Tutorial Phase 7 Sun is very high and cannot be seen from default position

[hlavacs]

After phase 7 and switching on sky, no sun is visible because it is very high. When rotating the camera up the camera lands under the plane and the sun is still not visible. This is confusing.

According to the web description, the sun should be low over the horizon and be easily visible.

[mklefrancois]

Thanks for reporting this! You're absolutely right - the sun positioning was confusing.

What was happening:

The screenshot in Phase 7 shows the sun in a different position than the default for visual variety. More importantly, there's a Phase 7 limitation I didn't document clearly: adjusting the sun position (azimuth/elevation) only moves the sun visually in the sky (miss shader), but doesn't affect the lighting direction on objects. The lighting still uses a fixed punctual light direction from sceneInfo.punctualLights[0].direction - this gets properly connected in Phase 8.

To see the sun in Phase 7:

You can adjust the sun position to make it more visible:

However, I kept the default sun position high because it provides more dramatic lighting once Phase 8 properly connects the sun direction to the lighting system.

Camera Controls:

The camera uses "Examiner" mode by default, which orbits around a point of interest. When you orbit upward, you can end up below the ground plane (no backface culling), making it hard to see the sun. The trick is to use ALT + Left Mouse Button for "look-around" mode - this rotates the view around the camera's current position without moving it, making it much easier to look up and find the sun.

Documentation Update:

• I've added a new section after the Phase 7 Checkpoint that explains:
• Why the sun is positioned high by default
• The Phase 7 limitation (sun position vs lighting direction)
• How to adjust the sun position
• Camera controls (including the ALT key trick)

Thanks for bringing this up - it definitely needed clarification!