[TEC] Can you mod the 8000m visibility range?

[Immacolata]

I know someone did, but conveniently never answered how he did >.<

HAve anyone tried this and want to share it with me? I really find the 8000m visual range completely crap, and it is the one thing about SHIV I was most pissed off about.

How is it done?

[Banquet]

I wish someone would. This is probably thing I miss most from SH3 GWX

[Sailor Steve]

I'm not sure, but I think I remember reading that the SH3 16km Mod works with SH4.

I hope so.

[Banquet]

It doesn't unfortunately - I tried it.

[Sailor Steve]

What happens exactly?

[Banquet]

The colours for the ground and sky go weird. I didn't bother to see if I could see 16k because it looked pretty unusable.

[Sailor Steve]

Okay. I just wondered if the only bad effect was the old black sky problem. There is a fix for that. But if all the colors are weird I don't know the answer.

[Hitman]

I'm not sure, but I think I remember reading that the SH3 16km Mod works with SH4

It was Der Teddy Bär who said it, but I think he didn't refer to porting directly the scene.dat from SH3 to SH4 but instead to hexediting it with TT's tools in the same way.:ping:

[Immacolata]

Who is TT and what are his tools?

[Ducimus]

Adjusting the visual range just isnt enough. YOu have to adjust the scene.dat (or whatever file sh4's using that has the same functionality) and i beleive the sensors.cfg as well. Those are the three files that make up the 16K mod from sh3.

Sensors.dat (and AI_sensors.dat)
scene.dat
sensors.cfg

All three i beleive have to be adusted or you get some funky things going on.

[Seeadler]

in short:
- extract Clouds.obj from scene.dat
- extract all SkyColor.obj's from the env dat's
- size these obj's with 3DSMax, Maya, ...
- maybe some tweaks on the moon and sun objects (model and textures)
- pack them back into the dat's
- edit the sensors, lookout etc. dat/val/cfg to correspond to the new visible range

[Immacolata]

Oi Oi. Much too difficult for me. But thanks for the reply :) I will hope someone gets around to it later and relases a mod.

[Beery]

The visibility was probably the most frustrating mod for SH3 because the game really just didn't allow it to work properly. There were all sorts of problems with AI sighting that arose from the game's developers basically pulling visibility figures out of their arses and hard-coding them into the game without programming differences between day and night visibility. So if the AI crewmen could see 20,000 yards in daytime they could also see that far at night. The standard visibility of 8,000 yards is not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel it's a reasonable compromise when the alternative has so many negative consequences. If SH4 is the same way, and I fully expect it is, I advise people to try to get used to the visibility ranges that the developers have imposed on us. Although I'm sure modders will attempt a fix, I have real doubts whether such a fix can work.

[Banquet]

In my case I'm not hugely bothered about ship sighting distances.. although it would be nice to be able to spot ships/smoke from further away.. in a sub you have to get close anyway, as opposed to a surface engagement where 8k is short range already.

I just don't like sailing past a big fat mountainous coastline and not being able to see it 5 miles away! At least the 16k mod extended that to 10 miles. In reality 20 miles would be more accurate on a clear day but them's the breaks..

[Ducimus]

random thoughts:

- visual sensors at 8KM? I Didnt realize.

- Ive noticed i can see *slighly* farther then my watch crew

- No wonder planes are such a pain..Really need to slow those buggers down in speed to give time to dive.

[tater]

Is the world a sphere, BTW? Range finding has a lot to do with hull position in relation to the horizon line, as does visibility of something small (short) like a sub.

tater

[Beery]

Is the world a sphere, BTW? Range finding has a lot to do with hull position in relation to the horizon line, as does visibility of something small (short) like a sub.

tater

I believe the SH3 world was a cylinder, not a sphere, but I could be wrong, and it might not apply to SH4 anyway. I guess this comment is totally worthless, LOL. Well, may as well post it hehehe.

[Ducimus]

Im pretty sure SH3 was a dome. I have no idea about SH4.