[REL]Visual and Hydrophone detection issue: a new workaround
 

Update Released!
March 29, 2007
"Stay Alert - crew fix" mod for GWX and Stock game version 1.c
This is a 8km version only.
This version have the new fix for the visual airplanes detection.
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Here the link:
http://rapidshare.com/files/23281282...ix_v1c.7z.html

Notice that inside you have two versions:GWX and stock. Install only the correct one for your game after adjust the file structure.
JSGME ready after choose your version to use.
Please read the readme inside.

Any feedback is welcome!

Thanks mates!:up:

Rubini.




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First post:
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I'm working on a complete revision of the Visual and Hidrophone detection issue. These two are very important and at same time bugged conditions of the game.

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The problems:

a) Visual detection
In stock Sh3 and mainly after 16km mod we have two main problems on the Visual detection, some of them continue present even in the big mods.

1.The more easily noticiable stock problem with Visual detection by player crew is that the player frequently can spot the ships far before the most skilled crew, sometimes so annoying that even with external camera you can see the smokes and the crew stay blind!
Some players could prefer this way, they then can then detect the ships before the crew...but sometimes the crew is so blind that the first thing that you will see is a warship firing at you! Needs fix!

2.The other, which appears or become worst after the 16km mod, is that the player crew frequently is blind at fog conditions. This appears because ppl tried to solve that vampire night vision - 16km mod related, also present in stock, just less noticiable- and to soften this problem they introduced a annoying side effect: blind crew at fog conditions.

Also frequently the big mods uses the same sensors files for both mods: 16km and 8km what makes the 8km blind crew even worst!

The vampire night crew don't have a good solution (is in truth a stock bug) and if you try to fix it you always will make the crew blind at fog at some level. So, whatever solution that we acquire for the first problem we will also make the vampire night vision a bit more noticiable again. This is why I will at first only work with 8km installations.

b)Hydrophone detection
Here we have 5 main problems. Anyway some of them are a bit more subjetive problems, so if somebody have others results/comments let me know.

1. The player can always detect ships far before the more skilled crew. Just make a full stop and you can listen a single small merchant at least 30km away. A skilled crew only will detect this same ship 17-20km away at best. The player ability to detect at 30km is hardcoded and can't be fixed. I tried to mess with the hydrophones on sensors.dat and also raising the ambient_hydrophone sound but no dice.

2. The crew only have ability to follow nearest contact order for contacts at 25km or less even after changing the settings for max distance on sensors.dat file or adjusting the sensors.cfg. Seems that this is also hardcoded or will mess with a lot of others things to fix it.

3. You only will see the ship identification on notepad on Hydrophone room after you are at least at less than 10km of a ship. Before this or is not possible to have a identification or you have a "unknow contact" on the notepad. Seems that this is also hardcoded or will mess with a lot of others things to fix it.

4. SH3 don't shows differences distances to detect a warship, a single merch or a convoy. However, in real life these are very different conditions like you can see below during WWII:

If a submarine speed was 4 knots, the submarine's underwater sound detector average distance of detecting another object was:
- for a destroyer- 5 to 10 nautical miles,
- for a cargo ship- 3.5 to 7.5 nautical miles,
- for a convoy- up to 50 nautical miles.

Uboat.net has a article regarding underwater sound detection here
http://uboat.net/articles/id/52

5. I also don't see any difference when tried to mess with the hydrophones settings on sensors.cfg for sea state. So the same detection distance for a calm day or for a 15m/s day is present.

Obviously the final detection distance is always a bit random (not always the exactly same valour) and the max distance is easily adjusted on sensors.dat files but with the limitations exposed above.

The proposal workaround:
(First of all don't forget that a skilled crew is always necessary)

For the visual problem
-make the crew and the player see the smokes/ships at the same time to have a better behaviour in TC...and I think that you don't want to sail far away with a dumb crew, no?
-stop with the blind crew at fog conditions.
-also make the max distance the major possible to improve realism.

For the Hidrophone problem
-Make the max range detection the same for crew and player.
-make the max crew distance detection a bit major (25km) to have a better middle ground between a single merch detection and a convoy. 25 km to avoid the follow nearest contact min distance bug.

Possible side effects/limitations/actual stage of the mod:

-The visual problem is already fixed and tested for the 3 main goals: crew and player see now the ships almost at same time and no more blind crew in fog conditions The max distance is now also better than before. But take in mind that the vampire nigt vision crew is present but not more than stock in 8km. Notice that these fix break partially the Long range Gunnery mod present on GWX. The LRG mod is not well fitted for Sh3 anyway as it is now on GWX and in truth have more side effects than good things IMHO. However the good things of LRG mod will yet stay intact.

-The player will continue to listen far before the crew on hydrophones. It's possible to make the crew listen at 30km (raising the max distances for hydrophones on sensors.dat) but this brakes the "follow nearest contact" order (after 25km) and is to much for single ships. So I will go with a middle ground without brake the "follow nearest contact" order. The player needs to avoid to cheat the game using the hydrophones unless when you are following a convoy which in RL could be listen even far way than the 30km present on SH3. The crew will now always listen at 20-25km anyway, what is far more useful.

Any idea/comment is welcome!
I intend to release the mod in few days.

Nice one mate

Now stop talking and get on with it
Before you disappear for the weekend again
:rotfl:



:up:

I will wait for your mod!:up: Keep up the good work!

Will this be an independent mod or a gwx only?

At first for GWX. But the essence is just corrected settings on sensors files (sim.cfg, sensors.cfg, sensors.dat and AI_sensors.dat) and my start point is the stock not the GWX settings. So I gues that in the end will be suitable for GWX and any stock installation. I just yet don't know how it will be fit for NYGM though. (IIRC NYGM only uses 16km).

Very promising
 

Rubini, this looks very promising and seems to adress a couple of real issues, which I for one would like to see solved. On the visual one, our having the ability to see better than the crew just doesn't make sense, although you can certainly keep the simulation going with the issue.

The Hydrophone one, however, is a bigger problem in that your sub may be missing out on some good enemy traffic, due to your crew not hearing the hydro sounds correctly. Anything that restores this capability would be a big plus for me.

I was curious about one thing though and that was your comment about making these changes for the 8Km version before moving on to the 16Km version. Wouldn't the changes to the sensor files affect both versions?
I'm on the 16Km version. Thx EmeAzul (Brasileiro transplantado)

Olá EmeAzul!
Hi EmeAzul!

Yes, obviously the same files are used for both versions (8km and 16km). But what is evident after you work a bit with the settings is that they need to be at least slight different to avoid some side effects here or there for each mod.

This is great! My biggest pet peeve with SHIII is that I can get on the hydrophones and hear very distinct and obvious warship screws and my crew does nothing. If you can solve this in anyway (what you have suggested already seems an excellent solution) I will be a very happy man. Good luck!

P.S. I am using a modded stock install with 8km atmosphere...sounds like this will be indeed compatible...I hope it will.

This "sounds" interesting indeed if it can be used outside of gwx.
Something to help resolve the retarded sonarman deal.

http://mysh3.info/WAC/images/wac_2.jpg

That's good news Rubini, I use 8km & the main problem is the hydrophones, when submerged there are no reports from hydraphone yet on external camera there is a ship above, probably within 2km, but hydraphone reports "Unknown Contact" and this is not in a blind spot, I assume hydraphone should find a known contact way before a visual one! :-?
Sometimes I click on "follow nearest contact" I get the report "No Contact", so I manually listen & shows contact type warship, I then click on "follow nearest contact" and away they go! I'm sure their asleep sometimes!! This may be another problem though!:oops:
Thanks.

Hi Rubini
Sounds great and looking forward to it. If anyone can do it you can. Keep up the good work.

Hi there!

maybe a suggestion to "workaround" the fog problem (vampire sight) by limiting the density fo the fog. In otherwords - At the moment fog can limit visibility to as much as 250 metres. How about changing this to like 600 metres, so crew will spot ships when you really see them. Otherwise its just cheating and annoying anyway if the ai crew sees ships that a player doesn't.

hope i understood it correctly.

Here the first comparison table results for GWX 8km (default), stock SH3 and the new workaround on sensors.

First of all take in mind that SH3 have a good default random results on these numbers, isn't always the same result for the same condition. It's better speaking in probability for band of results.

I tested in 3 differents times during day, so the day time results are an average results. I also tested at deep night. I don't noticed so much difference between 6m/s or 12 m/s. Seems that Sh3 don't put so much waves/wind on the formula in the end.

Like I said I tested each fog condition in 3 different times per day plus one at night at least 6 times each one...was really a big and tedious work ; ).
The results are quite curious. The Devs made the crew blind probably thinking that the players could like to detect the ships by yourself...but this makes the crew too dumb for serious players. Here the table (it's not easy to make a good table with the forum text editor no?):

1. For GWX 8km, Stock or these new settings the player always can see using binoculars at these distances max:

No fog, daytime: 9000m...............................at night: 8200m
Light fog, day time: 5500m...........................at night: 5300m
Medium fog, day time: 2500m........................at night: 2300m
Heavy fog, day time: 350m...........................at night: 300m

Notice that we don't have so much difference between day and night for the players eyes. Obviously at night also depends on what Env files you are using. The more darker, more difficult to see. Anyway why these values (night and day) are so close? It's because Sh3 have preset distances where the fog is put on and is the same for night and day (sky dome and fog)! So even if you make the sensors very larger in distances and the crew start to see longer the player only will start to see anything at the above distances anyway.


2.Now the main results for the crew:

Day time(distance in meters when the crew start to see the ships in 90% of the time):
......................GWX(crew).....Stock(crew)... .....new settings(crew).......max player eyes
No fog...........7400-8100A......6800-7900...........8700-9200......................9000
Light Fog.......4100-4400A......4200-4500..........5700-4900.......................5500
Med. Fog.......1800-2100A......1600-1900A........2000-2600......................2500
Heavy Fog.......280-300AA.......220-300AA.........300-350A........................350



Night time:
...................GWX(crew).........Stock(crew).. .....new settings(crew).......max player eyes
No fog..........6700-7900..........5700-6600..........7000-8400....................8200
Light Fog......3800-4100..........3500-4300..........4500-5200....................5300
Med. Fog......1700-1900A........1500-1900A.......1800-2300....................2300
Heavy Fog....NoEncounter?.......150-200A...........200-300A.....................300

Comments:
1. Notice that with the new settings the crew and the player "see" almost at same time now.
2. At night is not so important to see at same time because is very difficult to see anything anyway.
3. These new settings have a slight more vampire vision at clear nights with calm weather but this is the unique small side effect. And this isn't a so frequent condition (weather) in game. This happens because the new settings are in truth a "11 km mod" with better adjusted sensors files. I limited to 9300 the max distance for visual detection by the crew because the game don't draw anything before 9000m (unless if we have a new sky dome and scenes.dat adjusts). This will avoid eagle eyes on the crew.
Just as an example, FYI, Manuel Ortega made a new sky dome and others adjusts on scene.dat to make the game start to draw at far away for 16kmod. ; )
4.Stock and GWX have a very blind dumb crew for visual purposes. Notice that in GWX frequently the player is attacked first!! This is a mix of blind crew and LRG mod (but can be and must be adjusted by the team)
==>A=frequently attacked first,
==>AA=always attacked first.
5. The new settings also made the crew better to detect (visually) airplanes.
6. At night and with fog the results are more random. With heavy fog is better to only stay at surface if you have a radar! (for all settings).
7. The game is really far better to play now! Seems more intelligent.

Tomorrow I will post about the hydrophones adjusts and results.

This sounds so good i would like to use it. If needed I come back with some range results if you want after I played a bit. I would use it in combination with RuB1.45

Yes, thankyou. Any feedback after the release will be welcome. Some fine tunning could be always needed.;)