How far away can an object be before it dips below the horizon and is no longer visible?
For simplicity, treat the planet like a smooth perfect sphere,
and ignore the atmosphere and any other obstacles.
Table of Examples
Assume that your eyes are 1.8 meters above the surface of an earth-sized sphere.
From how far away can you see the tops of various objects?
Object |
Object Height (m) |
Visable Distance (m) |
Vis. Dist. (miles) |
The Ground Itself |
0 |
4,800 |
3.0 |
Garden Gnome |
0.5 |
7,300 |
4.5 |
Another Person |
1.8 |
9600 |
6.0 |
A Male Giraffe |
5.2 |
13,000 |
8.0 |
An Aspen Tree |
16 |
19,000 |
12 |
Statue of Liberty (with base) |
93 |
39,000 |
24 |
Great Pyramid of Giza |
140 |
47,000 |
29 |
Statue of Unity (with base) |
240 |
60,000 |
37 |
Burj Khalifa |
830 |
110,000 |
67 |
Mount Everest |
8800 |
340,000 |
210 |
Severe Thunderstorm |
18000 |
480,000 |
300 |
Arc distance along the ground is same as straight-line distance, up to the precision I used for these numbers.
Once you get up to the Mount Everest row, the difference is on the order of one mile.
The practical takeaways for hexcrawling are that if you're standing in the middle of a flat twelve-mile hex, then:
I've seen similar numbers before, but wanted to recalculate everything in a tidy little list for my own use.
Calculator widget below