Two questions come up every time: does a taller car help, and how low does the visor actually reach. The first has a clean answer. The second has a range, and Glare shows you which end of it your car is on.
Height does not matter. Rake does.
The sun is 93 million miles away. Raising your eyes by two feet, from a sedan to a pickup, changes its angle by nothing you could measure. What changes between cars is the windshield: a raked sedan glass puts the visor far forward and high, so when you flip it down its lower edge sits around 20° above the horizon from your eye. An upright pickup or van windshield keeps the visor closer and lower, so it covers a few degrees more of the sky.
The angles Glare assumes
| Preset | Sun fully in view below | Fully behind the visor above | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sedan / coupe | 15° | 25° | raked windshield, low seat: visor covers down to roughly 20° above the horizon |
| SUV / crossover | 12° | 20° | more upright glass: visor reaches a little lower |
| Pickup / van | 10° | 18° | upright windshield: visor covers lowest |
Between the two angles the score fades from full to zero, because a visor edge is not a hard line: at 18° in a sedan you get the top of the disc and most of the glare. Below the lower angle, nothing you own blocks it. Above the upper one, the visor does its job and the app calls the stretch clear.
These are working values from typical visor and windshield geometry, not laboratory measurements of every model. They are marked as assumptions in the app for that reason. If your car sits clearly outside them, the check below takes a minute.
Check your own car
- Park facing a clear horizon, sit as you drive, flip the visor down.
- Hold a phone level at eye height and tilt it until its top edge lines up with the visor's lower edge. A compass or level app shows the tilt in degrees.
- That tilt is your "fully behind the visor" angle. Sedans land near 20–25°, upright windshields near 16–18°.
Pick the preset closest to your number. The difference is real: at 7:45 on a September morning in Detroit the sun is about 8° up, under every visor made; by 8:40 it is 16°, hidden in a pickup and still glaring in a sedan.
What the visor cannot fix
Everything below the visor line: sun on the hood, on the wet road, in the mirrors, and the low sun itself for the first half hour after sunrise. That is why the app scores the sun's height and its bearing against your road, and does not stop at "the visor will handle it".