6-point Compass Rose? Bonus: Can you name the non E/W directions?

[King Krak]

Has anyone here made or in possession of an image of a 6-point compass rose?

To be clear: East and West direction points, plus the ones 60 degrees adjacent to them.


Tougher question: Anyone know of the names (if they exist) for the four other directions that are roughly NE, SE, SW, and NW but are each 15 degrees off from that true direction.

[Elzevir]

Never heard about a 6-points compass... I believe there are only multiples of 4-points (4, 8, 16, 32...).
As far as i know, the other directions were given names from winds around the Mediterranean Sea : (clockwise, from north) Tramontane, Grec, Levant, Sirocco, Marin, Libeccio, Ponant, Mistral. Hence the name : a compass rose is also called a windrose...

Edit : the wikipedia entry is far more accurate than i am : Compass Rose

[liciobruno]

Maybe you could use the 12-wind rose on wikipedia, erasing the 6 point you don't need.

[Lukc]

I love the old names ... particularly Boreas feels very relevant very often ...

[Freodin]

What would you need a six-pointed compass for? Geometrically, four points are enough to define any point and direction on a two-dimensional surface.

[Mark Oliva]

Has anyone here made or in possession of an image of a 6-point compass rose? To be clear: East and West direction points, plus the ones 60 degrees adjacent to them.

Why would anyone wanna do that?

Tougher question: Anyone know of the names (if they exist) for the four other directions that are roughly NE, SE, SW, and NW but are each 15 degrees off from that true direction.

The basic directions and their abbreviations, starting from north and moving clockwise, are:

North (N)
North Northeast (NNE)
Northeast (NE)
East Northeast (ENE)
East (E)
East Southeast (ESE)
Southeast (SE)
South Southeast (SSE)
South (S)
South Southwest (SSW)
Southwest (SW)
West Southwest (WSW)
West (W)
West Northwest (WNW)
Northwest (NW)
North Northwest (NNW)

[King Krak]

(laughing) Okay, I'll explain further: I'm a game designer. My new game uses a six-point compass rose...you can only travel in those six directions; just like any wargame that uses hex maps. (i.e., very common)

As to the why, there's a bunch of reasons but the best is that six-directions to travel is better than four (too few) and eight (too many) for my game. (From county to county.)

Second best reason is that the distance to the border of a six-directions is equal...eight is not.

Btw, if you look at County maps for states, you'll note few counties have 4 or 8 adjacent counties. Most have 5-7.

So, I have directions Sort of NE/NNE (30 deg.), E (90), Sort of SE/SSE (150), Sort of SW/SSE (210), W (270), and Sort of NW/NNW (330).


I did look extensively at wikipedia before making this post. @liciobruno I did see the 12-point one.

And note, because this forum seems to be decently gaming-oriented, it didn't seem like a stretch to think that a few here had made a 6-point compass rose.

[subhuman]

There are tutorials around for drawing compass roses (sorry, I'm way too new to point them out on this site, but Google will get you something). The only difference is that you'll need 60 degrees between points rather than 90, 45, or 22.5, like most real world roses are.

EDIT: Oh wait, you want the names... The best approximations for that would be North, East North-East, East South-East, South, West South-West, and West North-West.

[King Krak]

Sorry, but as stated, I opted for NE/NNE (30 deg.), E (90), SE/SSE (150), SW/SSE (210), W (270), and NW/NNW (330). (Rather than a 30 degree shift that you mention - North (0 degrees), etc.)

I'm most interested in seeing 6-point compass rose examples. I don't know if there are names for those for other four directions...so I have low hopes of learning such.

[maxsdaddy]

Try taking a look at some of the hex signs used in amish country in PA, USA. They refer I believe to "hex" as in curse (or rather a way to protect against them), but many of the designs I've peeped were hexagonal and could easily be modified for use as compass rose.