I've been working on having all the stock ships placed at an approximately 1000 yards distance and at a 90 degree abeam angle in my test missions. I finished this last week, and have been creating the Recognition Manual to support the added ship length dimensions. I've followed some of my previous work in creating ship reference points other than the mast head for the height dimension. There are just some ships that lend themselves better to this approach than a nonexistent mast head (many of the capital American warships use the center mast for their flag placement. There is no mast visible at 1000 yards to judge the distance, the flag has to be attached to something, so the top of the flag will be used for the reference point). All Recognition Manual pictures will have the height reference point marked with either a red line or a national flag.

Turning the ships to a full 90 degree abeam angle will allow a correct measurement of the ships length at 1000 yards distance. I thought I'd give you a bit of a preview of what and how I'm doing.

The first image is of the Bogue CVE showing the computer found range at 1000 yards. Notice I have put the ships length dimension along the top of the RM page. The "Divided By:" figure is something I'll get to later.

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...foundrange.jpg


This image is with the game running at the 1024x768 resolution. The dimensions and image ratio will be the same for all other resolutions except for the 1280x1024 (I'll need a whole different set of dimensions for this particular resolution).

The next image shows the Stadimeter at work using the 68.2 feet height dimension for the top of the bridge superstructure as the reference point.

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...foundrange.jpg

I had already checked the range with the Stadimeter and found the distance to be 1000 yards using this 68.2 ft measurement. That's good, the stadimeter is right on (In my opinion, the reading could be as much as 10 yards off, one way or the other, and still be very accurate at a 1000 yard range distance).

Next, I'm using the Telemeter marks to judge distance with the Omnimeter. We know the Bogue is at a 1000 yard distance so lets see how close are we when using the Omnimeter and Telemeter marks as we should. The image has the High Power magnification in use. The first thing to do is to move the Omnimeters magnification scale slider to point to the height of the Bogue found in the RM, 68.2 ft. Next, place a Telemeter line on the target's waterline and read the distance to the reference point. Then check the Omnimeter for the approximately 5 1/4 marks at High Power to the range scale in the center of the device. The red lines are just to point out the Telemeter marks which are a light green in color. The green color will help in night estimates.

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...hpowerOmni.jpg


The range is found to be about 1000 yards which is correct for this particular ship test.

The following image shows the periscopes magnification at low power. The only thing that changes is where you read the Telemeter Power Scale, this time on the Low Power setting. Which is at about 1 1/4 marks.


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...wpowerOmni.jpg

This should give you a taste of how the device will work and it's accuracy when used.

I mentioned something about the "Divided By:" figure on the RM page. When you use ship lengths to find Angle on Bow determinations you will need to divide the total overall ship length by a number that will allow the Omnimeter to be used (the Omnimeter only has the length dimension to a maximum of 200 feet). In the case of the Bogue, its length is 494 ft. A divisible number of 3 will be used to give you a working ratio of 165 ft (494 divided by 3=164.6; close enough to 165). You will simply use the 165ft length figure to calculate with the range; then remember to multiply 3 back into the figure to get the correct finding. This was how the real life Omnimeter was used, so keep the calculators handy. Just think how lucky we are to have a calculator, the crews had to use slide rules or just paper and pencil to figure this. The "Divided By:" figure is just an aid in getting you started toward the final Omnimeter result.

My next job is to finish the ship length calculations for the 100 plus stock ships. This will take time but the game isn't going anywhere. I think the next post will contain the "what and how" to finding AoB with the Omnimeter.

As promised, I want to explain how you will use the Omnimeter tool to find Angle on Bow of a target ship. Lately I've been working on the various world views and putting them into their correct perspectives to match the views of the calibrated scopes. The flack gun gave me the most trouble with trying to get the aiming mark to line up with the column of fire after having the target sized correctly. I still need to check the other flack guns for their correct view. I'm going through the individual ship dimensions and changing them as needed. If you haven't guessed, I'm intending on this mod to be a comprehensive replacement to my SCAF mod. Not only will the Optics be corrected but also accurate ship dimensions as well.

To start, I admit I cheated. I made a mission with a Japanese destroyer approaching and I fully knew what type it was (a Fubuki). So, to test the Telemeter divisions I knew what ship was coming and made the target range finding much earlier than one would do if you relied on positive identification to decide what you're up against. I did this to check the accuracy of the range finding with both Telemeter marks and using the Stadimeter. I was accurate at distances beyond normal ship identification distance, so I think this was good for checking the basic ability of the tools involved with manual targeting. The Omnimeter has two movable sliders. The top is called the AoB scale, the lower is the Telemeter scale. Both have a "red pointer" for setting the scale to whatever your doing. The scale is mouse draggable in the general area of these pointers.


I've got the game running in a 1600x1200 resolution. This first image shows the Fubuki coming from the starboard side at a little over a 3/4 telemeter mark high. The periscope is set to its High Power magnification. As you can tell at this distance making a positive ID is impossible (so shoot me). I've moved the Telemeter scale pointer to the Fubuki's mast height 73.8 ft (where the top of the flag is) and read the corresponding figure to a bit over 3/4, or about 6500 yards.

I admit, there's a bit of wiggle room at these long distances when using the Omnimeter. The scopes Telemeter reading is near the 7/8 area of a division, so you'll need to guess at the position on the range scale.



http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...ngeFinding.jpg



To check this finding I'm running the test with the manual targeting disabled giving me the computer found range of 6478 yards (yep, I'm cheating again). Oh, by the way. If you check the Recognition Manual page for the Fubuki, you can barely see the rising sun flag at it's corrected position for this ships height. Like SCAF, if the reference point is to be the top of the flag, a national flag is put into the RM pictures to aid you in finding range (either with the scopes Telemeter divisions or the Stadimeter).



http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...RangeCheck.jpg


Ok, so we have range to target found with the Telemeter marks and using the Omnimeter (and rechecked by the game itself) to be about 6500 yards. As I fooled around getting the pictures and lining up the Omnimeter, my final range I used for the Angle on Bow check was about 6200 yards. You will need to have the range to target in order to find Angle on Bow.

To find AoB, use the scopes horizontal Telemeter marks to measure the approaching target. The below image has the ship length at about 1 1/2 division marks on the High Power magnification. Now move the Telemeter scale to match the "1 1/2 High Power" figure with the approximate 6200/6300 yard range distance found on the Omnimeters center "Range in YARDS" scale. Next, read the dimension (on the lower Height/Length scale) at the Telemeter scale's "red pointer"; it reads about 130. The 130 ft reading is going to be used in relationship to the overall ships length in finding the difference between the two. This "difference" is the targets measurement of angle, at least the angle that the target is in at the time of the reading. And it's this difference that will render the Angle on Bow amount.

Move the upper Angle on Bow slider to have its "red pointer" set at the targets overall length of 380 ft onto the center Range scale (the overall length will be found in the Recognition Manual). I know, you may say this "Range" scale is set to yards, and it is when you use it for finding range. BUT, it also can be used for finding specific lengths that are not set in yards such as the length of a target in feet. The key is built into the Omnimeter comparing the "ratio" of a dimension not the actual size of the dimension. So just use the scales for the face value of the dimension, don't worry about converting feet into yards or back again.

Using the 130 ft figure, find 130 on the Range scale and correspond it with the AoB scale. I know, there isn’t really a 130 figure on the Range scale. Just pretend its just about off the scale, below the 150 mark. You end up somewhere near the upper 17 degree AoB area of the scale. You can now enter the AoB through setting the Attack Data AoB and send it to the TDC.



http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...e/AoBCheck.jpg



To check the figure, the next image has the computer found range in the Position Keeper and Angle on Bow showing in the Attack Data tool. Both show the AoB to be about 16 degrees, very near the Omnimeter's found result.



http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...FinalCheck.jpg



Of course, you'll want to make additional checks for range, AoB, and do a timed assessment for target speed but, what else do you have to do? This ship traveling at the speed of 5 knots will take 30 minutes to cross into firing range! Plenty of time to make corrections and further observations.

In an earlier post I told you that there will come a time when the Omnimeter runs out of room on the Height/Length scale (it only goes up to 200ft), and you'll have to divide the range in half to keep the Height/Length scale within its parameters. Just remember to multiply back into the Height/Length dimension what you divided by to use on the center "Range" scale. As in this example double the 130 to 260 and find it on the "Range" scale. No need to double the AoB, just read the AoB at the 260 mark.

So far I've been very satisfied with the results. The nearer the target, the more precise the reading will be. I'm planning on helping the Omnimeter with creating more divisions so an easier read can occur at these long distances. If the Omnimeter works this well at long distances it should work equally well at shorter distances.

Excellent again :up:

It's also good to know that the ruler can be used inversely, i.e. you make the estimate of AOB by naked eye and knowing the size of the target after a positive ID you can calculate range :yeah:That's according to the Torpedo Fire control manual 1951 the primary use, but it's nice how you reversed it help finding the AOB in the always limited 2D environment of a screen :up:

Thanks Hitman,

You're very observant!! :salute:

The "Torpedo Fire Control Manual" illustrates how the Omnimeter is used to find a target length when range and an estimate of AoB is used. I just reversed the process by knowing the estimated range and target length, you should come up with AoB using the Omnimeter.

What has really helped is having the optics capable of measuring the world correctly. In other words, the Telemeter divisions really do measure 52 feet vertically or horizontally at 1000 yards distance (at least in the games terms).

Again, my focus is on completing the ship heights and lengths for the stock game, and making a Metric Omnimeter to be used for the German side before release.

Next week I'm heading East to cheer my niece on who's running the NYC Marathon. While I'm up there I'm planning to visit the Submarine Museum in Groton Conn. I know they have a TBT in the hallway leading to the Nautilus docked out in the river. I just want to see what one looks like through the lens.

Oh great and please take a picture if possible so we can see it :yeah:

Yes, I plan to. Although I'm guessing, sticking the camera up to just one lens will only show what the one lens sees. But I'll certainly try. From what I've seen of the TBT it doesn't have much capability to conform to the different eye spacing we all have. Most of the binoculars now a days have a hinged center to allow for a better "fit" to the users pupils. This usually allows for both focal views to converge into a complete circle. I'm curious to see what the TBT binoculars have if anything. I have my grandfathers WWI Artillery field glasses and they are not hinged. The view is small and depending on how far away you hold them up to your eyes, the view changes from a double circle to a single circle.

I've been to the museum several times, but there's always something new to look for. These kinds of things just never get old to me. :D

I have been to the Nautilus this past summer, and looked through the TBT. Unfortunately i can't remember if the scope had the range markings or not. When you're with youngsters they tend to get board very fast and want to rush through. The Fleetboat attack room is cool! Has a TDC and working periscopes that you could look through.If you're close to NYC, may I suggest visiting the Intrepid as well. Another great piece of history:yeah:

Thanks for the thought about the Intrepid Fish40. I've not been to the museum but it sounds really interesting. The more modern USS Growler missle submarine is there too. I'm up in New Haven now, planning on heading to the city Sunday morning to watch my niece run the marathon. We will be close to Pier 86, but we may not have time to take in the museum. :wah:

I've been to the Yorktown CV 10 (the first Yorktown CV 5 was lost at the Battle of Midway) in Charleston SC, and the carriers are huge when standing on their decks!! I'd love to visit the Intrepid, I believe it was launched just after the second Yorktown and carries the CV 11 number. It's just great these old machines of war are kept out of the salvage yard!!

As far as the TBT goes, I'm thinking no matter what the view may reveal, we will need to have the ability to judge a ships height and length with Telemeter divisions. The game takes this even a step further by having the Stadimeter in use with the TBT. In real life, the Stadimeter was never put into the binoculars of the TBT. The in-game question is, why have a TBT station if you can't use it to send a reading back to the TDC? In real life, the TBT only sent the target ships realtive bearing to the TDC operator, the range was gained by pure eyeball estimation or by the radar or sonar findings. So, some ability to do just that was put into the game and (I believe) a correct Telemeter divided TBT view should do that too. One other thing I do know about the TBT, was it had the capability of illuminating it's self to show whatever marks it had for night attacks (which is what it was mainly used for). My plan is to do just that before I'm done. Just a bit of color to the corrected division marks should do the trick.

Wasn't the illumination a rather late war addition? I thought (but could be mistaken) that for the majority of the war the TBT was just a mount for a pair of 7x50's. I'm pretty sure that O'Kane discusses this in both WAHOO! and CTB.

Regardless, very impressive work you are completing. Very much enjoying following the progress. And enjoy Groton - I can't wait to make my way out there.

Well we know that there was an official Mare Island TBT install late in the war, but we also know:

1) That skippers started adding a mount with pelorouse for their 7x50s well before that

2) That they got custom reticles engraved in their 7x50s

(Both informations from O'Kane's "Clear the Bridge")

So I guess it would be fine to have a 7x50 with telemeter divisions as if we had requested the yard to add it for us. In that regard, the slide out ruler for distance calculation does actually make more sense than ever, because the 7x50s didn't have a stadimeter as C.Scurvy already pointed out. :up:

Great stuff. Thanks, Hitman!

Back home from the East coast with a few photos from the Submarine museum at the New London sub base in Groton, Connecticut. I focused on the TBT that is easily available.

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w132/crawlee/TBT.jpg


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...e/P1010367.jpg


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...e/P1010366.jpg


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...e/P1010368.jpg


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...e/P1010369.jpg


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...e/P1010371.jpg


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...e/P1010374.jpg


These last couple of shots were taken through the right side lens (the left side doesn't provide the cross hair markings, only the right). I pointed the view to a white wall in the museum to help see the size of the markings. The last photo is looking out towards the west side of the Connecticut River.

On the third photo showing the right side of the TBT, notice the 4 screws holding a cover on the right/top of the lens (just to the right of the manufacture label). The center circle is some sort of a lens giving light to this side of the binoculars. I'm assuming this was how the cross hairs were lit for night viewing with an external light source.

Just thought I'd update you on my progress. I'm about 1/3 done with checking ship heights and lengths. I've checked and corrected about 30 ships so far.

I've had to work with the metric version of the Omnimeter to get it correct for use (some changes needed to be made to the "Ship: Name" area of the German solution notepad due to how I'm putting the ship lengths into the Recognition Manual; change one thing and two others become problems to solve).

I've also made an additional "optional" mod to have the periscopes and TBT/UZO appear as realistic as possible; removing any highlights from the Telemeter divisions marks which would help in night observations. Although the TBT did have the capability to be illuminated, I kept this feature. Also (I don't see anyway around this), I've had to keep the Telemeter divisions in the TBT/UZO for making estimates of range. The real life TBT didn't have this feature, it was just for reading relative bearing of a target. But, I think our need to read range to target is important when looking through this device, so there are division marks in the TBT view which will be highlighted.

Nice pictures! I see the crosshair was the same I had found previously on a similar model. Must have been the standard, then :yep:

In the picture with the plaque details I can't find the optical values (FOV, zoom, etc), were you able to get them?

Apparently the official TBT installation started appearing at a time when all subs had already radar, hence they found unnecessary to add the markings. However, it's interesting to note that german UZOs didn't have those markings either. The IWO estimated range by naked eye, both looking directly at the target over the binoculars, and using the FOV and estimated size of the target as a guide. My guess is that, even if slightly stabilized, the TBT/UZO moved too much for a good measurement with a reticle, whereas the periscope, with the submarine submerged, was much more steady.

Then there's another aspect of the game that is difficult to recreate: The huge difference between seeing things plainly with your eyes and looking through a periscope/binocular. In real life, skippers hated submerging because they lost the privileged view of the target with naked eyes and lots of situational awareness, being limited to look through a small eyepiece. In the game, ironically, it's the opposite, as the mods usually give excellent views through periscope that are much better than what you see in the bridge. The player doesn't have therefore so much of a reward for staying surfaced in that aspect.:hmmm:

That would be the Thames River. Great shots!

TG

Just wondering if this mod will be compatable with RFB?:hmmm:

No, there where no other markings for lens values or magnifications on the piece. The manufactures label has it as a "MARK 91 Telescope" (the 1 is barely visible). I've done a bit of "Googling" and have come up with little information. One post on a forum website called opticsplanet.com asked:

No one had much info on the handful of replies except for this gentleman's comments:

"Opticschief" stated he had been stationed on the Darter and had perhaps cleaned the very pair the first fellow had in question. Interesting, but no real info on the makeup of the binoculars.

I did a bit more checking and found more information from this linked manual for a Submarines 5" deck gun. It seems the Mark 91 Telescope was used there at times as well.

So, if you put the two together, the "Mark 91" could have either a 6x or 7x magnification, and at least one U.S. training manual lists the 6x version as having a 7 degree FoV. Which version the museum had, I haven't got a clue. Bausch & Lombs website didn't provide much help either.



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:oops: I stand corrected Timmyg00, it is the Thames river. My bad.

============



As far as a compatible version for RFB, I'm needing to finish the stock version first for both 1.5 and 1.4 (I don't plan on keeping those folks out in the cold). Since I know there's a problem with the stock games 1280x1024 resolution which has the periscopes camera FoV increased by 2+ degrees over the other game resolutions, I'll have to make a separate version just for that resolution. Then there's TMO, and RSRDC to keep up with!! Guess I'm saying I'll try, but the fact that those guys working on RFB now saw fit to change the "ride height" of ships just to make them "look better" makes reading manual range all the more screwed up. I'm just not in a hurry to fix their problem.

Good find, I have been myself at opticsplanet forums and didn't see it :up:

I'd swear I have seen the 7x mentioned elsewhere, I'm almost sure it was on the website of one of the museum submarines, may be the USS Cod :hmmm:

It's been a while since I've been on the forum to update my progress. That's a good thing, I can get some work done on this project!!


I spent some time tweaking the Omnimeter to have it read correctly. I found the original USS Cod version (its picture is at the beginning of this thread) was a bit off when used. Take a good look at the image below.


http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...mnicloseup.jpg


Notice the tick just to the right of the arrow of the Telemeter Scale. That wasn't put on there for nothing. For some readings (depending on the height and distance to the target this "tick" gave more accurate range than the "arrow" did. The problem was how the Cods Omnimeter was made (for the most part these devices were hand made by the crew), this one has the Telemeter Scale just a bit off what it should be. Take a look at where the Telemeter Scale reading of "2" at High Power magnification is reading. Its sitting right on 4000 yards range with the "arrow" set to the 100 ft height mark. That's wrong, doing the math the range needs to read 3820 yards. That's just about the difference the added "tick" would give you. So someone figured it out and added the "tick" to correct the error. Probably better than going down to the cigar chewing Chief Machinist and having him make another!!


I'm finished with the stock game 105 ship entries. The corrected mast heights and ship lengths are listed in the Recognition Manual. Most warships will have a mast head as the reference point for taking a reading with the Stadimeter or using the scope Telemeter divisions for finding range. On a few, I've chosen to use the prominent flag as the reference point. The top of the flag is simply a better visual point (it has to be attached to something, like a mast anyway!). Most of the merchants I'm using the top of the funnel as their reference point. The Recognition Manual pictures will aid in using the correct reference point for all ships with either a red marked area or an added flag to point to the spot.


I've been working on the documentation to go along with the mod. I've finished a PDF on how to make a calculation of range and AoB using the Omnimeter for both Imperial and Metric versions.

One thing I'm doing now is to see if I can make a way to input range to the Position Keeper without using the Stadimeter function. Early on I had made a circular Omnimeter dial and found some interesting things about the different dial functions. I'm looking at making a better, more clearer readable dial than what's on the Attack Data Tool and hope to have it function to set range for the TDC. It seems a waste to calculate range to target using the scopes Telemeter divisions without having a way of inputting range to the TDC. So, I'm going to spend a little time to see what I can do. If I don't make some progress towards this I'll still release the "Optical Targeting Correction" without the range input function.

Yes you can :DL

The only problem is that you need a circular wheel and not a slide out tool like the one you currently have. If you do it circular and with manual input, you can link it directly to the slide out tool on the right top of the screen, so that both rotate together. In fact it would just be a clone copy (But bigger and with marks scale) of that tool, but it would serve the purpose you want.

Nisgeis also managed to translate horizontal slide into turning the distance wheel for his radar mod, but he tweaked something much deeper than simply the menu.ini for that. You could ask him however and see what he thinks :hmmm: