How the Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium seat and sun data is measured

Every number comes from a USGS lidar survey of the stadium, NOAA solar equations, section numbering and row lists from rateyourseats.com. Nothing is estimated from photos.

Sources

Stadium shape: USGS 3DEP lidar, NC Hurricane Florence 2020 (D20) collection, flown 17 December 2019, 2 tiles. First-return points gridded to 1 m, noise removed.
Section directions: no official vector seating map exists for Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium (ecupirates.com links a third-party seats3d.com interactive tool, not a static chart). Section order and side-of-field were read from the rateyourseats.com static chart image and each section's side-of-field tag, then checked against the lidar (the tall stand with the 2019 TowneBank Tower is the south/home sideline; the stand with the club level and upper deck is the north/visitor sideline).
Row lists, covered rows, student sections and side-of-field tags: rateyourseats.com section pages.
Gates, bag rules, parking, transit and accessibility: ecupirates.com. Capacity and opening year: Wikipedia.
Sun: NOAA solar position equations. Weather: ERA5 reanalysis and forecasts via Open-Meteo.

How shade is computed

Each section is sampled on 3 lines (left, centre, right) at every row, 6012 seat points in total. For each point the surrounding stadium surface is scanned in every direction the sun can come from to give a horizon profile. A seat is in direct sun when the sun is higher than that horizon. Games are sampled every 10 minutes for 3.5 hours. Kickoffs not yet announced are modelled at each American Athletic Conference TV window (noon, 3:30 pm and 7:00 pm Eastern).

How rows and section positions were placed

A line is walked out from the field edge through each section and takes the first continuous rise in that stand's height band (the south stand up to about 42 m under the TowneBank Tower, the north stand's lower bowl up to about 8 m, the Club Level up to about 17 m, the 200 Level from about 8 m to 29 m, the east end up to about 13 m). Section centre positions (raw/chart_sections.json) were placed by hand from the rateyourseats.com chart image and each section's side-of-field tag, spread evenly along each stand in published numbering order; this is a reconstruction, not a registration to an official vector map, so section edges can be off by a few seats. The Club Level and 200 Level are spread over the same east-west range as the north lower bowl since no official pairing of upper to lower sections was published; this is noted as a guess.

How the seat views are made

Each view is drawn from a 3D model built from the lidar, from 1.15 m above the seat (seated eye height), facing the field.

Frame correction

The lidar's automatic field-centring step mistook the open west end for part of the flat field (the flood fill used to find the field boundary has nothing to stop it at that end), which skewed the measured field axis to 122.88° and offset the centre. We re-measured the axis by finding where the stand height first rises above 0.9 m along lines at u = -45 to 45 m from midfield on both sidelines, and took the axis (121.6°) that keeps that rise point from drifting with position. We re-centred using the flat-to-rising transition at the open west end and the closed east end along five lateral lines. We checked the fix by drawing a regulation 120 x 53.3 yd field box on the corrected axis over the height map and confirming by eye that it sits inside the flat field and is symmetric between the two sidelines (it is; the uncorrected box was visibly rotated and offset toward the stands).

Limits

The lidar was flown 17 December 2019, before the 2019 Southside Renovation (TowneBank Tower) was fully completed; we found no official seating change to the modelled sections since.
No official seating-chart map exists for this stadium; section positions are a reconstruction from a third-party chart image, not a registered official map.
Not modelled: the TowneBank Tower suites, loge boxes, club seats and press level (not sold as numbered public sections). The open west end (Murphy Center) has no numbered seating.
No official pairing of the Club Level and 200 Level sections to the lower bowl sections below them was found; their east-west spacing is an even spread, flagged as a guess.
Light poles and video boards thinner than the 1 m grid may be missed.
No seat view for Sections 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121. Their rows and sun minutes are still shown.

Downloads (CC BY 4.0)

sun-by-section.csv: game, kickoff, section, minutes of sun, shade arrival
sections.json: section geometry and row-by-row sightlines