Really nice find guys. KUDOS!:up:
Now I would only like to have some pics of a "real" observation scope...maybe there is in the http://www.maritime.org/fleetsub/pscope/trans01.htm

Actually "panthercules" and "Scoochy" already mentioned this...

Tried this quickly before going to work here.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a1...TTACKSCOPE.jpg

My 8dgr KOLLMORGEN Attack Scope

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a1...ATIONSCOPE.jpg

Bigger aperture Observation Scope based on my 32dgr KOLLMORGEN

Works super nice I would say. Only thing I should tweak is the actual graphic lines in the 32dgr as i simply scaled them up to fit the bigger aperture, so the lines gets thicker...will tinker with it after work. Again great find guys!!!!:up:

As for reference check this thread
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=110064

I tried adding a background to the scope (from the USS COD and USS PAMPANITO)
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a1...x/Capture2.jpg

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a1...ox/Capture.jpg

But i find that it looks weird when you start turning the scope and the background turns with it...if you know what I mean.

'looks great, capitain!
but as far as adding a background goes, wouldn't the rubber eye attachment that the scopes seem to have been nominally fitted with preclude any sort of peripheral view like that?

Yup I think so to. I just wanted to try it out but as I said I did not like it.

Hmmm - the post a couple above that shows the attack and obs scopes raises a question - would the actual/physical size of the circular view really look bigger in the Obs scope than in the attack scope (as in the post's pictures), or would the circles be the same size and just the field of view be different because of the magnification difference? (as appears to be the case in game, essentially - I never actually measured the sizes of the two in game, but they seem to be about the same - certainly not as pronounced a difference as in the post above).

Does making the view circle area in the obs scope version in the post alter/mess up the way the ships look in the scope (e.g., do they look bigger than they should like the line markers do because the whole thing is scaled up?) or is that determined independently based on whatever magnification number you use. Put another way, in that big-circle obs scope, would you see a target ship the same size and just a lot more ocean on either side of the ship (compared to looking at the same ship at the same range in the stock game obs scope view), or would the ship look bigger so the relative proportion of the ship to the amount of see showing on either side would be the same as in the stock obs scope view?

Also, is there any way to mod the various TDC pull-outs to be smaller, so they wouldn't protrude onto the scope view? I achieved that effect by jacking up the resolution really high, but it slowed my game down a bit much unless I turned the FSAA and AF way down or off, and I like the way the game looks at 1024x768 with high FSAA and AF better.

Wow a lot of questions...

As i never looked in a real Kollmorgen scope i can only speculate, but I would guess the real thing has now difference in size as to regards of the aperture between Attack and Observation, like you said.

But I guess the only way to "simulate" a wider angle of view would be to make the aperture bigger like I tried in the above pic. If you would try to make a "true" angle of view I guess we would have to start looking at refraction and stuff and i am not even sure that is possible. Another way would be to play with the zoom levels, now that I think is possible (seen some post here regarding that, will look) but that would not really simulate a wider angle of view...or?

The Periscope in the game is simply a graphical overlay that is independent from the outs side world, so any changes done to the scope graphics don't alter what you see "outside" in anyway, the only thing you could manipulate would be the zoom level i think. so simply, yes more ocean on each side ( i guess simulating a wider angle of view)

To resize all the pull outs is for sure modable but a lot of work as there is many many pieces involved and each would have to be sized individually and possibly moved...now that's a lot of code to change.

As I did not have time to really work on this yesterday i will start tackling it today. It could be that the Observation scope should be smaller in size like you say, I only did above example fast to see what it looked like. Also with the findings from "l3th4l" http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=516454#post516454 I will try to make something like a "set" of Attack/Observation Scope.

if i might chime in here and offer my opinion, i prefer the scopes to be of (at least roughly) the same size and that size should be significantly larger than what we have in game right now. I think because of the limited resolution our displays offer in comparison to our eyes we should make use of as many pixels as possible while still keeping that circular look. IRL one is able to focus on very small and distant details but in the game a lot of detail is lost at a distance because of the limited resolution.
the best compromise imo would be the increase the size of the "hole" while narrowing the field of view slightly to compensate. i've measured the visible FOV with the ingame heading scale roughly and came up with about 9.4deg zoomed in and 35.4 deg zoomed out. that was using the textures i posted in Cpt. Cox thread which have a larger view.

Heh eveyone likes something slightly different :P Only reason I thought the OBS and Attack scopes should be different is the OBS scope had a wider head, and since we cant simulate a different FOV (As far as I know), resizing the OBS scope is the second best option.