Dimensions in SH5?

[urfisch]

On many screens, the dimensions are simply wrong, or look so. In the boat there is too much space...to all sides. And in the bunker, there seem to be midgets walking around. Or it the simple answer is, the crew models are to small...but when i look at the screen in the command room...i get to know, there has to be something gotten wrong or the perspective makes the whole thing strange.

http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/7821/kartentisch2.jpg

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/9607/kartentisch.jpg

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/6458/kart3i.jpg

And the diesels in the game are too small...

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/6031/diesel.jpg

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/2086/diesel2u.jpg

Any one got thoughts or news on that?

[ReFaN]

Looks, quite frankly. Odd, now when you mention it.

[St. Cobra]

On many screens, the dimensions are simply wrong, or look so. In the boat there is too much space...to all sides. And in the bunker, there seem to be midgets walking around. Or it the simple answer is, the crew models are to small...but when i look at the screen in the command room...i get to know, there has to be something gotten wrong or the perspective makes the whole thing strange.






And the diesels in the game are too small...





Any one got thoughts or news on that?

Thoughts? I think we need a special joke thread for posts like this

[conus00]

100% agree. I have personally visited U-505 (I know it's type IX not VII) in Chicago and you can't even walk through it without banging your head.

The SH5 makes the interior look like cathedral-size in comparison.

[cardiff]

I think its a cammera trick they have used in free view which is also being used on the interior, look at the distance and size of far objects, to the size of near objects, there is false perspective rather than bad scale.

[onelifecrisis]

Looks damn near perfect to me in both shots, and I know my geometry. :O:

By the way, the average European male in the 1940's was 5'6. Looks to me like the men in the screenshots are that size too.

[Darkbluesky]

Yes I agree with OLC and cardiff. Make the photo with a 15/17 mm (or less) objective (in full frame camera) and you will find more or less the same feeling that in SH5 shot.

One of the mods I would like to test, is to change the FOV of the FPS view, to make it narrower and less "angular-ish".

Remember that it was one of the choices made by the director of Das Boot (someone, somewhere explained that, I don't recall), in order to try to give a feeling of small space. He could have choosen angular lenses and give a feeling like the stock SH5 (according to what is given to us), but he didn't.

[Schultz]

Looks ok to me, maybe the diesel a little

[oscar19681]

Whats next?

* shadows again?
* lighting effect?
* the upper left corner of the conning tower is 2 cm to small?

[GoldenRivet]

my "thoughts"

its a game. :doh:

Im a realism buff and even if there was an entire meter of "error" it would appear that we still have more in SH5 than we have ever had in any subsim.

[onelifecrisis]

Whats next?

* shadows again?
* lighting effect?
* the upper left corner of the conning tower is 2 cm to small?

No it's the GUI. Haven't you heard? It's the wrong shade of grey!
I **** you not.

[piri_reis]

Me too, I think they look very much in the correct scale.
What you're doing can rival rivet counting, it's pixel counting.
The angle of the camera, FOV, resolution, aspect ratio, all these will effect the screenshot, I bet you they designed these models almost in the correct measurements, using a 3d program. Why the heck would they make a 1meter tall guy and 2 meter tall engine room ceiling...

[piri_reis]

Whats next?

* shadows again?


I love this one, the nail on the wall doesn't have shadows, wth!!!
:hmmm:

[urfisch]

its one thing, if there are shadows missing...which is quite a fail for a 2010 3d game. but its another if dimensions are modeled wrong...

:down:

the mapdesk is extremly too large...this looks simply crappy and is a fail too. look at the hand rails over the hatch...they are also not at the right place. i care about these details, especially if everybodys review is telling us "extremly nice detailed uboat interior".

beside this, its a pitty to have so few details in the interior. but, lets see, how easy the is to be modified.

[onelifecrisis]

its one thing, if there are shadows missing...which is quite a fail for a 2010 3d game. but its another if dimensions are modeled wrong...

:down:

the mapdesk is extremly too large...this looks simply crappy and is a fail too. look at the hand rails over the hatch...they are also not at the right place. i care about these details, especially if everybodys review is telling us "extremly nice detailed uboat interior".

beside this, its a pitty to have so few details in the interior. but, lets see, how easy the is to be modified.

It's pretty easy. You change the field of view in cameras.dat. Problem solved. :up:

[conus00]

100% agree. I have personally visited U-505 (I know it's type IX not VII) in Chicago and you can't even walk through it without banging your head.

The SH5 makes the interior look like cathedral-size in comparison.

After I did a quick 'shop I'm retracting my previous statement.
Here is the VII diesel engine room (outlined in green) taken directly from WW2 blueprint. The male in the picture is approx 170 cm tall.
All things considered the game screencap does not look too wrong after all
http://i281.photobucket.com/albums/kk234/conus00/scale.jpg

[Onkel Neal]

Hmmm... I can see maybe a little difference between the screenshots and photo, but not too much. I will send this to the dev team and suggest we go with Silent Hunter Lego Edition for SH6 :03:

[Diopos]

"Dwarfish" sailors on original release,
Snowhite on first patch,
and then we'll see if we'll include midget subs....:hmmm:

are we getting a bit overboard here???

[Boris]

It might be the scale that is slightly off, but probably not by much, if at all.
What makes the most difference is the field of view. It seems the SH5 camera has a fairly wide angle, which is great to simulate the peripheral vision as well.

If we want a more claustrophobic feeling I suspect it will not be a case of changing the dimensions, but just reducing the FOV on the camera a bit, which I'm sure won't be too hard to mod.

[Sailor Steve]

Hmm...let's see.

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/2086/diesel2u.jpg

Guy's head is just a bit shy of the top of the valve train...

On the other hand:

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/6031/diesel.jpg

Guy's head is just a little shy of the top of the valve train...

Looks about right to me.

Also, it's true that overall the diesels seem a little small, but there are a lot of pipes and valves overhead that don't seem to be in the game. That can change a lot, as well as the afore-mentioned camera angles.

Looks real good to me.

[kapitan_zur_see]

Indeed, the differences are thin... I would take it's mainly a false perspective distortion because of the cam FOV (ie wide angle lenses, for those who are photographers). Easy to correct

Now the other thing that people seems not to pick... It seems far bigger BECAUSE there is a hell lot less details than in a real interior. Small details like a valve or pipe, but since the real interior is litterally full of a hell lots of them everywhere, it takes a lot of room! Without 90% of them, it is sure to look like a lot more spacious!
Once we find out how to implement 3d models into the game, then again, it's perfectly modable with a lot of time and research material.

[Sanuck]

As an ex pro photographer things look good
it is wide angle not main eye angle but if it where you woulnt see much
look at the space on the floor to feet ratio perfect

Cant wait for more

[Letum]

I thing that the ingame VII interior does look unusually large.
However, I can't tell if this is because the hull is too big or it just lacks
the pipes and equipment that would make it look smaller.

I suspect both are at play.

[ichso]

Whats next?

* shadows again?
* lighting effect?
* the upper left corner of the conning tower is 2 cm to small?

I don't believe the initial post was about nitpicking, even if you want to make it sound like it was.
One quite important aspect of the u-boat 'feel' is that everything is very narrow and cramped. Simply because they stuffed a lot of machinery and personnel as close together as possible to save materials, make the whole thing harder to detect, etc.
If you disturb that feeling by making the interior look too large and open, you destroy one important aspect of the whole atmosphere and immersion, at least for some people. So I can quite understand this point, although I would say that one should wait how it really looks in motion and so on.

Its probably a similar thing as with cartoons: There emotions are presented totally over the top which in the end makes them appear more real. If you want to really let the player feel the narrowness of a u-boat you should probably overdo it a bit to create the same feeling that people have when they visit museum boats today.

[Factor]

Maybe you and your crew are midgets in this title.

[Iron Budokan]

I thing that the ingame VII interior does look unusually large.
However, I can't tell if this is because the hull is too big or it just lacks
the pipes and equipment that would make it look smaller.

I suspect both are at play.

I think so, too. It's a problem when you try and model a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional screen. You lose a lot of angular/spatial perspective. :hmmm:

[Heretic]

Sorry but this so reminds me of some of the things I see on modeling forums.

" The new 1/32 Whizbang Mk II is 3mm short wingtip to wingtip! EPIC FAIL!!!!! Mightyfine Models sux!!! "

[ichso]

And this is so what it is not about, at least I didn't understand it that way.

[Webster]

On many screens, the dimensions are simply wrong, or look so.


And the diesels in the game are too small...

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/6031/diesel.jpg

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/2086/diesel2u.jpg

Any one got thoughts or news on that?

the guy in the doorway is leaning down a little so judge by the guy behind him and his head is in the right height to the rockers in the picture so all that looks ok but the :06: comes with the 10ft high ceiling height. thats why the engine room looks so off, there is too much room above the deisels and not that they are too short.

[ichso]

Maybe everything is really a bit more wide than it was in reality to prevent clipping issues.

[Webster]

Maybe everything is really a bit more wide than it was in reality to prevent clipping issues.

thats what im thinking too, to move around the boat they need room to get out of your way or you wont be able to pass them to walk around the boat

[urfisch]

sure thing, it was done, to prevent clipping and make crew animations not that complex. but, what for? ichso is right, when saying the atmosphere is affected by to wide space. if one visited the original one at laboe...you would know, what i mean.

all that people here whining about my question and presenting it as nitpicking...go and visit that boat. you will know, what i mean...

and if the game is presented as "real atmospheric" and "nicely detailed"...i complain and say "no"..it is not. it was only done, what had to be done to make the game look interesting for the casuals. this is what we can see so far.

im open for any correction, by proofs. screens or footage are welcome.

[Webster]

yep, its the "be carefull what you ask for" thing

they wont admit it but this is likely the result of the fact that many were asking for all the things like free roaming in the boat. these things often have side effects that go along with them like submarines with huge interiors to make that possible. most of the modders knew this and were asking for non visual things to be corrected instead but "eye candy" sells and this won out.


im sure many assumed they would have someone there to say dont do it if "this" is the result, but the way buisness works is if it cost time or money to do then it gets used so they were just told to "do it" period because thats what the customers said they wanted.

we should never assume common sense is applied to the implementation of something when the devs arent making all of the decissions and the end result can cause the unintended results we see in some things.

when we mod things we look at the result and judge if we did the right thing. bad side effects often mean we have to scrap the hard work we put in because its more important to "us" that we preserve realism as much as we can but often the devs are "told" what to do and not given the choice to scrap something that cost money to do just because the result of keeping it is that it hurts realism.

[ReallyDedPoet]

yep, its the "be carefull what you ask for" thing



:yep: Yeah this.

[ichso]

+1 @[urfisch, webster].

If the interior is too large it will not be a deal braker on it's own for me. But it is still an issue. And a noticable one too.
The step to show the submarine's interior this way was a natural one in the series and a good decision.

If its really an issue like it looks on the screenshots, the devs will know that too. They only need to know that the buyers notice it too to concentrate more on that aspect in future releases.

It is still miles ahead of the few accessible rooms in SH3+4 plus the static positions of crew members we had there. I think nobody should hope for a quite major feature like this to be implemented perfectly on the first go.

[Nordmann]

Screenshots are one thing, seeing it in-game is quite another. It's hard to make an accurate assessment from a picture, and from the few videos I've seen, it doesn't look all that bad.

[Brag]

It seems to me, the apparent size distortion is caused by height of eye.

[Tarnsman]

Strangely I agree with basicaly everyone in this thread a) the boat is too roomy and b) the Devs probably had to, to get the animations to move around.

I hope its true that a FoV edit will scrunch things up a bit, now the engine room is the size of a "cathedral". Also, maybe more pipes and stuff can be added like the periscope well has been added to SH3 (made central alot more realistic).

As for the U-505 as tight as it is, the museum pulled stuff out of the boat like bunks and cut open passageways for visitors and its still tight as a virgin, and only about a dozen or so are in a tour group at one time. Soo, aint much room in a U-boat.

And 50 years later U-505 still smells of disel oil.

[Lanzfeld]

If it is indeed the case of them making the sub bigger for the movement then I have to say that I, given the choice, would have prefered a correct size sub and just have to crewmembers clip each other as they walked by each other.

But this, as with almost everything I want, is'nt so.:nope: