Information needed about sonar
 

Hello everyone,

I'm new here, and as a student I'm doing a work about sonar, so I wanted to know if there were games (like Dangerous Waters, Sub Command, etc...) where sound waves are correctly simulated (variation of sound celerity with depth, salinity, temperature, existence of shadow zones, etc...), in order to possibly use them for my work.

NB : I'm already a SH II and SH III player, but sonar is still "too simple" in those games.

Thanks for your answers.

The sound propagation model is simplistic in DW but its far more advanced than the SH games. Of the items you mentioned the only one I don't think that is simulated is Salinity.

The processing power needed to calculate sound 'correctly' and the number of variables you would need to know to do so, pretty much precludes a 'real' sonar simulation in games like DW (games used because I just said simulation, not because DW isn't a sim). Real time calculation is pretty much impossible for such calculations.

Yeah, I guess so, I just wanted to know if it was possible to get something much more closer to reality than in SH.
You talked about DW taking temperature or depth into account, what about games like Sub Command or Hunter Killer ?

Sub Command is DW's predecessor, so it just has a less advanced model than DW. Hunter Killer (by which I am presuming you mean 688(I) Hunter/Killer) is Sub Command's predecessor, so... :cool:

Here is little something about DW sound model:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=117814

There are some other interesting threads about the topic:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=142464
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=131080
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=131383

Here is link to sound propagation ray-tracing based tool I made:

http://roger.questions.cz/other/SoPro.1.9.zip

Here is some documentation to it:

http://subsim.questions.cz/sopro/doc/sopro.html

I'm no underwater sound pro, so I post this to get some feedback too.

Hey if I could get my degree by playing DW and at the same time writing my thesis where do I sign up? :D

Thanks for the links Dr. Sid !

The sonar model in DW does not simulate the behavior of sound in the ocean correctly. It captures some qualitative effects but I wouldn't do any sort of academic research based on it.

Thanks for the information, anyway I didn't want to do a work based on a game, I just wanted to know what level of "realism" was posible, in order to help me figuring a few things (it's more fun than boring charts in books...).
And Dr Sid "SoPro" seems very interesting.;)

It's probably best to stick to the charts. There's a lot of stuff that goes on in them that doesn't go on in DW.