Overview of the magnetohydrodynamic simulations employed in this work. The upper panel shows a map of continuum intensity at λ_c = 630 nm, I_c(x,y), normalized to the average continuum intensity on the quiet Sun (I_qs). The middle and bottom panels show maps of magnetic field strength B(x,y) and inclination γ(x,y), respectively, at an optical depth τ_c = 10^-2. The conversion between z and τ_c is described in Sect. 3. The maps in this figure have a horizontal extension of 4096 × 512 grid points or 49.152 × 6.144 Mm. The figure has been compressed along the X-axis so as to fit the entire box on the same panel.