Celestial Navigation Revisited

[11Bravo]

Weekly update

Nothing worth posting this week. Lot's of testing trying to break the clocks per vanjast's suggestion a while back. His observation was that sometimes saving and loading a game can change the clocks. After a week of testing I finally got the game to display the wrong sky data for the displayed time.

Since synchronized sky and time is the basis of celestial navigation, this will be an important game bug or feature to understand. So I am going to focus on that for a while.

[Wolfstriked]

Great stuff Bravo I wonder is there a way to fix the game so that when you get near land you get the pop up screen that springs up when an aircraft is spotted?I ask this because one has to set the land spotted TC speed to low so you have time to change course but this causes the terrible TC when traversing the Kiel canal issue.I have my near land TC speed set to 128 and its worlds better but I have also finished patrols only to crash into land.With manual navigation this will become very apparent.

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by 11Bravo

@palatum and P_Funk

There would be no practical way of presenting the very precise information found in a nautical almanac as in-game graphics. There might be a way to create a condensed version of low precision data that would cut down on printing. There might even be a way to put something useful in-game, like a perpetual almanac or sunrise/sunset table in-game. It all depends on how much accuracy is necessary. If the method is limited to 30 km, we only need celestial data good to 10 arc minutes, not 1 arc minute or arc seconds.

Most likely the final solution will involve pdf's that the player would print out, although the actual books should work better.

Well a way to create a compromize on the massive volume of information would be to create modules of the relevant information that could be displayed somehow in game like the recog manual is through SH3 Commander. With SH3Cmdr you can create folders that copy information into the game based on your active patrol date. I'm not sure if its possible if we can create a limitation that copies it based on patrol area as well. Since we'd only need a very small portion of the total available almanac given the known area you'd be patrolling this seems like the best alternative. Even without SH3Cmdr we could create different sets of information for month/year based on broad geographic areas. Add that to a trimmed down accuracy as you've suggested, it may be possible to create modules you activate before patrol through JSGME much the same way the Merchant Fleet Mod has different folders for skins based on month/year.

Ultimately having a pdf of everything is preferable but having a shortened version in game would be nice since alt-tabbing or having a stand by laptop isn't as nice, not to mention alt-tabbing is known to create its own issues with SH3.

[vanjast]

Originally Posted by 11Bravo

Weekly update
After a week of testing I finally got the game to display the wrong sky data for the displayed time.

Ah.. the jaw breaker has arrived..
If I remember correctly, when you load the game the GMT time (or your base time) is set to the ship's clock (your current position time).. or visa versa, until you cross a time zone. This of course makes your navigator pace up and down the deck muttering obscenities to himself (which one cannot mention on the forum.. of course ).

This is why I mention that you have to write down the real times each time you save/load the game... i didn't look to far into this as i had RL things to attend to.

[vanjast]

Just curious on your progress about this point ?


I've been thinking about this problem lately, and it might be within the save/load structures where the time parameters are f.. (whoops careful - SailorSteve is watching) Ahemm! messed up
Maybe Hsie might be able to look into this, if not he can contact me :-)

[mikey117us]

In the early war to mid war, the clocks are set to German legal time, GMT+1 Mitteleuropische time. Mid-war they changed german legal time to GMT+2. This makes sense from the KW (wireless) point of view, keeping the clocks set to command control communications and intelligence time to receive orders and important comm. Navigators placed sunrise high noon sunset and weather data in in the KTB. What hell it must be to resume your bridge watch on german time + as you reach the East Coast of the U. S. and your watch has moved from daylight to the graveyard shift, sleep patterns are altered crew gets grumpy morale is affected. U-Boat Archive has several KTB's with the sunrise sunset data for the month/year. I've always been amazed when surfaced to see my friend Orion Rising over the horizon and wondered if thats where it was in june of 1942? Now I am mostly in the late war where U-Boat Navigation changed. Dead Reckoning, soundings, known landmarks and Elektre-Sonne beacons were used to get a fix. So I drag and drop on the map my course and leave it at that, remove the Sub Icon on the map and Navigate across the sea? Would be awesome!

[11Bravo]

Real life has robbed me of my game time, so I have done nothing on this. Back at it in a week or so when I get some time off.

[vanjast]

Originally Posted by 11Bravo

Real life has robbed me of my game time...

It's so annoying that ... I mean there's a war to be won, does the world not realise this

[palatum]

Originally Posted by 11Bravo

Real life has robbed me of my game time, so I have done nothing on this. Back at it in a week or so when I get some time off.

Just set 128 TC in Real Life, that should be about 80 minutes

[Sartoris]

Hopefully this is still being worked on, I really liked the idea!

Let us know if there's any progress.

[CommanderU]

What an excellent thread, i´ve learned much so far. What a pity it broke off. Is there somebody out there, who knows if these thread-results were enhanced or used by other projects? And question #2... : Does anyone still have the files released by 11Bravo? His gamefront-page is empty.

I`m really no modding-pro at all, but i would spend some time to come a bit closer to Bravo`s goal, the celestial navigation in sh3. Having his files would help for there are some questions left, despite Bravos clear presentation.

[CaliEs]

goto http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...82&postcount=4

The other day i had trouble to open 11Bravo's files. Maybe a glitch, maybe not.

[CommanderU]

Originally Posted by CaliEs

goto http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...82&postcount=4

The other day i had trouble to open 11Bravo's files. Maybe a glitch, maybe not.

Thanks a lot, mate! Voyage Two is not available, but the other files were successfully transmitted.

[CaliEs]

http://www28.zippyshare.com/v/10817307/file.html (2.8 MB) 11Bravo CelNav Second Voyage (link valid for some days)

[Pisces]

The 11BRAVO files will be mirrored on my site in a few minutes from now.