I managed to get a custom texture on the planet Toril, got the sea level pretty much where it should be and added some clouds. Next I will be working on a better bump map and a few night-side lights. Oh and the rest of the Realmspace system from the Spelljammer source books. Abeir is around a different star though.
Yo
Gnargenox, I love the Toril map! I have seen your images of it around the forum for awhile, but is it downloadable for SE? I am quite a fan of the setting.
If you need any additional data for the planet, I have this exert from the forum "
So saith Ed" (a thread where the creator of Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood, answers questions about his setting, now discontinued) on
Candlekeep.com:
"December 31, 2004: Hello, all. Hereafter, Ed's reply to Jerryd:
Jerry, I've perused your full globe-of-Toril construal from the Realms-list, and here's my take on it.
Like our real Earth, Toril is an oblate spheroid rotating in the same direction as Earth does, around a tilted axis (as Earth has). Its distance from its sun is unknown, being roughly equivalent to that of real-world Earth (but affording some "wiggle room" to adjust climate and to a small extent gravity). It's clear that the Heartlands of Faerun are SLIGHTLY warmer (higher temperature, longer growing season) than real-world Earth regions of the same latitude, but get a trifle colder in winter than real-world locales of the same latitude. In effect, discounting altitude- and wind-current-related factors, this is roughly equivalent to winter temperatures on Toril being about 5 degrees of latitude cooler than on Earth. In other words, Waterdeep at a little north of the 45th parallel on Toril averages the same winter-cold as does a Manitoba, Canada timberlands locale a little north of the real-world Earth's 50th parallel (though like any large city burning wood and peat and dung for warmth and cooking and industry, crowding people and livestock together, casting minor warming magics, and taking up slightly-warmer-than-winter air from Skullport and the Underdark depths, actual Waterdhavian street temperatures, when one escapes wind chill, can well be higher).
The D&D rules postulate an environment as least as rich in heavy metals as our real world, so Toril must be as dense as our real world. It's clear from any close examination of my original maps, the Fonstad FR Atlas, and the ProFantasy Interactive Atlas, that Toril is larger than Earth. TSR designers over the years have estimated anything from ten to fifteen percent larger, and I corrected some of them (discovering along the way that map projections seemed to be a subject neglected in the early grades of some American schools) to show that they were correct in seeing about a five percent 'window' in size, but that the bottom figure couldn't be less than 12 percent. We settled on official agreement at twelve percent at a design meeting at the TSR offices after I pointed out that a larger Toril, given similar densities, has increased surface gravity and therefore the "Barsoom factor" (Hey, I'm a strongman! Watch me bend iron bars with my little fingers!) comes into play. That was something we largely wanted to avoid, as it affects not just musculature and body strength, but trajectories and therefore weaponry and spell effects and yadda yadda. :} So 12 it is.
You came up with 14, which considering the slightly wonky maps in the Interactive Atlas, isn't bad.
There is a way of putting a tiny 'wiggle room' in the density/metals problem, too, which is to have celestial-body calamities (asteroid/planetoid impacts) and plate tectonics shift more heavy metals near the surface in Faerun than are to be found elsewhere on Toril (hence some of the in-print, metal-avoiding daily construction materials and weaponry of Kara-Tur). This in turn can cause axial wobble and will tend to be 'smoothed and evened out' over the long run, but a thousand years of Realms game time is still but a passing geological moment.
And yes, you can see from my comments here that I stand with the stated-in-print Waterdhavian latitude, so I'd follow the second suggestion in your article (to correct all the locations, rather than to ignore the difference in calculations that left Waterdeep 12 minutes south of the 45th parallel rather than about the same distance north of it).
Placing Toril a trifle closer to its sun than Earth is to the real Sun gives us our warmer climes, and postulating a greater axial tilt than real Earth gives us our swings to and from severe winter at extremes of latitude. Some climate jiggering must take place to avoid howling, all-scouring and fairly constant winds in places, but we already know that such jiggering is taking place, in-game, because of the great southern reach of the Inner Sea North glaciers (a secret that was in the Realms from the first, and made official in the internal-TSR-publication-only "Realms Bible" I wrote years ago, but only officially revealed to the wider gaming public in the 3e Epic Level Handbook: Iyraclea in Appendix 1), and because of my carefully-planted lore about the Phaerimm magically monkeying with the climate (hence the spread of Anauroch).
The slightly smaller size (12 versus 14) leads to a slightly smaller axial tilt than you arrived at, but by and large, your calculations are just fine, and you came to the same conclusions as the TSR designers did when they accepted my presentation all those years ago. Which makes the most valuable part of your article (the "What time is it in Waterdeep when it's such-and-such a time in Suzail?" and the hours of daylight bits) perfectly valid and very useful to all. Thanks, Jerry!
Interestingly, years ago I wanted to include a very simple Sword Coast naval trading pull-out game in DRAGON, of about the complexity level of the old Milton Bradley childrens' classic PIRATE AND TRAVELLER, only with water hexes rather than specific game-track routes [but with paths of double-speed hexes for trade-wind-aided open waters], wherein players picked up specific cargoes [cards with values] in various ports and sailed around within the limits of a single sailing season trying to get richer than each other. TSR editors (right up to the Creative Director level) wouldn't bite, which was a pity because it would have settled so many of the sailing times/coastal road caravan times/merchant shipping questions, down the years. As part of this game, all harbours were to be marked, all islands (of course) named, reefs and 'wash rocks' located, and a little 'back story' Realmslore snuck in about the two competing methods of seaborne location (the elder meridian was through the highest peak on Tharsult, and the newer competing one through Mintarn).
Regarding those islands you asked about: NDA clearance has been received, so expect my lore answer tomorrow.
So saith Ed."