User Guide · Appendix

Reference

Default settings, the Premium matrix, and a glossary.

Default settings reference

Setting Default
Show Sun line On
Show Night On
Show Night Lights On
Show Cloud Cover On
Download Daily Cloud Formations Off
Show Celestial Bodies On
Show Geographic Timezones On
Show Political Timezones Off
Show Seasonal Maps Off
Show Location On
Show Location Label On
Show Clock On
Movable Clock On
Show Seconds On
Clock Size 0.0543
Center Map on Location On
End time-lapse after (Time-lapse timer) 10 minutes
Object Size 0.8221×
Text Size 0.808×
Line Size 0.7468×
Allow Zoom Seasonal maps when in Simulation mode Off
Projection Flat map
Time mode Live
Time-lapse starting speed 5 minutes per second
Natural shuttle direction Off
Cloud Tuning: Land Cloud Opacity 1.00
Cloud Tuning: Day Opacity 1.00
Cloud Tuning: Night Suppression 0.85
Cloud Tuning: Night Ambient Dark 0.70
Cloud Tuning: Night Cloud Lum (Lights On) 0.15
Cloud Tuning: Night Cloud Lum (Lights Off) 0.60

Premium feature matrix

Feature Free Premium
Real‑time Sun line, day / night, city lights ✓ ✓
Bundled cloud cover overlay ✓ ✓
Sub‑solar and sub‑lunar markers ✓ ✓
Geographic (15°) timezones ✓ ✓
Location marker and label ✓ ✓
Clock overlay ✓ ✓
Flat map and 3D globe views ✓ ✓
Long‑press to set location ✓ ✓
Time-lapse (date, time, speed) ✓ ✓
Time-lapse — play / pause ✓ ✓
Time-lapse timer (auto‑return to Live) ✓ ✓
Object / Text / Line Size sliders ✓ ✓
Land Cloud Opacity slider ✓ ✓
Zoom and pan (flat map and globe) ✓ ✓
Daily live cloud cover download — ✓
Seasonal monthly Earth textures — ✓
Allow seasonal textures while zooming in sim — ✓
Political (IANA / per‑country) timezone boundaries — ✓
Time-lapse — shuttle (drag‑to‑scrub) — ✓
Natural shuttle direction — ✓
Cloud Tuning panel — opacity, ambient, luminance sliders — ✓

Glossary

  • Terminator — The boundary line between the part of a planet that is in daylight and the part that is in darkness. In Sunline this is the "Sun line".
  • Sub‑solar point — The single point on Earth where the Sun is directly overhead (at the zenith) at a given moment. It moves continuously as the Earth turns and as the Sun's apparent declination changes through the year.
  • Sub‑lunar point — Same as above, for the Moon.
  • Geographic (or "nautical") timezone — A 15° band of longitude. There are 24 of them, evenly spaced, corresponding to one hour of the Earth's rotation each.
  • Political timezone — A real timezone as used by a country or region, as catalogued by the IANA (also called "Olson") timezone database. These are jagged, follow political borders, sometimes have non‑hour offsets, and change over time.
  • IANA timezone database — The reference dataset of real‑world timezones, maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Things like Europe/Dublin or America/Argentina/Ushuaia are IANA timezone identifiers.
  • Black Marble — NASA's satellite‑derived imagery of the Earth at night, showing city lights and other artificial illumination.
  • Blue Marble — NASA's full‑colour imagery of the Earth, with twelve monthly versions used for seasonal textures.
  • Reverse geocode — Look up a place name (country, city) for a given latitude / longitude.
  • Frame rate / FPS — Frames per second. How many times the app redraws the map each second.

Alphabetical Index

Sunline is made by Lotabytes. Contact: support+sunline@lotabytes.com (questions, anything) / bugs+sunline@lotabytes.com (crash reports, bug reports).

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