Where do you stand on Map Updates?

[siber]

Hi all.

I'm playing regularly now and, although in 1939/1940, am getting quite successful at high realism (as shown in tag). However, I'm generally pulling in 20k+ tonnes per patrol, sinking between 4 and 6 merchants each time out, and am wondering (in the name of 'simulation' rather than 'game') about knocking realism up to 100%.

When I try this though, I noticed that I got 100% realism WITHOUT map updates disabled - it makes no difference to the realism settings whether map updates is on or off.

If I turn off map updates though, I'll only be able to find ships that the crew see or hear. Contacts won't be plotted on the map as if reported by BdU or after being spotted nearby by (simulated) other friendly subs or aircraft, right?

So which setting is best for realism? Map updates off, but losing updates which might have really been reported by friendly assets that SHIII can't simulate realistically? Or map updates on, but fed far more information (range/course of targets and ship size etc) than would really be available?

What do you all think? Any comments/thoughts appreciated!

[GoldenRivet]

personally I leave them on... it provides you with a greater situational awareness that you dont get with a 2-d screen representing a 3-d world.

[Schöneboom]

Personally I prefer map updates off -- but somehow a few distant ship icons manage to appear anyway with a bit of course & speed info (I regard that as intel from BdU). My own sonar & visual contacts don't appear at all, so I mark them, which gives a "realistic" level of inaccuracy. Quite a few times I've missed the interception point or wasted fuel pursuing a ship that was much farther away than I thought.

Mach's gut!

[Heibges]

I use map updates, but keep the map pretty far zoomed out. I also use a mod that makes the tales disappear.

To me, this gives the illusions of other uboats out there looking for targets.

The only thing I have found that really gives you realistic tonnage is to no overuse/abuse the hydrophones. Doing this, I find on 33% of my patrols I will find no targets, and this really makes it realistic for me.

[Sailor Steve]

I use the 'Assisted Plotting Mod'. Map Contact Updates on; you get sonar lines, but no map pictures while using the periscope or UZO. Once you ID the ship it shows up on the attack map, but no others do. It's as close to perfect as it can get...at least for me.

[Canovaro]

I always play 100% without updates, and there are still contact updates, but they are few. Makes it feel more realistic.

[Sawdust]

I use automatic map updates (that and external camera are the only "non-realistic" options I use), but I am considering diabling the map updates for my next patrol to see what it is like.

I imagine it will make things much more difficult: possibly more exciting...or maybe just frustrating. :hmm: We'll see how it goes.

To siber: IIRC, Automatic Map Updates is worth a hefty amount of "realism percent". You shouldn't be at 100% with it active...maybe you have a mod that is changing this?

[ichso]

I play without the auto map updates too. In most cases it is more realistic and requires more thinking from the player to keep good awareness of the situation.

The only thing I that really annoys me is that the sonar contacts are off too. Once I THOUGHT I got chased by a destroyer and there where actually THREE of them -.- The sonar guy just couldn't really give me a hint in which directions they were, mostly just one of them at once.
I COULD place myself at the hydrophone all the time to get around this, but then I would not see whether the DC's shake the boat or not.
And besides I am the CAPTAIN and not the SONAR GUY :cool:

So is it possible to leave just the sonar contacts on the map on and visible contacts not ? The whole plotting-by-sighting thing is cool.

*wave*

[Corsair]

All is drawn by hand on the map, don't even have a GPS positioning of my sub...:D

[dcb]

If I turn off map updates though, I'll only be able to find ships that the crew see or hear. Contacts won't be plotted on the map as if reported by BdU or after being spotted nearby by (simulated) other friendly subs or aircraft, right?

Turning map updates off does not cancel the random contacts announced by other sources - planes, uboats, whatever... You still get them on map. It only cancels the display of contacts spotted by your crew.

I always play with map updates off. Whenever the watch crew announces a contact, I plot it on the map with pencil, ruler and, sometimes, protractor. After several plottings at 2 minutes each, I already get the general course and position of the contact. The same goes for convoys. It's more fun this way, I think, without an attack computer the kind of those installed in today's SSNs. Makes me work harder for a prey.
Coming to sonar contact lines, I can live without them. During an evasion, I frequently listen myself to the hydrophone, to have the situational awareness about who attacks me. Generally, it's enough to me having the SO announce the closest warship.

[ichso]

Coming to sonar contact lines, I can live without them. During an evasion, I frequently listen myself to the hydrophone, to have the situational awareness about who attacks me. Generally, it's enough to me having the SO announce the closest warship.

I don't like listening at the hydrophone by myself all the time. It is a good solution to keep track of the destroyers hunting you. But this makes me loose some of the atmosphere while playing. And on top of that does the turning wheel of the hydrophon turn too slow to get a really quick overview of the situation. So I would have to stay at the hydros most of the time to keep the situation correctly in mind.

[Corsair]

When under attack from DDs, am always sitting at the hydrophone station, only place where I can make myself a picture of the situation as the sonar boy can only track the closest ship... (which closest ship can be sitting still while another further away is accelerating for a depth charge run from another direction...)

[siber]

Well, I'm going to gve it a shot on fully realistic, map contacts off, the whole shabang!

I'll report back from Davy Jones' Locker about how difficult it is...

[Puster Bill]

I don't use update map contacts. I did when I was first learning, but it was one of the first things I turned off.

Now, the only thing I leave enabled is stabilized view. I haven't quite got the hang of getting the range when the image is bouncing up and down.

And don't ignore your watch officer: On the surface, I use him to get ranges and bearings. That is what he is there for;)

[ichso]

I think the not stabilized view gives me no real problems. If you are surfaced, the watch officer gives fairly accurate range measurements, and even if not, when being surfaced you can use the UZO which has always a very stabil view. Even if you turned the option off.
when submerged I only get problems at day and distances beyond 3km. Then it can become a bit tricky to get accurate ranges to plan the attack correctly. But as soon as one gets nearly into firing range, the unstabilized view is not much of a problem anymore.

[maillemaker]

Yeah, I've been wrestling with this while watching all these "100%" realism posts.

I tried it myself, and it was a little underwhelming to me.

First, I've turned back on the auto TDC. I found I could, in fact, sink ships without it, but to me the biggest problem was identifying ships. It just took too long to ID a ship. I think a real submarine captain would not be thumbing through the ID book - he would know on sight. So to me it is probably more realistic to have the auto ID on. If it would just do the auto ID, I could do the range and speed calculations myself.

So I turned the auto TDC back on. Maybe as I get more experience looking at ships I will be able to ID them by eye rather than having to use the ID book. The ID book is very slow, I find, to click from page to page.

I tried running with no Map Updates, but to me this is like sailing blind. I'm the Captain, dang it, and I expect my crew to keep track of things like contacts. I don't want to have to "do it all", running the hydrophone, checking the periscope, and tracking the positions on the map.

So I've got everything off except external view, auto TDC, and Map Updates.

The external view, well the game is boring just watching pole-dancing sailors in my sub - I like the view. The TDC compensates for my lack of nautical experience to identify ships. And the Map Updates just makes the game far less tedious.

So that's me. :)

[danmir]

I really like having the map updates off myself. I have been playing with it off and 100% difficulty with mixed results in performance, but lots of fun.

My nitpicks on realism:
- With the scope stabilization off: I have a hard time believing the scope would roll around as much as it does in game, considering I'm down 15m below the waves. I could be totally wrong but I think it would be much less bobbly.

- The optics in general. From accounts that I read, sub captains were able to make out masts fairly well at the horizon and keep just the tops visible. In game at that range, you can't really see anything but the smoke. Also, I get the impression a real sub commander's optical viewing yields more detail than you get in game (as far as determining ship type, course, AoB, etc).


=====================================

For fun on a related note...some math on horizons. Consider the horizon is tangent, so you have a 90 degree angle there to the earth's radius. (wish I had a drawing!). Thus you have a right triangle formed by the earth's radius + your height, the radius of the earth itself, and the horizon length.
(Rearth+height)^2=Rearth^2+horizon^2
horizon^2=(Rearth+height)^2-Rearth^2
horizon^2=Rearth^2+2Rearth*height+height^2-Rearth^2
horizon^2=2Rearth*height+height^2
horizon^2=height*(2Rearth+height)
horizon=sqrt(height*(2Rearth+height))

Rearth~=6871300 m

horizon=sqrt(height*(2*6378100+height))

Noting that 2*6871300 + height ~= 2*6871300 for small heights,

horizon~=sqrt(height*(2*6378100))
horizon~=3571.6*sqrt(height) (all in meters)
horizon~=3.572*sqrt(height) (height in meters, horizon in km)

Good rule of thumb that takes into account refraction:
Horizon in km is 3.9*sqrt(height).

The same will of course apply to your target from the top of his mast.

Thus the earliest you could possibly see a target is your horizon distance plus the top of the mast horizon of your target. This is the case when you are both along the tangent line just over the surface of the earth.

Playing with the numbers: Say we are at a height of 5 meters in the sub's conning tower. Our horizon is about 8.7 km away. Say a target has a 22 meter mast. The horizon 22m up is 18.3 km. You should just see the top of the mast then at a range of about 27km.

[ichso]

The scope view was more often than less too bouncy, I agree on that. But it feels like it is more stabilized since GWX 1.03 or am I wrong there ?
But it's true, we are driving submarines and not nutshells which get shaken by every little wave ;) :yep:

[danmir]

I'm wondering about the visual acuity so I looked it up. See if you guys think these numbers are right. Wiki lists 20/20 vision as being:

"20/20 is the visual acuity needed to discriminate two points separated by 1 arc minute"

I assume it means 2 points seperated by 1 arc minute at 20 feet.

20 feet * 12 inches/feet* 2.54cm/inch * (1/100 m/cm) = 6.096 meters

Considering a right triangle approx, you get 6.096*sin(1/60)= 1.77325449502e-3 meters ~= 1.8mm

It means with 20/20 vision: at 20 feet (6.1m), you can distinguish 2 dots 1.8mm apart.

So what about at say 8 km? You have similar triangles, so

8000/6.096 = x / 1.77325449502e-3, x=2.32710563652 m

Thats about 2.3 meters of resolution at 8 km with the naked eye. I haven't done the math, but I'm confident that at the default 1024 resolution we are not getting about one pixel every 2.3m of a 8km distant ship. And this is with the naked eye view.

I don't have the game in front of me, so I can't give evidence. Though consider a typical ship length of say 100m and beam of 15m. I'd expect it to extend 43 pixels from the side, or 6.5 pixels looking at it from the bow or stern. (at 8 km range). If we make the assumption that each pixel is one of the "seperable dots" as defined above (in reality, two dots, pixels next to each other are blurred, so it would take at most a pixel between to squeeze in a gap between two dots. I say at most because I think you could bring them closer, and with shading the area between with antialiasing, the two as dots may still be distinguildable.).

My monitor has a 20.1" diagonal, say a 4:3 aspect ratio, so its about (3-4-5 triangle) 16.1" across. This means each pixel is 0.01572265625". So it would extend 0.67607421875"(1.72cm) looking along the port or starboard (90d aob) or 0.1" at the bow or stern. I'll have to measure in game, but I'm confident that at 8km, a 100m long ship is not 1.72cm long in a naked eye view @ 90d AOB. Thus we are losing resolution.

If you have an optical aid, as long as its aperture is bigger than the eye, and it has passable optical quality, it will improve your resolution. So think of 2.3m@20km as a worst case. With binos, you'll likely have much better resolution. I would expect it at the upper limit to improve by the ratio of the area of the area of light gathering aperture of binocs / area of your pupil. Considering a typical pupil diameter of only 3-8mm, it seems there is much room for improvement with binocs.

In conclusion, I think the monitor costs us resolution and the real eye, especially aided with binocs would give much better detail on ships at range.

[joegrundman]

Of the low-realism options, I only ever use external view, and then only on every other patrol in order to deter bad habits. But i like the pretty pictures. My average tonnage score isn't affected - i think.

I do not use map contact updates, ever. I only used it when learning how to do manual targetting. That sort of situational awareness was impossible without modern computers, but i do kind of agree that the current following options provided by the sonarman are inadequate. You ought to be able to specify follow nearest merchant contact, because if you are tracking an approaching convoy, the nearest contact is often the lead escort performing a search pattern, which is much harder to track than the convoy, so i have to spend time in the hydrophone station myself.

I also think that it would be better if the sonarman could track more than one object at a time for you. Perhaps the number of trackable opjects would be proportional to the experience/skill of the operator, but this is obviously out of the question until the next gen SH game is released.

Stabilise view was the last thing for me to graduate out of. As for its historical veracity, well the u-boat may be moderately stable, but the scope is on the end of a long arm sticking out from the sub. Even tiny rotations in the sub will translate as severe movements in the scope head, especially if the view is then magnified.

In any but very calm weather, accurate range readings are therefore impossible and determining course by plotting is not recommended. They found it too difficult and unreliable in real life and didn't do it then either. But AOB is still easy enough to determine visually in rough weather, and that coupled with a poor range reading is far more accurate than plotting using two inaccurate range readings.

All this is made easier using a SACF or kriegsmarine equivalent whiz wheel. In my sig there's a link to my hunting method which never requires multiple plotting to determine target track, and therefore works well in bad weather.

As for IDing targets, practice!! Also, experience can often tell you in advance the kind of target to expect in any given area and time and you can have the recognition manual prepared and at the most likely page before you get close enough to make a positive ID. it is also the case however that for range reading purposes, you don't have to have gotten it completely correct. Most destroyers have a similar mast height. Small and coast merchants have a simillar mast height. C2 and c3 tankers, likewise - but in this case the truth should become apparent eventually and you can make the necessary corrections. It's enough to be getting along with.

My suggestion for improvement to the game in this regard is that when in the museum, it should show you the present AOB from every position so that players can familiarise themselves with how the targets look from different AOBs

[dcb]

But it's true, we are driving submarines and not nutshells which get shaken by every little wave ;) :yep:

It's not the sub that's being unstable. On the contrary, it is actually too stable - LOL. So stable that if the peri always stays at the same depth, waves however are of different heights. In brief, what you take as sub instability is the waves (higher or smaller) that constantly wash your periscope.

[Sailor Steve]

I So is it possible to leave just the sonar contacts on the map on and visible contacts not ? The whole plotting-by-sighting thing is cool.

*wave*
Read my post two above yours, #5. The Assisted Plotting Mod does just that. It comes with Real U-Boat by Beery. http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=82931&highlight=Real+U-Boat RUB's readme lists exactly which files were changed to achieve different ends, so you can take just the files that affect map contacts. This is what I did (I run a bunch of different mods from different collections, combined to suit my own tastes. Assisted Plotting is the most realistic to me).

[ichso]

It's not the sub that's being unstable. On the contrary, it is actually too stable - LOL. So stable that if the peri always stays at the same depth, waves however are of different heights. In brief, what you take as sub instability is the waves (higher or smaller) that constantly wash your periscope.

The point is not about waves washing my periscope but about a steady aim. For example to place the horizontal line of the stadimeter correctly and getting an accurate reading from the scale. This much more difficult when the periscope goes up and down all the time.

[Sawdust]

For example to place the horizontal line of the stadimeter correctly and getting an accurate reading from the scale. This much more difficult when the periscope goes up and down all the time. I made some tables you can use to get range in SHIII without the use of the stadimeter. You might find them useful. They are at http://www.brockmanonline.com/sh3/sh3.html

[ichso]

Already got them ;)
They look very good, though I was too lazy to print them out yet :roll: