[REQ] Sextant Mod

[Castorp24]

Pardon my English;).
Since my modding skills are way worse than my English... would anybody be interested in modding a real navigation system in SH5... maybe something close to the Bubble Sextant developed for Flight Simulator 2004. Usually the stars, moon and sun position are quite accurate in all these simulators. Actually, the latitude was pretty easy to find in Silent Hunter 2, pointing to Polaris with the flak gun (no kidding!) and reading the "inclination" degrees in the scale at the right side (or was it the left? doesn´t matter).
Longitude, of course, is harder to find.

Well, I had to ask... just in case...

Thanks:DL

[dagamecat]

Heh, funnily enough I was just thinking about this last night. I'm sure the idea doesn't appeal to a lot of people, but it is something that I would enjoy doing, and I like the idea of navigation becoming more difficult in bad weather.

Thinking about it some more, I really don't know how well it could be implemented in a UI sense. Completely remove the sub marker from the map and involve dead-reckoning? Keep the sub marker and allow us to refine its position with sextant tools, therefore letting the navigator perform the dead-reckoning, if you will...?

I'm really not sure, and unfortunately nor do I have the ability to mod this kind of thing, but it's an idea I find interesting and appealing. I'd love to hear more thoughts.

[kapitan_zur_see]

I think it's not really possible to implement, because basically, in SH5 (and previous SH) the world is not round but cylindrical thus all the mathes implied would be going south, so to speak.

[BowfinSS287]

this would be a fantastic mod.....i also play fs9
and with the sextant mod and star mod together
you need a star fix to get your position,bad weather
plus low fuel could spell disaster. If this could be done
it would become a staple for hardcore players:yeah:

[Cthulhus]

Totally agree, that mod will be excellent !

[Castorp24]

As I said above, finding Latitude would be peace of cake in the northern hemisphere: if Polaris is 40º above the horizon, you are at 40º North. It just couldn´t be simpler. Of course, bad weather would make finding Latitude harder.

Regarding Longitude, we would "just" need two clocks: one of them showing either GMT time or the time at your base and the other clock showing local time (the time where the sub is positioned). The time difference between them would increase/decrease as we sail, giving us our Longitude. We wouldn´t even have to rely on dead reckoning. Not completely, at least:O:

This clock thing is, of course, where the difficulties begin. I just don´t have the skills nor the time to try to acquire them. I don´t even know if the current clock in SH5 shows local or GMT.

However, if anybody was able to create the clock(s) needed...

...that would be great:03:

[Mav87th]

Hmmmmmm

an idea...

If a station on the deck was made with a 3d sextant you could click on (much like the UZO) then the camera for that station could be tweaked into showing 45° angular field of view. and the ability to tilt the camera from its lowest position at +22,5° on Y-axis to +67,5° on the y-axis. That would cover from horizon to zenith and make placement of the view "easy". I'm picturing a sextant hanging on the inside of the wall next to the hatch fx.

And the station could only be used when surfaced witch would be a realism step. The camera viewport could like the UZO be provided with two graticule scales. One on the left going from 0-45° and one on the right going from 45-90°. Even if the view (like in SH4) is compressed on the horizon (in SH-4) a degree near the horizon is not as big as a degree on the top of the screen the graticule scales could be made to reflect this as they are "made" to measure on a particular place of the sky.

Just an idea tossed up - i have no skills making this except for the tweaking of the camera.dat file for getting the correct zoom and angular angle etc.

[jaromaz]

Let's try to implement this:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom//downloads.php?do=file&id=525
or this:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=524343&postcount=1

[Castorp24]

Thanks for that!

I´m trying to work something out, but I need to position the clock lower. I know it can be dragged, but what I mean is that I need it to appear lower when it pops up without dragging it.

There´s a good reason for that:03:

I´ve been messing around with Page Clock.ini in data/Menu/Pages, but I can´t seem to find the parameter that would lower the clock.

Any ideas?

[Castorp24]

It´s ok, I got it...:D

[jaromaz]

send me the beta when you finish :)
i can create better (professional) Sextant graphics ... my e-mail:
jm at iq.pl

[Castorp24]

Sure, mate!:DL Any help appreciated... the graphic part is exactly what I don´t... u know...

Now I´m working in the reticule (graticule?) that will allow us to determine Latitude on one degree accuracy. Then I´ll give sunrises a go using the table in previous Real Navigation Mods.

Of course, before releasing this I should ask permission to former modders (hope there is no problem there) about using/adapting some of their files.

Calculating Longitude will get less accurate the closer we are to Greenwich meridian.

I should have the Latitude reticule soon, but I wouldn´t commit to a date yet.

I´ll keep you updated.:up:

[Castorp24]

Oh!

I´ve managed to remove ALL traces of the sub (not even the little dot remains) from the navigation map, so we´ll be able to use it for plotting our DR´s.

TAIwise, I thought about limiting it´s zoom. No sub icon remains here either, but here our position is showed by this triangular thing that represents our focusing the periscope when submerged. No big deal, anyway, if we stay zoomed to close surroundings...

In any case, I´d definitely rather getting rid of the TAI than getting rid of the navigation map. Likely, we won´t have to get rid of anything.

[jaromaz]

maybe you can use flak gun as sextant ? (remove the binocular and change scale) ? ...

[Nico71]

What's the problem? Doesn't Stellarium work with SH5? Taking shots from within the game is not nearly precise enough, btw.

[Castorp24]

maybe you can use flak gun as sextant ? (remove the binocular and change scale) ? ...

That worked quite well within Destroyer Command (or was it SH2?), where the flak gun used to have a vertical graded reticule (to calculate firing range, I suppose).

However, I think I´ll stick to Vanjast method: a reticule stuck to the game stopwatch, adapted to the current distances from Polaris to the horizon at every degree from the ecuator to 60N & 60S. Will take some time, though, but well get 1/2 degree accuracy easily. I´ve tried a couple of dead reckonings from the mid atlantic to my hometown in the north coast of Spain, half speed and x512 time compression, and I arrived only 20km east of the desired position. I didn´t use the sextant for that (I hadn´t started it by then), nor made sunrise observations. Luckily, there´s no drift simulated in SH. Afaik...:)

[jaromaz]

how's work progress? :)