Realistic Lighting and Shadows

The ONLY Rimworld mod with North-facing shadows!

I love playing at high latitudes (45 degrees and above) – yet Rimworld’s experience has always been lacking up there.

That means pointing north in the northern hemisphere, south in the southern hemisphere, and either direction in the tropics (and the poles) depending on the time of year (day).

A moonless night (or even crescent) should feel different than the full moon beaming down in all its glory. Moon phases should vary over time and provide different amounts of moonlight.

if the sun is above the horizon it should look like day even in winter.

The sun may be below the horizon – but the light may linger for hours – especially at high latitudes.

This mod uses REAL astronomy calculations to figure out where the sun and moon actually are based on the planet’s (settable) tilt and adjusts the lighting and shadows to match.

This means that latitude choices matter more than ever before. A colony at the equator will feel very different from a colony at high latitudes. Winters can be dark, and summer days long. Growing seasons are now just as influenced by light as temperature. If you have a grav ship, you can now take full advantage of the seasons by hopping latitudes at different points of the year.

This mod can be safely added or removed to a saved game as it does not touch the save file at all.

This means that twilight starts when the sun is below the horizon, and shadows are only cast when the sun is above the horizon. Experience blue to red twilights, awesome sunrises/sunsets, and bright days – even in the polar regions!

The moon will light up the nights based on its phase and if it’s above the horizon. This means that moonless nights are naturally dark, while full moons light up the nights – especially during polar night.

A helpful GUI element will let you know if the moon is visible and what phase it’s in (can be disabled in settings).

The game’s lighting follows real human perception (logarithmic). This means that full moons directly overhead appear 39% as bright as noon – simulating a human’s adaption to light over time (though most nights will be less than half that).

Even though the day may "feel" bright, that doesn’t mean much energy is reaching the ground. Plant growth and solar panels will now grow according to real energy hitting the ground. Which leads to…

Plants will now start growing if the sun is above the horizon, and reach max growth at 50% solar intensity.

(This is based off real plant light saturation: Plants don’t need much light to start growing – and they get saturated well before the sun provides peak power.)

This means that plants may grow slightly quicker than you are used to – but it’s now possible for tribes to grow plants farther north without hydroponics – as long as it is warm enough (temperature calculations remain unchanged).

Also – Light sources no longer affect plants except for sunlamps. This is to prevent torches from acting like sunlamps.

You can set the planet tilt to be 90 degrees and have the sun be directly overhead at the poles for days – but you will not get 100 degree Celsius temps. You also won’t get the atmosphere freezing around you during your half-year night.

I would like to add this in the future. You will still see all the weather particle effects from vanilla – it just may be brighter or darker than you are used to. On the bright side – lightning and shadows look awesome with the mod – as the shadows will point to where the lightning strikes!

This is because Rimworld’s speed reduces a normal sunrise from about 2 minutes to 1.5s – which is quicker than our eyes can adjust. There are settings you can use to "slow down" the sunrise so it feels more natural.

There are setting to tweak shadow length, darkness, even how tall they make things look!

Yes! It handles just as if you were on the ground. All rimworld orbital platforms are geosynchronus yet orbit close to the planet – so apart from theoretically having slightly shorter days and longer nights than you actually would in orbit, the mod’s realism is preserved.

Yes! This does not touch your save file at all – so you can safely add or remove it.
The plant growth changes are done each time on game load – so if you remove the mod they will simply revert back to default vanilla growing behavior.

There are settings to tweak the sun, moon, stars, even airglow!

Weather is not yet supported – but I hope to start adding it soon.

No. This mod should works with no DLC, some of them, or all of them.

It works with any other mods that don’t change lighting or shadow (Don’t use with mods like Realistic Darkness or Moonlight as this mod replaces or extends their functionality).

Yes it does!

Yes – the game supports tilts from 0 degrees all the way to 90 degrees. Just go the to mod’s settings. You can change it in real time if you like to see what feels right to you.

You can turn off all balance-related changes in the settings. Warning: this can be immersion breaking.

Great! Post it in the mod’s comments and if I have time and it’s not too hard to fix, I’ll update the mod.

Maybe! Post it in the comments with why and how you imagine it happening and I’ll see if it’s something I may want to add.