How the Oracle Park seat and sun data is measured

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

Sources

Ballpark shape: NOAA San Francisco Bay - Delta Estuary topographic lidar, flown on 31 August 2025 (NOAA Digital Coast dataset 14673). 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 3 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 Oracle Park 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, 6687 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 1:05 pm, 6:45 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

The lidar was flown on 31 August 2025. The 2026 changes we found (the King Street Gallery bar under a new sunroof behind home plate, and the Shield Lounge in the Field Club) are not seating sections, and the official capacity is unchanged at 40,260. The new King Street Gallery sunroof is not in the scan.
Sections 101, 136, 137, 143, 144, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 202, 203, 204 and 229 did not give a clean rake in the scan (corner and arcade sections with only a few rows, the bleacher ends and the short Club Level ends) and are not modelled. Their rows are still listed.
The Giants dugout side comes from rateyourseats.com (Sections 122 and 123 are tagged 'Near Giants Dugout') and our map fit puts those sections on the third base side.
Suites, the Club Level lounges, the Field Club lettered rows in front of the 100s and standing room are not modelled as seats.
Covered rows come from rateyourseats.com: the aircraft scan sees the roof, not the seats under it.
Section directions come from a ticket map that is not to scale, so a few sections may be a row or two off along the stand.

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