16km visibility

[papa_smurf]

Just installed the 16km mod, and loving it, as I can now see much further. The only "problem" I have now, is that my crew have what i like to call " super-binocular vision". As when I get a "ship spotted" call, I look in the direction that the ship was spotted, and see nothing, that is unitl the ship get within about 12km, when I see just a faint dot on the horizon.


Looks like i'll have to invest in a magnifying glass for my monitor, or get a bigger monitor.

[mengle]

Just installed the 16km mod, and loving it, as I can now see much further. The only "problem" I have now, is that my crew have what i like to call " super-binocular vision". As when I get a "ship spotted" call, I look in the direction that the ship was spotted, and see nothing, that is unitl the ship get within about 12km, when I see just a faint dot on the horizon.


Looks like i'll have to invest in a magnifying glass for my monitor, or get a bigger monitor.


My card is broken 7800 GS i use now my old 420 MX so i don't see water or horizon, i have to wait until i got my new card back.
I was wondering what mod sould i use SHIII combined_scene_atmos, ore OLC_environment_final ??????

[Avatar]

I cant live without 16km visability. Sometimes on very clear days with perfect seas, I can be spotted at about 12km, while running flank speed. It's great to have the almost "mast on the horizon" appeal to 16km vis.
I have the regular 19in monitor and I can barely make out the ship on the horizon, which gives me more time to gather information and perform a sort of Target Motion analysis on the ship. Also, I have a geforce6800Ultra graphics card, so I'm not sure if any improvements to sighting a ship will increase with a better card. My system runs great except with a slight, almost unnoticable decrease in frame rate while near ports.
Have fun with 16km vis., I believe that it will save you some trouble many times.

[Sailor Steve]

Yes, the crew spots them so far away that you can't even lock onto them for identification. On the other hand, if I can't tell what they are at that distance, why should my Weapons Officer? I like it that way. It feels more real, and it gives me plenty of time to make decisions.

[Captain Nemo]

Never used the 16km mod, are there any FPS related drawbacks using it?

Nemo

[Sailor Steve]

Only if your computer is memory-challenged, like mine. I think it's so much better that I use it anyway.

Still looking forward to that upgrade, though.

[SmokinTep]

16K mod is great.

[Captain Nemo]

Thanks Sailor Steve, I think my computer might fall into the same category as yours memory wise. I have 1 GB of memory and not the best graphics card, an ATI Radeon x300se with 128MB, which I understand has 32MB built in but grabs the rest from system memory. Having said that it runs SH3 with GWX without any major issues to speak of.

Nemo

[difool2]

At periscope depth I have the opposite problem: I can ID a ship and get its general AOB long before the AI will spot it.

[Jimbuna]

Never used the 16km mod, are there any FPS related drawbacks using it?

Nemo

The major difference between the 8 and 16km kods is the radius of the rendering area in the SH3 world.

The 8km mod renders everything for a range of 8km around you and the 16km renders for.......hang on I'll get back to you :lol:

The memory 'hit' usually comes into play when there are an increased number of objects being scripted at the same time in your 'world' http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/thumbsup.gif

[Captain Nemo]

That makes sense. I might give it a try when I get back to port and see how I get on.

Nemo

[bobchase]

Just installed the 16km mod, and loving it, as I can now see much further. The only "problem" I have now, is that my crew have what i like to call " super-binocular vision". As when I get a "ship spotted" call, I look in the direction that the ship was spotted, and see nothing, that is unitl the ship get within about 12km, when I see just a faint dot on the horizon.


Looks like i'll have to invest in a magnifying glass for my monitor, or get a bigger monitor.
Have you tried increasing you periscope and/or binocular zoom to 10x?

Bob Chase, ETC

[ichso]

Never used the 16km mod, are there any FPS related drawbacks using it?

Nemo
As far more objects have to be rendered in a doubled radius around you, this should also have a significant impact on the workload of your graphics card.

It depends on how the rendering algorithm works. If it just renders every object in a 16km radius then this mod can have a significant impact on the peformance.

Ships can't always be seen in 16km distance (due to bad weather for example), and a clever rendering algorithm should exploit this by not rendering everything in 16km distance but everything in range of sight, which is now increased to a maximum of 16km, but doesn't have to be that large all the time.

Also, what could have an effect, is that for example a convoy within rendering range should be much more difficult to calculate than one somewhere else.
A convoy near your position has to keep track of every single ship, so that the escorts will stay at their position and so on.
If a convoy is still more than 16km away from you, the game justs needs to see it as an abstracts number of some certain ships with a certain speed and destination.
So a 16km rendering range should also have a noticable impact on CPU workload, too.

EDIT: You should also note that the 16km range should not be a big problem on the open ocean. If your machine is able to render a whole convoy within 8km range, then it will do so within 16km range, too. Just that the heavy work for your computer begins 8km's ealier ;).
But near land, especially in a harbour, there should be much more ships within a 16km radius than within a 8km one.
That's why I didn't use the mod yet. My computer already has its poblems with harbours even with the 'Light Harbour Traffic' mod enabled.

[Jimbuna]

That makes sense. I might give it a try when I get back to port and see how I get on.

Nemo

Good Luck mate http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/9026/wolfthumbsuprw5.gif (http://imageshack.us)