Navigation at night
 

Stop me if I'm way off the mark here and feel free to point and laugh, but seeing as SH4 is such an accurate simulation, does anyone know if it is actually possible to navigate using the stars?

Not that I would ever be able to (I can only spot a few constellations in the northern hemisphere let alone the southern!), I'm just curious

Well you can tell east from west but seeing as how the earth is flat conical projections are .. uhhh... impossible.

I havent been able to tell if the "ceiling" is a "celistial sphere" either.

Either way a sextant wont work. It would be cool if it could be simulated but for now we have the GPS :p

This was discussed for quite some time in SH3.

Crikey, a sextant, my curiosity hadn't even stretched that far. That would certainly sort the men out from the boys if there was one of those in the game.

Thanks for your answer

Well orion is certainly promanent Hrm.. Im going to check it for accuracy for date/time/lat,lon tonight just out of curiosity.

For those of similar curiosity here is an excellent freeware sky mapping software

http://astrosurf.com/astropc/

at the top of the page "Cartes de ciel" "Charts of the sky" also available in many languages.

What would be nice would be the ability to get lost. After a few nights without stars or any other kind of fix, the position shown on the chart should start to lose accuracy. That would one for the developers though.

As for the night sky in the game, you can tell North from South but you could never fix your position.

Interesting!!! I'm wondering if a nav instrument could be used using the sun's position in game for measuring location.

They used what is referred to as dead recokining. Plot a particular speed at a particular heading for a particular amout of time wold give them a pretty good guess. This btw was the only way to keep track while submerged.

They also would factor in things like known currents and wind drift. You would be supprised as to how accurate they were.

Of course theres always the noon sight which could usually be done in all but the worse weather. Basically the track the sun till it reaches its azmiuth (highest point), check that agains a very accurate time piece and walla you have a pretty damn good fix.

Keep in mind the pacific is one big bowl of water and being off by 10 or 20 miles was not really a big deal.

Not in mid-ocean but making a landfall would be interesting, or even fatal.