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Hey guys, I'm not really the type of guy who usually cares about making wiki-wide revisions, but this one's been bugging me for a while, so I thought I should. Currently, we calculate things being sent flying across the horizon or doing the ole "twinkle in the sky" gag using a distance crossed of 20 km, because that's what we consider to be the "vision range". That's something I've been a bit suspicious about. I mean, it's a bit silly to assume that it's 20 km for everything. You can see clouds from much further away than you can see an insect. So I did a bit of research and have found results, but keep this in mind, I'm not exactly an expert on what I'm about to say, hence the "possible" in the title. I'm decently confident in what I'm about to say, but am also very willing to reconsider.
Anyhow, I looked it up and there's a couple things of note, the biggest one of them is that is that it's obviously way harder to see in the dark, but I'll get to that in a second. The second biggest is that typically your vision range is determined by your height due to the Earth's curvature, being less than 3 km in most circumstances.
That's all well and good but it does depend on the actual size of whatever's in question, and straight-up doesn't matter if that something is in the air. For that purpose, I found this handy site that says that the Angular Resolution limit (UNDER DAYLIGHT) for most people is 5 x 10^-4 rad, while for people with extremely acute vision under perfect circumstances (can probably be used for Enhanced Senses) it's 2 x 10^-4 rad. The theoretical maximum for any eye of human size (often ignored by fiction, obviously) is 1.22 x 10^-4 rad.
Now, what does this mean calculation-wise? Well the formula to get distance out of that is simply Angular Resolution x Distance = Minimum Size (Of things you can see), which in turn becomes Size / Angular Resolution = Maximum Distance. When it comes to a man-sized object, we get a maximum vision distance of 1.8 meters / (5 x 10^-4) = 3600 meters, which, yeah, makes more sense than 20000. This does actually imply an increase in vision range regarding massive objects, but I think that's fine. Famously, you can see the Great Wall of China from space (and less famously, a whole lot of other man-made things), and while I couldn't find a source that I deemed reliable enough to post here (mostly stuff like travel and pop culture websites, alongside answers on Quora and r/askscience), clouds can be seen from several times more than 20 km away.
So, that's the revision, simple enough. Feats using the 20 km thing should preferably recalculated, starting with the one in References for Common Feats. I think the biggest impact of this revision is that our "Creating a Storm" calculation uses that assumed range of 20 km, but given that I couldn't find a number for that one, it should preferably maybe wait a bit (You can't just calculate the range in question using the formula I gave because planet curvature does end up playing a part).
EDIT: Nope they're fine, as far as this thread is concerned at least
Most of the "twinkle in the sky" feats I mentioned will probably end up with a hefty downgrade, including my poor baby God Hand. But, yeah, I guess that's all I got. By the way I'm not sure if I should or even can specify this but I'm not opposed to non-staff members weighing in, any opinion can potentially be valuable as far as I'm concerned. That said please don't post if it's just stuff like "oh no/yes, [verse] will be downgraded/upgraded!"
Anyhow, I looked it up and there's a couple things of note, the biggest one of them is that is that it's obviously way harder to see in the dark, but I'll get to that in a second. The second biggest is that typically your vision range is determined by your height due to the Earth's curvature, being less than 3 km in most circumstances.
That's all well and good but it does depend on the actual size of whatever's in question, and straight-up doesn't matter if that something is in the air. For that purpose, I found this handy site that says that the Angular Resolution limit (UNDER DAYLIGHT) for most people is 5 x 10^-4 rad, while for people with extremely acute vision under perfect circumstances (can probably be used for Enhanced Senses) it's 2 x 10^-4 rad. The theoretical maximum for any eye of human size (often ignored by fiction, obviously) is 1.22 x 10^-4 rad.
Now, what does this mean calculation-wise? Well the formula to get distance out of that is simply Angular Resolution x Distance = Minimum Size (Of things you can see), which in turn becomes Size / Angular Resolution = Maximum Distance. When it comes to a man-sized object, we get a maximum vision distance of 1.8 meters / (5 x 10^-4) = 3600 meters, which, yeah, makes more sense than 20000. This does actually imply an increase in vision range regarding massive objects, but I think that's fine. Famously, you can see the Great Wall of China from space (and less famously, a whole lot of other man-made things), and while I couldn't find a source that I deemed reliable enough to post here (mostly stuff like travel and pop culture websites, alongside answers on Quora and r/askscience), clouds can be seen from several times more than 20 km away.
EDIT: Nope they're fine, as far as this thread is concerned at least
Most of the "twinkle in the sky" feats I mentioned will probably end up with a hefty downgrade, including my poor baby God Hand. But, yeah, I guess that's all I got. By the way I'm not sure if I should or even can specify this but I'm not opposed to non-staff members weighing in, any opinion can potentially be valuable as far as I'm concerned. That said please don't post if it's just stuff like "oh no/yes, [verse] will be downgraded/upgraded!"
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