also one more tip, diving to deck awash depth will reduce boat movement...
Hopefully Sjizzle will jump in soon with few more useful tips...

Aloha and a happy new year to all of u....
u can calculate by yourself the position using the sextant from the game, but it's not 100% accurate...there is some factors for example like the high of your eye's sextant index error and more...
in SH5 is only 1 thing done perfectly with no bugs and that is the celestial sphere/body's... they are really accurate... if u don't believe me install Stellarium from here and use the same date hour location as in SH5 and u will be amazed :03:

btw my Real navigation thread is messed up because i lost my all files from a server and now i am working/looking to fix this

Another quick one. So celestial positioning can only be done at night? I thought you could also do it in daytime based on the position of the Sun.

A typical day in the life of a navigator is a morning fix at dawn using stars/planets, then a mid morning sun sight (rendering only one line of position or LOP). Then a noon latitude sight for a running fix (DRing the morning sun LOP forward). Then an afternoon sun LOP for a running fix (DRing noon line forward). Then an evening fix using stars/planets to tie a bow on it.

for better understanding the celestial navigation watch this video series it's very well explained there


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMoW...8wTzXE4XaQU64E

Sjizzle, can you please explain how do you do measurements when measured object is higher than 20-25 deg? How do you eliminate possible errors due to boat instability since we don't have classic sextant double prism view implemented in the game?

there is an in realism settings an option which one make the both to be stable... i can recall the option name

I see, you mean "no scope movement" or something like that. :yep: But do you have any trick for precise measurements with 100% realism? I noticed that if you dive to 8 meters your boat will be perfectly stabilized and the sextant can still be used...:yep:

yea if u dive 7-8 u can use the sextan and the both is stable ....i always used local noon to find out the my latitude...and used this Sunsight.xls file to find out my longitude then Ded Recognin till next day local noon...using the stars to find out your location u need know very well the celestial body's and the SH5 map it's damn unfriendly for that kind of navigation...i never used time compression more then 128 because u will drift really far away from your course...us DR each 2-3 hours....
i also use Stellarium parallel with the game...there was some .bat file somewhere and u could connect stellarium with SH5 made your navigation really easy...

Thanks Sjizzle for your help.

I must praise my self a bit. :) I think I have learned how to take local noon latitude readings and and also to find Polaris!

Local noon latitude is actually quite simple. The biggest problem here is to determent when "local noon" exactly is (when the sun is actually on zenith).



Also, it seems that in order to take the most accurate measurement with built in sextant one has to :
- Dive to 8m to stabilize the boat
- Align the sextant with the horizon and nullify it using stadimeter button
- Then, taking measurement by moving sextant up (not by using stadimeter button because it seems that it will introduce some error) until it's aligned with a celestial object.


Using this method I think I achieved the best results...

Thank you gentlemen! As soon as I have some time I’m definitely going to go back into the game and try this out. Regarding the other stars, I have a pretty good method of identifying stars by doing the sight reduction in reverse, so I’ll test it out with some star sights too.:up:

Hm, it seems that my sextant measurements are always "short" for about 30-50 minutes, even with "no stabilized view" option disabled. Not sure is it due to sextant or my measurement precision... :hmmm:Any comment Sjizzle? Maybe I should aim for top of the sun instead of center?

never center or top of the sun... always bottom of the sun...local is noon when 12 PM local time not UTC !


Edit:

forgot to say if some mod change the cameras.cam files from NewUIs_TDC_7_5_0_ByTheDarkWraith\data\Library\ then u can forgot the sextant...all measurements will be way off

Hm, if aim for the bottom of the sun I'm of for a entire degree :hmmm:.


How do you mean if we change cameras.cam file sextant won't work properly? We all use different cameras.cam settings (remember resolution patches). I tried with different cameras.cam files, even the one from default TDW New UIs mod but still , results are pretty much the same. Can you upload cameras.cam which you use for sextant?


One more question. When should I take sun readings? When the sun is highest on the sky (this is local noon if I understand this correctly) or at 12PM local (nautical) time? Local time is actually nautical, right?

the default cameras.cam from tdw's i think is for 8:5 ration and that one work perfectly and i think not sure but tdw edited all cam rezolution...if nope then i must look where i have my all resolution patches and i'll send it to u... Manos 100% sure nut sure about large optics....

local noon when the sun is the highest on the sky...yea local nautical time...