[REL] Solution Solver 1.3

[I'm goin' down]

I see you have fixed post 28. However, your black and white diagram is slightly misleading. Per a PM from gutted, heading and course are the same thing. Bearing, however, is what you see when you look out of the periscope, which I assume is 90 degrees in your wheel. Using his definitions, the target bearing is is 90 degrees. Agreed? You state in the opening sentence of the post it is the heading and on the diagram you say it is the course. According to gutted, 90 degrees is the target's bearing. Its course (or heading) is 270 degrees. Those corrections should be fixed or clarified. You should also make at a note at the very beginning to the effect that this post was corrected per post 330 by gutted, so you won't confuse readers of the thread. Other than that, I like it.

Here is gutted PM to me re course/heading and bearing:

"cousrse & heading are the same thing.

course is simply the direction you're heading.

see?

bearing on the other hand.. is the direction you're looking, not the direction you're going." (Bold and Italics supplied).

The terminology in the readme is what got me off on the wrong track. If gutted is correct, we should adopt his terminology.

[gutted]

with those protursions on the bottom dial, you'll be able to rotate it from "blank space". not a big deal, but if you're trying to get to the context menu.. you'll have to right click further away from the wheels.

thats why i said the wheels have to be circular, or the area you can operate the wheels will be off.

Now that i've started working on the next major feature, i've switched to a directX renderer, so doing the pixel perfect hit detection wont be as costly, i'll put it on my to-do list.


as for the next major feature....


drum roll....


A live periscope view. I've already got it up and running, but have some things to work out.

basically it's a mock persicope view sorta like you see in the game (has the scope graphics and everything), with a 3D ship that rotates as you move the dials. so now you can train yourself to estimate AoB's. As you rotate the dials, you'll see what the ship looks like from the current "persicope" bearing. should help you estimate the correct AoB.

the next step is to be able to move the 3D ship further or closer to align it's apparent width to the tick marks on the scope to get an estimate of range not only to the target... but also to the current intercept angle. getting a range estimate to the intercept point without having to plot on the map is the main reason i wanted this feature.

but it's coming along.

i'll post some screens of it soon.

[Hitman]

However, the diagram says its course is 90 degrees. It course is 270 degrees, heading 90 degrees

No! You are getting the terminology wrong! That's the problem with the wiz wheel used so far, it differentiates course and heading, but actually they are both the same thing. The wheel needs to diffentiate them because the course is at the stern of the ship image, nothing else. That is a side effect of the inverted way of displaying the bearing dial (the blue one)

In any naval aplication you only have heading=course, never different concepts.

[gutted]

Originally Posted by Hitman

Another nice -and historic!- skin for the tool

this one has 000 at the bottom, and looks like it would operate exactly how the program does. you'd rotate the whole tool in your hand to put the bearing your looking down in front of you.

i see it has some "wedges" between the wheels to keep the targets wheel steady, as you're moving those two dials around while you maneuver the ship (.ie like rotating just the outer dial in the program when you make course changes).

i dunno, from what i see, the program is not really wrong... it just depends on your point of view.

[I'm goin' down]

Hitman, I was fixing post 46 when you posted 48. Take a second look, and see what you think now. What am I doing up at 4:49 a.m.? working on the wheel!! sheesh.

[Hitman]

Yes it has the zero at the bottom BUT the true course of the submarine is actually at the 180º. I am positive about that, as I have readed the user's manual of it, and besides the silhouette of the submarine shows clearly the bow at the 180º, and the stern at the 0º bearings. When choosing which dial to invert, they went for the bearings one.

EDIT: Rgr that IGD, so it was you who misunderstood it. No problem then!

[I'm goin' down]

I know you are running around Spain dodging tomatoes and bulls. If you understand baseball, please go to YouTube and play the classic, famous video, "Who's on First" by Abbot and Costello. That is what we should label this thread!

Heading/Course and Bearing--Elementary School Course?

I will keep this simple. We are viewing the target from Own Ship's periscope line at 000 degrees.

1. Viewed from the red periscope line at the bottom of the wheel, Target's heading/course appears to be 270 degrees. It's bearing appears to be 90 degrees. That is what the wheel indicates, and what gutted apparently advises.

2. If you pretend the view is from a real live periscope on Own Ship, Own Ship's bearing is 0 degrees and Own Ship's heading/course is 180 degrees.

3. If the compass is pointing true north and Target is perpendicular to Own Ship, as in your diagram and as seen from the periscope on Own Ship, the Target's bearing appears to be 90 degrees and it's heading/course is 270 degrees. If so, the bow of the target in your diagram, as seen from Own Ship, would have a bearing of 90 degrees. I hope so for my sake.

Do you agree with that? If you do, that might explain why I seem to be talking in circles. If you agree, we should be able to get all of this straight.

Gutted the term "Own Ship" is what aaronblood used in MoBo, an amazing program.

[gutted]

I will keep this simple. We are viewing the target from Own Ship's periscope line at 000 degrees.

1. Viewed from the red periscope line at the bottom of the wheel, Target's heading/course appears to be 270 degrees. It's bearing appears to be 90 degrees. That is what the wheel indicates, and what gutted apparently advises.

the target ship has no "bearing".. bearing is completely relative to the viewing person. How do you know which way the target is looking? Like i said previously, the arrow at the firont of the target ship is meaninless.. and points to nothing. It shouldn't be drawn that way.

Since you say the periscope is at 000 degrees... he's at a bearing of 000 degrees from YOU. Now if you were to place yoursef on his ship and then look at your sub.. YOU would be at a bearing of 90 degrees from him. Ths bearing from his ship to your ship is mainly what the Angle On Bow is derived from.

[I'm goin' down]

okay. why have a middle dial (compass)?

[gutted]

weeee. we're spinning in circles here now arent we? LOL.

what the number mean on each dial:

bottom dial:
Bearings from your periscope.

middle dial:
Headings (.ie True Course) that both ownship & target will be travelling on.

top dial:
Bearings from the targets point of view (expressed in terms of AoB port/starboard).

[gutted]

Originally Posted by Hitman

Yes it has the zero at the bottom BUT the true course of the submarine is actually at the 180º. I am positive about that, as I have readed the user's manual of it, and besides the silhouette of the submarine shows clearly the bow at the 180º, and the stern at the 0º bearings. When choosing which dial to invert, they went for the bearings one.

i dont buy that. nothing about that wheel is inverted. It's the same as when using the "Tool helper" on the "Ruler" in game.

when you are drawing out the course.. (say north for this example), you would read it from the bottom of the tool helper in game.. your nose would be at the 180 location.

this is how it works.. there is nothing inverted about it. It's just simply the way the dials interact that it seems backwards to you, but as i said it's a matter of perspective. It doesn't seem backwards at all from my POV.

IMO, the custom artwork you put into the soltion solver screnshot looks backwards

[I'm goin' down]

Tried two attempts at a tutorial set up by Rockin Roberts for practicing the Cromwell method. I had two hits on my first attempt, but the solution was not perfect. On the second attmept, I noticed Own Ship was not proceeding down the 45 degree track. I realized the course plotting tool put some extra flags which caused my boat to go off course and screwed up the firing angle. But I think I had the set up correct with the target's true course of 28 degrees to starboard at 12 kts, and Own Ship at 0 degrees. The AoB on the wheel looked good. It was 45 degrees which is correct under the Cromwell theory. The firing solution said 351 degrees, which was a lead angle of 9 degrees. I will try it again later.

If I get this thing down and you make major changes.....ARGGGG!

[gutted]

If I get this thing down and you make major changes.....ARGGGG!

i seriously doubt i'll be making any changes.

if anything... for people who want to use custom dials that are oriented differently, i'll have the program look for a specific config file that tells it the orientation of each dial.

[I'm goin' down]

If contact with six torpedoes means I have learned how to figure out the wheel, then I must have learned something. Third attempt - I forgot to submerge. Target started shooting at me, changed course and ran away. Fourth attempt - I knew target's course, so I set up for a Cromwell attack and set the dials on the wheel and solved the solution. I fired four 46 kt. and two 45 kt. torpedoes at 3,600 yds. All were right on the MONEY.

I am sold. I will use it in lieu of Easy AoB until I have it down cold. A nice piece of work, although mastering the wheel for some of us can be a challenge. Thanks for working this through with Hitman, me and the rest of the Captains. This should be stickied and made a part of Neal's post re important mods that is in his sticky in the Mods forum.

[Hitman]

MO, the custom artwork you put into the soltion solver screnshot looks backwards

Yes, because that artwork replicates the real wheels ... and those work the opposite!!

It is obvious that, as you say, it's all a matter of perspective, and that the dials can be brought to work also with the current layout. The only thing I wanted to point out is that they work the opposite to the real ones I know, and hence they are less intuitive for me. Plus I believe the US and german Navy must have had some reason to put them like they did.

Never mind, it's not a big deal

EDIT: I checked again the example of arwtork and the bearinsg dial is indeed inverted. The reason is it was a quick job intended to showcase skins, and I used the same template for all dials.