SO REAL THAT IS SILENT HUNTER?
 

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One time a got sea sick

It's not real at all.

In a real submarine every officer and every man has to go through months of training, both in classrooms and aboard ship. You drill and train until you know exactly where every instrument and every switch is located, at least in your department.

Look at your Flight Simulator. To truly simulate the cockpit you would have to have a game console that was an exact copy of the cockpit, with all the real gauges and switches actually working. Then you could develop the muscle memory to instinctively know what to do in most situations, and hopefully in every situation. This is how an air force or airliner simulator works. In the game you use the mouse to flip certain switches, something you don't do in real life.

The same is true of the ship. To be a true simulation we would need the complete mock-up interior made for Das Boot, with one of us being the captain and everyone else doing their job, coupled with video graphics plugged into the periscope and a full surround screen for the bridge, along with appropriate smells. I know that sounds silly but smell is a major part of life and all our experiences.

The captain gives orders to different personnel, and if they've trained together properly they know not only what to do and how to do it, but what he wants and how he wants it done. The game is a simulation, but it's not a simulation of reality, but of how reality feels. Does it make me feel like I'm really there? Does it make it easy for me to pretend I'm really stalking an enemy merchant ship? Does it make me feel like I'm actually sailing through the harbor, with the sights and sounds illustrated as I imagine them to be?

If so, then it's doing its job. :sunny:

Certainly one thing a sim like SH3 or 4 can't give you are the extended environmental conditions you have to put up with for a whole patrol. Especially on a U-Boat, or one of the S-Boats. What's it like to be soaking wet and unable to get dry for weeks on end? Freezing cold? Enervating heat? Sweat-induced rashes that won't quit? Most of us who have lived in relatively climate controlled conditions all our lives would probably go into a catatonic stupor in a few days in the torrid conditions on most WW2 submarines operating in a tropical environment, let alone able to function and efficiently perform our jobs at a moments notice.

You may want to check out this vid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJT_CACIZqs

The guy flies a Cessna 172 with no prior training, or flight hours, and only flight sim experience. While he most certainly makes some mistakes none would be catastrophic.

However I do believe that flight sims are about 100 steps above any desktop submarine simulator. And also no ww2 uboats/fleetboats are available to the general public to test this.

-deicide

"How hard would it be to fly a light plane, like a Cessna 172?"

"It's easy! I'm 15 and I have 23 hours in a Cessna."

"There is a reason the 172 is one of the most popular trainer."

"A C172 is really easy to fly as it is really stable and forgiving."

You can also fly a 747 in Flight Sim. Good luck landing a real one.

The question was "How real is it?", not "How hard is it?" After years of playing SH3 you could also walk into the Type VII U-boat at Laboe and know where everything is, if not how to work all the switches. My point was not whether you could do it or not, but how it compares with the real experience. It doesn't, but that's not what we play these games for.

As I said, if it feels real to the player, that's all that counts.

I gotta admit i've been playing for a few years know and I still don't even know how to operate the A-Scope still.

Very true!!

I misinterpreted your post. So my apologies! :O:


-deicide

Sailor Steve pretty much summed it up (not bad for a skimmer!). The trainers we used before heading out to sea were full scale mock-ups of that particular section of the boat you were training for. That said, they didn't 100% portray the real thing either.

Since neither SH3 nor SH4 gives instructions on how to operate the head I can confidently say the simualtors are not sufficient instruction to allow you to survive long on a real submarine.:rotfl2:

I have seen plenty of submarines and not one of them was controlled with a mouse and keyboard. SH4 doesn't even allow you to control individual shafts or separates dive planes. The christmas tress is automatic and there are no random errors such as a stuck vent to keep you on the surface until it is cleared.

I'd love to see a mod with random failures like FSX has.

Even the much-maligned SH2 had mechanical breakdowns incorporated into the game. If you pushed your diesels too hard for too long, you could end up paying for it.

Unfortunately, that's hard coded with no provision for modding. Otherwise it would have been done five years ago. Just radar breakdowns were crucial to how operations panned out in the real war, to say nothing of all the other possible breakdowns. It's a major unrealism in the game. Only torpedoes can malfunction, other than combat damage.

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