How the Hancock Whitney Stadium seat and sun data is measured

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

Sources

Stadium shape: USGS 3DEP lidar, Alabama SW Central (B22) collection, flown 9 January 2023, 1 tile. First-return points gridded to 1 m, noise removed.
Section positions: the rateyourseats.com Hancock Whitney Stadium section chart, rotated so the South Alabama (home) sideline matches the lidar's west side.
Row lists, general admission sections and side-of-field tags: rateyourseats.com section pages.
Gates, bag rules, parking, transit and accessibility: usajaguars.com. Capacity and opening date: 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, 3093 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. The Troy game (Nov 14) has no announced kickoff yet; usajaguars.com lists it as TBA, so it is modelled at the common Sun Belt TV windows (11:00 am, 2:30 pm and 6:00 pm CT). App State (Nov 27) kicks off at 2:00 pm CT, announced the Friday before.

How rows and section positions were placed

Section positions come from the rateyourseats.com section chart, rotated so the South Alabama (home) sideline sits on the west, matching the lidar. Sections 119 to 129 are sold general admission with no assigned rows; this build models them as 17 evenly spaced front-to-back positions (P1 at the front to P17 at the back) rather than numbered rows. Every other section's rows are placed by row number along one rake measured from the lidar, square to the sideline.

How the seat views are made

Each view is drawn from a 3D model built from the lidar, from 1.1 m above the seat (seated eye height), facing the field.

Limits

Not modelled: the 11 suites and 44 loge boxes inside the west tower; these are not sold as individually numbered public sections.
The student section and band location at Hancock Whitney Stadium are not published anywhere we could confirm, so this guide does not state them.
Light poles and video boards thinner than the 1 m grid may be missed.

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