Celestial Navigation Revisited

[11Bravo]

Returning to Silent Hunter 3 after a long absence...happy to see many of the old Kaleuns...

I am interested in the old problem of celestial navigation within Silent Hunter. I am familiar with the important work done by vanjast on RealNav and the excellent Stellarium workaround advocated by don1reed. I am familiar with the old problems...with the clock, the sun, the moon, the lazy helmsman, and the tantalizing accuracy of the stars...

What I want to know is if the state of the art has been advanced since then? Have any of the old problems been solved in SH3 or SH4 or SH5?

I have a special interest in knowing this, because before I left back in 2009, I was working on my own celestial navigation mod. I focused only on understanding navigation by the stars since others seemed to be working on the sun, dead reckoning, hiding the boat on the map. It was very difficult, but I was finally able to fix a position by the stars to within 120 km...or was it 30 km ...nearly all the time...and at the time that seemed pretty good to me.

I never finished my mod because it was more work than I was capable of accomplishing at the time. Anyway, I don't have my old files anymore but I remember what I did. And I feel like doing it again. But not if someone has already done better.

[postalbyke]

I haven't read anything really exciting recently, all I remember is getting good latitude but no longitude I'm interested in another celestial navigation mod!

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by 11Bravo

What I want to know is if the state of the art has been advanced since then? Have any of the old problems been solved in SH3 or SH4 or SH5?

For SH5 you'll want to look into my Real Nav mod for my UIs mod Being that SH5 let's you use Python to extend the game we can do many things that the other series only dream of.

[TorpLos]

vanjanst created a RealNavMod some time ago. It was pretty great. However it interferred with my MagUI and other mods because it changed the map so much. So i did not end up using it,

However now that ive started again and swore to myself to keep my Sh3 Modification simple im definately going to give this mod another whirl. Great for realism.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...ht=RealNav+Mod

There is the link and OG post.

Ack i forgot the damn RealNavMod baiscally only works with vanilla SH3. NYGM cant run it and i know GWX cant run it either. Lot of MENU ID xxxxx errors come up. However the game still loads after you close all the errors, but a few things are wrong and im sure its not running at full efficiency. Wish there was a way to get it to work. Its such a wonderful mod and the tutorials are great.

[11Bravo]

@TorpLos

I mentioned vanjast's RealNav in my first post. I think it was the best in-game effort at navigation. All mods risk interfering with each other because they try to modify the same game element or affect something the other mod relies on. I will try to show all my work so somebody can create their customized version that works with their soup of mods.

@postalbyke

It seems the state of the art hasn't advanced much and the old problems have not been solved. I will be solving a few of them which will improve things quite a bit.

@TheDarkWraith

Cool, huge, mod. SH5 does seem a different beast. I don't own SH4 or SH5 so I will be working here on SH3. I would appreciate your feedback if I find something that benefits the SH5 users. I read some of the threads, and my impression was that the star shots are performed out-of-game with Stellarium?

[TorpLos]

Good luck Bravo im excited for a good NaVmod that works well with MegaMods!

[Wolfstriked]

Originally Posted by 11Bravo

@TorpLos

I mentioned vanjast's RealNav in my first post. I think it was the best in-game effort at navigation. All mods risk interfering with each other because they try to modify the same game element or affect something the other mod relies on. I will try to show all my work so somebody can create their customized version that works with their soup of mods.

@postalbyke

It seems the state of the art hasn't advanced much and the old problems have not been solved. I will be solving a few of them which will improve things quite a bit.

@TheDarkWraith

Cool, huge, mod. SH5 does seem a different beast. I don't own SH4 or SH5 so I will be working here on SH3. I would appreciate your feedback if I find something that benefits the SH5 users. I read some of the threads, and my impression was that the star shots are performed out-of-game with Stellarium?

While I love the idea of getting your own coordinates I also love the ide of a navigator.Could you possibly make it so that there is no map position shown when the skies are cloudy?

[11Bravo]

@ TorpLos

"Some assembly required." I will be releasing my findings and tools in pieces so others can use as they see fit. Hopefully there will be enough success to make it worthwhile for the megamod authors to do the work for me....

@ Wolfstriked

I will do my best, but RealNav should already have that. My early work will require all the stock tools to help in testing and development. We will see where it leads...