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.

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.

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

I fully agree with Gammel! :up:

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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?

I think

RELEASE IT NOW! :rock:


:-j

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!!!

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

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)

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?

Can we please see some screenshots of the new horizon?