Sonar Range Completely Wrong

[jcope]

Enroute to patrol station, I encounter a merchant at long range. Engines faint, it's close to 20 miles away. The range I get from active sonar is around 6000 yards. Another time I stalk a merchant, and get it in view. Its well within 5nm, but the sonar reading reports over 30k yards.

Anyone seen this before?

v1.5, upgraded with RFB and RSRDC, and improved navmap mods.

[Rockin Robbins]

No, I've never seen that before. Sounds like something is wrong with your game and I would recommend a complete reinstall.

[jcope]

Thanks. What a drag. I posted that after a complete reinstall, updates, did LAA and downloaded fresh mods. Then started a new career, sailed almost all the way to Japan just to find a merchant...

Maybe there's a setting that affects this... I use the sonar all the time, maybe more than I should.

[jcope]

I used the mission editor to place ships in various locations, then tested, backing out various mods, and turning off LAA. Even going back to straight bare bones stock, i get ridiculous sonar readings. I think the close-in readings were ok, and consistent. The distant readings were also consistent, but orders of magnitude too small. It reported ~5000yds for ships that were 15 or 20km away.

Does anyone know if it's necessary to upgrade to 1.4 before upgrading to 1.5?

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by jcope

... Does anyone know if it's necessary to upgrade to 1.4 before upgrading to 1.5?

Now, there's a tidbit of information... Do you have the Steam v1.3, and if so, where is the game installed? If you don't have a Steam version, what do you have, and where is it installed? Generally speaking, you do not need to go through v1.4 to install v1.5. Just put it on top of your v1.3

[jcope]

1.3 and 1.5 both came from Steam. SH4 is installed in a directory location I made up, not in any standard OS location like Program Files x86.

I installed 1.5 directly over 1.3. I had faint recollections of installing 1.4 way back when I did this all on another machine... wasn't sure if it was just something I did or it was technically necessary.

[propbeanie]

So long as your Steam game install is in its own "library" folder, you're fine. The last time I tried on my Steam stuff, I couldn't get v1.4 to "stick" in the Steam SH4 v1.3 folder. I have Steam SH3 & 5 also, and have to be very careful with their new "security" stuff, or else it'll wipe-out mods, even when not in the Program Files folder, but just from the Steam "updates". I do not use my Steam SH4, since it's such a pain, and I've got two disk versions of it (actually, 3 disk versions, but I can't find my original, nor can I find my original SH3 disk - )... I don't know what to say about the erratic sonar ranging. There is some "slop" built into it in the game for "simulation", but I don't recall it being ~that~ bad. Try a mod, like TMO, that alters the figures, and see what happens...

[jcope]

I figured it out. When I click "Range to Target", the number that returns has no relationship to anything as far as I can tell. I forgot that before I figured out that clicking "Send Range to TDC" would show me the range.. I'm back in business. After a complete reinstall that ended up not being necessary...

Good practice though.

After uninstall, the steps I followed are:
Install 1.3
Install 1.5
Set LAA to true for SH4.exe.
Go to main.cfg in the users/documents/SH4/cfg folder, and set the display configs to have vsynch on, resolution lower than 1080, 60Hz, everything else off.
Right click on SH4.exe, then Properties, then Compatibility, then Override High DPI Scaling, Application does the scaling.
Then extract JSGME to the SH4 folder where SH4.exe is.
Then extract mods to the MODS folder that came with JSGME.
Then enable them in the right sequence using JSGME.
Then it should all work. I set better display settings within the game, restart, and then start sailing.

Fingers crossed.

Is there an easy way to figure out if LAA is actually doing its job?

[propbeanie]

Sart LAA again and Select the SH4 executable, like you did before. Then, on the "Mode" menu, select either Intermediate of Advanced, and it'll have the file listed with an "LAA" column, and an "Original" column. The "LAA" column should have "True" under it. If not, then it didn't "set", in which case, check the SH4.exe file itself by right-clicking on it, choose "Properties" from the context menu that comes up by left-clicking, and then, if necessary, on the "General" tab (which should be the first tab displayed). Make sure that the "Read-only" tick box is empty, else the LAA can't write to it.

[jcope]

I’ve done all that. I was wondering what evidence I can look for that indicates it’s actually doing something.

[propbeanie]

In a "Stock" install, you probably wouldn't notice much difference in most situations, but with something the size of Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate, the game will sometimes crash to the desktop on you, and all it is, ends up being the amount of traffic in the surrounding area, including ships and planes. The Museum is another place where the LAA is needed on the bigger mods, and you might notice a difference in load times in stock there also. Other than that, and the "True" setting, there's not much to show that it's actually "working", but you definitely don't want to find out that it's ~not~ working~...

Just thought, but in the Stock game, there are about 7 RGG (Random Generated Groups) that are not terminated correctly, and the game will definitely shows its bad side if you encounter one or two of those. That starts to get ugly by the time late 1943 comes along, progressively getting worse to the game's end, if you find the groups. You might see a large group of destroyers off the coast of Honshu, traveling on about a 45 degree course. Sometimes you'll see a single file, sometimes a triple file, and every once in a while, they'll be looking at each other, going back and forth in a mess, no "lines" at all. The groups grow larger due to the bad termination that doesn't "destroy" the old spawn. Now, if you do run into one of those without the LAA activated, anything from about 24-32 vessels will usually slow your computer to a crawl, eventually crashing it. With LAA activated, you stand a chance of slowly getting out of the area... maybe. But that's an unusual situation you wouldn't want to run into anyway, just to find if LAA actually does something for you. Just be assured that it does...

[jcope]

Great info! Thanks!

I do see that the modified date of the SH4.exe file changes when I update the LAA setting. I was thinking to turn on Aterburner and watch the RAM usage. If it goes over 2GB, that would be evidence of a good outcome (?).

At this point all I see is the modified date of the executable and the LAA line that says "true".

It's great to have the game up and running again. Not sure my wife thinks it's so wonderful, but I gotta do what I gotta do.

[propbeanie]

Afterburner might well be able to do that, but I'm not sure how often you'd see an indication, even with a big mod like FotRSU running - other than loading the Museum, that might be telling... Afterburner can also record your game video hint-hint...

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by jcope

I figured it out. When I click "Range to Target", the number that returns has no relationship to anything as far as I can tell. I forgot that before I figured out that clicking "Send Range to TDC" would show me the range..

there are two other commands that have similar behavior: report depth to keel (which always reports 0) and get depth to keel which will generate an actual depth report.