[cdrsubron7]

Came across this while looking in the RFB folders of the mod. Found it interesting and decided to post it.

////////RFB2 VISUAL SENSORS REWORK 1.0///////////

This set of files will make certain changes to the RFB visual sensor and the 3D scenary in order to have a more realistic result.

The existing problems so far -which this mod attempts to minimize- were as follows:

-Crew sighted in good visibility conditions far located ships that were invisible to the player
-Crew had too much good vision at night
-Fog was too dense except in excellent visibility conditions
-Crew could not see under foggy conditions ships the player could

First thing that should be noticed is that there is no perfect solution for all situations, owing to these hardcoded limits:

1- Visual sensors in the game are mostly independent from what is actually rendered on screen, except light level (To a certain extent)
2- Visual sensors in the game are not hindered by horizon, nor by ships been "hull down". For the crew ships are entirely "visible" even if completely hidden below the horizon. THis is specially true for small vessels, which can be completely hidden
3- Visual sensors in the game differentiate between night and day, but night is a more or less fixed percentage of vision from the day, and there are major problems with twilight situations.
4- Visual sensors in the game differentiate between overcast and clear skies, but NOT based on what is rendered on screen. Hence the vision of your crew worsens a lot in overcast weather no matter if the other vessels are still clearly visible to you. Which is specially true when seing them against the mild grey background of the overcast sky
5- There is a certain simplification of sensors when running higher time compression
6-Many settings tend to interact with others because you rarely get perfectly test conditions during a campaign (literally dozens of different mixes of fog, light, clouds, etc. are possible, and you must add to rgar the different monitors and monitor settings for all players!).
7- Sensor efectiveness also depends on your crew's experience.

To adress those problems as possible, a compromise had to be made with the main objetive of NEVER having a ship sighted by the crew that is actually invisible to the player. The opposite however is true, i.e. if you would stay in the bridge at 1x time compression and scan the horizon, you would find ships your crew will not see until they are closer/the light level raises. The areas in which I have worked are following:

1- Earth radius: While in true life it is 640000 metres, I have set it to 800000. The reason is that you see ships better in the horizon, specially small ones.
2- Horizon fog: Has been lowered considerably to improve visibility in excellent weather conditions, up to nearly 20000 metres.
3- Environmental Fog: There was a major bug in the environment file, where fog settings were equally dense for heavy, medium and light fog
4- Sensor range settings: I limited the maximum range of visual sensors to better match the moment when ships are actually rendered in screen at extreme ranges. Now when the crew calls ship sighted you should be always 4able to see tips of masts in the horizon
5- Sensor sensitivity settings: This is the most delicate and tricky part, I did my best but of course it won't be perfect for all situations.Expect green crews to spot enemy ships only at closer ranges at night, but so far I have never had the problem of being detected by them before I saw them. In general, though, sensitivity at night has been toned down considerably, so those guys with darker monitors should be pleased.

IF YOU FEEL THAT YOUR CREW IS SEEING ENEMY SHIPS TOO LATE AT NIGHT, USE THE GAMMA SETTING IN THE GAME OPTIONS TO MAKE THINGS DARKER UNTIL YOU SEE THE ENEMY BARELY WHEN YOUR CREW CALLS IT. Dark gamma settings are actually great to make the game look better, so it's a win-win situation.

The final AVERAGE results I have had so far are more or less as follows:

Clear/cloudy day:

-Excellent visibility (No fog): Crew will spot ships up to 16-18000 metres
-Good visibility (Light fog): Crew will spot ships up to 10-12000 metres

Clear/cloudy night:

-Excellent visibility (No fog): Crew will spot ships up to 8-9000 metres
-Good visibility (Light fog): Crew will spot ships up to 8-9000 metres

Overcast day:

-Excellent visibility (No fog): Crew will spot ships up to 16-18000 metres
-Good visibility (Light fog): Crew will spot ships up to 10-12000 metres
-Medium visibility (Medium fog): Crew will spot ships up to 6-7000 metres
-Bad visibility (Heavy fog): Crew will spot ships up to 1500 metres

Overcast night:

-Excellent visibility (No fog): Crew will spot ships up to 8000 metres
-Good visibility (Light fog): Crew will spot ships up to 8000 metres
-Medium visibility (Medium fog): Crew will spot ships up to 5000 metres
-Bad visibility (Heavy fog): Crew will spot ships up to 1000 metres

In any case, I think that in all situations you will actually SEE what your crew does. Bear in mind in any case that I have limited time to test, and this all is very time consuming, so I wellcome any feedback based on repeated situations (Don't raise your hands to the sky and yell because in one specific situation sensors didn't work as expected, OK?).

Hitman, March 2010