Ship ID at night
 

I can't see a ship at 1,000 yrds let alone ID it in the dead of night. This got me to wondering if my LCD monitor is not bright enough. Should you be able to ID a ship at 1000 yrds at night or is it normal not to be able to see it.

tia

What is the weather like? On an overcast, cloudy night target ID could be a real pain. On a cloudless, starry night it should be easier. With a full moon you should have no trouble at all. But then neither should he.

There was light fog present but even in good wx I can't see 'em.

With the external camera I have to be right on top of the ship to be able to see it.

This was a topic of much discussion on the SH3 boards some time ago. Part of the problem is monitors and gamma settings. SH3 players would complain that they couldn't see anything on the best of nights, and I would turn right around and complain that I could see everything far too well. It seems that the fancy LCD monitors make things much darker, and I have an old 19" CRT.

People trying to help suggested adjusting gamma settings, or adjusting the monitor itself. I never found a real solution. I could make it darker, but then everything was far too dark in everyday use. You might try adjusting your settings, but it might make all your other uses way too bright.

I don't know a certain answer, but then I'm no expert; just throwing out ideas.

Did you try adjusting the in-game Gamma or the monitor settings?

I also have an old 19" CRT, but everything was waaaaaaay too dark, so I just tuned up the Gamma and it sorted it out

Personally I have better experience (CRT) with lowering contrast alone, as opposed to gamma. That way you also lower the intensity of any bright GUI elements. Gamma has the tendency to distort color balance. During the night stay away from your map if you want to look into the dark. It's far too bright. The same goes for bright lamps in your playing environment. Kill those. Once you let your eyes get accustomed to these lower light intensities you'll see much more.

As Raptor said, adjust your ingame gamma slider. This should brighten it up. I have mine just a tad above the half way mark. Once thing is for sure, that gamma control can make it as dark as coal.

This isn't so different from real life, what subs actually experienced. Identifying ships in limited visibility was difficult. I have read that some called it "Blobology." And there always seemed to be someone on board who was able to distinguish ships while others only saw the blob.

Regards,
Feltan

Actually I suggested long ago that all visibility mods or mods that shipped tweaks to the environment shipped a sample screenshot for calibrating the monitor. Otherwise you can't know for sure that you are seeing what the modder saw when he balanced his creation. Too many times I have seen people yell against such a mod before actually realizing that they had inapropiate monitor settings to run it.

I personally do a series of calibration runs by setting all parameters to darker and waiting till my crew spots a ship in a sample mission I have. They I point at that bearing and rise the light until I can barely see the ship, and now I know that I see the same as my crew :D

And yes, identifying well a ship in a dark night is a pain. Herbert Werner in Iron Coffins told that when doing surface attacks at night they just aimed at the barely visible shadows, so go figure how difficult getting details would be.

An elegant solution, as is usual from Hitman. I'm still new to SH4, and had forgotten that you could now pause the game and adjust parameters while still playing. Brilliant, both on the part of the devs and of yourself.

Jurgen Östen said the same thing when he described the torpedoing of HMS Malaya for the SH3 videos - shooting at shadows.

Cheers Steve :up:

I meant primarily tweaking monitor settings, but yes in SH4 we know also have that in-game gamma setting which is great :yep:

Do what I do. Turn off the light. Playing at night with a light on, or in the day (real) is very difficult, as you can't see squat. Much better than upping gamma, which sort of defeats the purpose in my eyes. Besides, with the light off, its more immersive. :)

Yeah ... with daylight streaming through my windows many a ship that my crew spots during night looks suspiciously like a reflection of my face. Mostly I save the game and load it up again when it's dark outside.

I've discovered if I move my head a foot or so to the right or left, I can make out more on my 19" LCD screen... Sort of like averting your eyes at night to see better! (Grin)

As far as I figure your not supposed to see anything. I think best (most immersive and realistic) solution is to DL scope mod to give you a night scope, like in RL. I did some modding on it myself and made my obs. scope a little brighter and gave it a green filter. Great nightvision without messing with gamma every time and sticking to realism.

Maybe I could make it available as mod if you can't find anything to suit your taste?

Attack scope: http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...013130_875.jpg
Night scope: http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j...013151_906.jpg