How the Oriole Park at Camden Yards seat and sun data is measured

Every number comes from a USGS lidar survey of the ballpark, NOAA solar equations, the official outfield distances and published row lists. Nothing is estimated from photos.

Sources

Ballpark shape: USGS 3D Elevation Program lidar: Maryland 4 County collection, flown 23 December 2024. First-return points gridded to 1 m, noise removed.
Home plate: placed so the measured outfield wall matches the outfield distances in the scan; the fit is within about 1 m.
Section order and direction from home plate: a public ticket map of the ballpark (section and row centre points only). It is not drawn to scale, so it gives each section's direction; distances and heights come from the lidar.
Row lists and covered rows: rateyourseats.com.
Gates, bags, food and policies: the Oriole Park at Camden Yards A-Z guide.
Sun: NOAA solar position equations. Weather: ERA5 reanalysis via Open-Meteo.

How shade is computed

Each section is sampled on 3 lines at every row, 8064 seat points in total. For each point the ballpark surface is scanned in every direction the sun can come from, including the upper deck and its roof. A seat is in direct sun when the sun is higher than that horizon. Games are sampled every 10 minutes for 2 hours 50 minutes, on the 15th of each month from April to September, at 1:35 pm, 7:05 pm.

How rows are placed

A line is walked out from home plate through each section and the measured rake is split into decks by height jumps. Rows are spread over the visible slope in front of the published cover row. Premium boxes at the front of the lower bowl use the row positions from the ticket map, with heights from the lidar.

Limits

Sections 4, 80, 83, 90, 98, 230, 242, 244, 246 and 278 are not modelled: 4 has no published rows, 242 to 246 and 230 and 278 did not land on the club deck in the scan, and 80, 83, 90 and 98 gave no clean rake.
The scan was flown on 23 December 2024, during the work that moved the left field wall in for 2025, so the model is fitted to the centre and right field walls only (unchanged since 1992). The left field distances shown are the official 2025 figures.
Suites, the Club Level lounges, the Flag Court, Eutaw Street standing areas and the left field rooftop decks are not modelled as seats.
Covered rows come from rateyourseats. The aircraft scan sees the Club Level and roof, not the seats under them.
The Orioles dugout side comes from MLB.com game reports (the Orioles' first-base dugout) and our map fit; the Orioles ballpark guide does not state it.

Downloads (CC BY 4.0)

sun-by-section.csv: month, start time, section, minutes of sun, shade arrival
sections.json: section geometry and row-by-row sightlines