Here is a little progress report!

I did a very important migration to a newer set of programing tools, which took some time but improved alot of aspects.
Mainly it opened up for some newer OpenGL tools and solved some license issues, so now I can even charge money for my program!

Here are some pictures from it's current state, with a new water shader and the work in progress firedirector/rangefinder(I had to combine these two stations for some user friendlieness :)).

https://i.imgur.com/NT3Ykbf.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/xQVeB3m.jpg?1

Glad you got into a new stage :up:

The idea of combining firedirector/rangefinder is good and practical, Iguess you will be adding a panel to control individual or salvo shots from al turrets?

It would also be great to be able to switch to any turrent for local firing in case the director gets knocked down. :ping:

Hi Hitman!
Yes, the switches are allready there, in the right hand panel! :up:
The switches just hasn't got labels yet. I'll demonstrate them in a video at some point.
But basically there is a switch to choose which of the three firedirectors the gun should be connected to.
You can also teleport between the three firedirectors; fore, foretop and aft.
So each gun can be connected to it's own firedirector, or all of them to one firedirector.

The three bigger rounded compass-ish things indicates to where the guns are pointing.
The red button fires that individual gun.
The big handle in bottom right corner fires all guns!

edit:
Easier to see with colors:
https://i.imgur.com/RJP5UvPh.jpg

The fire control should comprise also the target plotting and computing the necessary lead angle, because if you shoot f.e. at 15 to 20 kms the target will have moved consideably when the shell arrives there. I think that a specific station for the full fire control would be great, then having smaller simplied pannels that present the results in the fire director (This one with binoculars for observation, range finder and fire command) and the individual turrets.

Battelships worked very much like a submarine in that regard (Or rather the opposite lol) and there was a specific part of the crew in charge of being the brain of the ship's fire direction, plotting and calculating (Slide rulers or mechanical devices like the TDC in a submarine).

This is WW1 but the base is common, and the site is probably the most serious resource around:

http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/tf...y:Fire_Control

Yes, the FCC (Fire Control Computer) is mandatory to have.
It is incorporated, atleast in code at the moment with a few inputs, range and bearing to target. I'm currently searching info on have advanced the german FCC's were.
Over the war years they could get veeeery complicated, taking inputs such as temperature, wind and humidity to account for the airpressure in the ballistic curve!
You'll definitly get to input target course, bearing, speed and distance. Info about own ships speed and course will be automatic from the gyroscopes.
Not sure if there will be a different station or if all fits in the firedirector screen! We will see! :salute:

Time to take a look at what's new:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiKOaSGMnBI

That's fantastic progress! Love the concept and the battle looks so involving :up::up::up:

Looking forward to blowing ships from the arctic convoys, that has always been my favourite theater :Kaleun_Cheers:

And I guess the concept can be easily ported to control destroyers and other surface units. :ping:

One thing I see is not yet implemented is ship inertia, seems to almost instantñy come to sp4eed as well as turn, in real life such a big ship would certainly need much more time and room to change to a precise course.

Thanks Hitman!! I'm fairly excited myself, that I reached this far.
No, I have not worked alot on turn rates or inertia. I will for sure do it at some point!
I think you will help me out, because I'm looking at compiling a simple prototype demo and let people give it a spin...
I have a few problems to solve first just!
Cheers

This is looking pretty interesting, and I assume you're doing this all by yourself? You've made some great progress.:salute:

Thanks FightingSteel!
Yes, it's my own little side project for now.
Who knows, if this prototype game/sim turns out well I might consider hiring someone to get some proper modern graphics and a better programer to optimize the code.

Currently I'm sketching out the campaign/mission module.
What you've seen so far is from the "battle mode" of the program.

Cheers!

I saw you link over on SimHQ, figured I'd follow the main thread over here.

I'm really enjoying what you're doing and where it's going. I get the concept of combining the director and the range finder for usability, however as someone else noted I do like the authenticity of having them split. Range finding, particularly stereoscopic is hard to do in real life well and it's almost impossible to simulate on a monitor to the degree of fidelity needed for warfare. I would think having a rangefinder station that user can utilize as they prefer, but the main action being in the fire director. The FD is where a lot of the tactical versus technical decisions are made, which to me as the player is the interesting part.

I'll DL the tech demo you put together and give it a go. Keep up the great work!:Kaleun_Salute:

-Jenrick

Good to see you here Jenrick!
Yes, there is a few dilemman to deal with regarding the rangefinder(RF).
As it is now, it's just a switch to turn on/off in the firedirector.
This is good while there is no AI crew to help you out. You would loose valueable time switching to a whole different station to input new distance data to the computer.
Try for example to use the radar for RF targets.
It will be a whole different story when I finishing programming AI crew that can help keeping the target in sight or do the RF for you.
As you say, it was a hard job on a real ship. And there were several RF-stations sending data to the computer. Firedirector didn't really have anything to do with it.
Second problem, is there any point to have a real stereoscopic RF?
Now the resolution is quite low, for performance reasons. This leads to the RF being useless above some 10k-12k distance, because the pixels are too big to see any change of focus...

In the AA-station I used an approach closer to what you see in the game, Destroyer Command. One ball is the target distance, move your ball there and you got your distance setting.
Maybe I will make something similar to the main battery aswell!

Luckily it is quite easy to change and modify! So expect different versions of RF to try over time!

Let me know how the trial went! Sank any ships? And how did you find their distance?

Cheers

Alright, got that sorted out. I used the map and the radar to close at flank, until I located at least two ships steaming. As they shot back, escorts of some kind. I opened fire around 20,0000 (yards or meters? Not sure what the Kreigsmarine used). I tired to use the RF, but at that range the stereoscopic effect was too minor to be useful, instead I took my initial range cut from the radar. I laddered my ranges until I started getting brackets, not having a range clock, and range cuts, certainly makes that difficult. I some how got what I think was a hit at about 18,500 (extra bit of smoke, and missing a shell splash). I kept closing using just the fore turrets until around 14,250 I got another hit, again more smoke and a missing splash. I think I sunk the target actually as shortly after that I observed no more stack smoke, and the after a few minutes the ship was gone.

I hit escape to pause things, and when I hit return to game (I think, I may have hit the wrong option) it dumped me to the initial screen.

So far it's a neat project. I'm looking forward to where you can take it. There is a suprising bit of tension even in it's current state to get a visual sighting, and then to try and get hits. Personally I'd got after the range keeping, and bearing generation systems next, as they are the heart of the gunnery system.

-Jenrick

looks great!:Kaleun_Applaud:

Thanks!

Map??
 

Hey Bracer, is there a map?

Hi Pitti!
Yes, there indeed is, but it's work in progress.
I'm currently working on a waypoint system for the AI to cross the map.
It's not a global map, but a part of the north atlantic.

When you get bored of coding AI, then you work on the water representation.

Nice improvement :Kaleun_Applaud::Kaleun_Cheers: