, but it doesn't like humid air, preferring cold.

With these three plants in an area you will likely start to get positive feedback going until you have a cycle of plant growth (with the attendant temperature and humidity changes). If the area is large enough then these changes will be occurring over a huge area and you will have seasons. (It doesn't have to be different plants. it could be three different stages of a single plant).

Does this Felarya setup experience changes in the average daily heat influx?
Yes, because some of the plants reflect more heat than the others.

Does this change occur in a cyclic manner?
Yes and no, depending greatly on the initial conditions, topography, and dozens of other influencing factors. Its possible to get steady state behavior out of this setup, along with cyclical, psudo-cyclical, and even chaotic behavior.


Situation 4 - Star brightness and distance choosing
We don't know how Felarya "chooses" what star it connects to next, but if it is "intelligent" or has some way of "knowing", then it could generate seasons on itself by choosing stars of varying brightness and connecting to those stars at different distances. Both methods affect the heat influx, and if done in a cyclic manner would result in seasons.

Does this Felarya setup experience changes in the average daily heat influx?
Maybe.

Does this change occur in a cyclic manner?
Maybe.



Situation 5 - Combination

This situation is simply a combination of one or more of the ideas mentioned above; for example, a non-seasonal Felarya with regions of seasons caused by plants and angry gods with d20's and cans of Mountain Dew ("Cool, CRITICAL WINTER. Make a fort save or take 1d12 + 8 of frost damage!")

Does this Felarya setup experience changes in the average daily heat influx?
Maybe. (See above)

Does this change occur in a cyclic manner?
Maybe. (See above)

Oldman40k2003 wrote:

Mu ha ha ha, time to resurrect this thread and get the flames roaring again!



The question "Does Felarya have seasons?" has different answers depending on what assumptions you choose to make about Felarya, and so at the current time does not really have a correct answer; it is still an interesting problem.


Firstly, lets define a season. For my purposes I am going to define a season as simply being a portion of a cycle of change in the daily heat influx. That is to say that a season is a change in how hot and cold the days are, and that this change occurs over and over again as part of a cycle of some sort. On Earth, the season of "Winter" is one with low daily heat influx (on Earth, caused by few hours of sunlight), and it occurs once a year, every year. I have chosen "heat influx" because the change in temperature is the driving force behind the effects we all see as part of the seasons; ice, snow, heat-waves, etc.

Assuming that "heat influx" is the driving force behind the seasons, then the question "Does Felarya have seasons?" becomes two simpler questions "Does Felarya experience changes in the average daily heat influx?" and "Does this change occur in a cyclic manner?".

If we assume that the only significant source of Felarya wide heat is the sun, then the question of changing average daily heat influx becomes one of how does Felarya connect with the stars it uses as a sun.


Not much is known about how Felarya does this, so here are some situations and if they have seasons or not.

Situation 1 - Pan-Felaryan Seasons
Assume that Felarya is a flat plane of finite size (but it might "loop" from one edge to another, and the size, while limited, might still easily be hundreds of times the surface area of the earth without causing significant problems with this setup). Assume that it connects to the space around stars via a flat plane (imagine a piece of paper with one side marked as Felarya and a lightbulb as the sun). One side of the plane is the "planet side" that connects to the surface of Felarya; this side needs to towards the light for the things on the ground to get any sun. For there to be a day and night cycle would require that the plane rotate around some axis that is roughly perpendicular to a line running from the connection point to the center of the star, or for Felarya to connect to some other place where it is dark.

Does this Felarya setup experience changes in the average daily heat influx?
No and yes. As described there is no "wobble" in the "day" axis rotation, and so there is no change in average heat flux over multi-day periods. But if there is a wobble (induced perhaps at the source of whatever causes Felarya's skies to connect to different stars?) then there would be changes in the average daily heat flux over multi-day periods.

Does this change occur in a cyclic manner?
Obviously, if there is no change then it doesn't occur in a cyclic manner. If there is change, however, it may or may not be cyclic. If the source of the wobble in the "daily" axis is based on some sort of angular momentum of some sort, then the wobble would likely be cyclic (just as it is on Earth), and thus the change in average daily heat influx would be cyclic. If the change is based off of some other phenomenon, it might or might not be cyclic, depending on the source. For example, if the "wobble" was controlled by some sort of atomic decay, then it is very likely that the wobble would not be cyclic, unless some care was taken when designing the "system" to ensure that it would end up being cyclic. Some possibilities would be psudo-cyclic; exhibiting cycles that don't quite loop all the way 'round again, or that have "seasons" of wildly varying and inconsistent lengths. A god playing with "season" dice would probably exhibit psudo-cyclic behavior.


Whatever the case, a Felarya setup like this would experience the same season all at the same time, since the "connecting portal" is flat and the heat influx hits every square meter of surface area equally.






Situation 2 - Localized Seasons
Consider a rotating connecting plane as described above, with no wobble. A day and night cycle exist, but without a wobble there are no seasons... or are there? It is possible to theorize a situation where there are either global seasons or local (and perhaps vastly different) seasons, if you allow for the opacity of the connecting plane to vary, either overall or locally. Or in other words, pretend that the connecting plane is a sheet of glass. If its transparency can vary over time, it can let more or less heat pass through it (with the remainder traveling to the stars "behind" the portal, assumable). If the transparency can vary over small distances, then it would be possible to have the heat influxes of two nearby areas be rather different from each other.

Does this Felarya setup experience changes in the average daily heat influx?
Yes.


Does this change occur in a cyclic manner?
Yes and no. If the "global transparency" of the connecting plane varies based on some cyclic phenomenon, then it itself is cyclic; otherwise it isn't. The "local transparency" of the connecting plane may or may not be cyclic, and in fact could be psudo-cyclic, depending on what exactly is driving the transparency changes. It is possible for this method to have a very large number of seasons, to the point where it appears to be random to everyone but statisticians and historians; consider a giant slide projector with every slide being the "connecting plane's transparency over every location" for a day, and having thousands of slots in said projector. Unless you kept track the seasons for a particular location would appear to be random, but would actually be repeating over a thousands day long "year".




Situation 3 - Flora enforced seasons

Plants (and animals, to a lesser extent) have a tendency to significantly modify the reflective characteristics of the land they are on, along with modifying how much water the land stores and emits. This can have a stabilizing effect (See the Daisyworld simulation), but it could also have a semi-stabilizing effect, if each plant tended to create conditions that were inhospitable for itself but hospitable for one of the other plants.

For example, consider a fixed area of land with three major types of plants on it: the Hot plant, the Cold plant, and the Wet plant. The Hot plant absorbs most of the light that falls on it, making things hotter, but it doesn't like hot conditions, instead preferring humid conditions. The Cold plant reflects most of the light that falls on it, making things colder (and causing the water to rain out of the now less dense air), but it doesn't like the cold, preferring hot conditions. The Wet plant "breathes" a lot of water into the air from the ground, but it doesn't like humid air, preferring cold.

With these three plants in an area you will likely start to get positive feedback going until you have a cycle of plant growth (with the attendant temperature and humidity changes). If the area is large enough then these changes will be occurring over a huge area and you will have seasons. (It doesn't have to be different plants. it could be three different stages of a single plant).

Does this Felarya setup experience changes in the average daily heat influx?
Yes, because some of the plants reflect more heat than the others.

Does this change occur in a cyclic manner?
Yes and no, depending greatly on the initial conditions, topography, and dozens of other influencing factors. Its possible to get steady state behavior out of this setup, along with cyclical, psudo-cyclical, and even chaotic behavior.


Situation 4 - Star brightness and distance choosing
We don't know how Felarya "chooses" what star it connects to next, but if it is "intelligent" or has some way of "knowing", then it could generate seasons on itself by choosing stars of varying brightness and connecting to those stars at different distances. Both methods affect the heat influx, and if done in a cyclic manner would result in seasons.

Does this Felarya setup experience changes in the average daily heat influx?
Maybe.

Does this change occur in a cyclic manner?
Maybe.



Situation 5 - Combination

This situation is simply a combination of one or more of the ideas mentioned above; for example, a non-seasonal Felarya with regions of seasons caused by plants and angry gods with d20's and cans of Mountain Dew ("Cool, CRITICAL WINTER. Make a fort save or take 1d12 + 8 of frost damage!")

Does this Felarya setup experience changes in the average daily heat influx?
Maybe. (See above)

Does this change occur in a cyclic manner?
Maybe. (See above)

Sum up all of this in three words, Stat!

Sean Okotami wrote:

Sum up all of this in three words, Stat!

It makes one word.

Sean Okotami wrote:

Sum up all of this in three words, Stat!

Three words is two too many.

In one word, my reply above is: "Maybe."

Oldguy2003 wrote:

Situation 1 - Pan-Felaryan Seasons
Assume that Felarya is a flat plane of finite size (but it might "loop" from one edge to another, and the size, while limited, might still easily be hundreds of times the surface area of the earth without causing significant problems with this setup). Assume that it connects to the space around stars via a flat plane (imagine a piece of paper with one side marked as Felarya and a lightbulb as the sun). One side of the plane is the "planet side" that connects to the surface of Felarya; this side needs to towards the light for the things on the ground to get any sun. For there to be a day and night cycle would require that the plane rotate around some axis that is roughly perpendicular to a line running from the connection point to the center of the star, or for Felarya to connect to some other place where it is dark.

This is possibly the most important part of your post.

Of course I'm confused about the "planet side" of felarya, you're saying felarya's dimension would connect itself to a planet as well, so the ground would have something to relate gravity to? or what?

Also, about the day and night part, this is assuming that we have some explanation as per why a flat plane of existence has some sort of axis.

An axis for felarya at this point would be the best decision to come up with. Although I think felarya connects to a moon when it's night time, but I'm not so sure about the (science?) behind that.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

Of course I'm confused about the "planet side" of felarya, you're saying felarya's dimension would connect itself to a planet as well, so the ground would have something to relate gravity to? or what?

No I'm not saying that, though I don't find it all surprising that it is confusing. Maybe it will help if I get a little more abstract.

Suppose you have a two dimensional object siting in a three dimensional space (a piece of paper being held in mid-air is a good approximation). This object has two sides to it, which I arbitrarily label as the "A" side and the "B" side. Suppose that this object is the portal Felarya uses to connect to a location in space to get its sunshine. In that case one of the sides of the two dimensional object must be oriented (roughly) at the sun. Arbitrarily I choose the "A" side to be that side. So now a ray of light can leave the sun, enter the "A" side of the portal, travel through it, and then hit the ground somewhere on Felarya. (Presumably heat can leave the surface of Felarya, enter its sky portal, and exit the "A" side of the two dimensional object, to allow Felarya to not get infinitely hotter).

It is this "A" side of the two dimensional object that I call the "planet side", since if you were to look at it from the point of view of the sun, you would see the planetary surface of Felarya (well, assuming the light reflects back out of the portal from the surface.) The "B" side does not show a planetary surface... well, assuming nothing tricky is going on.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

Also, about the day and night part, this is assuming that we have some explanation as per why a flat plane of existence has some sort of axis.

Well, its not Felarya rotating around an axis; its just the portal that connects Felarya's sky to the universe that is rotating. I assumed a rotation around an axis in order to easily allow sunrises, sunsets, and day-night periods of similar, constant length (IE: roughly Earth-like without any extra long or extra short days), but of course it is just an assumption. If you don't care about having a day length that is the same from day to day you can just have the object rotate irregularly; if you also don't care about sunrises and sunsets you can get rid of the rotation entirely.


Really, to come up with (a) model(s) that describe Felarya's day-night cycles and its possibly existent seasons, we need more data. I believe that with the data we currently have, we can fit just about any model we choose, and thus I can't really draw any firm conclusions.

Quote :

Well, its not Felarya rotating around an axis; its just the portal that connects Felarya's sky to the universe that is rotating.

I assume this means that the rotating of the sky portal will rotate the plane it's attached to as well? Since the star connected to felarya will have to shine on different parts of felarya, not different parts of it's sky.

As for the data and model statement, I'll have to agree with you there. Although I wouldn't mind getting this question solved, as it's not the first time it's been asked, and really just being able to answer "maybe" to everything about felarya is very irksome.

This is how I thought Oldman's explanation worked with days
That thing going around the sun is the portal.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

This is how I thought Oldman's explanation worked with days
That thing going around the sun is the portal.

No, but that way would work if the orbit was really quick (~24 hours) and Felarya only connected to dim stars, small stars, or only let through a very small percentage of the star's light. An odd side effect would be that the sun would be very large in the sky, and any solar flares would be truly awesome sights to behold.



My idea was more or less to replace Earth with a rotating piece of paper. It would be at 1 A.U. and rotate around itself once every 24 hours, but orbit the star once every year (though Felarya wouldn't stay connected for nearly that long).

No seasons?....So.........No snow angels?

What hell be this place?

To prevent bloating, I have removed images from quotations.

Ilceren wrote:

Okay, I got some things to say about seasons, so I'll use some images for better understanding. Though, they may be more confusing than revealing sometimes, but meh.

I do confusing. Lead on.

Quote :

Well then, let's say we take for reference Felarya, which is flat. Then take the bigger plane that encompasses it, and mark the vertical axis, such as this:

There, the actual size of Felarya might be about the size of the blue marked square. Or less, I'm not good at astronomical proportions, but it's not that important. Now, after having marked the vertical axis, we mark the vertical east-west plane too, and mark with a line the north south direction, resulting in something like this:

Okay, we have some misconceptions about spatial relationships here. Let us start with the obvious ones, using the Physics Wiki article for our basis. Felarya is a flat plane, that might potentially be a disc in shape. Extrapolated, we wind up with a cylinder; this is because the ground has a sky above it and some amount of dirt below it. Thus, our boundaries are marked by the top and bottom of the cylinder and the 'wall' of the cylinder, and each of these boundaries is some form of dimensional rift.

Now, the first problem we encounter with this proposal here is that you are assuming that at a minimum, the top of our cylinder must not be flat. This allows our 'sun' model to make an 'arc' in the sky. While it has never been a particular topic, it has generally been the presumption that the top of the cylinder is a hard boundary that doesn't change shape and is flat, just like the plane of Felarya. I imagine this was done for simplicity's sake. The atmosphere in which life can be sustained however changes across the plane - in a desert region the 'level' of inhabitable atmosphere is lower than that say of mountainous regions or that of the giant tree. This could raise the question as to whether or not the rifts that form the 'boundaries' of Felarya are in fact flat, or if they 'follow' these dips and rises in inhabitable atmosphere.

If they did follow the dips and rises, we could potentially see this arcing of the sun across the 'plane' of Felarya. If not, then the idea falls short right here. Unfortunately, we have another issue - Felarya's geography. In order for this arcing to work, we would essentially need regions of low atmosphere on the 'edges' of the cylinder's wall boundary and regions of high atmosphere in the center of the cylinder, or in other words where the radius of the plane of Felarya is at it's minimum.

This could be accomplished with the giant tree and with realms we have not yet seen, if it were not for one particular issue and our second mentionable problem - Felarya's geography shows a tundra existing on the same lines as both jungles and forests. This is purportedly accomplished by means of a higher elevation - possible. However, the ice continues into the Shimmering Sea. Not so possible without a temperature gradient. This would mean we cannot assume a planetary gradient for temperature, which in turn sort of destroys the whole thing for seasons. Moreover, the atmosphere of this region seems to suffer from a different set of principles than other regions, which would allow it to coexist with the other idea perhaps about the top of Felarya's cylinder being lower at the edges, if it weren't for the fact that the land itself is higher to make up for it.

Quote :

Now then, unless I'm terribly mistaken, the sun in Felarya makes a normal cycle; rises at one point and goes through the sky to end up setting in the other side. If we mark that trajectory in our plane system from before, it should be something like this, the trajectory being the yellow line:

Actually, nobody has bothered to clarify this before. Probably because nobody has really thought about it, I'd say. The wiki gets a bit contradictional here:

<<According to Yarblek, the rift in the skies of Felarya shifts nearly as much as the world itself and observant people will notice that the stars and moons change sometimes, albeit rarely.>>

Felarya shifts all the time. The skies above Felarya shift all the time. But the stars and moons of Felarya that can be seen change only rarely. What the wiki does say for certain is that Felarya's governing body, whatever that might be, always connects to the same type of stars at the same distance to create the same effects, which keeps Felarya at roughly the same temperature. I must assume that to mean the thermal profile of Felarya is the same across each thermal layer that exists, since it doesn't make sense when proposed any other way.

By keeping the thermal layers of Felarya at roughly the same temperature, we again kill seasons.

The interesting part to what you bring up though is that localized regions of Felarya have different skies. Key point to discuss: Sunfall Thicket in the Fairy Kingdom. How exactly this nifty concept works, nobody has really bothered trying to figure out. Probably because it would result in a headache if one tried to throw a concept of physics at it. By having regions with localized skies though, the idea of having an arc across the sky for the 'sun' to travel across is also thrown into disarray. How are these regions of discontinuity accounted for in this proposal?

Quote :

Wait a minute before asking why I represented it like that and please read further. Now that we have the trajectory, we'll project it to the two planes we had before, just to have a better view of what the sun does. The projection in the vertical plane is the green line, while the one in the horizontal plane is the red line:

Now what I wanted to say. The change in temperature that determines the seasons happens because of two factors. The first one is the angle in which the light reaches the ground; the more vertical, the hotter. The second one is the length of the day; obviously, the longer, the hotter.
Both this factors could be achieved rather simply with the plane system we've made right now. First for the sun's angle:

Marked in blue, that would be a pretty vetical angle of the sun in its highest point, which would correspond to summer. A fairly lower angle would heat less the land and would correspond to winter:

Now that we have the maximum and minimum angles the sun can have, the only thing left would be the length of the day. If we assume that the total length of the sun's trayectory (the yellow line) doesn't change, the day can be made longer by altering that trajectory's angle. That would make the sun set earlier or later, and thus, cause days to have different length in summer than winter.

There, the purple dots are the trajectory's intersection with the vertical plane, while the black ones are the intersection with the horizontal one, meaning that the sun sets exactly at that point. (And yeah, I know that technically it would have to be a point in the red line.) If one were to move the purple dots up in the plane, just as the arrow points, the day will be longer, while taking them down would make the day shorter. This is assuming we keep the highest point in the trayectory fixed, otherwise the angle of the sun would change.

I like how you are attempting to compensate for the flat nature of Felarya with this arc by applying geometry to it, but the aforementioned notations above kinda of kill it as it stands now.

More importantly, and the real stickler to your proposal on seasons, is that this would affect the entirety of Felarya. All of Felarya is either in one particular season at one particular time. Regions would undergo seasons based on the arcs the sun is making, and thus would no longer be like the places they are purported to be for large amounts of time.

Unlike a round planet which accomplishes this by having the land physically be closer or further from the sun, as well as having an orbit which moves in a warped (ie not completely circular shape), while being able to tilt, your example simple moves the sun's path over the land thus disproportionately affecting large swathes of area and more than likely making the inhabitable zone (the life belt concept) of Felarya very narrow indeed.

Quote :

And finally, after all that gibberish, how can it ACTUALLY be done? Well, it's relatively simple. Pick a star, then choose a distance from it. At that point you fix a flat portal, without real need for it do go around the sun, just stay there. Once the portal is set, pick the maximum and minumum inclination of the sun from the vertical axis of the portal. The portal will very slowly pan from one angle to the other, then back. The span of time it takes the portal to be in one of the extreme angles then move back there again would be considered a year. Finally, pick one of the horizontal axis of the plane and make it rotate around that axis. This axis would be considered the north-south axis, while the other will be the east-west one. The span of time it takes the plane to do a full rotation will be considered a day.

Maybe you'd want to change the panning motion with a fixed inclination angle and move the portal around the sun, but I think that is a bit more complicated.

I'm not honestly sure how this would work. I think I'm confused particularly with your regards to the use of axes and perhaps even the particular shape of the proposed dimensional plane with respect to the vertical inclination and the ability for the horizontal to spin in this configuration.

Ilceren wrote:

Okay, easy enough to modify that system to be fit in the flat face of the cylinder. Just that making more lines in it will make it even more confusing.

The only difference is that, instead of the sun setting at the apparent horizon of Felarya, the sun would disappear before reaching it, one it gets to the vertical rift. The rest is still consistent if the sky portal is situated at the flat side of the cylinder.

I'm assuming that the sky of Felarya is a gi-normous flat portal parallel to Felarya's overall flat form, square, circular or whatever. If it is a portal, then the arc of the sun is done naturally if the other side of the portal, the one in space, rotates. No need for some kind of cupular solar proyection or anything.

Just to clarify, the sun doesn't seem to do an arc because Earth's atmosphere is spheric. If one was standing in a flat asteroid that rotates so that the sun is in one's side half of the time, and on the other side the rest of the time, the sun would describe an arc, even if the asteroid has no atmosphere.

We don't know what Felarya's sky portal looks like, or any of its portals for that matter. The issue with the atmosphere and the need for a particularly shaped projection was the amount of atmosphere we have available to us. If we had more atmosphere in a certain area with more or less matter in it, we wind up with a greatly different amount of energy getting to the ground.

The cosmic ray cascade from the solar wind is going to destroy Felarya in a matter of moments without some crazy make believe science anyway, but having a flat plane above that reaches into an 'exosphere' like atmosphere combined with regions that continue up with a habitable atmosphere for leagues (besides creating the aforementioned storms in the wiki) is going to create drastic differences in habitation zones. We have to assume that somehow, Felarya's portal replaces a planet's magnetic field since Felarya has no dynamo (no planetary core) to make up for the otherwise severe lack of protection, but even so the varying amounts of atmosphere coupled with a 'flat' projection will cause all sorts of problems.

Ilceren wrote:

I thought that just meant that Felarya was kept in the "habitable range" of the star. That is, Felarya wouldn't appear in the same orbit as Mercury nor in Pluto's. Just the ideal point where the temperature overall is consistent taking into acount all the different stars it connects to.

It would be easy to tell just asking a sinple question. Can you see Sunfall Thicket's twilight atmosphere from outside Sunfall Thicket? If the answer is yes, then this system of mine wouldn't be possible. If the answer is no, then it would be possible. With the no answer, this gi-normous portal I propose would act as a "general sky", and specific places would have some kind of rift that isolates the internal sky from the rest of Felarya. Think of them as extra cylinders inside Felarya's big cylinder.

Again, not sure. The issue though with the second is why bother coming up with a season change program when various parts of Felarya would operate on their own anyway? This is one of the particulars of Felarya - with various regions generating their own separate weather and atmospheric patterns, the idea of 'seasons' is inherently lost. The Mist Ocean for example, while not having any odd upper atmosphere phenomena like Sunfall Thicket per se still has a particular weather pattern which would be cast awry by any attempted implementation of seasons. For it, and other regions, to be as they are it is almost a requirement that Felarya doesn't have seasons.

Ilceren wrote:

I was thinking of making the temperature range between summer and winter quite slim. A ten degrees Celsius difference wouldn't kill Felarya's mostly tropical temperature but would still be enough change for people to feel the change of seasons, plants to flower, and so on. Extreme climates such as desert or tundra wouldn't be affected that much either.

By limiting the impact of seasons to begin with what is the point of developing complex ideas to make them come to be? I don't think most of Felarya's plant life is dependent on weather or solar changes to undergo growth cycles anyway; it is always growing. Then of course there are several regions where the energy of the 'sun' doesn't pierce them, one of which is described previously but you also have Evernight as well.

Ilceren wrote:

Erm, what do you think the excentric orbit and earth roundness boils down to? They only change the angle in which the sunlinght reaches the ground. If Felarya's Grand Commanding Entity, or whatever it is that creates the sky portals, takes into consideration creating them at the right distances, then it would also choose the appropriate maximum and minimum angles so that Felarya doesn't become a living hell. Just like earth; right distance, right axis angle.

They do a lot more than that. The orbit not being a circle changes how the two hemispheres are effected by the variance in season. The earth's magnetic lines of flux creates the various zones of energy dispersion from the solar wind, which changes the amount of energy landing at various areas and those lines of flux are dictated by the sphere shape - just using tokamak vs linear fusion reactor design it is easy to see why a sphere or donut shape is better. The earth's curvature also creates the 'culmination effect', affecting how the 'extremes' view sunlight during 'seasons'. It also affects the regional variation of seasonal length. Your model has the sun passing over the entirety of a flat Felarya in a single arc once per day, but somehow the entire region sees the same percentile change. This is most assuredly impossible, especially with a 'flat' portal design and will create a minimized habitation zone.

Moreover, given that it is possible to circumnavigate Felarya through the 'end of the zone' rift (the walls of the cylinder), what happens when an explorer crosses that threshold? Does the 'sun' suddenly and drastically change position, since the point of view of the observer with respect to the ground and the 'arc' of the 'sun' just flipped, essentially? I should think not, which means that Felarya's rift has to create localized regions and again, like the Sunfall Thicket example, this kills your proposed system. But I digress...

We need some curves in here somewhere, either in Felarya's atmosphere itself (which presents its own challenges given how various zones have different 'heights' of habitable atmosphere, thus changing the amount of material in said atmosphere to interact with radiation from the sun) or in the shape of the portal that is 'viewing' the star. In the latter example however, you would also see a change in habitable zones such that Felarya would have 'poles' corresponding to this curvature - which it clearly does not have. Regional differences are instead accomplished with heights of zones in some cases, and in other regions by unknown and inexplicable phenomena.

Ilceren wrote:

You can have the portal act just like a planet; fixed axis inclination, rotation and an eliptic orbit around the sun, or use the simpler (in my oppinion) fixed position, rotation and tilting axis incination, which would work exactly the same.

The first is at least somewhat possible as discussed above, the second, like I said before, I don't see how the stationary portal with just tilt and rotation alone can accomplish all the effects that the first portal that experiences relative motion will. For one thing, elliptical orbits mean the planet is closer to the star at some points in the orbit than at others, so your latter example still has to move to and fro to recreate this even if it is not actually orbiting, it cannot be stationary.


I've never really been onboard with the seasons idea / mentality, I think Felarya's regions create their own localized weather change systems and the flora and fauna of that region adapt and overcome as necessary. The idea to implement seasons seems too much like attempting to make Felarya match a normal cycle / period stage system (which is unnecessary given that Felarya is always altering itself), which some would say is backwards from my typical stance since I do like to implement 'real life' as much as possible into my own designs. Many of Felarya's regions have their own localized effects that work better without an overarcing 'seasons' concept. It is clear you put thought into the design, but this remains a complex system easy to poke holes into.