Скачать или смотреть Scenes from Fallout 4, part 7, moving shadows

Time in "The Commonwealth" moves more quickly than real time by a factor of about 20. An hour within Fallout 4 elapses in about 3 minutes. As a result sun shadows move relatively quickly. I was curious to see the underlying pattern of this movement and so used a vacant flat foundation in Sanctuary Hills to lay out a rough sundial.

This video follows the moving shadow of a power pylon from 7 AM to 5 PM Commonwealth time which is about a half hour in real time. Starting at sunrise, 7 AM in the game, on the previous "day", a piece of miscellaneous junk had been placed at the shadow tip every 3 minutes. This video shows the motion of that shadow and small corrections made to make the time reading more precise.

There are no working clocks in the game. The only way to find the time in The Commonwealth is to begin to "sleep" where there is a bed, or in this case a sleeping bag. Starting the sleep function gives a date and time announcement. It is not necessary to sleep. Once you have the time information, just "cancel" out of the sleep function.

Even though clear shadows are visible, the sun itself is never visible in the game. Usually there is a bright spot in the clouds where the sun should be. Rarely, at sunset the sun will be its most distinct. The use of light in the game is extraordinarily well done I think.

The moon, however, often is visible and quite clear. Watching its motion, particularly through a high-powered rifle scope, also is interesting. Since time is speeded up in the game, the motion of the moon's orbit is easy to see alongside the motion of background stars.

In any case, this video ended unexpectedly when the PS4 system failed. I have noticed that once in a while the system will hang when, I guess, the user is doing something unexpected, such as using "wait" several times in succession. In this case system failure doesn't make much difference as Sanctuary Hills was about to lose sunshine and be hit by one of the frequent storms.