New theory regarding Felarya's size

It's been a rather old topic and discussion, but the problem with not knowing Distances in Felarya has bothered me for quite some time. So, I did some more research on that matter and actually have a more proper estimation than before now.

For the lazy people among you, see the Tl;DR Conclusion at the bottom of the post. For everyone else, please read on! ^_^



Let's see where the problem lies:
The map isn't very accurate in the hindsight that the cities are drawn too large.

Assumption: The normal topography, (i.e. Mountain ranges, lakes, rivers, oceans and regions) is pretty much correct. If we can't even assume that, there'd be no big point in referring to a map at all.
Even small variations like a deviatation of 1 centimetre aren't that big of a deal in that case though as long as its roughly fitting. For a city that would be HUGE, but I'm looking for something LARGE in the first place.

So, following that assumption, I looked for accurate distance references of large map objects and found this:

Felarya Wiki wrote:

A huge river so large that only a fourth of it is shown on the map, and so wide that you can barely see the other side when you stand on the shore.
http://www.felarya.com/wiki/index.php?title=Jewel_river

It says barely see the other side which is pretty accurate if you take vision range into account.
It's a fact that air consists of not only oxygen, but also very fine materials, like water, dust and stuff. It's not 100% clean.
So I did some research and found out:

Wikipedia wrote:

In extremely clean air in Arctic or mountainous areas, the visibility can be up to 70 kilometres (43 mi) to 100 kilometres (62 mi). However, visibility is often reduced somewhat by air pollution and high humidity. Various weather stations report this as haze (dry) or mist (moist). Fog and smoke can reduce visibility to near zero, making driving extremely dangerous. The same can happen in a sandstorm in and near desert areas, or with forest fires. Heavy rain (such as from a thunderstorm) not only causes low visibility, but the inability to brake quickly due to hydroplaning. Blizzards and ground blizzards (blowing snow) are also defined in part by low visibility.

The planet's curvature does NOT come into effect for this.

So what kind of region do we have at the jewel river? Close to it are Miragia Forest and the Oloonde Lakeland. Miragia falls out for a proper estimation because it changes everyday, the Jungle of perils doesn't give an explanation, which leaves us with the lakelands.

Felarya Wiki wrote:

[...]The waters of the lake are dark, cold, and treacherous[...]
[...]Over millennia, leaves, branches and various debris accumulated and congregated[...]
http://www.felarya.com/wiki/index.php?title=Oloonde_lakeland

So the region we are talking about is cold, because in warm regions water is also heated up. But it's not too cold as the trees still sport leaves instead of needles. Which leaves us at roughly subtropic to arctic temperatures. In other words, it is not a completely humid jungle.

A temperature zone like that would have a roughly 60-70 km long vision range. We can clearly assume a rather clean air since there are no cities spreading smog around.

Now this was under the assumption that Felarya has the same air as earth. Which is NOT the case.

Felarya Wiki wrote:

. The direct consequence of that is that the overall atmospheric pressure of Felarya is greater than what is found on most other habitable worlds, and that jungle regions, in particular, would exhibit greater atmospheric pressure than other areas. As a result, the maximum life-supporting height of the atmosphere is greatly increased, and a plant like the Giant Tree produces a massive effect on the atmosphere around it, enabling life to exist at greater heights than would otherwise be possible.

Moreover, it's interesting to note that areas such as deserts have a thinner atmosphere and lower air pressure, as those regions lack the extensive vegetation needed to expand both the volume and the amount of gas in the atmosphere. As these different pressure fronts meet with each others, vast storm fronts are created. These stormy regions are fixed, as the different air pressure zones are fixed, and thus appear as localized features, notably in the Great rocky fields and Torrential coast.
http://www.felarya.com/wiki/index.php?title=Physics

This states that A: the clima is getting colder from south-west to north-east which is what I assumed due to the description posted above.
And B, that the Felaryan Air is more dense than the commonly found air. It can't be too much more dense than earthern air because humans can easily breathe.

A denser atmosphere that is still breathable would make the air "thicker", obviously, which means less light is able to travel through. So that reduces our 60-70 kilometres another time. Since we don't know for sure, let's be generous:
Roughly 50-65 Kilometres.


Keeping that in mind, we can say that the jewel river is approximately 60 Kilometres wide, again a generous assumption.
http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs51/f/2009/327/9/0/Large_map_of_Felarya_by_Karbo.jpg
If we take a look at this map, the jewel river is 94 pixels wide at its thinnest point, near the crystal cave, at average 120 pixels and its widest distance spans over 200 pixels. Let us again assume, that the wiki description was referring to the average point, because no particular specification was given.

That would mean that 2 pixels on the map are around 1 km in distance. The width
of the entire map would then be around 1600 kilometres. For reference: The US spans about 4500 Km. So it's pretty accurately about 1/3rd of the united states.
Assuming that the jewel river is not 100% properly drawn, we might give or take a deviatation. But even if the jewel river was actually twice as large as in reality on the map, we'd still be stuck with about 3200 Km. (2/3rd of the US) It might be smaller, but I don't think Karbo had that in mind. if yes, it might as well only be about 1000 Km in width (roughly 1/5th to 1/6th  in size)



Let us doublecheck that:
The distance between the great tree and chordoni waterfalls is 151km according to my math. That would be direct flight. So if we round that up to about 180 Km we are being very generous again.
Crisis was said to travel from the great tree to chordoni waterfalls and back again within 1 day.
Assuming that crisis DID rest or stay still or something that hindered her from going on, we can say that she didn't travel the entire time. If we put in 8 hours of sleep and 6 hours of rest or anything else, we'd be left with a convenient rough 10 hours. I'm being convenient because it doesn't matter in the large scale and we don't have exact information. That would assume that crisis went with an average speed of 36 Km/h. That's about a human's running speed x1.5 and completely okay for a giant pred if you take the dangerous region into account. Again, if we double or half the size of the jewel river we'd end up with roughly human-running speed of 18 km/h or 72 Km/h which is rather unlikely.

-> So while this Checkup did not PROVE my Theory, it at least made it sound more reasonable and did not contradict with my theory.


i'm not 100% certainly saying that this theory is correct, but the map must be REALLY messed up, if the felaryan reality deviatates more than 50%-200% of the amount I had calculated.




TL-DR: Using the air's density and vision range as the point of origin, I came to the assumption that the known region of Felarya as seen in the official map appears to be roughly 1.600 Km in width west to east and about 1000 Km north to south.



Thoughts?

Not a bad ballpark estimate, but I was never under the impression that the rivers were to scale any more than the cities. Rivers don't look like that on any known planet - they're a lot longer and skinnier. So while the rest of your theory holds up I have doubts about the dimensions calculated based on the river.
Either that or Karbo made the river disproportionate to begin with, but as long as nobody's drawn an "official to-scale" map, I'm all for making things as plausible as we can manage.

Tl;DR: I think you're pretty close.

Amaroq wrote:

That would mean that 2 pixels on the map are around 1 km in distance. The width
of the entire map would then be around 1600 kilometres. For reference: The US spans about 4500 Km. So it's pretty accurately about 1/3rd of the united states.

I must say that I agree with paramecium. Trying to figure out the size via pixels isn't going to give you an accurate estimate in any means. Karbo has specifically stated on numerous occasions that the map is not to scale.

I'm sure if we ask him, he'll say it again here.

The only real thing you can do is figure out what the size of the Jewel River is based on the descriptions, which you did quite well.

Keep in mind the general idea for Felarya is a truly massive landscape. I remember there were cliffs somewhere, that were supposed to be like a mile tall or something. The Kjol cliffs maybe? When I look it up it seems to be in the same area I remember it - on the edge of the Dridder Forest, but there's no description about height like I remember there being.

The cliffs on the mountains on Venus and Mars' surfaces are incredibly tall though however. Venus has cliff faces that are four times the height of the grand canyon, and the Mariner Valley on Mars runs 7 km deep if I remember correctly.

However, you raise a good point with the river's size based on air pollution and sight range, etc. Having a river to be 60km wide would be really huge. It'd be more like a really long vertical sea than an actual river, haha. I believe the Red Sea is about 355 km wide at its widest point. So keep that for perspective.

Here's another thing for land size.

Remember I live in California, and the Spanish Missionaries built a Mission that was always within one day's walk. There are 21 Missions and they go through about two-thirds of of my state. There were no roads back then either, so they traversed about 500 or more miles in less than a month (It's about 500 miles from where I live to LA, and I live near one of the upper mission areas), if we're speaking from mission to mission. (Of course since they stopped for every mission it was way longer than that, but that's beside the point).

I can't see california being half the size of Felarya. It's just way too small. Not to mention, like I said, the map is ultimately not to scale.

I do agree with the river judgement though. That was clever.

Spoiler:

Wow. I never even came across that part of the wiki. How in the hell does anyone get across something that big? That just completely screws up every single perception I've ever known about felarya. Heck, I may need to rewrite my entire cache of old, crappy stories.

Regardless, if the map isn't to scale, then has Karbo ever stated if he'll work on a map that IS to scale?

Pendragon wrote:

Wow. I never even came across that part of the wiki. How in the hell does anyone get across something that big? That just completely screws up every single perception I've ever known about felarya.

Funnily enougth, I've always felt that Felarya would be huge, it only makes sense given the large population of gaint predators.

Sadly though, there doesn't seem to be much acknowledgment that Felarya is actually big in most stories I've read. It gets quite jarring everytime I see an adventurer doubting the existance of gaints.....while walking through an environment that should be quite obviously an gaint forest, and should have taken them awhile to get where they are...pleanty of time to realise something is a miss. It seems unintentional by the author, presumingly because they underestimated the size of the forest. But it gives that unsettling impression that their characters have been in the forest for days without noticing anything particualy odd (Like that it's large and is very deadly) which makes me want to doubt their mental state and grasp on reality.

Which I think isn't the intention of most authors.

Yeah sure, Crisis like gaints are not bleeding out of the woodwork. But it really shoulden't take long before an adventurer encounters something large that should make them question their current perception of the place, long before the actual gaints show up.

Well Felarya is really really big to tinies!


...



Like.......really big.

Grave wrote:

Well Felarya is really really big to tinies!


...



Like.......really big.

Being a tinie in the Felarya forest has to be the ultimate existential horror experaice.

I think it'd only be that way if you weren't used to it, like someone being shrunk to that height. I think for born tinies, it would just become something they'd be used to, or cope with.

Pendragon wrote:

Regardless, if the map isn't to scale, then has Karbo ever stated if he'll work on a map that IS to scale?

Definitely ^^;

And this will be a step by step work where I ask for opinions, remarks.  I just love drawing general maps but I'm not very good when it comes to precise numbers..  

I think your theory is fascinating Amaroq and how you manage to have estimations based on so many seemingly unrelated factors   
Great job on that ^_^
However taking the Jewel river as a base of measurement is really risky, it appears way too big on the map   
I think the map taken in its entirety  would be bigger than the united state actually.

It'd be cool if the new map had some more of the world visible.

...I thought that would take longer to say, but nope. That's about all I had to say. xP