Is Hyrule's world FLAT or ROUND?

Comments · 452

• PA

  @PapaGoron · 5 months ago · pinned

  A Huge shoutout to Leelz who created the amazing thumbnail art for this video!!! &nbsp;Check out Leelz&apos;s art here: &nbsp; <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/leelz-art">https://www.tumblr.com/leelz-art</a> <br><br>And let me know what you think! &nbsp;Is Hyule&apos;s world FLAT? &nbsp;Or is it ROUND!?

  57

• HA

  @haileymccurry3756 · 5 months ago

  A---Aurora Borealis? At this time of year! At this time of day! In this part of Hyrule! Localized entirely on a single mountaintop?!?

  364

• PL

  @PlumpProductions-wj3jp · 5 months ago

  I think the biggest proof that Hyrule’s Earth is round is that little globe that Tetra has in her room in Wind Waker.

  180

• BJ

  @bjam89 · 5 months ago

  i find it kinda funny that youtube has given the flat earth wikipedia thing, on a video that shows you a buuunch of ways to prove earth is indeed round

  708

• HE

  @herbalspecialtea · 5 months ago

  Can&apos;t wait to be here in 10 years for the 100th Hyrule Science video

  191

• WE

  @wesleyjudson599 · 5 months ago (edited)

  But with a flat earth, does that mean that the water falls off the edge? Would that explain the excess rainfall?

  109

• IN

  @inrevenant · 5 months ago

  Heya, physicist here! <br>Man, you did a lot of good explaining and relating to real-life science in this one! 🥳<br><br>However, I thought that I might go over a couple of things in your homework, because I noticed you missed something ;D<br>(and I have a couple of mild critiques on other parts, and lastly a big question for you)<br><br>---<br><br>So, to start off: Didn&apos;t you notice that the <b>direction</b> of the the sun (at noon) in BotW is <b>opposite</b> to the direction of the sun (at noon) TotK? <br><br>This is consistent with <br>1. a round planet with a significant axial tilt (like Earth&apos;s or even more), <br>2. where the entirety of Hyrule&apos;s landmass is pretty-much-spot-on the equator (so that its biomes&apos; climate are stable from winter to summer), <br>3. and where one game is set to transpire around summer\* solstice, while the other is set to transpire around winter\*\* solstice.<br><br>\*: BotW, because the sun is in the north at noon. This makes sense when Hyrule-on-the-equator during its planet&apos;s rotation would appear to dip <b>under</b> the (planet-sun-)orbital plane at noon, making its sun appear to shine from the north at that point in the day.<br>\*\*: Vice versa for TotK.<br><br>Number 2 there also begs the question of how much bigger Hyrule&apos;s planet has to be compared to the extent of Hyrule itself, which is to say, Hyrule&apos;s planet has to be <b>quite a lot larger</b> than Hyrule itself. <br><br>The scale question here is important not just because of the direction, but because the angles of the shadows are consistent in every region at noon - even so consistent that we may deem it safe to neglect any variation. This not only implies that the planet is of a significant scale larger than Hyrule&apos;s extent, but also that the planet is a fair distance away from its sun.<br><br>I mention the assumption of specifically the solstices being the time of year for the games, as I assume we are experiencing the equal-and-opposite largest magnitudes of shadow lengths. I haven&apos;t actually measured the shadow lengths; I assume they are the same amount. And if the games are intended for any other part of the seasons, then the planet has to have a <b>completely wild</b> rotational axial tilt. &nbsp;<br><br>---<br><br>Granted, the fact that the stars are stationary (like you point out lastly) is still a significantly strong blowback regarding how we can/should compare Earth&apos;s universe to Hyrule&apos;s universe and/or planet. However, the movements of those stars (or lack thereof) <b>do not</b> imply a shape of the planet.<br><br>---<br><br>Also (not relevant to the question of planets&apos; roundnesses or not, but neat in regards to programming realism)<br>the distance-blue/grey-&quot;blurring&quot; of objects arises from Rayleigh scattering and Mie scattering, and applies to looking in all direactions of the sky, making it blue: <br><br>Another note on that: In 2017, users on the RESETERA forums started to compile all they could find out about the code of BotW (look for a forum thread called <b>Zelda: Breath of the Wild: The Technical Analysis</b> from November 26th, 2017), and apparently <br><br>&gt; &quot;BOTW approximates this algorithm mathematically (I actually found this out through a text dump of the game&apos;s code earlier this year!) Apparently the algorithm accounts for Mie Scattering as well, which gives fog its appearance in the sky. [...] I would have never assumed that <b>this phenomenon was being simulated in the game.</b> It&apos;s just so easy to fake. However, after looking at the reflections of the sky in the water, it all made sense. This scattered light is being reflected onto the entire environment in real time. A simple sky box would make that impossible.&quot;<br><br>Well, I don&apos;t know if the &quot;impossible&quot; claim is true, but it certainly is impressive.<br>Note: In the thread, the first post gives an overview of the effects and what they&apos;re about; the second post explains the sources and how to spot them in-game.<br><br>Actually, I <b>can</b> posit that this point as well is &quot;non-determining&quot; towards a flat earth as well: I&apos;ve seen IRL views from mountains where atmospheric conditions are interfering with the optical depth of the surrounding atmosphere in a non-uniform way, i.e. I&apos;ve looked around and <b>not</b> been able to see equally far into the distance in all directions. So the horizon&apos;s fuzziness you describe can be achieved in other ways - and who says that Hyrule&apos;s planet&apos;s atmospheric composition is exactly like Earths? Maybe their atmosphere is just &quot;prime fuzzy&quot; 😉<br><br>---<br><br>On the matter of your &quot;Light and Mast&quot; argument, I&apos;d like to point out that your argument is incomplete: It <b>could</b> also be that, even at the distances you measured from the shore, the planet is simply so big that even those distances <b>appear flat</b> - that the planet is so big that even if you elevated yourself to an altitude of a kilometer, even that still doesn&apos;t give you a significant advantage to view the planet&apos;s &quot;true geometry&quot;. <br><br>Like an ant on a wide cylinder: make the cylinder wide enough, and the ant will have no idea whether it&apos;s walking along the length of the cylinder or around it. That metaphor is actually a common framing device used in everything between trying to explain to people how the Earth can be round even if it appears flat at ground level, all the way to more abstract stuff like how Kaluza-Klein spatial geometries might be able to exist (which unifies 4D spacetime &amp; gravity effects with electromagnetism into a 5D theory), and has even been used to argue for string theory.<br><br>Now, if Hyrule&apos;s planet <b>was</b> so much bigger, then we would have to ask questions about its composition, how the hell its geologic processes even work with a density that seems to also work out to make surface gravity at 1g acceleration ...so, it&apos;s not impossible, but while I called your reasoning incomplete, I still support your conclusion here.<br><br>Actually, rewatching your section on it, I now notice at the end of that argument that you actually <b>do</b> address this in basically a single sentence without really explaining the statement (which I would have assumed, given the rest of your writing, my bad 😅😂)<br><br>---<br><br>I think your latitude argument regarding the biomes falls apart a bit when you consider that places on Earth like China has temperate coniferous forests, marshes, a hot-and-cold desert (Taklamakan) and a somewhat-warm-and-even-colder desert (Gobi). I don&apos;t think your claims about what we &quot;should&quot; or &quot;shouldn&apos;t&quot; see when traveling further northwards hold much water, well, at least not &quot;absolutely&quot; and without exceptions. Don&apos;t forget, life is strange on Earth as well! Airborne and seaborne weather patterns both drive the temperatures and humidities for a bunch of biomes on Earth, so Hyrule&apos;s biomes aren&apos;t really &quot;that special&quot; with that lens and in comparison <br>(except for maybe a couple that just don&apos;t make sense, hehehehehehe) <br>((this is completely sidestepping your excellent hydrological analysis that you did previously - <b>freaking loved that video</b> !))<br><br>Just take Japan itself, with all of its many types of biomes, and its Aomori prefecture being the place in the world that receives the most amount of snowfall in the whole world, which is at the same general latitude (about 40°N) as New York City, Denver Colorado, Redwood National and State Parks California (Death Valley is just 3°~4° degrees latitude away from 40°N, by the way!), the aforementioned Gobi Desert in China but also Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan (which is <b>definitely</b> a hot desert in the summer), a lot of Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain - basically a lot of the Mediterranean ...I think you get my point.<br><br>Just to drive home the point of not taking biomes for granted: Heck, in the deep past, even the Amazon flowed backwards compared to today, creating a huge inland sea! <br><br>---<br><br>Actually, I have an important question for you, but it needs framing first.<br><br>If Hyrule&apos;s planet&apos;s sun really <b>is</b> that close... you should be able to calculate its actual distance with trigonometry, and subsequently (from assuming that Hyrule&apos;s planet receives the same amount of light/area from its sun as the Earth does from our Sun) you should be able to determine how much weaker in luminosity that the sun in Zelda has to be compared to our Sun - which in turn will let you make an estimate on Zelda&apos;s sun&apos;s size.<br><br>Now, my question is this: <br>Would all of this (according to, say, the same estimation conventions that give us Hertzsprung-Russel diagrams) <br>result in that Zelda&apos;s sun &quot;has to be&quot; ...really small? Like, Red Dwarf-small - or would the smallest hypothetical Red Dwarf star still be too big?<br><br>Hope your astrophysicist consultant may have an answer there, and I hope to hear from you! 😁<br><br>---<br><br>If I were to make a conclusion for the both of us:<br><br>All-in-all, BotW and TotK are both games that are in some ways constrained by the specific geometry that was used in their crafting as Nintendo&apos;s 3D Zelda worlds <br>...but Nintendo also did a bunch of clever things to at least keep us guessing! Or, at least to try and &quot;ground&quot; us in the experience.<br><br>Awesome video! 🥳

  126

• MI

  @Miss_Rydia · 5 months ago

  This video sponsored by RAIN SHADOW LEGENDS 😂

  37

• MI

  @michaelwinter742 · 5 months ago

  Maybe “North” isn’t geographic/axial North. It would explain the weather thing, too.

  71

• FE

  @FergiesGarden · 5 months ago

  wait, the same pliny the elder who gave his life to save people from the mt vesuvius eription at pompeii? bro went “yeah the earth is round and here’s why, also watch me save a bunch of people cuz im just that cool of a guy” dude lived one hell of a life

  73

• MI

  @Mitzi_DelverVRC · 5 months ago

  As another note, one of the main development teams behind the game, MonolithSoft (specifically the world designers), has experience making a game world that is canonically flat. The first Xenoblade game takes place on an endless, flat sea with the only land being the corpses of two giants who died in combat.

  64

• EL

  @elderglowpea2414 · 5 months ago

  You gotta love using real science and applying it to fictional worlds

  46