Option to remove sun/shadow from SceneView globe

[ADClark]

Add the option to remove the sun/shadow effect for the virtual globe in a SceneView. The shadow negatively impacts viewing datapoints on a regional scale in the polar regions. Similar to comments here: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-api-for-javascript-questions/how-to-disable-sun/td-p/310501 but the user-provided workaround fails on an iPad, potentially other tablets as well.

[ArnoFiva]

Thank you for your feedback, this requirement is on the top of our list and we plan to provide a solution in the near future.

A supported workaround we recommend, is using lighting.date to change the season depending if you are looking at the northern or southern hemisphere. See the following Codepen as an example: https://codepen.io/arnofiva/pen/oNeLrLY

As pointed out in the linked conversation, there is a bug that essentially allows you to disable lighting completely:

new SceneView({
   /* ... */
   environment: {
     lighting: {
       date: new Date ('null')
     }
  }
});

We cannot provide support nor do we recommend using this workaround as there is no guarantee that this will continue to work for future releases. However if your globe only shows draped layers and icons (no 3D symbology), it's a possible workaround until we provide a better solution. I use for example in this Codepen: https://codepen.io/arnofiva/pen/1d0d0d501bb2bd6f6df361c0940b3403?editors=1010

[Anonymous User]

Happy to announce that you can choose now between sun and virtual light for your scenes.

With JS API 4.23 released last week,  we introduce a new lighting mode called "VirtualLighting". This positions the light source relative to the camera, minimizing the amount of visible shadows. Assign it to SceneView.environment.lighting as an alternative to the existing lighting.

Check out more about the virtual lighting and other new features in our release notes for 4.23.