Can This Be A Work Around For The 8 KM Visibility?

[Lanzfeld]

Like somebody said in another thread:

Can we have the sonor work on the surface to compensate the lack of real visibility??? We could turn it off on the surface when the weather gets poor.

:hmm: :hmm: :hmm: :hmm: :hmm: :hmm:

[Shadow9216]

Maybe a dumb question- the circles that appear when you click on a ship, these would be visual range and hydrophone range? Later modified to sonar and radar perhaps? I'm in Jan 1940 and evaded a V&W on the surface at night, but was paying particular attention to the circles- the smaller one had a pie-shaped wedge aft, which I assume would correspond to a dead zone for the hydrophones. Anyway, the visual circle extended well beyond the accoustic circle.

[Pablo]

Hi!

In the files "SIM.CFG" and "SENSORS.CFG" there are a number of parameters that would appear to limit the downside potential for "uebervisibility" if maximum visual (and other) detection ranges were set to higher values (say 30-40 km to encompass sighting a 50-meter smoke cloud).

Has anyone experimented with these to see how they could or should be changed? If not I'll be happy to conduct some experiments this weekend.

Pablo

[Jungman]

Well I did. Set visibility to 10 km. The only way I got a report was to ask the WO personlly and he replied "Nearest visual contact at 9200 meters".

I also set light factor to 1.0 instead of 0.8. Makes him more blind at night as he should be.

I did notice, it is good to set the range factor to other than 0.5 since the enemy AI seems to get a range boost too.

I increased Hydrophone from 6 km to 8 km, I was hearing out to 20 km and the sonar guy was much more reactive.

You can also set use crew effeciency and fatigue true or flase.

Interesting results....Seems to work but need to ask your WO for an update -and he is not always right ( 20 to 50%). Between 8 to 10 km with Visual Range in AiSensors set for 10 Km.

Also you can get airplanes detected further out if you take off the 10,000 meter altitude cap. It should be 25,000. Then your Watch will see airplanes coming from about 10 km away instead of dropping bombs on you from 3 km....in a few a seconds.

Makes airplane raid much more fun because you will have time to react to them with flak (instead of after the fact as is now).

[Lanzfeld]

How do you change the altitude cap? :huh: :huh: :huh:

[CCIP]

Yea, where is that cap?

By the way, meant to ask - increasing the values for various factors in sim.cfg makes your crew MORE efficient at spotting? Or less?
I've been trying to make my WO a little less blind in fog, and it does seem like bumping the fog factor a bit helps... but I'm not entirely sure, either...

[Lanzfeld]

JUNGMAN....

Where is this altitude cap you speak of???? This may be a MAJOR breaktrhrough for the unrealistic late aircraft calls. :huh:

[Jungman]

FIle AI_Sensors.dat look for string Ai_Visual following that is an entry Maxheight with a value of 40 1C 46 which is 10,000 in IEEE float.

The game simulates to 25,000 height. Change it, and even the planes flying altitude and speed too if need be.

Lower the fog factor in Sim.cfg from 1.0 to 0 and I think your WO will see through fog 100%, I never tested it yet. It may only affect the enemy AI.

[Lanzfeld]

Did you talk to Beery about maybe changing tis is 25000 and testing it for earlier aircraft warnings and them maybe putting it in RUB?

[joea]

FIle AI_Sensors.dat look for string Ai_Visual following that is an entry Maxheight with a value of 40 1C 46 which is 10,000 in IEEE float.

The game simulates to 25,000 height. Change it, and even the planes flying altitude and speed too if need be.

Lower the fog factor in Sim.cfg from 1.0 to 0 and I think your WO will see through fog 100%, I never tested it yet. It may only affect the enemy AI.


Good job but I have no idea how to change it. :88) Still not sure I agree with making my WO see thorugh fog...fog is well foggy.

[v!por]

Jungman:

Could you post the files.... the chain and ... procedure to make the changes u described above...

I looked in several files sensors... config..... and could not find entries you are referring to ...

thank you

[CCIP]

Danke, Jungman!

I'll get to testing it. I do hope it has the right effect; but looks like a fine suggestion to me...

[Lanzfeld]

NOW I'm am excited! :huh: :huh: :huh: :o

[Duke of Earl]

FIle AI_Sensors.dat look for string Ai_Visual following that is an entry Maxheight with a value of 40 1C 46 which is 10,000 in IEEE float.

The game simulates to 25,000 height. Change it, and even the planes flying altitude and speed too if need be.

Lower the fog factor in Sim.cfg from 1.0 to 0 and I think your WO will see through fog 100%, I never tested it yet. It may only affect the enemy AI.

Thanks Jungman for identifying the exact string... it's not that obvious to the untrained eye when looking at the AI Sensors.dat file for the first time...

By the way, I believe the hex value for 25,000 is 40 D8 6A, correct?

P.S. Hmmmm, seems to work... now I can get that Type IX hog below the water before the PBY turns me into herring salad...

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[v!por]

Gents:

located the necessary files but ... are they in hex format? I was able to open one with a hex editor utility .... I am unable to open them otherwise ... what utility prog would u recommend and if they are in hex.... i have no clue what I am reading and certianly how to edit them:<)
v!por

[Duke of Earl]

Gents:

located the necessary files but ... are they in hex format? I was able to open one with a hex editor utility .... I am unable to open them otherwise ... what utility prog would u recommend and if they are in hex.... i have no clue what I am reading and certianly how to edit them:<)
v!por

I use the 'XVI32' utility and the 'find/replace' function to edit the appropriate string in the .dat file... there are several other hex editor utilities that you can use, mostly freeware, and easy to locate with a Google search...

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[Jungman]

Duke of Earl

By the way, I believe the hex value for 25,000 is 40 D8 6A, correct?


Not what I used. It is 50 C3 46

I have not tested for airplanes yet. What altitude do they fly at anyway? I assume letting them see to the games Max (same for Radar) height could not hurt....

I know about the problem, maybe there is a solution to it. I have not done any testing except collecting data in game and watching the behaviour. I am getting better warning, but alot still is after the fact.

[sdcruz]

JungMan

Can you post your updated file somewhere so we can download it.

Thanks
Shelton.

[Duke of Earl]

Duke of Earl

By the way, I believe the hex value for 25,000 is 40 D8 6A, correct?


Not what I used. It is 50 C3 46

I have not tested for airplanes yet. What altitude do they fly at anyway? I assume letting them see to the games Max (same for Radar) height could not hurt....

I know about the problem, maybe there is a solution to it. I have not done any testing except collecting data in game and watching the behaviour. I am getting better warning, but alot still is after the fact.

Got it... I just remembered that I have to reverse the order in the .dat file.. so, 46 C3 50 (32 bit hex) = 25,000 (floating point decimal) = 50 C3 46 (SH3 .dat code)

My number (40 D8 6A hex = 6A D8 40 SH3) was the 64 bit double precision hex value.. I used the wrong one from the converter... thanks for pointing that out to me... now, off to edit the .dat file and get it right... ;)

I'm not sure what altitude the jabos fly at.. they come in low, turn around, and fly away high.. that's about all I know without an altimeter...

I will check to see of this edit changes radar spotting behaviour...

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[CWorth]

Well I did. Set visibility to 10 km. The only way I got a report was to ask the WO personlly and he replied "Nearest visual contact at 9200 meters".

I also set light factor to 1.0 instead of 0.8. Makes him more blind at night as he should be.

I did notice, it is good to set the range factor to other than 0.5 since the enemy AI seems to get a range boost too.

I increased Hydrophone from 6 km to 8 km, I was hearing out to 20 km and the sonar guy was much more reactive.

You can also set use crew effeciency and fatigue true or flase.

Interesting results....Seems to work but need to ask your WO for an update -and he is not always right ( 20 to 50%). Between 8 to 10 km with Visual Range in AiSensors set for 10 Km.

Also you can get airplanes detected further out if you take off the 10,000 meter altitude cap. It should be 25,000. Then your Watch will see airplanes coming from about 10 km away instead of dropping bombs on you from 3 km....in a few a seconds.

Makes airplane raid much more fun because you will have time to react to them with flak (instead of after the fact as is now).


This sounds interesting...what do I need to edit to get the seetings above..I figured out the light factor but how d you set the ranges etc?

[sdcruz]

It looks like this:


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00002740: 00 000 000 00000000
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00002742: 00 000 000 00000000
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00002765: 83 131 203 10000011
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00002790: 00 000 000 00000000
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00002793: C8 200 310 11001000
00002794: : 3A 058 072 00111010
00002795: FC 252 374 11111100
00002796: 1C 028 034 00011100
00002797: B9 185 271 10111001
00002798: ; 3B 059 073 00111011
00002799: F 46 070 106 01000110
00002800: 1F 031 037 00011111
00002801: 00 000 000 00000000
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00002809: D9 217 331 11011001
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00002827: 00 000 000 00000000
00002828: 09 009 011 00001001
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00002832: T 54 084 124 01010100
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00002845: M 4D 077 115 01001101
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00002849: a 61 097 141 01100001
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00002858: 0D 013 015 00001101
00002859: 00 000 000 00000000
00002860: 00 000 000 00000000
00002861: 00 000 000 00000000
00002862: M 4D 077 115 01001101
00002863: a 61 097 141 01100001
00002864: x 78 120 170 01111000
00002865: R 52 082 122 01010010
00002866: a 61 097 141 01100001
00002867: n 6E 110 156 01101110
00002868: g 67 103 147 01100111
00002869: e 65 101 145 01100101
00002870: 00 000 000 00000000
00002871: 00 000 000 00000000
00002872: 00 000 000 00000000
00002873: FA 250 372 11111010
00002874: E 45 069 105 01000101
00002875: 0E 014 016 00001110
00002876: 00 000 000 00000000
00002877: 00 000 000 00000000
00002878: 00 000 000 00000000
00002879: M 4D 077 115 01001101
00002880: i 69 105 151 01101001
00002881: n 6E 110 156 01101110
00002882: H 48 072 110 01001000
00002883: e 65 101 145 01100101
00002884: i 69 105 151 01101001
00002885: g 67 103 147 01100111
00002886: h 68 104 150 01101000
00002887: t 74 116 164 01110100
00002888: 00 000 000 00000000
00002889: 00 000 000 00000000
00002890: 00 000 000 00000000
00002891: 00 000 000 00000000
00002892: 00 000 000 00000000
00002893: 0E 014 016 00001110
00002894: 00 000 000 00000000
00002895: 00 000 000 00000000
00002896: 00 000 000 00000000
00002897: M 4D 077 115 01001101
00002898: a 61 097 141 01100001
00002899: x 78 120 170 01111000
00002900: H 48 072 110 01001000
00002901: e 65 101 145 01100101
00002902: i 69 105 151 01101001
00002903: g 67 103 147 01100111
00002904: h 68 104 150 01101000
00002905: t 74 116 164 01110100
00002906: 00 000 000 00000000
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00002908: P 50 080 120 01010000
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00002914: 00 000 000 00000000

[Lanzfeld]

So somebody is testing this to see if it does indeed make your crew spot aircraft sooner?

[Duke of Earl]

@sdcruz... where do those strings come from?

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[v!por]

Thank you Duke of Earl for the info on XVI32... works well.... if I knew what i was doing... I will learn....:<)

Thank you Jungman for info on the new numbers for 25K

Anyone know the string within dat files for 6km and what should be replaced with to 8 km??/ and where would find...

v!por

[sdcruz]

@Duke of Earl

Those in yellow are the ones you need to change in the AI_Sensors dat file (as provided by Jungman).

You need a hex editor to open up that file.

Hope that helps

Shelton.

[Duke of Earl]

@Duke of Earl

Those in yellow are the ones you need to change in the AI_Sensors dat file (as provided by Jungman).

You need a hex editor to open up that file.

Hope that helps

Shelton.

Well, I can't find the yellow string locations you are referring to with my editor... the address row numbers on the left do not correspond to my address locations.. converting your decimal (or is it binary?) code into hex is a bit difficult... I'll try again...

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[sdcruz]

these are the new values!! not the old ones so you wont find it.

Look for AI VISUAL (it is going down vertically on that output) in the dat file when you open it up in a HEX editor - I used the one in Linux so cant help you there.

Regards
Shelton.

[Duke of Earl]

@sdcruz... sorry, can't correllate your Linux OS hex values... the format is totally different... I have a Win XP OS using XVI32...

In any event, I hex edited the AI_Sensors.dat file this way...

In the AI_Visual section, I changed Max Range to 10,000 and Max Height to 25,000...

In the AI_Hydrophone section, I changed Max Range to 8,000.. and in the FuMO_23 section, I changed Max Range to 10,000...

So far, I haven't seen any substantial change with the detection range of aircraft.. they still get within 4000 before they get spotted... more observations will be required...

One thing I have noticed about the Sonarman is that he does not get the bearing to the nearest warship correct very much anymore... not as accurate as before... especially when there are more than 6 warships nearby... don't know if it's because I changed the AI_Hydrophone Max Range to 8000 or not...

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[CCIP]

Oh, Jungman - Re: fog visibility - changing it to 0 in sim.cfg does NOT have the right effect. Sim.cfg seems to be completely for AI ship sensors. Meaning that with 0 fog factor, I just had a merchant shell me from about 2km away with actual visibility limit at 300m :huh:

I think setting it higher might help a bit though :hmm:

[Sawdust]

Oh, Jungman - Re: fog visibility - changing it to 0 in sim.cfg does NOT have the right effect. Sim.cfg seems to be completely for AI ship sensors. Meaning that with 0 fog factor, I just had a merchant shell me from about 2km away with actual visibility limit at 300m :huh:
I think setting it higher might help a bit though :hmm:
There's a fog factor in both sim.cfg and in sensors.cfg. Maybe one file is for enemy ships' AI and one file is for your crew's AI.

[Duke of Earl]

Well, so far, in the AI_Sensors.dat file... after increasing Max Height & Max Range for AI_Visual and AI_Hydrophone.. I'm not seeing any benefits... another red herring?

Visual spotting range of aircraft has not improved and hydro detection range has not improved either... if anything, changing these values appears to have created more errors with bearing reports from the Sonarman...

Good questions being raised about the difference between sim.cfg and senors.cfg files... which one controls Friendly behaviour (i.e my Sub crew) and which one controls Enemy behaviour (i.e. DD, Merchants & Aircraft)?

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[sdcruz]

YEA i cant make head or tail from it either - oh well - i also think that the AI Sensors for sonar is too much on the very sensitive side - especially for elite, veteran and regular destroyers.

Regards
Shelton.

[Jungman]

Sim.cfg seems to be completely for AI ship sensors

Yes. Did I say the other way around? Sorry. :oops:

EDIT: The Sensors.cfg has to be for you own friendly crew (just look at it, Radar warning, crew effeciency usage), the Sim.cfg has to be for the Enemy AI just by looking at it (detect rate, etc).

Though changing the fog factor in Sensor.cfg from 1 to 0 should let you WO see through fog.

I have my visual max hieight at 25,000 and my WO well report the correct bearing at Long Range for an aircraft even though I cannot see it so high up in the air.

He will ONLY report beyond visual range unless you ASK him. So if you have TC on, it will not stop the airplanes from getting too close. :hmm:

I was on the deck and ask my WO nearest contact and he gave it to me correct, way before the airplanes become visible and in firing range. :shifty:

Basically just making the Visual like RADAR settings.

Something odd is going on here...I have aircraft warning set to drop me to 1x and I have enough time to engage....maybe if TC is too high then it stops too slow? I also notice if TC is set to go to 0x the airplanes tend to still over run your crew...strange.

[Sawdust]

Something odd is going on here...I have aircraft warning set to drop me to 1x and I have enough time to engage....maybe if TC is too high then it stops too slow? I also notice if TC is set to go to 0x the airplanes tend to still over run your crew...strange.
Once, I heard an airplane while at 4x or 8x or so. I immediately hit F4 to go to the bridge and, of course, Time Compression dropped to 1x.
I personally saw the airplane (which was by now very close) drop its bomb and watched the bomb explode near the boat. About 1 to 2 seconds after this, the dialog box appeared for "Aircraft Spotted"!
So, even at TC of 1, there is a problem with the way the crew is alerting you of aircraft.

[Jungman]

I should say, I edited the Main.cfg in both places for DisableMessages. ;)

Without that, you will not get a frozen pop-up box that says "Aircraft, Warship, Merchant spotted" as a text box message and you can select either Engage, Maintain Orders, Dive to Periscope depth; and set this as default action.

This is not available in the Option Screen. Mine was set by default to Yes. After I manually changed to No, I get the Text Message in time to man the Flak, plus my TC drops to 1x (since I edited it), and I have plenty of time to man the Flak guns.

Your right, about the standard voice message is too late at anything other than 1x. Have you/ do you get this Text Message Black Box pop-up? I had to manually edited to get it to appear. Then I had the full well 8 mile or 10 mile (modded) as set by Ai_Sensors.dat to man the Flak Gun.


[SETTINGS]
LoadingMovie=No
VoiceCommand=No
DisableMessages=No ;Default=Yes
EventCamera=Yes
TextsLanguage=0
VoicesLanguage=0

[TIME COMPRESSION]
TimeStop=0
RealTime=1
LandProximity=4
CriticalDamage=1
CrewEfficiency=1
AirEnemyDetected=1
SoundEffects=2
CharacterAnim=4
EnemyDetected=1
RadioReport=1
Particles=8
PrayState=8
HunterState=32
3DRender=32
Maximum=1024

[Lanzfeld]

I should say, I edited the Main.cfg in both places for DisableMessages. ;)

Without that, you will not get a frozen pop-up box that says "Aircraft, Warship, Merchant spotted" as a text box message and you can select either Engage, Maintain Orders, Dive to Periscope depth; and set this as default action.

This is not available in the Option Screen. Mine was set by default to Yes. After I manually changed to No, I get the Text Message in time to man the Flak, plus my TC drops to 1x (since I edited it), and I have plenty of time to man the Flak guns.

Your right, about the standard voice message is too late at anything other than 1x. Have you/ do you get this Text Message Black Box pop-up? I had to manually edited to get it to appear. Then I had the full well 8 mile or 10 mile (modded) as set by Ai_Sensors.dat to man the Flak Gun.


[SETTINGS]
LoadingMovie=No
VoiceCommand=No
DisableMessages=No ;Default=Yes
EventCamera=Yes
TextsLanguage=0
VoicesLanguage=0

[TIME COMPRESSION]
TimeStop=0
RealTime=1
LandProximity=4
CriticalDamage=1
CrewEfficiency=1
AirEnemyDetected=1
SoundEffects=2
CharacterAnim=4
EnemyDetected=1
RadioReport=1
Particles=8
PrayState=8
HunterState=32
3DRender=32
Maximum=1024

Could you explain this again please? Are you saying that you get aircraft callouts sooner if you make that entry "NO" as opposed to "YES"?

[sdcruz]

Jungman

Can you please tell us wht the max range is for the AI SONAR please!!

Thanks
Shelton.

[Jungman]

Lanzfeld
There is a black coloured pop up box that apears when a aircraft is spotted, a merchant is spotted, or a warship is spotted.

The game will pause to your set TC which mine is 1x. It is a dialog box. It will ask you what to do about the event. Either 1) Engage target. 2) Maintain current orders. 3) Dive to periscope depth.

This is NOT the normal call out, it will be heard later after you decide what to do. It gives you plenty of time to react.

It also has a check box to make this the default action, then you will never see it again.

The new patch removed this from the beginning openning Options Menu. Do you want "Messages On or Off".

I though it was very useful for stopping the game in order to man the Flak guns. So I re-enabled the Messages On in the file Main.cfg.
------------------------------------------------
sdcruz
Can you please tell us wht the max range is for the AI SONAR please!!

The AI Sonar has two main sonar values (one for active and passive), then 7 named active sonars. (Plus the 7 passive sonar known as Hydrophones.)

They also have a Sensitivity rating too.

AI_Active_Sonar:

type MAIN max range = 4000 meters.

Type QGAA = 2000
Type QCIA = 1700
Type QCeA = 1300
Type 147A = 2200
Type 144A = 2000
Type 128A = 1500
Type 123A = 1200

AI_Passive_Sonar:

type MAIN max range = 6000 meters

Type QGAP = 8500
Type QCIP = 7500
Type QCEP = 6500
Type 144P = 9500
Type 138P = 8500
Type 128P = 7500
Typr 123P = 6500

Maybe the Main max passive range of 6000 m sets the AI for your Sub crew to 6 km.....and active sonar to 4 km...

[sdcruz]

Jungman

Are these the Destroyers AI sonar ranges or the uboats?

If its the destroyer can you reduce the max main sonar to 2500metres?

Thanks
Shelton.

[Jungman]

DD enemy AI Sonar ranges. For the named sonar (14 total).

Your own virtual submarine crew (active and passive sonar) uses, I think, is set by those other two 'unknown' types of sonar.

One is the Main Active at 4000m and the other Main Passive is at 6000m. I think these are for your sub if you are not personally controlling the sonar station youself.

You can hear out to 20 km personally, but the AI crew will only report out to 6000m for passive hydrophones? I think.

I am only guessing at what these two 'no name' sonar entries do.

If its the destroyer can you reduce the max main sonar to 2500metres?

Yes, you can reduce all the enemy DD sonar reduced to 2500m by manuallly changing the 14 named entries.

Or if you are having problems with the DD having this Super default Sonar (especially Elite and Veteran enemy crews), use the full SonarDC_fix Mod, or the less nerfed SonarDC_20 Mod.

Are you talking about reducing the passive DD detection (DD hydrophones detecting your noise movement under water), or the active sonar detection (pinging close in active sonar)?

[Lanzfeld]

nerfed???

[Jungman]

Lanzfeld

nerfed???

What do you mean?? sdcruz wants to nerf the sonar?

I am not going to. In fact, I made the last version of SonarDC_20 tougher.

SonarDC: original. Maintain Lock Distance 200m. DC blast radius 15 meters.

SonarDC_fix: A minor bug fix to the type 144A sonar at zero distance.

SonarDC_20:Maintain Lock Distance 150m. DC blast radius 20 meters.

[sdcruz]

Jungman

I was talking about the active sonar - i think the passive is OK.

Thanks
Shelton.

[sdcruz]

Jungman

I was talking about the active sonar - i think the passive is OK.

Thanks
Shelton.

[Jungman]

:P Hey, guess what I found while fixing the 180 Degree backward Radar?

The enemy AI sensors data is totally in the AI_Sensors.dat file.

It is the silly Sensors.dat that contains your crew freindly AI setting! :doh:

The radar has the MaxBearing as 360; but left the MaxElevation at only 180. Just make the Max Elevation 360 also, and viola...No more bearings from radar 180 out of phase. Bug fixed :hmm:

I also changed MinSurface size to fix the stupid Snorkel detection problem.... :yep:

But the main topic was Beyond seeing visual 8 km. Well, in that file Sensors.dat is where you can change alot of stuff. It was originally PreciseRange=6000m MaxRange=8000m PreciseHeight=15000 MaxHeight=20000, Sweep rate=15, sweep arc, probabiltyDetect, etc. Plus Surface area (so he can see those small airplanes better).

I change MaxRange to 20,000m. Did you know periscope is limited to 5000 precise and 6000m maximum range? No wonder the WO can out see you at night if you are using the Binoculars, UZO, Periscope...not sure though...

Anyway I am going to test UberWatch dude. Longer range to 20 km, but I may have to change the Surface (Area) detection from 40 to 20 like the radar so he can see the small airplanes. Or go into the Airplane.dat file and increase their surface 'area'.

It looks like you can tweak almost anything to ge the Wo to call out a ship, probability to detect too so it is not 100% constantly at long range.

[Immacolata]

Wnderful discovery. I wish you luck with the testing. One thing that might bring me back to another patrol of SH3 could be just that.

[Lanzfeld]

Very nice discovery. Many of us will be waiting to hear about your testing! :up:

[Duke of Earl]

@Jungman... thanks for the tip.. wasn't getting any noticeable results from the hex edits in the AI_Sensors.dat file anywho... so, got rid of those and replaced it with the Vanilla file..

Did some 'MaxElevation' edits to all the FuMO's I could find in the Sensors.dat fle..

Also, did some 'MaxRange' and 'PreciseRange' edits in the 'Periscope' and 'Visual' sections of Sensors.dat

Maybe something will happen now... if this works, then I'm gonna make some small changes to the GHG, KDB, etc. hydrophones too...

Ooops... forgot about your DD Sonar fix... better put that back in..

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[R48]

Jungman,

You are a man with a mission! Excellent work. I'm looking forward to what you come up with.

[Duke of Earl]

Ok... using the FuMO 30 Radar with 'MaxElevation' hex edit (180 changed to 360) in Sensors.dat file...

Single contact @ 5300 (not bad)... radar wheel shows contact bearing @ approx. 213... NavChart shows bearing @ 153... RO calls out bearing @153...

Not exactly a 180 deg error.. appears to be 60 deg outta-wack now... but still an error.. more tests to follow... I might have screwed up the hex edit, so I need to reverify the hex values... :roll:

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[Laffertytig]

is the problame not the fact that its the smoke we should see first, not the ship? there doesnt seem to be any AI setting for this.

[Immacolata]

Well there's no way to make us see smoke at 15km off I think. But h4x0ring the AI files might make it possible for your WO to spot ships at ranges further than the 8000 meter Sphere of Fogginess that you seem to live in (translate: render engine clips visual range at 8000m). So you can't see stuff further out. At least that is how I interpret it.

[irishred]

Well there's no way to make us see smoke at 15km off I think. But h4x0ring the AI files might make it possible for your WO to spot ships at ranges further than the 8000 meter Sphere of Fogginess that you seem to live in (translate: render engine clips visual range at 8000m). So you can't see stuff further out. At least that is how I interpret it.

Well, you can just pretend the smoke is visible past 8000m... :D

[Lanzfeld]

Well there's no way to make us see smoke at 15km off I think. But h4x0ring the AI files might make it possible for your WO to spot ships at ranges further than the 8000 meter Sphere of Fogginess that you seem to live in (translate: render engine clips visual range at 8000m). So you can't see stuff further out. At least that is how I interpret it.

Well, you can just pretend the smoke is visible past 8000m... :D

ANYTHING to increase the area we can visually scan during clear weather is good for me. :up:

[CCIP]

Jackpot.

http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/720/jackpot0vz.th.jpg (http://img176.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jackpot0vz.jpg)

:smug:

Thanks Jungman. Keep us up with the discoveries, and I'll keep testing to see how things work. :up:

I don't really mind not being able to see as far since frankly... well, there's not that much use to it, other than visual appeal. I won't be attacking anyone at 20k. The next question, I guess, is the minimum surface and so on...

I guess one way around the "uber WO" would be to take out his ability to tell range (which would be kind of fine, seeing how super-accurate he always is...). He'd just give you a bearing and off you'd go...

[irishred]

Can someone upload this for those of us without hexing skills?

[Egan]

One thing I would be concerned about is this: Smoke from a convoy can obviously be seen from a fair distance. But what about single ships...wouldn't those long ranges be wrong for single ships?

[CCIP]

Well, as far as I understand, a single ship could be spotted by mast heads and smoke from far enough. Certainly from the 13-16km with no fog whatsoever that I seem to be getting.

Another piece of good news: it seems that fog visibility is not affected by increasing max range. Meaning you still get the same limits as you would have before, except in totally clear weather. :up:

[CCIP]

Heh, well - after playing with this fix more, I realized something: how often do you got Fog:None in the campaign? Not very often, I'd say. Which means that, well, the high range will only work on those perfect days which you rarely get. Which means that the actual importance of it is pretty much marginal.

The radar fix that Jungman came up with is, in this case, the more important find I think.

[Lanzfeld]

This is one of the most important discoverys ever for this game.

[Egan]

Just have to find a nice balance - Mind you, does the game take the crew experience into account?

Lanzfeld is right, though; very important indeed....

[Lanzfeld]

Please upload for us hex-challenged when you are done tweeking. :up:

Does this also effect the distance that aircraft are first spotted??? :hmm:

[CCIP]

Well, as I said though - unless someone can find a way to shift the 'light' fog setting away from its' current 5km limit, the fix will only have any real effect on Fog:None. And that's probably 1 day out of a 100 in a 'real' campaign, if that...

If you'd like to check it out for yourself - that should be it:

http://rapidshare.de/files/3185013/Sensors.dat.html
(goes to data/Library)

I also included Jungman's fix for the radar elevation, though I haven't really tested that very much yet.

[Lanzfeld]

I am in a career now and it has been "fog=none" for over two weeks.

I really think it relates to time of year.

[jasonb885]

Well, as I said though - unless someone can find a way to shift the 'light' fog setting away from its' current 5km limit, the fix will only have any real effect on Fog:None. And that's probably 1 day out of a 100 in a 'real' campaign, if that...

If you'd like to check it out for yourself - that should be it:

http://rapidshare.de/files/3185013/Sensors.dat.html
(goes to data/Library)

I also included Jungman's fix for the radar elevation, though I haven't really tested that very much yet.

Wow, sounds interesting!

:up:

[Gammel]

Don't know what you've done to the sensors.dat file, but
for sure it was a good thing!! After changing the file and loaded my career the unbelievable happend:
I spottet the smoke from a DD at range that must be over 10000 meters with my own eyes!
a minute later i asked the watch officer for range and he
reportet 9600 meters!! (I was closing to the target with a speed of 13 knots).


the closest sightings i had before with the stock sensors file where around 8000 meters. For sure there's no graphic engine limit at that range. I swear i saw the smoke! :yep:

Conditions where: no fog, calm seas, late afternoon mid-november 1939 near the english east coast.



(I managed to sunk the DD with a manual aimed salvo. It was the first warship ever i sunk in my career, but thats another story)


Please excuse my horrible english. Many thanks to all modders for their outstanding work and their huge effort of their personal time!.

[Lanzfeld]

Do I have to ask my WO if he sees any targets (if one is, say, 12000 meters?) or will he give me a "Ship Spotted!" callout with this modded sensors file?

[Gammel]

havent testet so far, i was on 1x time compression and was faster at
spotting than my wo.
i asked him after i spottet the target with my eyes to check the exact range

[jasonb885]

If this is polished up I'll add it as a recommends: for ImprovedConvoys.

:up:

[Lanzfeld]

If this is polished up I'll add it as a recommends: for ImprovedConvoys.

:up:

I would like to see both this mod and IC added to RUB (1.43 maybe???) :up:

[Duke of Earl]

T'anks CC and Jungman... :up:

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[gonzman]

Do you think if a bunch of us camp outside the devs office for a week in tents and protest they will release a patch to change the maximum visibility distance?

*daydreams*

[CCIP]

If this is polished up I'll add it as a recommends: for ImprovedConvoys.

:up:

I would like to see both this mod and IC added to RUB (1.43 maybe???) :up:

I sent this to Beery to look at already. I think he'll agree that this is a good idea in general - the only question I have for everyone is:

Did you observe it doing anything funny to watch calls in fog?
(I haven't personally, and if that's so - then I think it's good to go, and the only "polishing" that remains is seeing if there's anything else Jungman or someone else may want to do to the sensors. I'm happy with these, myself.)

[jasonb885]

Yes, I'd just be looking for verification that there aren't any unintended consequences, like HDM and the conning tower blowing off, for example.

:up:

[CCIP]

Well, that just needs a few days of gameplay to make sure. I'm more worried about my recent work to RUb's damage model having that kind of an effect, personally :roll:

[Manuel Ortega]

Fog values for game engine (visually speaking, not for AI) are in scene.dat file, at least in part.
Changing those values could increase or decrease max visual range. For example:

Smoke in horizon. This is from a ship at about 8.4 km with default game values:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/fog01.jpg

Moving the fog start a little more far away we could see this, the same smoke but visible at 10 km:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/nofog01.jpg


A comparison of two Gibraltar images from the same place in a clear day:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/nofog02.jpg

Gibraltar in a day with medium fog:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/fog02.jpg

But it seems that game engine only draws as far as 10 km (clip distance). We can't see any object further, even removing all fog. I haven't found clip distances in any file yet, but changing them could be a good step in increasing the visual distance.

There is a small problem with the dynamic ocean. It only covers about 1000 meters from player's eye. From there to horizon, there is a flat pseudo-ocean that fades with the fog. I can make the dynamic ocean grid bigger easily, but it is practically at the same height that the pseudo-ocean, less than 1 meter of separation. This makes Z-fighting polygons, as we see here:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/renderengine02.jpg

It could be fixed by lowering that plane a little.
I supose that the main reason of making a too short viewing distance was to maintain a minimum fps. I know this because making the dynamic ocean grid four times bigger eats about 20% of the fps. Surely the dev team had the same problem and that is why they limited the range.

This is how world is rendered in the game:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/renderengine01.jpg

A draw to explain it:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/renderengine03.jpg

I hope this would be useful. I don't know about the AI part, only researched how increase the player sight.
I will put the hex addresses that I found, if interested.

[Duke of Earl]

@Manuel.. count me in, I'm interested... ;)

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[CCIP]

Thank you! I'll check out Scene.dat.

In general though, we can live with 10km visual ability, provided our WO can see a bit further. Now if we could also shift the light fog back a little bit, say, to near those 10km, that would be a good enough solution for me. That way we could realistically take advantage of better visibility on most clear days, excellent WO visibility on fog-less days, and the same good old unforgiving visibility in storms :)

[jasonb885]

I'll give it a go tonight.

:up:

[Manuel Ortega]

The fog distances are here:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/hex_fog.jpg
I don't know exactly which type of data is it, but it seems to be two 32 bit values.

And the dynamic ocean size here:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/hex_scale.jpg

[Immacolata]

Amazing work. There is a chance that the devs could fix this for a future release, if they somehow think it is important and someone tells them that it IS :)

Would it be possible to lower the pesuod ocean a bit and that would fix the z-buffering fight creating polygon flicker?

[Lanzfeld]

Hmmmm...

I put the sensors file in my data/library folder and on a clear day my WO still cant see ship farther then 8000 meters.

[timetraveller]

CCIP,

Let me know if you need a little tweak for the scene.dat rule.

Note that Manuel's displacement values are in decimal format, not hex. 2992=BB0

TT

[R48]

CCIP,

Does your Sensors.dat include the snorkel detection problem that Jungman mentions fixing?

[CCIP]

CCIP,

Let me know if you need a little tweak for the scene.dat rule.

Note that Manuel's displacement values are in decimal format, not hex. 2992=BB0

TT

Sure, if you can - I'd be happy.

Actually, I've looked through scene.dat yesterday and I couldn't find anything concrete as far as fog - maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. But if that distance can indeed be adjusted - that's good, and maybe then we can also adjust underwater fogging distance (which would be a huge plus for some of the 'real water' modding as well).

R48 -
I put in the fixes for the radar bearings that Jungman mentioned, but I didn't see anything about that snorkel radar. If someone can point me to what other value (if any) needs fixing there, I'll put it in too.

[Manuel Ortega]

Note that Manuel's displacement values are in decimal format, not hex. 2992=BB0


Mi mistake. Here they are in hex:

Fog distances:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/hex_fog2.jpg

Dynamic grid size:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/hex_scale2.jpg

[Manuel Ortega]

and maybe then we can also adjust underwater fogging distance (which would be a huge plus for some of the 'real water' modding as well).

It's pretty easy indeed.
Default underwater fog:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/waterfog_default.jpg

Modified values:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/waterfog_increased.jpg

Here is the hex address:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/underwaterfog.jpg

First 4 byte pairs are fog start (-4 in float, don't know units). Next 4 byte pairs are fog end (float 18, I modified to 10 to make the screenshot).

[CCIP]

Hmm, is that based on distance? If so, that's definitely very interesting. Up to now, water color modding has been based strictly on colors and transparencies at certain angles only.

[Manuel Ortega]

Yes. Objects at a distance higher than fog end value are totally hidden by fog.
The same with start fog. If you put a negative value, the fog starts behind the camera. This is useful in games for making a thicker ambient.

In this pic I modified the fog start with a value of -100. This shows as more dense water.
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/waterfog_dense.jpg

The scene.dat file has a lot of modification capabilities.

[R48]

CCIP,

The only reference I saw was I also changed MinSurface size to fix the stupid Snorkel detection problem....

I'm guessing he is refering to the AI's ability to detect your snorkel too easily. I could be wrong though. :)

[CCIP]

Oh. Well that's probably not in this Sensors file but in AI_Sensors. In which case I still ought to check with Jungman on this :hmm:

[Jungman]

CCIP
I aready posted a beta, on the regular forum...repost here. :P

Not tested just a beta.

http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=359353#359353

Snorkel_Radar beta fix. Needs some testing..time is not on my side lately...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I need a beta tester to try this snorkel radar fix. The three basic radar sensitivity is 0.03m, 0.3m, and 1.5m.

I changed them to 0.3m, 1.5m, 2.5m respectively.

Just I guess. It is the radar MinSurface values for the 18 radar types used by the enemy ships and airplanes. I modified my AI_Sensors.dat file, which is used by my new SonarDC_20 Mod.

The only affect is the DD are not as Super Lock On in the game for SonarDC_20 Mod.

Knowing that, and if this works decent (or need to change some values) I will make another version for use with the stock game file.

Give it a try...I do not have time to test it yet....Snorkel Mod

http://rapidshare.de/files/3202118/AI_Sensors.dat.html

Just place it in you DATA/Library folder. Backup original.

Your Schnorkel will have a better chance not to be detected by airplanes so easily via the later year radars. You do not need to restart a patrol or carreer -should be immediate from an ingame save....even you periscope...and go slow not to set off visual detection.

[timetraveller]

Yes. Objects at a distance higher than fog end value are totally hidden by fog.
The same with start fog. If you put a negative value, the fog starts behind the camera. This is useful in games for making a thicker ambient.

In this pic I modified the fog start with a value of -100. This shows as more dense water.
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/waterfog_dense.jpg

The scene.dat file has a lot of modification capabilities.

All excellent discoveries Manuel! Great job!! Many people have been looking for these fog values for a long time.

TT

[Jungman]

More stuff from that thread:

----------------------------------------------
Yes, late war, here is data from the Sunderland SNS

[Sensor 5]
NodeName=R01
LinkName=ASVMarkI
StartDate=19410101
EndDate=19430601

[Sensor 6]
NodeName=R01
LinkName=ASVMarkIII
StartDate=19430601
EndDate=19440601

[Sensor 7]
NodeName=R01
LinkName=ASVMarkVII
StartDate=19440601
EndDate=19451231

ASVMarkI Range 8 km MinSurface 1.5m
ASVMarkII Range 10 km MinSurface 1.5m
ASVMarkIII Range 12 km MinSurface 1.5m
ASVMarkVI Range 14 km MinSurface 0.3m
ASVMarkVII Range 16 km MinSurface 0.03m

As you can see, the last years war radar is 0.3m and .03m. That last year war radar would be impossible to hide a snorkel from, and the radar in the Sim.cfg does not have a range penalilty applied to it. Even 0.3 m is pretty darn good to detect you. And that is in June 1943.

Many people have lamented about the snorkel being detected by radar so easy.

All radar is at leat 1.5 meters, then goes to 0.3 meters, then the impossible 0.03m (3 cm radar).

That is why snorkel above less than 1.5 barely about waves will work and not get detected.

I believe this should be modded up to higher values.

First guess is from 1.5m, 0.3m , 0.03m;
to 2.5m, 1.5m, 0.3m.

These will let you snorkel fine until June 1943, then you must dive lower in water to avoid the better radars at 1.5 meters, then after June 1944 the radar is 0.3m almost impossible to not get detected unless in very smooth water to let snorkel work (water waves higher than 0.3m will shut it off).

Destroyers have thier own radar types too.

-----------------------

:o No one saw it?

[Jace11]

:P Hey, guess what I found while fixing the 180 Degree backward Radar?

The enemy AI sensors data is totally in the AI_Sensors.dat file.

It is the silly Sensors.dat that contains your crew freindly AI setting! :doh:

The radar has the MaxBearing as 360; but left the MaxElevation at only 180. Just make the Max Elevation 360 also, and viola...No more bearings from radar 180 out of phase. Bug fixed :hmm:

I also changed MinSurface size to fix the stupid Snorkel detection problem.... :yep:

But the main topic was Beyond seeing visual 8 km. Well, in that file Sensors.dat is where you can change alot of stuff. It was originally PreciseRange=6000m MaxRange=8000m PreciseHeight=15000 MaxHeight=20000, Sweep rate=15, sweep arc, probabiltyDetect, etc. Plus Surface area (so he can see those small airplanes better).

I change MaxRange to 20,000m. Did you know periscope is limited to 5000 precise and 6000m maximum range? No wonder the WO can out see you at night if you are using the Binoculars, UZO, Periscope...not sure though...

Anyway I am going to test UberWatch dude. Longer range to 20 km, but I may have to change the Surface (Area) detection from 40 to 20 like the radar so he can see the small airplanes. Or go into the Airplane.dat file and increase their surface 'area'.

It looks like you can tweak almost anything to ge the Wo to call out a ship, probability to detect too so it is not 100% constantly at long range.

Is this real!!! Have you tested it? That bug was my pet hate. I spent hours trying to fix the radar mirror effect..... hours and hours....

[Jace11]

:P Hey, guess what I found while fixing the 180 Degree backward Radar?

The enemy AI sensors data is totally in the AI_Sensors.dat file.

It is the silly Sensors.dat that contains your crew freindly AI setting! :doh:

The radar has the MaxBearing as 360; but left the MaxElevation at only 180. Just make the Max Elevation 360 also, and viola...No more bearings from radar 180 out of phase. Bug fixed :hmm:

I also changed MinSurface size to fix the stupid Snorkel detection problem.... :yep:

But the main topic was Beyond seeing visual 8 km. Well, in that file Sensors.dat is where you can change alot of stuff. It was originally PreciseRange=6000m MaxRange=8000m PreciseHeight=15000 MaxHeight=20000, Sweep rate=15, sweep arc, probabiltyDetect, etc. Plus Surface area (so he can see those small airplanes better).

I change MaxRange to 20,000m. Did you know periscope is limited to 5000 precise and 6000m maximum range? No wonder the WO can out see you at night if you are using the Binoculars, UZO, Periscope...not sure though...

Anyway I am going to test UberWatch dude. Longer range to 20 km, but I may have to change the Surface (Area) detection from 40 to 20 like the radar so he can see the small airplanes. Or go into the Airplane.dat file and increase their surface 'area'.

It looks like you can tweak almost anything to ge the Wo to call out a ship, probability to detect too so it is not 100% constantly at long range.

To do the radar fix, you change the MaxElevation to 360 for all GERMAN RADAR Sets???

[Jungman]

I only changed the radar MaxElevation from 180 to 360 for the radar sets in the Sensors.dat file. There are 18 total.

These are your own sub radars. I tried it out and it is spot on correct reading. It said the ship was 14 degree in front of me, and sure enough, it was. Use my download or CCIP version of Sensors.dat.

ASFAIK it fixes the reverse radar (MaxBearing=360 and MaxElevation=360 must match or 180 degree is subtracted). I explained it earlier in a post with the link.

[Jace11]

Well, I did the same and it didn't fix it. I will try the file that is going around and see it that does it, but all I did was change ElevationMax from 180 to 360 like you said. Though, I did it just for the radars that are set to 180. Not the RWR or sonar. I think in total there is only 6 radars. You said 18? I am missing something. Anyway, I try this file and test and report back.

[Jace11]

I am sorry but I can't confirm this as a fix. The radar bug is still present. I downloaded the file, it contained the same changes I did. I ran it in the game and the bug is still there. When you tested, did you use the dial? The bug is with the dial, not the spoken report. The spoken report has always been correct, it says 14 degrees when the ship is at 14 degrees, but the spike on the CRT will occur at 360 - 14 on the dial (346 degrees).

I thought about this a while ago and tried many fixes. I think you are modding pure sensors here. The radar rotation in relation to the ship works correctly, I believe the bug is simply an animation problem for the 3D object of the radar DIAL in the radio room. Which I why I was looking at the Interior RR files for a clue on this.

I will go back to my "mirrored.tga" for my dial, which helps me read it, and which I have used for months and I'm used to it now.

I hope someone can fix it though, as I spent along tim trying a while ago. I like the fog fixes though.

[Jungman]

I was using the digital readout when radar moving manually. :o I never knew it was the analog dial TGA that is reversed! So I thought it was fixed. I did not understand the true nature of the bug. :dead:

Radioman does callout the correct bearing then, always has. Why not upload your Mirrored Dial.tga? It should be easy enough to edit with an image editor. What is the file name for the Radar wheel TGA? Similar to the hydrophone dial I guess?

18 radar types I was refering to the enemy radars in the AI_Sensors.dat file. Your own sub radar stuff is in Sensors.dat which there are only so many. Six to eight or so. Sorry if I mispoke.

Messing around with the radar and snorkel problem, got them confused.

[v!por]

Gents;

Reporting on effect of Jung's mod on radar fix...

installed Jungman's fix and while surfaced, Jan 1943, VIIC 1/42, winds at 12+ , used the suggested changes in announcements returning from time compression to 1x. when aircraft spotted.... B4 using latest mod would receive the announcement and had time to crash dive to at least 30 meters and no damage... Now, u pick up air radar... u barely get below ... depth charges etc in water ... u r flooding .... and sink....

Reporting this to let Jungman know what is happening... tried twice and twice same result...

[Jungman]

Snorkel/Radar fix is not for you on the ocean surface, it is for the snorkel being picked up too easy while underwater.

You have another problem.

[jasonb885]

...
You have another problem.

Yeah, an incoming bomber!

:yep:

[CCIP]

Yep. I can tell you for certain that this has nothing to do with this fix. It happens occasionally, with or without any mods. Learning to manuever on surface when they attack suddenly is one way to survive.

[Jungman]

:rotfl: Seen that coming, or not. :dead:
:-j
In other threads and other feedback we are getting a feel for what the heck is going on..it may be the snorkel surface area is big as house and the planes with NO radar (Avengers) still are attacking with lazer visual sights.

This means the snorkel surface area is defined too big. Avengers have no radar yet the magic snorkel brings them running....

:arrgh!: , no wonder those submariners were so popular with the nurses back in port.... :smug:

[CCIP]

Really now? Do you know where that sort of surface area data would be? Maybe all it'd take is just reducing it to a reasonable value.

[Jungman]

Looking for it right now. Comparing its data with the periscope data, and other objects in game.

EDIT: Tt is mentioned by name in the Sensors.sim file.

The only other things in there are the Bold decoy data. The surface area for the snorkel is not given out right, it does have maybe a number for heigth at 13.

[v!por]

Gents:

AC attacks are increasing as of Feb of 1943. Thanks to Jungman at least we get a warning.... crash dive and go left or right.... usually works..... tonight first time hit by a B24

anyone figure out how to find the data in the dat file to visual id aircraft to increase reaction time?

Also, how far out does the radar warning array pick up that magic ac radars at ???? as soon as I pick radar up I must dive or get hit on surface!

Finally, how do you mod and what do u mod to get the XXI earlier...

Thanks

[Jungman]

THe Radar Warning is not very realistic, The sets ere better than this listed.

Metox 4 km
Borkum 5 km
Naxos 7.5 km
Tunis 10 km

Someone said the Tunis could go 60 km, Naxos 40 km, Borkum 20 km, Metox about 8 to 10 km.

I increased MinHeight values for airplane radar only from zero to 2.5m. I ran into alot of Sunderlands and Catilina in April 1943, so at best Mark VI which was 0.3m modded to 1.5m.

Using a VIIC boat and a snorkel, I could go at periscope depth with the snorkel about barely above water waves (windspeed 5 m/s)
at about 1 meter up out of water.

They never found me on radar cruising at 1/3 snorkeling underwater at 11 meter depth. Now if I went 10 meter normal snorkel depth, the radar will pick me up, as it should (second best radar).

No one should have nay problems except in heavy water waves. The snorkel will shut off and on; the snort to be high enough to work may expose you. Winds above about 10 m/s.

Different boats require different depths. This new modification is not for download yet, I am trying to get some more balance andt test.

It will not protect you from the last war radar in June 1944. I did nerf it from .03m to 0.3m so maybe you could hide in CALM water with snorkel below 3m/s. Really, after that date, you did die from airplanes picking you up?

I could change it to 0.6m so keep you snort below that you might just escape.

Another thing, the Visual Size of the snort is so big, even the Avengers, which have no radar, will spot them in the water. That also is part of the problem.

[joea]

Hmmm regarding visual snorkel size. They must have created a pretty large wake easliy seen in the dattime, not at night though.

I still don't have a handle as to how far a periscope snrokel could be seen though. I mean I watch planes in real life...can see them at cruise altitude about 20000 feet or so in good weather and like to watch smaller planes..

Hmmm if subsim would rent a u-boat and some aircraft and did some experiments in the North Sea. Maybe an idea for subclub meeting. :rock:

[CCIP]

Sounds good Jungman. Can't wait for the results, please tell us the values so I can stick them into my file and run them by Beery before RUb 1.43 is out.

Can you confirm the sources on those receivers? Perhaps that's a theoretical range, and in practice it didn't work out to that much?

[Jace11]

MinSurface = does this refer to the minimum surface area reflecting radar back to the transmitter?

If so, the values 0.03, 0.3 1.5 etc (which appear to have been picked because the represent wavelengths of radars)

These numbers are wrong anyway.

0.03 is correct wavelength for late war high res centimetric. 3cm band. above that should be 9.something "called the 10cm band" and above that should be the long wave radar....

I found some good info on these. Anyway my point is, wavelength does not equal surface area detectable or does it. How do you calculate the surface area detectable, from a certain wavelength...?

Is it 3cm x 3cm = 9cm surface area?

[CCIP]

Yea, that should be the reflecting surface, NOT the wavelength. I think you'd agree that 3cm by 3cm in water is pretty darn unrealistic for WWII radar... That's a 1/16th of a CD case's surface, if you'd like a visual comparison there... :huh:

[Jace11]

So for a start, all radar MinSurface values should be squared?

A standard sensor mod should incorporate.

1. Increased MinSurfaceArea for all radars. Surface ship based and aircraft. ASV I and II Long wave 1.5m squared = 2.25m SQ

ASV III to VI = 9.1 (named 10cm S-band) = 82.81cm SQ

LATE ASV VII = 9cm SQ.

But these could be rounded up. Also radars had a minimum range, not modelled...

And airborne radar and ship mounted radars appear to have similar ranges... but aircraft could search from higher up, dramatically increasing range...

[Jungman]

I noticed that in April 1943, the best radar the Catilina and the Sunderland had was the ASVMark I, The default value in game was for MinSurface is 1.5m (the normal start radar, in changed in June 1943 to 0.3m).

I changed that 1.5m to 2.5m plus I even changed the MinHeight of the AIR radars to MinHeight from zero to 2.5m.

SO in the above test, I should have been able to have the snorkel a full 2 meters above the water without radar picking it up.

I think the visual size for the snorkel is what the planes are seeing. It must be barely above the water to get by.

I made a mistake in the above test, the planes have the worst radar ASVMark I at 1.5m default (modded to 2.5m). April 1943.

I do not think the airplanes were attracted byradar from far away. I blew up a liberty ship and they showed up about 1 hour after the deed and were looking for me. I think if they get within visual range the snorkel they will see it as a big house size.

When I am cruising with the snorkel, with this setting in April 1943, using TC of 256x, I am not getting stopped due to radar 'attracting to me', but just plain luck during the day the airplane patrol sees the snorkel from 8 km away visually.

I drove about 100 km with full snorkel in type VIIC at snort depth 10m without detection except via Visual. If I cruise at 11 meters depth, only a close visual will pick me up and that is rare.

I cannot find the 'Surface Size' for the snorkel. It seems to be way too big. If I bump up the radar MinSuface and MinHeight much more, then it will not even see your sub sitting on the water!

Where is this snorkel surface size stored at is the question...if it is in the DLL that is bad....only the Sensors.sim metion the snorkel and that has to due to height and other unkown data there. :hmm:

UPDATE: I ran the U-505 singleplayer mission and blew all the DD escorts out of the water leaving only the Carrier and its Avengers. Avengers have no radar. I never got attacked with my snorkel fully extended 2 meters above water. June 1944 , only the carier will have radar and it is the Type SP radar range 10 km at 0.3m which was modded to 1.5m. I set the MinHeight for that radar also to 2.5m.

I cruised underwater with snorkel 2m above surface with 4000m before they even started to see me on the Noise Meter via Visual. So I know my radar nerf is working.

I think it is the Snorkel SIZE is just too big. I swear it is the size of the sub itself!! :huh:

[Jace11]

each sub has a dat and sim file. obj_snorkel is definately mentioned in the sim. Maybe also elsewhere..

[Duke of Earl]

Suggestion (for what its worth): find the Periscope object size data, bump it up a bit, and use it for the Snorkel... assuming that both objects might be located in the same .dat or .sim file...

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[Jungman]

I cannot find the Snorkel, nor the Periscope data relating to size. :(

[Jace11]

the surface values for German radar in the sensors.dat are all very large numbers..?

20 for late war radars, 40 for early war radars like the GEMA.

??? They work on old 1.5m wavelength band yet they need a large surface...

Maybe the other file is jus plain wrong, maybe a much larger increase is justified, assuming the surface= is equivelent to the MinSurface= for radars in both files.

Why does one set of German radars need 40 sqM and the other only 2sqM.

[Jungman]

Good point, maybe try them values out. Bump them up comparable.

But tonight is time to drink some cold beer. :P Here in the MidWest we have a heat wave at 100 to 103F. Now that does not sound that hot, until you figure the HUMIDITY is higher than hell, the dew point is 80 degrees.

Yes, this is more miserable than Arizona. There even at 114 F the humidity is low.

It is so sticky humid here my mouse will not slide correct.

I wil try out the large MinSurface values as Jace11 suggest and see whats up. Talk to you'll tomorrow.

[wabos43]

Sounds good Jungman. Can't wait for the results, please tell us the values so I can stick them into my file and run them by Beery before RUb 1.43 is out.

Can you confirm the sources on those receivers? Perhaps that's a theoretical range, and in practice it didn't work out to that much?

Yeah that was me, the information I posted in the main forum was this:

Metox: 8 km for ASV I and ASV II radar but not able to detect ASV III and above
Borkum: 20 km capable of detecting ASV III and above
Naxos: 40 km capable of detecting ASV III and above
Tunis: 60 km capable of detecting all ASV models


The above comes from "Type VII: Uboats" by Robert Stern and THE U-BOAT: The Evolution and Technical History of German Submarines
by Eberhard Rossler, so I think the above figures are pretty accurate. Judging by other literature, if the U Boat had the necessary equipment to detect the emissions then there was sufficient time to submerge. Which currently isn't working in the current model. I dont really know how to change these values, but concerning the snorkel problems being detected it seems to me that at the same time the RWR systems need to be changed also.

The range for the Metox depended on the angle that the plane approched from and also the skill of the operator, remember too that it couldn't pick up ASV III at all.

The ranges are the ones given for practical purposes not theoretical. Provided the equipment was installed in the U Boat there was always sufficient time to dive to safety, the problem was that not all radar emissions mean't that you had been detected, so it was up to the operator to determine if the signal was becoming stronger, i.e the aircraft is making a vector towards you. Another issue of course was that RWR equipment in u boats was difficult to maintain and prone to fail, if it did then you were a sitting duck. But make no mistake having RWR was an absolute lifesaver in most situations for a u boat, BUT it did mean that the u boat was now in an entirely defensive frame of mind, i.e picking up signals and diving is fine (you can read many accounts from 1943 where a u boat would dive 20-30 times a night), but if there are so many aircraft patrolling as by 1944 then the uboat cannot spend any significant time on the surface.[/quote]

[Jace11]

Jungman, have you reversed the 180 to 360 changes in your radar mod. I am worried that what you have done is enable radar to search underwater....

Example below, the maxELEV for sonar is 100 and MIN is 90 so it is a beam below horizon. If you havent reversed changes, radar can detect underwater objects...

here is a grapic about changing maxele cause i can't explain well in words...

one of the reasons i can;t type very well is I've been on the beer too, Leffe beer (strong stufF_) from belgium or france.... wheaty...

when I asked for it in bar once, i asked for a pint and they looked at me like I was an idiot, "we only sell it in half pints sir" probably cause its 6.6%, I like the litre bottles though cause they open like champaign... pop!!!

http://img332.imageshack.us/img332/5673/untitled8fe.jpg (http://www.imageshack.us)

[Laffertytig]

any updates on the visibility issues? have we given up on those?

[CCIP]

any updates on the visibility issues? have we given up on those?

Crew visibility has been cracked. Visual visibility is unlikely to be cracked (to more than Manuel's 10km), unless some marvelous discovery happens in Scene.dat, but that's beyond anything I could personally come up with there.

[Duke of Earl]

@CC... by Crew Visibility, do you mean unlocking the camera angles in Camera.dat for the Crew Stations?... if so, can you unlock the camera angles for the Periscope Seat station?....cause that is the ONLY crew station that's still locked up...

As for Manuel's mod for the Fog values in Scene.dat (both Surface Fog and Underwater Fog), I'm having a lot of trouble understanding the hex values that Manuel has highlighted in Scene.dat file...

Are they squared float numbers converted into hex values or what?... I can convert the existing hex values into float point, but they make no sense to me at all... so, I'm not sure what float numbers have to be converted and then inserted as the new hex values to move the Surface Fog back... like shown in Manuel's photos...

Mabybe someone can post something to clear up this issue so that us homegrown hex editors can get it right?

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[CCIP]

CC... by Crew Visibility, do you mean unlocking the camera angles in Camera.dat for the Crew Stations?... if so, can you unlock the camera angles for the Periscope Seat station?....cause that is the ONLY crew station that's still locked up...



No, no, this is all purely about visual range outside, as in, seeing ships through binoculars at any more than 8-10km. We know how to get the crew to do it, but not you. Objects aren't rendered beyond that, but are still tracked.

As for your Camera mod suggestion - I noticed it from before. I've just been 'hiding' from that project a little bit because I've been preoccupied with finishing RUb 1.43 stuff. :roll:
Update on that soon :up:

[Duke of Earl]

@CC... well, if you mean the edits to the Sensors.dat file to increase visual range with Binocs, I've been keepin up with that and making the appropriate changes... not too much trouble since the hex decimal - float point conversions make sense... but, the Scene.dat conversions are a still a mystery...

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[Manuel Ortega]

For the 'FogDistances' value I don't know what kind of data is, too. Maybe a possible enum?
Other values are simple floats, but I don't know what units are.
The main fact is that they are changeable. I'm working on clip distance to get more visibility than the default 10 km.

One important value that I found was EarthRadius. This handles the curvature of the world. Yeah, the SH3 Earth isn't flat, everything is curved depending on this value. For example with a lower number, a ship at 7 km only shows smoke (or masts), and viceversa (for higher values). All except dynamic ocean, that remains always flat.

[Duke of Earl]

Thanks Manuel... I guess it will trial and error for me with the FogDistances Scene.dat values... they might be squared float, so a square root conversion might be necessary to understand the units.. it's anyone's guess right now...

Good luck on the clip distance.. and earth curvature..

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[rulle34]

Hello!
Interesting to see you proffessionals work on this issue :up:

Is there some file ready (or in beta) you can download for increasing the visibility?

Best wishes

/Rulle

[Jungman]

n/a

[Manuel Ortega]

Well, it seems that we will have visual sight increased soon. :up:
- Clip distance is changeable now, I found it :rock:
- Clipping artifacts (Z-buffer fighting) have been reduced a lot :doh:

Just one thing remains: change the sky dome size. This is a hemi-sphere that cuts the horizon, and it does at 10 km from camera position. The problem is that every object behind the dome is not visible (but it is drawn).

One question: what is the visual range at sea in a clear day? Or better: what distance should I put to the camera sight to be coordinated with the AI sensors? If all goes as well as now, we could view ship smoke at 20 km (very very far, but we could see it), then the ship at about 10 km, like now.

[jasonb885]

...

One question: what is the visual range at sea in a clear day? Or better: what distance should I put to the camera sight to be coordinated with the AI sensors? If all goes as well as now, we could view ship smoke at 20 km (very very far, but we could see it), then the ship at about 10 km, like now.

My question would be, why was this apparently doable increased visual range locked?

I wonder if there wasn't a reason, perhaps a flaw in the game engine, which you will be unlocking as well?

[Manuel Ortega]

No idea, but I think it was due to CPU performance. The extra visibility eats about 15 % of total fps.

[Observer]

Well, it seems that we will have visual sight increased soon. :up:
- Clip distance is changeable now, I found it :rock:
- Clipping artifacts (Z-buffer fighting) have been reduced a lot :doh:

Just one thing remains: change the sky dome size. This is a hemi-sphere that cuts the horizon, and it does at 10 km from camera position. The problem is that every object behind the dome is not visible (but it is drawn).

One question: what is the visual range at sea in a clear day? Or better: what distance should I put to the camera sight to be coordinated with the AI sensors? If all goes as well as now, we could view ship smoke at 20 km (very very far, but we could see it), then the ship at about 10 km, like now.

Much of it depends on the height of eye. On a submarine periscope (~50 ft height of eye) I have easily spotted large warships and merchants (100 - 150 ft mast head height) out to 12-15k yards even on a slightly hazy day. These are the masts mostly, not a dark smoke cloud. It's not hard for me to believe smoke from a coal fired boiler could be visible out to 10 nm on a clear day (little to no haze).

[jasonb885]

No idea, but I think it was due to CPU performance. The extra visibility eats about 15 % of total fps.

Sigh.

With IC I'm already running at like 750MB of RAM just for SH3 to run. Fortunately with 1GB of RAM it's not been an issue yet. My load times are insanely long on my old setup though. And my Ti4200 may not be able to deal with the increased visibility.

Probably the same reason why convoys are so small in the stock game. On my system going over 64x compression when near a convoy with 40+ ships is nearly impossible. I'm stuck at 64x or slower. It was laggy even at 64x when I tested a convoy with 60+ ships.

In either case I eagerly await what you all turn up on this issue. I think it's as important as the single merchant reduction and convoy improvements. The 8km limit is simply a bust!

:up:

[jasonb885]

Heh.

I'm using the 10K range mod.

I just spotted a auxiliary cruiser at 29725m in light fog at night.

Anyone else having magic powers?

My WO spotted it, not me.

Sure enough it's correct. I can view it in F12 now, external view.

Weird.

[Jungman]

I never had the WO spot that far, only to less than 10 km.

That file and data CCIP made for download, is that the values you are using? The MaxRange for visual was only increased to 20 km.

How are you seeing in light fog (which cuts vision) at almost just under 30km? :o

Are you sure not using Radar? Even the stock radar the Uboat gets is at best is 10 km FuMO391. So I guess no.

What value for Visual MaxRange are you using for Sensors.dat?

I see, 10 km. That is strange. Eat alot of carrots...

[Manuel Ortega]

I don't understand... can you view a ship (or smoke) at 30km with the Free Cam (F12) ??

[perdu]

wow manuel great work keep on tunning tue scene.dat :)

hope not to many mods will change the scene.dat because it will not be easy to choose after that ;-)

[jasonb885]

I don't understand... can you view a ship (or smoke) at 30km with the Free Cam (F12) ??

I don't know that I can.

When the ship was spotted I confirmed by using , and . to look around at all spotted ships.

[jasonb885]

I never had the WO spot that far, only to less than 10 km.

That file and data CCIP made for download, is that the values you are using? The MaxRange for visual was only increased to 20 km.


Yep, I'm using his download where ever it was in this thread. No other changes or modifications, besides RuB and IC.


How are you seeing in light fog (which cuts vision) at almost just under 30km? :o


No idea. But I saw it with my own eyes. The WO reported a visual contact at 30,000m when asked about nearest visual sightings.


Are you sure not using Radar? Even the stock radar the Uboat gets is at best is 10 km FuMO391. So I guess no.

What value for Visual MaxRange are you using for Sensors.dat?

I see, 10 km. That is strange. Eat alot of carrots...

No radar, it's March 1940.

I personally couldn't see it, but the AI could. That's the only reason I knew it was there and the only way I could pick it up with the ship cam on , and .

[Manuel Ortega]

Ok. I thought that you was talking about seeing a ship 30 km far away from your own uboat (F4). That's impossible, because the visual sight from is automatically cut at about 10 km. This limitation is what I'm working on.

[CCIP]

30k? Are you kidding?

It must have something to do with the fog. Well... technically it's sort of impossible unless something in scene.dat was changed, because the max range even for the WO is only 20k for the Sensors file I posted :huh:

[perdu]

manuel , one thing i'm thinking about..

by changing the sky dome, will it change the aircrafts late apearance ? ( plane visible with googles but not without when a little far )

[jasonb885]

30k? Are you kidding?

It must have something to do with the fog. Well... technically it's sort of impossible unless something in scene.dat was changed, because the max range even for the WO is only 20k for the Sensors file I posted :huh:

I'm dead serious. I thought it was a fluke. I'll mention it if I find it again, but I can't imagine seeing it ever again. Might be a stock game bug even.

[Manuel Ortega]

manuel , one thing i'm thinking about..

by changing the sky dome, will it change the aircrafts late apearance ? ( plane visible with googles but not without when a little far )

There are two domes: a blue sky dome and a smaller cloud dome (this one has the cloud textures). The cloud dome is not opaque, through the clouds we can see the bigger one. The sky dome is opaque and doesn't let objects behind it to be shown. If we could make that dome bigger, we could SEE any object inside, if it is big enough to be seen. We cannot see a plane at 20 km because it is too small.
Anyway this is still an experiment, and I supose that the next step will be put this in coordination with the AI sensor stuff.

[Manuel Ortega]

Hi again

I'm a little stuck with the sky dome. I know where is the value to change, but I don't know what kind of data is it. I know that it's a value called 'Environment', because the devs put this as a comment in the source code that handles the scene.dat:

Environment: Scale the object to make its bounding sphere to fit the camera max rendering distance (e.g. Sky sphere)

This is the hex part of that variable(s) in the scene.dat:

http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/stuck.gif

No understandable floats, no ordered ints,... Any idea?

Any tip from the devs? :hmm:

[sergbuto]

Manuel,

It looks like the Environment chunk on your screnie ends just after the second word "Environment". The rest of the selected-in-green block is the 3D model of the moon. It seems the Environment chunk contains only one value before identifier 24 which is zero. This probably means that the game gets this value somewhere else.

[Manuel Ortega]

....mmmmm.
Yes, I see it now.
According to your advances with 3d ships, what format have the 3d models in sh3? I can identify them as triplets of bytes (X, Y and Z coords).
Do they follow any starting header in the beginning of the 3d data?

[oRGy]

I knew that clever modders would get the visual range fixed. :|\

Any screenshots that show it off though Ortega?

[Lanzfeld]

So is this mod complete and what does it do exactly?

(Dont have time to read all those pages. :88) )

[sergbuto]

According to your advances with 3d ships, what format have the 3d models in sh3? I can identify them as triplets of bytes (X, Y and Z coords).
Do they follow any starting header in the beginning of the 3d data?

yes, they have a header. Luckely, I do not need to decribe it here :) because lurbz has already done that in the other thread http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=40399&start=50.

As to 3D format, it seems it is not exactly 3DS or MAX due to faces being written in somewhat different manner/order. I think lurbz has found a good alternative by associating it with the Wavefront format. It is kind of a hex reminder of that format without vertex normals. It should not be very difficult to make a 3D importer for someone, who knows C#, based on a 3D exporter source code by lurbz.

[Manuel Ortega]

Thanks Serg!!
I didn't know about the DATnavigator tool. It is real amazing, has helped me a lot.
This is the situation now:
- Cloud sphere resized to 20 km radius (for testing)
- Sky sphere pending to resize, but finally located :rock:

Now I have to go to work. This evening I will make all the changes and will put some screenshots to show the advances.

[CCIP]

:D
Very interesting!

Tell us what you get. This might just be what we need...

[Gammel]

Hi Manuel,

how about quitting your job and concentrate on modding? :-j
Just kidding, sorry. Have you made any progress with your mod?
For me, the visibility issue is on of the worst things in stock sh3.
It's just like the wrong diving depths with early game versions or even worse.

Just imagine what fixing would mean to gameplay...
Thank you for all the work you´ve done so far and please keep us updated about any progress you made. :)

[Manuel Ortega]

Hi Manuel,
how about quitting your job and concentrate on modding? :-j


If you all pay for the mod... :lol: :lol: :lol:
Yes, there are some problems again (a lot of values to tweak now):
- Cloud sphere seems to turn invisible at about 12 km. I'm looking for changing that distance.
- Definitively SH3 render is not capable of handle rendering 3d at such distances. This is probably the reason of the stock 8km limitation. With the limit at 20km there is a fps drop in the game engine, mainly when at port and with cities nearby. With a little of luck, this could be due to water reflection. If so, it can be tweaked to reduce the resolution of water reflections at very far distances (with any quality loss).

A couple of images showing current advances:

This ship is at 14.3 km (well, only smoke is visible at that distance)
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/ship14km.jpg

Two aircrafts at about 7.2 km
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh2mods/planes7km.jpg

[Duke of Earl]

Either one of those visuals is quite acceptable with me... much better than the current visual distances..

Are those images with or without fog?

Are there any known side effects on other in-game graphics with these tweaks?... other than the fps slowdown?...

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[Manuel Ortega]

No fog at the moment. I will add a light fog at the horizon to smooth the ocean-sky transition. I haven't experienced anything else but fps slowdown.

[perdu]

nice job manuel,
how far can we see aircrafts WITHOUT binoculars?

[oRGy]

Manuel;

Sounds like fps drop near land and ports is due to the extra amount of terrain being rendered rather than water reflections. If you're tripling the view distance, then the extra amount of triangles rendered will be a multiple of that.

In the open sea, since the non-detailed sea seems to be a flat plane, this isn't so much of an issue.

Slowdown is worth it though to get a realistic view distance. I'm not too worried about frame rates at the moment since I have a GeForce 6600...

[Gammel]

Any chance of a pre-alpha release? :P

[Manuel Ortega]

nice job manuel,
how far can we see aircrafts WITHOUT binoculars?

Well, the same that you see them with the default values. If I remember, in the game with no mods you start to see the planes as small pixels. It's impossible to see them with a size of less than a pixel. This mod would enhace far distance, not near sight.


Sounds like fps drop near land and ports is due to the extra amount of terrain being rendered rather than water reflections


Yes, I know. To make real time reflections in game, the entire world must be rendered twice. Usually, a screen of 256x256 pixels is drawn and used like a texture in the reflecting surface. In SH3, with more water, more surfaces to fill with reflections. The fact is that the default dynamic ocean didn't reach the horizon (it stops at about half the way and from there a single plane works as ocean), and when I increase the ocean size, fps start to decrease, without increasing the visibility yet...


Any chance of a pre-alpha release?


Don't know. Not now, that's for sure. It's a (by far) unfinished product.

[Immacolata]

Yes, I know. To make real time reflections in game, the entire world must be rendered twice. Usually, a screen of 256x256 pixels is drawn and used like a texture in the reflecting surface. In SH3, with more water, more surfaces to fill with reflections. The fact is that the default dynamic ocean didn't reach the horizon (it stops at about half the way and from there a single plane works as ocean), and when I increase the ocean size, fps start to decrease, without increasing the visibility yet...

Keeping default ocean render distance and expanding horizon is not possible? Or was that what gave you the annoying z-buffer conflicts?

[Manuel Ortega]

It is posible, but the difference between the ocean and the fake ocean is very noticeable. Before it was disguised with the fog, but now it has to start far away.
Z-buffer conflicts with ocean are history now. :up:

[Treeburst155]

Keep up the good work, Manuel! Not many could do a mod like this. Even if you fail in the end, your efforts are greatly appreciated.

Treeburst155 out.

[Observer]

Very, very nice.

I would suggest the "light fog" should probably refer to haze instead of fog. Seldom in my time at sea have I seen a "light fog". Instead it was more of a heavy haze on the horizon limiting over the horizon visibility. I think the distances for fogs should be something like this:

-Light fog (haze) ~ 6-7000 meters (~3nm)
-Medium fog ~ 2-2500 meters (~1nm)
-Heavy fog - as it is today, though maybe out 100 or 200 meters.

[Jungman]

Did you people see my SensorPak mod thread that does help spotting airplanes and warships from up to 25 km?

I it is not Visual, using RWR file. It works, but it is only radar detection, not visiual. It is on the regualr forum, not here on the mod forum as it should be. Look at the picture in the "If you think the XXI Sucks thread.." It detects aiplane uisng the RWR out o 20 km.

http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=40248&start=100

[Jungman]

Is that sky dome cutting off at the sea at 20 km? The maximum for radar is set for 25km. I wonder does the game engine take which distance into account?

20km or 25km? It is a 3D model limit. You can push the clouds back and fog to 20 km but the ocean looks funny.

[Immacolata]

Darn if just we had the SDK. Or the devs could fix the limitation by making a low fog ring that sort of simulates vapor haze at the water level but it does not extend further than a few meters above the ocean. Then you could block rendering of the ocean but keep spotting of tall smoke plumes from far off ships. I bet the fog in the game is a big dome too? Or is the fog "modable" to allow spotting above it?

[rulle34]

Did you people see my SensorPak mod thread that does help spotting airplanes and warships from up to 25 km?

I it is not Visual, using RWR file. It works, but it is only radar detection, not visiual. It is on the regualr forum, not here on the mod forum as it should be. Look at the picture in the "If you think the XXI Sucks thread.." It detects aiplane uisng the RWR out o 20 km.

http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=40248&start=100

Hello Jungmann
I guess that you cant use "SonarDC_fix Mod July 14, 2005". You have to change to "Sonar_DC_20" that is in the folder?

Another question; Can you change the file "DepthCharges.zon in "Sonar_DC_20" from "SonarDC_fix Mod" to at least get back blast radius 15 m instead of 20 in Sonar_DC_20 mod?

I don't want to complain, I just like the settings in "SonarDC_fix Mod" and do want snorchel fix and radar fix without have to change to a more difficult deptcharge mod!

Great work with your mods.

Best wishes
/Rulle

[Jungman]

Rulle34

Another question; Can you change the file "DepthCharges.zon in "Sonar_DC_20" from "SonarDC_fix Mod" to at least get back blast radius 15 m instead of 20 in Sonar_DC_20 mod?


You can use the DepthCharge.zon of 15m from the SonarDC_fix to keep the old 15m blast radius. SonarDC_20 is 20m blast. :yep:

The AI_Senors.dat had to be modified since they share. The old Sonar nerf was the DD lost its lock on you when closer than 200 meters. In the new variation, it is more tough, holding on to 150 meters making it harder to escape. It was meant for those wanting more challenge.

I can add the new fixes to the old version and include it in the SensorPak. Then you have a choice. For now, just use the old depthcharge.zon for the original 15m blast and see how it goes until I whip up an update for that. The changes are immediate upon a reload of savegame, and you can remove it too without any damage to your game. :D

Edit: Just extract all files needed including AI_Sensor.dat from this updated original SonarDC_Snorkel_fix

http://rapidshare.de/files/3448541/SonarDC_Snorkel_fix.zip.html

You can also find it in the SensorPak.

[rulle34]

Jungmann, Big thanks!
I took the "depthcharge.zon" and "AI_Sensor.dat" from this "schnorchel_fix" and replaced the same in your "SensorPak". If I understand you right now I will now have radar_mod, scnorchel_mod and the 200 m min sonar and 15 m blastradius?

I hope I got it right :o

This is very nice and you do a very good job Jungmann!

/Rulle

[Jungman]

Yes, you got it correct. :up: Thanks, I hope you enjoy it! :D

The radar warning and visual snorkel spotting problem are a first version. I always welcome feedback in order to improve on the mods.

[Jungman]

If you move the Cloud sphere distance further back to see that ship to 14.3 km in the picture, does the clouds disappear from view?

The values SeaRelativeZMin and Max, SkyRelativeZMin and Max, SeaRelativeZmin and Max; helps with clipping?

EnvData Scale for dynamic ocean is 10 by 10.

What effect is that 'BumpScale' that follows it? It is 16 and 20.

Looks like a familiar number, does it not? Cloud sphere disapears at about 12 km, you shown a pic of a ship at 14.3 km and 20km is max render.

There are some number after the very beginning of the file after it says 'SKY' and just before the EnvData that is backwards, one is 2080 the other 8.125. I feel the sky dome data must be around this area. I will give them a try.

[Manuel Ortega]

If you move the Cloud sphere distance further back to see that ship to 14.3 km in the picture, does the clouds disappear from view?

Yes. Indeed in the pics the clouds are gone.


The values SeaRelativeZMin and Max, SkyRelativeZMin and Max, SeaRelativeZmin and Max; helps with clipping?

Maybe. I'm currently examining all those values


EnvData Scale for dynamic ocean is 10 by 10.

What you refer with this number? I didn't change that one, maybe it defines the size of reflection map or something like that.


What effect is that 'BumpScale' that follows it? It is 16 and 20.

I think it is the roughness of bump effect in water (those small waves shown as textures).


There are some number after the very beginning of the file after it says 'SKY' and just before the EnvData that is backwards, one is 2080 the other 8.125. I feel the sky dome data must be around this area. I will give them a try.
No. The dome is not there. Those values are probably data addresses for something else. The sky domes are in the data\env directory.

[Manuel Ortega]

Cloud problem solved. It was an error of mine while resizing the cloud sphere 3d model, rather than a limitation of z axis view. :oops: :oops:

How are we going to combine this with the enhanced sensors file? I need to know the distances of AI sight, in order to allow the player viewing the ship at the same time the AI does.

[Jungman]

Ortega

Check this out! :P Crew will spot out to 20 km.

Visual 20/20
http://rapidshare.de/files/3458643/SCENE.DAT.html

Darn, my detail post got lost in posting. My crew can spot to 20 km and shows it on the nav map too. Try it out on the singleplayer 'Happy Times'. You will have the crew spot to 20 km (18 km for that one) and see all ships. Use the "L" on the bearing to lock up target even though you cannot see it.

I changed different numbers, try mine out. Can you show me yours so I can compare?

I seen your spotting smoke visualy at 14.3 km, but I cannot see the ship until 10km. I also have clipping at the horizon, I could pull back the fog haze back in to hide it, or just fiddle with the 'xxxx'ZRelative Min Maxvalues to stop the z buffer fight.

I can also adjust the detect time and stuff in the Sensors.dat to make it more chance to spot. I set it for instant crew spotting for now.

Maybe together we can solve this. I adjusted another fog value and camera value next to each other in the scene.dat file. Wierd that it works. Can you post or send me what you got done? Check out what I did. I also changed that EnvScale size from 10 by 10, to 20 by 20 (that limited spotting distance).

Increase ocean 20 by 20 size I only have clipping at the horizon. Not so ugly...

I wonder how you see smoke at 14.3 km, I thought the sky dome cuts it off at 10km?

How are we going to combine this with the enhanced sensors file?

Easy it is in the AI_Sensors.dat file. Just simply increase from 8km to what you wish. I know it well. That is for Enemy AI seeing you.

Important! You reminded me...

I forgot, I did use the 20 km Carrots Mod in the Sensors.dat file so your crew can see out to 20 km also or this will not work!!
CCIP had a download 'stock copy' of it somewhere around here this thread back at page four...or use the one from my SensorPak for download.

[joea]

Jungman, your sensor does work! Spotted a convoy faarther than usual, at night, not 20 clicks, we had clear weather and a moon but my crew were rather tired and I had put my WO to bed. But it was farther than before. :up:

[Manuel Ortega]

Jungman, if you don't mind, let the graphics section to me. I have almost all under control. Concentrate on the AI part, that I have no idea how it works. Keep for sure that I will send you first the first 'beta' of the enhanced visual distance. Then you can test with your modified sensors.dat file if everything is correct. Then we can find together the best adjustments for bot parts, before releasing it.

I say this because there are a LOT of values to modify, and it's useless to research again the work that I have found. Trust me ;) .

Those are the last improvements, testing the mission Happy Times:

That's a very very far convoy. Ships are not visible at all, and smoke is so small that is almost invisible (without binoculars, with luck they show as a little pixel).
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh3mods/convoy1.jpg

That's because the convoy is at 18 km!!
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh3mods/convoy2.jpg

Through the UZO, to check distance (sorry, my game is in spanish, and not thanks to Ubi :rotfl:)
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh3mods/convoy3.jpg

Another silly graphic glitch I have found. To the to-do list :hmm:. In addition, there is no clouds, but it's for testing purposes only, it's not a problem now.
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh3mods/convoy4.jpg

[v!por]

Jungman:

Sorry I did not get this posted earlier... follow-up to earlier post..

Again.. I have VIIC 1/42, April of 43, snorkel, going north from Bersen to rraid northern routes to Mermask...

Installed Jungman's rwr mod, snorkel and visual mods.

I am traveling at 11 meters and with both attack and obser scopes up looking 180 and 0 ...

rwr warnings are great... able to dive in sufficient time... Jungman... the bombers.. always attack well behind my course.... never near me.... The B24s are hardest to detect..... not sure if rwr or if its ai on scopes....

Thought feed back would help and thanks for these mods....

South Florida may have gotten up to 90s today :<)

[Egan]

Manual, the smoke in your screen shots - are you using a mod so that it stands out better? I'm testing much the same sort of visual set up just now but I'm darned If I can see anything at those distances.

[Manuel Ortega]

I'm not using any smoke mod. It's normal that you can't see smoke (or anything) farther than 8 km. The default game engine cuts at 10 km and objects start to fade at 7.5 or 8 km.
This is a visual mod that I'm developing. It's not published yet, and has to be finished. There are a lot of values that have to be changed, not only in the scene.dat file. There are 3 cloud types (clear, cloudy and overcast), all of them with 4 fog parameters (no fog, light, medium and heavy), and 3 more types of ocean (Arctic, Atlantic and Mediterranean). Multiply those numbers and you get all the combinations that have to be modified...

[Immacolata]

Now that is a sight for sore eyes. Convoy spotting at 18 km, I like that. To further enhance visual range than that would be needless IMO, this looks like a vast improvement already.

I wonder if the haze value can be altered to cover a clipping real ocen/pseudo ocean edge?

And this is for mr. AI sensor fixer Jungman: does the crew and WO sensor values take haze and night conditions into consideration for spotting ranges? Or do they have 20/20 cybernetically enhanced robot laser eyes that spots a gull at 20000 yards on a moonless night?

[Duke of Earl]

Jungman, your sensor does work! Spotted a convoy faarther than usual, at night, not 20 clicks, we had clear weather and a moon but my crew were rather tired and I had put my WO to bed. But it was farther than before. :up:

Ditto for me too... spotted a Fletcher DD @ 20km... amazing!... :huh: ... also, aircraft visual spotting ranges have doubled too!!... :huh: ... and this occurred @ 64 TC...

Horizon clipping is visible in Binoc view... High Altitude ocean area is a smaller square shape... and no smoke on the horizon... but I can overlook small things like that...

This is going to be super when Manuel gets all the visual elements polished up...

Thanks Jungman and thanks Manuel... :up:

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[Treeburst155]

Wow!! This gets better every day. Thanks Manuel and Jungman!

Treeburst155 out.

[Manuel Ortega]

Jungman, I have sent you a PM.

Visual adjustments are near completed. I have found a equilibrate set of values that works well.

Current maximum distances (and maybe the definitive):
- No fog: 18200 m
- Light fog: 9500 m
- Medium fog: 4600 m
- Heavy fog: 600 m

Land can be seen a 10% farther than objects.
Sun, Moon and stars have been relocated too. Now moon and sun are half the original size.
There is a little of clipping on land that happens when appears on sight. Maybe it can be fixed with more tweaks.

The fps loss is a little agressive. In my pc I get about 12 fps while at port, with all those cranes, people, buildings, etc... But at high seas it remains above 25 fps. It's an old AMD 1700 XP with 768 MB RAM and a RADEON 9600. Sure that you have one better ;)

[Observer]

That sound very good Manuel! :up:

[Treeburst155]

Report on Jungman's scene.dat tweak:

I just got a "nearest visual contact, 18,300 meters" from my WO when I asked for it. This happened on October 1 at 0600 on the Halifax/Liverpool convoy route due south of Iceland. Windspeed was 4 mps, partial cloud cover with light fog.

I had no visual weirdness unless I elevated the F12 view to more than double the height of the F4 view and looked at the horizon. Even then, no big deal.

I'm also set up with Jungman's "SensorPak", in case that matters.

I have one question. Should I be able to fairly accurately determine enemy range, course, and speed at close to 20,000 meters? With the Assisted Plotting Mod (in RUb) I can now do just that from WO provided info alone. I may turn off the Automatic Map Updates just so I get a little inaccuracy in plotting.

Perhaps the WO can be made to NOT see things at extreme distances EVERY time. It would be nice if he messed up on the range estimate a little too, say +/- 10%. ;) The more you do, the more they want. :lol:

Thanks again, and Keep Up the Great Work!!

Treeburst155 out.

[Jungman]

Manuel those fog values look good. I sent a PM back.

As was said here does the crew and WO sensor values take haze and night conditions into consideration for spotting ranges? Or do they have 20/20 cybernetically enhanced robot laser eyes that spots a gull at 20000 yards on a moonless night?

This will be a problem. The enemy AI and your crew and a few other Sensor and sim.cfg values must be all changed and play balanced tested. You can make the AI take into account fog, light level, sweep time, probablity to detect, surface size area, Min MaxSensor Height, plus range distance modifiers.

If this is not changed in the CFG and AI_Sensors.dat and Sensors.dat, your crew will have superman laser eyesight and it will take away the fun for you to spot a ship far off. Plus the enemy AI will see you too. And you thought airplanes were bad in the stock game....


Those several values need to be tweaked to find a decent spotting 'ability' over all. I have experience with what these changes do in game. it is more complex than what it looks like to achieve a fun balance between them all.

Plus it will need to be integrated into any mod the affect the AI_Sensors.dat and Sensor.dat. Such as SonarDC, RF_Detect, etc.

Or for those that wish a stock game will have its own version too.

[Treeburst155]

Same mission but weather changed to heavy rain, heavy fog, and night. As soon as I got a "Ship Spotted", I asked the WO for nearest visual contact. It was at 4,200 meters! So weather and time of day still have a significant effect on the WOs abilities, just as it should be. Woohee!!

Hmmm.....I'm seeing 4 km at night in heavy rain/fog. Well, this is probably tweakable, correct Herr Jungman? I'm available to test this visual range question extensively if needed.


Treeburst155 out.

[Jungman]

Yes it is, and it needs alot of factors to consider. That is what I can help with greatly. All that stuff is changeable. The fog/rain distances affects are in the Scene.dat and I need to edit Manuel Visual beta Mod personally to work with the AI sensors.dat files and cfg files.

Thanks for the feedback, it is important. :D I am waiting to work with Manuel's beta Visual mod for play balance AI Sensors tweaking to get a decent behavior.

I want a chance for you spot at the horizon, as in the WO is not perfect. I can make this happen, even a few surprises...did not see that warship coming?

I think you still would want your Radar Warning, Active Radar and Hydrophones to have a use. Else, what good are they?

All these various sensors need to be changed to get a decent gameplay. Even the enemy AI radar will be a mute point with super seeing ability.

I must make these tweaks for his visual beta mod because it will not be the same for my hacked scene.dat (I would finish it and clean it up -but Manuel would like me to work on the AI sensors balance on his Mod.) Time is never enough to go around.

It does take alot of careful testing to get a good working model so that all your tools at your disposal are useful. Plus you do not want the AI enemy ships and airplanes to be doing odd things.

[Manuel Ortega]

There is a little of clipping on land that happens when appears on sight. Maybe it can be fixed with more tweaks.


Clipping problems fixed. :up:

By the way, I'm tweaking the sensors files and it's not as difficult as I thought.
From sensors.dat I only have changed the MaxRange and PreciseRange in the Visual sensor, and I don't think that it needs more modifications.
From sensors.cfg I changed the Visual fog factor and Visual light factor.
That's all. Now ships appear on sight at the same time that my crew spot them, and tested in all weather conditions with no problems.

But night conditions are different. I have tested several values but when a ship is correctly detected during night (a lot closer), it is a total mess when dawn and dusk, with ships clearly visible in horizon by player but not by the AI.

Expect a release of this mod in the next days... ;)

[rulle34]

Expect a release of this mod in the next days... ;)

Looking forward to this mod! :up:

Thank you all for good work!

/Rulle

[Jungman]

That is the basic changes. I though maybe you may want the WO not to be perfect, by increasing the Sweep Time under Visual in the Sensors.dat file for 15 seconds to maybe something higher? Plus change the Arc Size and Probability_within_arc?

Probability_within_arc. is set for 95%. I though it would be fun for the AI crew not to have such good visual spotting at long distance.
Even in the stock game, the Watch crew is very quick to spot a ship and is almost never wrong. I though make it more random and time for them to see out that far just for a fun factor.

The fact that you can hear contacts using the hydrophones the AI crew misses on purpose. The same for visual spotting at distance -make it so if you are personally looking for ships far away, you will do a better job that the watch crew missed.

Dawn and dusk setting for the light factor will always be a problem. It is it tied mainly to the on/off redlight condition. But maybe something else can be changed.

Of course, we still would want our Radar Warning, Active Radar, and hydrophones to have a use?

[Treeburst155]

Situations where the player sees better than his crew do not bother me, as long as the distance is realistic for conditions. We already have something similar with the hydrophone. The crew can be a little blind and a little deaf. If you want it done right, do it yourself. :D The only small problem would be when operating under high TC. The crew can't be TOO blind.

The Radar Warning, Active Radar, and Hydrophone should still be useful when visibility is less than perfect. The worse the "visual sensors" the more useful the others become.

Treeburst155 out.

[CCIP]

We're getting close it seems. Heh - sorry, been out of the loop here a bit myself, but this seems like a very good picture I'm seeing here.

I have no idea which values you're working with in scene.dat, so I can't exactly test it now. But I'll be on it the moment you have it out, I hope :)

[Jungman]

I thought to keep the maximum crew visual range down some from the maximum visual spotting range. That way you can as the captain can go on the deck yourself and see a ship's smoke on the horizon first. Just for more fun gameplay.

So far, I can say there is alot of extra good stuff in Manuel's Mod. It works well so far, no real FPS drop for me. I have a P4 2.8 Ghz and 2 Gig RAM, 9600 pro video card. :P

I think shorting the crew visual in the Sensors.dat file by 2 km is good for me. I want to be able to spot a ship first too. Precise range at 13.5 km Max Range remains at 17.5 km. Plus I increased the visual spot sweep time from 15 seconds to 30 seconds. There are four men spotting plus watch officor. That makes for alot of "Ship spotted!" messages. So I reduced the frenquency that way. That is my only small concern.

It is a personal choice. I just prefer for me to have the longest spot range over my crew, and the crew of five men on deck is alot of eyes on the sea. I like some randomness to the spotting at great distance.

I want to try some more testing at dusk to night and see the spotting behaviour. How he changed that Sky Dome is amazing. It is beyond my ability and understanding. :|\ So far so good.

If you want alternate versions of Sensors.dat file for other combo mods that share that file, it can be done easy enough. Plus the fog water was made more opaque. Those changes can be done to the users taste. A faster moving fly camera is also included.

Do you think the watch crew should have some 'nerf' randomness? :hmm:

[sergbuto]

Manuel,

How drastic is the effect of the mod on the fps rate? I do not have the high-end computer at the moment.

[oRGy]

I agree with Jungman's view - the player should if he's good be able to spot things *a little* before the Watch crew. Only thing is of course that the AI spots *you* at a realistic distance, and not 20km off. The U-Boat presents a small profile after all...

[Jungman]

I need a little help on something while testing. My Radar Warning Receiver will not work. :-?

Everything looks OK in Sensors.dat. I think maybe if the visual is detecting the target, the radar warning does not give a redundent message?

The periscope and visual views use square icons. Whereas sonar contacts use lines. But so does the Radar Warning use contact lines just like sonar.

I thought that when on the surface of the water, the visual and radar warning both works at the same time? Maybe not displayed but I would expect a message "Radar Signals Detected".

The normal active radar works. I did make a RF_Detect mod that increases the distance at which RWR works. Does not seem to work either way. All it did was increase the range of RWR and sweep time.

[Manuel Ortega]

Plus the fog water was made more opaque. Those changes can be done to the users taste. A faster moving fly camera is also included.

I increased the underwater fog to a more realistic one (it's a little mod that I did a couple of weeks ago). Sure that people that wants realism at surface visibility also wants realism when underwater.
The fly camera that I plan to include in the final version is the default game camera. In the beta version I installed the amazing FreeCamPro from CCIP in order to have a faster camera and unlimited height for testing purposes.
CCIP, with a little of coordination, both mods can be easily compatible ;) because yours is 'a must be'.

Regarding crew ability to spot a ship, I prefer to keep player and crew opportunities equally. I realize in one of the tests that when there is heavy fog, the ship appears in sight at about 600 m. In those situations you already know where the ship is (by hydrophone) and you are waiting for the ship to appear in the fog in a few moments. I found a silly situation when the ship was entirely on sight for 10-15 seconds and my crew hasn't spotted it yet :P loosing time to shoot if the player doesn't use manual TDC (the locking tool doesn't shows until crew has detected it). So I matched it and both player and crew should spot ships at the same time.

@sergbuto, fps rate will decrease near ports mostly. In my case, with an old AMD 1700 XP with 768 MB RAM and a RADEON 9600, I get about 12 fps in the most adverse situations, and keeps above 25-30 in high seas. Not too much differences with game default values, when I had about 13-15 fps in port.

[sergbuto]

Sure that people that wants realism at surface visibility also wants realism when underwater.

Not always true. F.e. I do not use periscope for underwater views and therefore do not have a problem with stock water transparency from the realism point of view. On the other hand I would like to keep the stock underwater visibility for making screenshots because F12 external viewing is not realistic anyway.

[Manuel Ortega]

I will make two versions, then.

[Jungman]

Manuel , when I place in the scene.dat file, the Radar Warning seems to not work.

Is there a priority override for messages that negates the RWR from giving the message " Radar Signals Detected"? Due to the Visual being so large.

I do not see any reason why the scene.dat will affect this.

Any thoughts?

When I use the SkyColor file which allows see beyond 10 km, it is OK. The sensor.dat file is OK. It is only when I place in the scene.dat file I loose the Radar Warning.

I did notice one odd hex value that maybe was left over in doing a file comparison. I did not think the scene.dat file would affect the RWR. Unless it is that one odd single hex value.

Here is the one value I do not understand in Scene.dat at adress 000001e2 is 3c. In the original it is 0f. :hmm: Start of the file, right before change to earth radius.

[Manuel Ortega]

That value is the scale of dynamic water. It's built by tiles. By default it is a matrix of 15x15 tiles. This changes the matrix to 60x60. I think this has nothing to do with radar warning, but I can be wrong.

[Duke of Earl]

Please excuse the interruption gentlemen...

I have T1 torpedoes with a range of more than 7500 meters... I am using Jungman's 20/20 mod...

My eyeball can see targets beyond 5000 meters with Periscope... I let the WE setup all my torpedo solutions... but I cannot shoot at them until they are inside 5000 meters... because the WE does not 'see' targets outside 5000 meters... also, I do not use manual Targeting for solutions...

Maybe some consideration to this issue?... increase Periscope 'visual' range for AI to 7500 meters maybe?...

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[Jungman]

Maybe some consideration to this issue?... increase Periscope 'visual' range for AI to 7500 meters maybe?...


Easy enough. That value is set for 5000m in the sensors.dat file by default. Nothing hidden about it. You can see farther than 5000m yourself, but you "Lock" range will not hold on target.

Just use an hex editor, search sensor.dat file for "periscope" just after it a value in float. Change it from 5000 to 7500 for PreciseRange. Change the MaxRange value from 6000 to 8500m.

It has been a pet peeve for me too. I will add a 7500m to the Sensors.dat file in RF_Detect Mod for you to use. That Mod increases the worthless radar dectectors range to higher level, has the Visual range increase to work also with Manuel visibility Mod.

Or Manuel can simply add it to the sensor.dat file in his Mod also. It will be a good fix. Thanks Duke.

I need to redo RWR mod to work with the new fog ranges in Visibility Mod for historic reasons and gameplay. I can slip that near sighted periscope buglet fix in there. Also you will find it in a newer version of SensorPak later.

That value is the scale of dynamic water. It's built by tiles. By default it is a matrix of 15x15 tiles. This changes the matrix to 60x60. I think this has nothing to do with radar warning, but I can be wrong.

Thanks Manuel. It seems to happen when I replace the scene.dat file only.

It does not occur with the sensors.dat or the added Skycolor.dat. Only when I add the scene.dat the ability to pick up RWR is gone. If I put the original back in, the RWR works.

If you just use the sensors.dat and stock scene.dat and leave out the skycolor.dat, you will not see past 10 km but the RWR will work. If you then add in the modified scene.dat then the RWR is not working.

I am rechecking all my files for corruptions and retesting, it could be something on my end.

Maybe give out a copy to CCIP and others who are also really good at spotting buglets or verify if something is odd?

[Duke of Earl]

Thanks Jungman... very true about the long distance 'Locked' View... it won't hold but just a few seconds... just good enough for the WE to ID and get a spot solution, but not good enough to shoot on...

By the way, today I was playing a mission with a souped up XXI... I believe it had Naxos detector (coil spring antenna)...

In calm weather, I was getting Radar Detects from Wellingtons in the 14k - 18k range... of course, Naxos is high-end equipment, but it seemed to work ok..

Radar detects from DD's @ sea level come in at a lower range than aircraft, but it is still a very respectable distance...

I am using your Version 1 SensorPak mod files...

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[Immacolata]

That is the basic changes. I though maybe you may want the WO not to be perfect, by increasing the Sweep Time under Visual in the Sensors.dat file for 15 seconds to maybe something higher? Plus change the Arc Size and Probability_within_arc?

Probability_within_arc. is set for 95%. I though it would be fun for the AI crew not to have such good visual spotting at long distance.
Even in the stock game, the Watch crew is very quick to spot a ship and is almost never wrong. I though make it more random and time for them to see out that far just for a fun factor.

The fact that you can hear contacts using the hydrophones the AI crew misses on purpose. The same for visual spotting at distance -make it so if you are personally looking for ships far away, you will do a better job that the watch crew missed.

Dawn and dusk setting for the light factor will always be a problem. It is it tied mainly to the on/off redlight condition. But maybe something else can be changed.

Of course, we still would want our Radar Warning, Active Radar, and hydrophones to have a use?

Dusk dawn or not, darn, I am reinstalling SH3 tonight in sheer anticipation of this mod. Thanks Jung and Manuel. I really didnt think the game was tweakable to this extent.

I'd say that dawn dusk conditions should rather have the crew spot ability WORSE than better, since it gives you a good reason to be on the conning tower at least twice a day to see if you can out-spot your WO :)

[Immacolata]

I thought to keep the maximum crew visual range down some from the maximum visual spotting range. That way you can as the captain can go on the deck yourself and see a ship's smoke on the horizon first. Just for more fun gameplay.

So far, I can say there is alot of extra good stuff in Manuel's Mod. It works well so far, no real FPS drop for me. I have a P4 2.8 Ghz and 2 Gig RAM, 9600 pro video card. :P

I think shorting the crew visual in the Sensors.dat file by 2 km is good for me. I want to be able to spot a ship first too. Precise range at 13.5 km Max Range remains at 17.5 km. Plus I increased the visual spot sweep time from 15 seconds to 30 seconds. There are four men spotting plus watch officor. That makes for alot of "Ship spotted!" messages. So I reduced the frenquency that way. That is my only small concern.

It is a personal choice. I just prefer for me to have the longest spot range over my crew, and the crew of five men on deck is alot of eyes on the sea. I like some randomness to the spotting at great distance.

I am on the same page as you are on this subject. The reason I stopped playing SH3 was precisely because of my EITHER 100% or 0% watch crew and super low visual range. It made playing RUb unbearingly hard for me because in order to spot anything by chance I had to so hydrophone sweeps rather than use my bincos to scan the horizon. This fix will make the RuB ship traffic reduction much more fun to play with I think. The best moments of the game is when I am on the tower using my binocs and deck uzo. The stock game really broke the gameplay that involves tracking and stalking your prey. Only the hunt it self was any good. I hope that the mod improves on this aspect. Sounds like it :) So keep the crew a bit worse for me please.

Do you think the watch crew should have some 'nerf' randomness? :hmm:
You mean they should get worse chances for spotting? Yes I think so. At 8 km visual range you REALLY dont want your crew to miss a contact. With 18 km range its much more important to have their spotting ability lowered to compensate for their much farther reach.

You know, I cant help think that Ubi Romania somehow build the game for this but they for reasons unknown nerfed their own game nearing release, and jacked up the radio reports and spot ability of the crew to compensate for their suddenly shoddy rendering range.

[Gammel]

For me this is one of the most important
mods so far.
I have stopped playing since i saw you are working on
that visibility issue. If you succeed it will add much more realism
and playability to the game!

- No more hydro checks on sunny days. :sunny:
- Perhaps realistic gun battles between capital ships
- no more open fire at 6000 yards .
- convoy shadowing by visual sight possible
- lower framerates :-j
...


Are the Developers ever have offered some kind of technical support for you? I guess not, but it wouldn´t hurt them very much
if they do. :up:

Thanks very much for your efforts so far, it must be a hell of work.

Of course thanks to all other modders here as well, and thanks for all your silenthunter 2 mods i used too. lol

[rulle34]

I fully agree with Gammel! :up:

Don't want to be nagging, but how far is a DL of this mod?

[Observer]

I've used the version Jungman posted above. Here's my feedback.

In general, I like this mod. I'll like it better when the visible distance for smoke gets resolved.

Here are a couple of things I didn't like, or were annoyances:

1. I'm not sure I'm crazy about this mod when used with assisted plotting. Way too much info, and needs to be toned down. I really, really like assisted plotting, but I don't like getting full contact details at 20 km. I think it's going to take some hex editing, but would it be possible to only draw precise contact info for hull up contacts? Maybe set a range of 6-8 km? I don't know how to fix this in any of the config files, but I'll have a look.

You should be able to determine direction of relative motion, course and speed, as well as a rough range, but not to the current precision. Stadimeters can't do that well especially since you can't ID the contact. It takes an OTH range table, and a generic mast head height to estimate range.

It would also be nice, again, don't even know if this is possible, to change the WO report on range to "Over the horizon." or "Hull down." instead of "19999.567432 meters". I suspect this is hard coded and not possible, even with creative hex editing.

2. Fog has no meaning. I was in a "medium" fog and could see contacts at 20 km.

3. This is really annoying, but the time compression settings must be updated in the players Main.cfg. You've either got to increase the "HunterState" to 128 or 256 (potentially very dangerous), or change the 3DRender to something less than 32x. With RUb fatigue, my crew was completely zapped after a single convoy attack attack because my TC was limited to 32x.

[Jungman]

Observer: that quick hacked scene.dat file for download was only to show it was possible to detect at long range visually. :cool:

It has no fog, and lots of clipping. Use Manuel's Visibility Mod when it is released. As for me, I am trying to figure out an issue.

It seems that when I use the mod, I lose RWR. It maybe the way the game prioritize messages. :-? If you can 'see' a ship, why then need to know if there is radar beaming at you?

I would, in case the ships radar or airplanes pick me up. The game I think uses it different. I am not talking about the active radar on your sub.

I think if I am in heavy fog, and cannot see the ship, then maybe the RWR will give me a message if ship or airplane has active radar.

[Observer]

Ahhh!

I think the difference is between "precise" and "imprecise" contacts. I suspect it works the same way as the periscope and sonar contact lines.

[jasonb885]

...
It seems that when I use the mod, I lose RWR. It maybe the way the game prioritize messages. :-? If you can 'see' a ship, why then need to know if there is radar beaming at you?
...

That would be my guess. The game has so many failures with respect to detection, it would not surprise me in the least. Unfortunately, radar detector detection is not just finding a contact, but valuable information as to whether you have been detected already or not.

Hopefully there will be some workable solution.

As long as you're getting shout outs whenever you spot a contact, though, that would at least be something. I'd certainly prefer the radar detector to go off if there's radar, in addition to any sightings, though.

Wish I had time to test... Sigh.

[Jungman]

OK, good news (or bad) what I found out about how the RWR works in game (Your own active radar behaves goofy too but that is another story).

The Radar Warning Receiver is modelled by the game strangely. The stock values are from Metox 4 km to Tunis 10 km.

The RWR do NOT detect radar beaming at you! :huh: It will 'show' you the enemy that is using active radar only if there is no way for a Visual Sighting (such as heavy fog or night time).

Because your visual sight is increased, the RWR will never fire off, unless you get lucky upon surfacing your boat in that transition time.

I used my RF_Detect mod that has increased range and detection time for Metox 10 km to Tunis at 25 km for a test.

I can get the "Radar Signals detected!" message from the radio man if the enemy radar is beyond visual range. My Sensor.dat for the RF_Detect Mod is set for the maximum visual at 25 km. Manuel Sensor.dat is set for 17.5 km.

I will get the "Radar Signals detected!" message from ships or planes between the 17.5 km maximum visual range and the 25 km maximum detect range of the Modified Tunis on a XXI sub.

Funny the RWR is detecting active radar signals from a ship 22 km away that only has a maximum radius active radar of 10 km! When the radar is not beamed on you (impossible you are too far away)! :o

If you are inside the visual range of 20 km (or whatever it is set for) you will get no RWR message.

My last test is to go into heavy fog 600m, I know that is beyond the visual range, and see if the stock RWR and modded RWR will work.

The stock range values for RWR are all below 10 km, which makes you think you are picking up the active radar from the ship beamed at you, actually that is not true. It is more like GPS unit locator.

My active radar guy will show the radar blip from a ship but will not talk to me or show a message. But that is another problem.

I think they meant the RWR (and maybe your subs active radar) to only work under non visual conditions??

With increase in visual, it cancels it out. I hope it works under non visual conditions such as heavy fog and night time. I need to test that.

Next if that works, then the RWR ranges and your subs active radars will need to be tweaked proportionally higher in order to match the increase in visual sight and new fog value ranges , else they will not work very well (or not even at all for stock RWR for the most part - except maybe in heavy fog).

[Manuel Ortega]

Great, Jungman. You are close to solve that ;)

I will be very busy this week, and maybe next too. The main objective of this mod was to increase the visual sight (graphically speaking) and I think that I have done it. But I don't know how sensors work in this game, you have done much more research on that part.
I think that I will release what I have as a beta mod, and you can tweak it as much as you wish, fixing HFDF's, detection distances, and all that stuff.
The other option is wait until I learn how it works, so I can finish it completely, but it can take a lot of time...

I have to say that I don't find any serious bugs with the current status of the mod, only that ships can be spotted at night from a long distance and some minor fps drops, but some of you have reported some bugs that I can't find. Even the radar detection works well. Maybe I miss something.

What do you think?

[Gammel]

I think

RELEASE IT NOW! :rock:


:-j

[bobo]

following this one very closely........can't wait even for a beta LOL if ya need anyone to help test and provide feedback be it in general or on specific issues just let me know. I'd be glad to help. :arrgh!:

I really appreciate ya'lls hard work!!!

[perdu]

wel if there is so few bugs, aiting will be hard for thoses who follow the topic

all depend of the numbrer of frustated guy you want lol

[CCIP]

Well, I got to try it out - my impressions...

Looks good. The fog-less horizon seems odd after you've played the default game for a while, but it kinda looks more realistic. Though the game's resolution shows there, and the horizon can get pretty jaggy sometimes - if only the AA worked properly with the game...

Yea, there's an FPS loss. But for doubling visibility, it's not a big price to pay. Still rather manageable, even with the bigger Improved Convoys in sight.

One comment: is it possible for you to make it compatible with RUb's sky colors? (these make for dark water at night)

[Jungman]

only that ships can be spotted at night from a long distance

Testing more last night, I noticed my crew was spotting at 17 km at night! But it is a game engine tweak, not your visibility mod that is causing it.

Go ahead and release a beta. The more people can test it, the better. It is difficult to describe the RWR problems, except that if it s within the 17.5 km max visual range, it will not report. That is the way the game engine logic is set up.

I think alot of these things can be worked out through the Sensors.dat file. Just a whole lot of testing.

Right now you know about the 'Long distance Spotting at Night'. I can confirm this while testing last night.

I am next testing for spotting ships in a heavy or medium fog, and if the RWR works when visual is impossible. THe game's model of what a RWR does is wrong. It is only when your Visual distance is increased this goofy behaviour shows up.

I think maybe the first thing is to make 'Long Range Spotting at Night' fixed. I am playing around with the Sensor.cfg light levels too.

In the stock game, the watch crew was very good at spotting almost to around 6 km at night even though it was pitch dark! It was a problem from the start. It is just still there.

The light level modifier only adjust a factor in determining time to detect (sensitivity * range * factors). Beyond that value, detection time is doubled. I think the default values for senstivity for the watch crew is way too good. With a five man watch crew, that is alot of visual spotting. Nerfing this to make it work better, then I think the Moddified and Stock RWR radar warnings will work again more often. I do hope they work in heavy fog.

Manuel, what program or tool did you use to modify the 3D model data in scene.dat?

[Beery]

Can we please see some screenshots of the new horizon?

[CCIP]

Sure thing, Beery:

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/8340/hor14cu.th.jpg (http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hor14cu.jpg)http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/650/hor33vf.th.jpg (http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hor33vf.jpg)http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/688/hor45he.th.jpg (http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hor45he.jpg)
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/7631/hor52et.th.jpg (http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hor52et.jpg)http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/9094/hor67xq.th.jpg (http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hor67xq.jpg)http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/5043/hor70ah.th.jpg (http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hor70ah.jpg)
(this is the huge Happy Times convoy, except the last screenshot - thus the lower FPS).

[Gammel]

Ok, thats enough, im a patient person but...

If you don´t release it now i´ll torture my birds.
Try to mention those little innocent creatures...
You have 5 minutes.

[sergbuto]

Testing more last night, I noticed [i]my crew was spotting at 17 km at night!

With the current beta version of Manuel's mod and the stock game my crew can detect ships only within 8000 m even during day time and at good weather.

[jasonb885]

Testing more last night, I noticed [i]my crew was spotting at 17 km at night!

With the current beta version of Manuel's mod and the stock game my crew can detect ships only within 8000 m even during day time and at good weather.

Are you saying the mod has no effect on your system?

[sergbuto]

I am saying that I can see ships at ~18000m but not my crew till the ships are at about 8000m.

[Manuel Ortega]

Here is last version:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh3mods/visibility_mod_v091.zip
I will make it a little more 'public' once the problems are gone.

I must say that I'm able to see far ships (~17000 m) and my crew too, at least on surface. At periscope depth, it takes a little time to my crew to see a so far ship.

[Jungman]

Serbuto, make sure your Sensors.dat file has your Visual MaxRange set to 17.5 km and PreciseRange set to 17.0 km.

That is the changes made in Manuel's Visibility mod. You must increase your visual distance beyond 8 km in that file.

--------------------
Spotting at night by crew is same as daytime. It would seem these setting in Sensors.CFG has no effect in game which affects your crew. Here is changes made by the beta mod. I tried alot of combos, it is as if the game ignores these values. As for the enemy AI Sim.CFG the modifiers seem to work.

[SensorParameters]
; Sensors Detection Parameters

;Visual.
Visual range factor=0.5 ;[>=0] 0.5
Visual fog factor=0.85 ;[>=0] 1
Visual light factor=1.5 ;[>=0] 0.8
Visual waves factor=0.8 ;[>=0]
Visual speed factor=0 ;[>=0]
Visual aspect=0.9 ;[>=0]
Visual enemy speed=0.2 ;[>=0]
Visual noise factor=0 ;[>=0]
Visual sensor height factor=0.5 ;[>=0]
Visual already tracking modifier=600 ;[detection probability modifier], most accurate, once a contact is detected it will lose it very hard
Visual decay time=200 ;[>0] already tracking bonus decay, in seconds
Visual uses crew efficiency=false ;[true or false]

;Radar.
Radar range factor=1 ;[>=0]
Radar fog factor=0 ;[>=0]
Radar light factor=0 ;[>=0]
Radar waves factor=0 ;[>=0]
Radar speed factor=0 ;[>=0]
Radar aspect=1 ;[>=0]
Radar enemy speed=0 ;[>=0]
Radar noise factor=0 ;[>=0]
Radar sensor height factor=0 ;[>=0]
Radar already tracking modifier=10 ;[detection probability modifier]
Radar decay time=150 ;[>0] already tracking bonus decay, in seconds
Radar uses crew efficiency=false ;[true or false]

Now what difference does checking under Realism setting does 'realistic sensors' do? It was to reduce effeciency and detection by your sub, I suspect via enabling this check box file to use the modifers given in Sensors.CFG. I do not see any difference. I think it is broken somewhere.

This problem has always been around, just at 8 km it is not so noticeable, at plus 17 km it is more pronounced. The watch crew visual range and quick spotting is the same at night and daytime?

Quick detection also occurs no matter if the ship is close, or far away. Only the default fog works since that is tied directly to the game 3D model. Are these modifers even being applied?

[v!por]

Jungman and gents:

I modded to allow XXI for May of 43 :<) i am interested in "What ifs" more than historical repeat...

I am getting great results with these mods previously mentioned.
XXI boat at 14 or 15 meters depending on sea state... speed at 5 or 6 knots... both scopes up and on AI... I am North of Great Britain...

crew is visually spotting ac at about 2 km. This includes small ac like Spits, biplane and what looks like dauntless divebombers.... AND :<) many times these planes do not see the snorkel ... and I dive down to 50 meters for safety for a while....

Gents.. thank you ... thank you :<) Oh ya... convoy routes NW of GB ...... two convoys not to far apart.... "with XXI .. happy times"

[Beery]

Looks good to me. What about with fog - how does that look?

[martes86]

Manuel is doing a great job. Luckily, he started it after we knew about this X1 thingie, hehehe :arrgh!:

[Observer]

Jungman,

What is the relationship between the visual MaxRange and PreciseRange? I'm not sure how the AI works, but the PreciseRange seems to be the distance setting to show map contacts and remove the imprecise lines. Have you tried setting the visual PreciseRange to something less, like the original 8 km and see the effect on RWR (adjusted out past the visual PreciseRange of course)?

[Jungman]

No, I have not tried that. It does sound interesting. :hmm: I'll give it a go.

Lately, I was trying to understand why the game seems to ignore the modifiers in Sensors.cfg. :-? Relating to seeing long range at night as well as in the day.

[lurker_hlb3]

Here is last version:
http://www.mp-labs.com/sh3mods/visibility_mod_v091.zip
I will make it a little more 'public' once the problems are gone.

I must say that I'm able to see far ships (~17000 m) and my crew too, at least on surface. At periscope depth, it takes a little time to my crew to see a so far ship.


I have run some test missions and this is outstanding, changes the whole feel of the sim.

BZ

Leigh

OSC USN Ret

[Beery]

Manuel, when you get this working to your satisfaction I'd love to plug this into the RUb mod if you're willing to give us your permission. It seems you're on the right track, and that the visibility issues are going to get solved very soon, just as you solved similar underwater problems. Thanks for all the work you're putting into this! :up:

[CCIP]

Just wondering - do the SkyColors files contain relevant settings for this mod? I've tried using RUb colors and haven't had any problems, but that may be because I haven't tried it with any fog/clouds yet.

If not, again, I hope this can be made compatible with RUb's darker reflections; I would do it myself but I'm not familiar with the SkyColors files at all...

[Jungman]

CCIP: All that was changed with Skycolors is the 3D model was made larger in size to fit the bigger world.

You can still make changes to actual color reflection etc as much as you wish. ASFAIK looking at the file and comparing it to stock the last few days.

Observor: As for precise range and max range, the crew still spots exact contacts at maximum distance.

Berry: I hope someone can figure out why the light modifiers are not being used in the sensors.cfg files. Or figure out a work around. It is not good to see the same distance at night as in the day. But FOG distances works OK it seems so far.

[Beery]

I hope this can be made compatible with RUb's darker reflections; I would do it myself but I'm not familiar with the SkyColors files at all...

Once work on this mod is pretty much done, I'll look at it to see if it can work with RUb. It should work, but I'm wary about looking at it at this early stage, because I'm not overly familiar with the files in question, and it sounds like fine tuning of the mod is still underway.

[Beery]

I've been looking at the skycolors files, and although there are definitely some changes that have been made (a comparison of the files made with a hex editor shows differences between the modded files and the originals), I'm finding it hard to see any real perceptible difference in terms of colour or shade (the files contain only two *.tga files, so they are graphical in nature). Their size has not changed either, so I'm a bit stumped as to where the changes lie, or what the changes do.

[Manuel Ortega]

Manuel, when you get this working to your satisfaction I'd love to plug this into the RUb mod if you're willing to give us your permission.

Sure :up:
I was disappointed when I saw the 8 km default limitation. And I don't know why the devs put that fog that fades the ocean at about 2 km, making the water awful at those distances (just a colored plane :huh: ). But now it's different. Sure that you will make the mod perfect, and I can tell you all the discoverments done.

About the skycolor files, the only item changed is the sky 3d hemi-sphere. In the three files it is from address 111 (decimal) to 5402. No more changed, so you can copy that entire block.

[Laffertytig]

the more people are lookin into this sim the more cracks are showing.
why oh why would the devs have visual ranges at day and night the same? plus the radar issues

[oRGy]

Not to mention that save game bug where scripted ships lose their waypoint information after a load, making things like harbour traffic etc **** up? Nasty.

The only way I can see around the above bugs of the night/day thing not working would be for someone to write a program in the background that dynamically monitors and changes the values held by SH3 when running. A program for Morrowind (TES Optimiser) did something like this for lots of settings.

[redstorm101]

Wow! great work guys.... :yep:

[Immacolata]

Sure :up:
I was disappointed when I saw the 8 km default limitation. And I don't know why the devs put that fog that fades the ocean at about 2 km, making the water awful at those distances (just a colored plane :huh: ). But now it's different. Sure that you will make the mod perfect, and I can tell you all the discoverments done.

It looks as if the devs did make the game capable of doing what you now find out. But I think they were forced to "nerf" their own game before release for some reason. No man with proudness in his work would allow for a 8km visual range. That is why we get so many radio contacts. They knew all along!

the more people are lookin into this sim the more cracks are showing.
why oh why would the devs have visual ranges at day and night the same? plus the radar issues

Money. It was all about making the simulation pass QA and the critical eye of the reviewers who can spot a pretty game 10 miles off, but can't identify whether its a good sim or not. That and experience, if Ubi Soft romania haven't made a subsim before, we must agree they did a very good first impression. Unfortunately there is no money in spending another 2 months fine tuning the game, when you are fine tuning the innards of a very complex simulation engine. And those changes would never be noticed by most people.

[Duke of Earl]

@Manuel or Jungman... what changes, if any, were made to the Camera.dat file?....

Right now, I am using CCIP's unlocked Camera mod (the Kaleun version)... is this the same Camera.dat file that is being used in this mod?

@CCIP.... any progress on updating your Camera.dat mod (Kaleun version) to unlock the Camera in the 'Periscope Seat' station?

Cordialement, Duke of Earl

[shipkiller]

Do we need to download jungman's sensors mod separately or is it included in this mod?