[WIP] Lighthouses mod

[gap]

Originally Posted by MLF

At sea, when it is very windy, the tops of the waves are whipped up into spray. I would therefore suggest adding it to the highest waves - it might look a bit messy otherwise.

Okay, working on it right now. I hope to release a new patch within the next few hours

Originally Posted by MLF

I'm not sure everything follows the wind direction anyway - the waves, for example, come from any direction as far as I can make out

Yes, once spawned, particles follow wind direction. Their spawn point around the lighthouse base doesn't follow wave direction though: they are triggered by wave height instead, i.e. they spawn wherever wave crests reach the set level near the lighthouse

Originally Posted by MLF

I'm sure it's nothing to do with this work - I had to disable a few other mods to take screenshots etc, so most likely some tail-end charlie is messing up the clouds - my problem

Yes, I doubt this has anything to do with our mod

[gap]

Originally Posted by MLF

Would it be be possible to have the spray go higher and be more wind blown after spawning (depending on wind speed). At the moment I feel there is a certain lack of fury in the spray.

Originally Posted by MLF

At sea, when it is very windy, the tops of the waves are whipped up into spray. I would therefore suggest adding it to the highest waves - it might look a bit messy otherwise.

HI MLF,
could you please test the following patch?

Tourelle de La Plate v12 - Patch 9

For this patch, I have added wind-driven spray to the highest waves. The texture used could be better, and there is still some space for improving the effect. Water spray could be done to go higher and/or to move further away from the splash, but unfortunately spray particles are not physical objects, so the ones spawned upwind go through-and-through the lighthouse building. In order to make this visual glitch lesser apparent, I had to limit the movement of sparay particles.
I hope you will like the effect anyway, and I am curious to know what you think about it. Please don't hesitate giving me your criticism and any suggestion you migh have for making the overall effect to look better

[MLF]

Hi gap,

Do you ever sleep?

I have tested patch 9 and the wind-blown spray is very good. The screenshots don't do it justice - I shall try to get some better ones. However in the screenshots I was trying to show a couple of other things:-

Wind direction in the mission is 000 ie. it is coming from the north.
The U-boat is heading due south.
The rain is following the direction of the wind (vaguely) - north-east to south-west.
The foam movement on the sea is from north-east to south-west
The spray is going against the wind - South-west to north-east

I believe you have 8 placement nodes for the particle generation? What would be the effect of increasing these nodes, say to 10 or 12? As you can see from the 'above' screenshot the generation is quite apparent (this is being over-critical as who, in the game, tends to look at things from above, apart from pilots, and this is a sub sim)

Regards,

MLF

[MLF]

I've been playing around with the mission editor. I set the wind direction to 180.

The rain now goes from the SSW to NNE.
The wave foam still goes from NE to SW
The spray goes from SW to NE still.

My conclusion is the spray is not affected by the wind direction.

I had the same problem with funnel smoke on ship's.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/sear...archid=2132889

I tried to get the smoke to go in a direction from the ship which was a combination of the ships speed/direction and wind speed/direction (apparent wind speed/direction) by changing Local wind and Global wind parameters. Seemed to work for the combination of ship's speed and wind speed, but not direction - ie: if the wind speed was say 25 knots and the ship speed 25 knots in opposite direction smoke went straight up. However when the ship was stopped, the smoke went in the direction set by the local and global wind parameters and not the direction of the wind set in the campaign/mission ie: the rain and smoke were never in the same direction.

Perhaps rain parameters would give a clue as to how things are done? Any idea where that is set - scene.dat, but not sure that parameters there set the rain to follow wind direction.........?

regards,

MLF

[MLF]

Hi Gap,

Sorry, but noticed another strange effect - when the wind blown spray is spawned the light tower goes double vision

regards,

MLF

[gap]

Originally Posted by MLF

Hi gap,

Do you ever sleep?

At times, when I don't have anything better to do

Originally Posted by MLF

I have tested patch 9 and the wind-blown spray is very good. The screenshots don't do it justice - I shall try to get some better ones.

So you are saying that except for particles not following wind direction and splash FX spawn points being not close enough to each other, the rest is good?

Originally Posted by MLF

Wind direction in the mission is 000 ie. it is coming from the north.
The U-boat is heading due south.
The rain is following the direction of the wind (vaguely) - north-east to south-west.
The foam movement on the sea is from north-east to south-west

Originally Posted by MLF

I've been playing around with the mission editor. I set the wind direction to 180.

The rain now goes from the SSW to NNE.
The wave foam still goes from NE to SW

To the best of my understanding, an heading of 0 corresponds to a South to North direction, and a 180 heading to a N to S direction. That's true in common navigation terminology and in game, as far as units are concerned. Maybe devs got wind hedings wrong?

Originally Posted by MLF

Perhaps rain parameters would give a clue as to how things are done? Any idea where that is set - scene.dat, but not sure that parameters there set the rain to follow wind direction.........?

I don't see anything related with rain drop direction in scene.dat's rain properties, maybe rain following the wind direction is an hardcoded feature. Anyway in the Env.sim controller I see some Start/End WindHeading parameters which might apply to the issue of wind directions as perceived in game (from rain and waves) being inverted releative to wind headings set in mission editor

Originally Posted by MLF

My conclusion is the spray is not affected by the wind direction.

Whatever is the convention used by devs, if spary direction didn't change after inverting wind heading, your conclusion must be right

Originally Posted by MLF

I had the same problem with funnel smoke on ship's....

IIRC, TheDarkWraith managed getting smoke to follow the wind direction in SH5. Let me check the settings he used for achieving that

Originally Posted by MLF

I believe you have 8 placement nodes for the particle generation? What would be the effect of increasing these nodes, say to 10 or 12?

The particle generators would be closer together, thus creating a better effect, especially if seen from above.
I don't think increasing the number of particle generators placed around the lighthouse would have a big impact on game fluidity, as the generators we have set are not so particle-intensive. Nonetheless, should we notice any performance hit, we can always reduce the number of particles per generator. If we decide to increase the number of PG placement nodes from 8 to 12, A reduction to about 2/3 of the original particles should be okay

Originally Posted by MLF

As you can see from the 'above' screenshot the generation is quite apparent (this is being over-critical as who, in the game, tends to look at things from above, apart from pilots, and this is a sub sim)

No problem: if we can improve the splash FX with no side effects, why not to do it? If on the other hand we will notice any adverse factor, well, we will refrain our virtual pilots from taking aerial pictures of our lighthouses

[MLF]

Originally Posted by gap

So you are saying that except for particles not following wind direction and splash FX spawn points being not close enough to each other, the rest is good?

In a very long winded way, yes that's what I am saying. It is good and getting better. Not sure about the double vision problem reported in my last post, though

Originally Posted by gap

To the best of my understanding, an heading of 0 corresponds to a South to North direction, and a 180 heading to a N to S direction. That's true in common navigation terminology and in game, as far as units are concerned. Maybe devs got wind hedings wrong?

Originally Posted by gap

I don't see anything related with rain drop direction in scene.dat's rain properties, maybe rain following the wind direction is an hardcoded feature. Anyway in the Env.sim controller I see some Start/End WindHeading parameters which might apply to the issue of wind directions as perceived in game (from rain and waves) being inverted releative to wind headings set in mission editor

IMO they used the word heading instead of direction. If the wind direction is from the North it is blowing N to S. If it is from the South then it is blowing south to north. The wind is always stated in the direction it is blowing from - a South Westerly wind is a wind blowing from the SW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_direction

Not sure what convention (if any) was followed by the devs.

Originally Posted by gap

IIRC, TheDarkWraith managed getting smoke to follow the wind direction in SH5. Let me check the settings he used for achieving that

Hopefully you'll find something that has gone un-noticed before (re my thread and sub threads on Funnel smoke)

Originally Posted by gap

The particle generators would be closer together, thus creating a better effect, especially if seen from above.
I don't think increasing the number of particle generators placed around the lighthouse would have a big impact on game fluidity, as the generators we have set are not so particle-intensive. Nonetheless, should we notice any performance hit, we can always reduce the number of particles per generator. If we decide to increase the number of PG placement nodes from 8 to 12, A reduction to about 2/3 of the original particles should be okay

Originally Posted by gap

No problem: if we can improve the splash FX with no side effects, why not to do it? If on the other hand we will notice any adverse factor, well, we will refrain our virtual pilots from taking aerial pictures of our lighthouses

Regards,

MLF

[gap]

Originally Posted by MLF

In a very long winded way, yes that's what I am saying. It is good and getting better.

I have increased the number of splash-spawn nodes from 8 to 12, and the effect looks pretty nice. Tomorrow I will release a new patch probably

Originally Posted by MLF

Not sure about the double vision problem reported in my last post, though

Originally Posted by MLF

Sorry, but noticed another strange effect - when the wind blown spray is spawned the light tower goes double vision

If you mean the sharp edge where the spray particle lays over the tower, that's due to the particle being on a plane which is behind tower's 3D mesh in that point. Maybe we can fix that glitch by playing with the DepthBias parameter.

Originally Posted by MLF

IMO they used the word heading instead of direction...

That makes perfect sense. Dev's usage of the term 'heading' in place of 'direction', misled me

Originally Posted by MLF

Hopefully you'll find something that has gone un-noticed before (re my thread and sub threads on Funnel smoke)

I have been doing some research on the forum, and I have read that every attempt to make FX particles affected by real wind in SHIII, has failed so far. The one thing that other modders managed, is having particles to move following a pre-set non-dynamic wind, which is exactly what we currently have in the present mod.

I seem to remember that TheDarkWraith (best known to SHIII players by his old forum name of RacerBoy) managed making SH5 smoke particles to follow real in-game wind. I didn't get time to dig into his files yet, but even if my memory was confirmed, that doesn't necessarily mean that we can achieve the same in our mod: his fix might only work in SH5, or he might have devised a workaround which can't be applied to our mod.

Fingers crossed

[MLF]

Originally Posted by gap

If you mean the sharp edge where the spray particle lays over the tower, that's due to the particle being on a plane which is behind tower's 3D mesh in that point. Maybe we can fix that glitch by playing with the DepthBias parameter.

I played about with DepthBias. It seems to affect the height and frequency of the splashes. If set to a negative number the splashes seem subdued. When positive splashes and spray are regular and high.(see screenshot below with set to 5.0 - don't know why, but seemed a nice number) I think the sharp edge is reduced and only appears on the base IMO. It's quite difficult because, as you pointed out yesterday, each time you run the mission the waves behave differently but each time I have run with a +ve number for depthBias the splashes are regular and reasonably high. No idea what DepthBias is really meant to do....worse than a crossword puzzle!!!!

Originally Posted by gap

I have been doing some research on the forum, and I have read that every attempt to make FX particles affected by real wind in SHIII, has failed so far. The one thing that other modders managed, is having particles to move following a pre-set non-dynamic wind, which is exactly what we currently have in the present mod.

I seem to remember that TheDarkWraith (best known to SHIII players by his old forum name of RacerBoy) managed making SH5 smoke particles to follow real in-game wind. I didn't get time to dig into his files yet, but even if my memory was confirmed, that doesn't necessarily mean that we can achieve the same in our mod: his fix might only work in SH5, or he might have devised a workaround which can't be applied to our mod.

Fingers crossed

There was his U-Boat exhaust mod that people thought had the smoke following the wind, but I think this was discounted in one of the threads
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=154338

As you say, fingers crossed

regards,

MLF

[gap]

Originally Posted by MLF

I played about with DepthBias. It seems to affect the height and frequency of the splashes. If set to a negative number the splashes seem subdued. When positive splashes and spray are regular and high.(see screenshot below with set to 5.0 - don't know why, but seemed a nice number) I think the sharp edge is reduced and only appears on the base IMO. It's quite difficult because, as you pointed out yesterday, each time you run the mission the waves behave differently but each time I have run with a +ve number for depthBias the splashes are regular and reasonably high. No idea what DepthBias is really meant to do....worse than a crossword puzzle!!!!

Depth bias makes two objects that are co-planar in the 3D space to look as if they were one in front of the other by adding a z-bias to one of them. z in this case is not the z (North/South) global axis, but the "depth" axis that the virtual camera is aligned with at any given moment.
The approximate radius of the lighthouse base is 5 meters; your tests demonstrate that the depth bias setting in SH particle generators is in meters and that positive values mean particles closer to the observer

Originally Posted by MLF

There was his U-Boat exhaust mod that people thought had the smoke following the wind, but I think this was discounted in one of the threads
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=154338

As you say, fingers crossed

I followed the whole discussion about wind direction and particles in SHIII, but matters in SH5 are slightly different. Particles that are supposed to be affected by real wind in SH5 files, have one or both of the features below:

- a parameterless GlobalWind controller attached to the same node as the particle generator;

- a GlobalWindCoef among particle generator's parameters, whose
description in Silent3ditor and Goblin Editor reads "Global/game wind coefficient (0=not affected by in-game wind)".

Neither of the above features is found in SHIII. I have already tried adding the GlobalWind controller to our splash effect but after running the test mission I couldn't see any difference. What I want to try next, is copying the settings of one of our particle generators into a SH5 particle generator with GlobalWindCoef set to a positive value, and see what happens. Chances of success are quite low though

[MLF]

Hi gap,

Is there any way of making the wave-splash sound change with the wind speed/ At 15m/s you cannot hear it, and I'm pretty sure, from my own experience, it would be close to a roar when close to the light house?

regards,

mlf

[gap]

Originally Posted by MLF

Hi gap,

Is there any way of making the wave-splash sound change with the wind speed/ At 15m/s you cannot hear it, and I'm pretty sure, from my own experience, it would be close to a roar when close to the light house?

regards,

mlf

I think so, but you should help me finding the appropriate SFX.

BTW, this mod is slowly turning into a storm simulation mod lol

[MLF]

Originally Posted by gap

BTW, this mod is slowly turning into a storm simulation mod lol

You are right. I'm sorry. it was just an idea. I'll try and find a solution to my question, but I'm nowhere near as knowledgable in this area as you or Kendras.

I have been playing with the placement Y value to get the splashes visible during lower wind speeds, with 0.5 showing splashes less frequently at 10 m/s than at 15 m/s and very seldom at 5 m/s. I found your setting of 1.5 didn't show much at 10m/s but then that may have been just that time I loaded the mission.

The thread is about lighthouses, and perhaps that's where we should go back to?

There seems to be a lack of input/interest from elsewhere in the community.

regards,

MLF

[gap]

Originally Posted by MLF

You are right. I'm sorry. it was just an idea.

I think you misunderstood my answer: I am into whichever suggestion might improve this mod, and I like very much your idea. Please point me to any sound effect that you think might be fit for it

BTW: I have bad news regarding the wind-aligned spray particles. I have replaced our particle generators with one from SH5. It works, but after trying many settings and setting combinations, I couldn't get our particles to follow the in-game wind. I think the additional PG parameters introduced with SH5, are simply ignored by SHIII.

At this point, I guess that our only hope would be an hardcoded patch by our wizards: Stiebler, h.sie and the likes. While we wait for their magic, what should we do with our particles? Should we scrap the fake wind, or keep it? and if so, what wind direction should we set?

Originally Posted by MLF

I have been playing with the placement Y value to get the splashes visible during lower wind speeds, with 0.5 showing splashes less frequently at 10 m/s than at 15 m/s and very seldom at 5 m/s. I found your setting of 1.5 didn't show much at 10m/s but then that may have been just that time I loaded the mission.

1.5 means 15m above the seabed level. i.e. 2m below the sea level in the point on map that our lighthouse is placed at. Anyway I don't think placement nodes' Y value to be critical, as the library FX node attached to them is set as a floating object and its Y position varies with wave height. The small wave effect is triggered when the floating node has an height of 18 or more metres above the seabed (i.e. wave height equal or bigger than 1m), whereas the bigger splash spawns at an height of 18 above the seabed (wave height = 2m or more)

Originally Posted by MLF

There seems to be a lack of input/interest from elsewhere in the community. I'll try and find a solution to my question, but I'm nowhere near as knowledgable in this area as you or Kendras - where is he by the way?

Kendras sent me a PM. He is in holidays like many other subsim comrades. I think in a couple of weeks the forum will be a more lively place. By then, the first release version of our lighthouse mod will be out, and hopefully there will be more interest around it

[gap]

New patch available:

Tourelle de La Plate v12 - Patch 10

Main changes:

• Number of particle FX placement nodes around the lighthouse increased from 8 to 12; number of particles per particle generator unchanged.
  
  
• Depth bias for all the particle generators set to 5, following MLF suggestion.
  
  
• Added underwater wave sound to the splash effect. It should be audible inside the submarine too. Curiously, the SFX sounds better inside the sub than it does underwater, in free camera mode

The patch should replace all the previous patches, except v12 patch 1. As usual, I am looking forward to your feed-back