How the L&N Stadium seat and sun data is measured

Every number comes from a USGS lidar survey of the stadium, NOAA solar equations, the L&N Stadium section numbering and published row lists. Nothing is estimated from photos.

Sources

Stadium shape: USGS 3D Elevation Program lidar, Kentucky Central East collection, flown 12 December 2022, 1 tile. First-return points gridded to 1 m, noise removed.
Section directions: the section order round the stadium from a ticket map, lined up with the field in the lidar and checked against landnstadium.com (101 in the north-east corner, numbers running clockwise).
Row lists and the Louisville and visitors' sides: rateyourseats.com section notes; wheelchair platforms keep their row slots but are not seat rows.
Student and alcohol-free sections, gates, bag rules, re-entry, beer, parking, rideshare and tailgating: gocards.com and landnstadium.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, 8688 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 ACC window (noon, 3:30 pm, 7:30 pm Eastern).

How rows are placed

The 100 and 200 levels share one rake: a line is walked out from the field wall through each section, the 100 level's rows come first and the 200 level's carry on up the same slope. At the north end the 200 level is a second rake about 17 m up, and the UPS Flight Deck is a separate upper deck from about 31 m up. Row depth is measured at the open south end (0.81 m for the 100 and 200 levels) and on the Flight Deck (0.65 m). Rows past the visible rake keep that depth and count as covered.

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. Only rows open to the sky get a view.

Limits

The lidar was flown in December 2022. We found no official seating change since; the last renumbering (the Flight Deck to 301 to 312, the clubs to letter prefixes) came before the 2019 season.
The ticket map is not drawn to scale, so section directions come from it but section edges can be off by a few seats.
Not modelled: the club sections (W, E and N), the suites and the press box.
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