Quote:
Originally Posted by h.sie
Regarding vampire nights
Using GWX 16km environment, I also was amazed how far my crew and I could see in dark night (sometimes > 10km), while the enemy is completely blind and cannot see me in 200m distance.
While "hacking" the visual sensors for my type VIIF wolfs, I made some discoveries regarding visual sensors: Assume there are the player sub P and two escorts A and B. Every second, every sensor of every ship looks at the other ships. The arrow -> means "looks at".
P->A
P->B
A->P
A->B
B->P
B->A
But: In the code I cannot see, which sensor currently is looking, since the sensor's name (e.g. AI_Visual) is stored elsewhere. Same discovery that Stiebler did with his ASDIC. I can only identify a sensor by its range value, e.g. 30000m for GWX AI-Visual.
At the beginning of every "look-process", first, the distance between the sensor and the current target object is used to calculate a certain variable, which directly affects detection probability, maybe it IS the detection probability. After that, other factors like light, fog and so on modify this variable. Not examined in detail.
Multiplying this variable with a factor 10 will raise detection probability accordingly. Factor 0,1 will lower detection probability.
It would be easy to adjust / modify this factor according to the sun position (day, night, afternoon).
2 problems remain:
1) ATM this modification can only be done for all sensors in common. I cannot differ between different sensors in a smart way - except for the "dirty solution" by identifying them by their range (which unfortunately differs between supermods). AND: While Uboat crew sensors must be made more blind during night, AI-sensors ARE already blind and should be made to see better. So it is necessary to differ between AI-Sensors and Crew sensors. Only dirty solution possible ATM (indentify by range).
2) Even if we can modify sensors in a smart way, the objects are still rendered to be visible for the player in the dark night. This would cause a dysbalance between the crew ability to see and the players ability - which currently is very well balanced, at least in my sh3-installation. I don't know how to change the rendering so that the objects also are made less visible during the night.
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Hi h.sie,
Some comments:
1. the rendering issue (your monitor, your files at a once): Hitmann already said correctly that the rendering max distance at night (mainly) is also a matter of adjust on your monitor color/contrast/brightness and also dependent on what environment colors you are using. Almost all supermods try to delivery something already adjusted - but trust me, isn't equall for all because the monitor differences. So, we never will have something working very well for all users.
2. the type of environment 8k or 16km etc (scene.dat, env folder files): this is again making a fubar on the matter. Different fog distance settings, different waves size, different env colors, different sky textures - all this can produce different detections distances and different rendering points.
3. finally the sensors (sensors.dat, sensors.cfg , sim.cfg and AI_sensors.dat) : again we have a lot of different mods and different personal adjust here producing again different detections distances.
By the exposed above we can see that we don't need to delivery a real and total solution for all. What we need to delivery is a working&plausive night uboat crew visual detection. I mean, something that works as the AI_sensors.
We can't forget that the player sensors have two values (the precise range and the max range). To our intention we must use the max range settings.
I will suggest (if possible) to make the mod with two range options (that you could then easily detect on the code - needs to be exclusive non?), lets say: 8650 or 16250. This will be the trigger to the mod find the correct values just for player visual sensors and then make the cut based on the light of the environment.