I don't know that I can.

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

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

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.

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 .

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.

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:

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 )

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.

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.

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:

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.

....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?

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

Any screenshots that show it off though Ortega?

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

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

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/viewtopi...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.

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.

:D
Very interesting!

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

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. :)

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

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

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.

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