[SeaQueen]

Originally Posted by Bellman

SQ I am sure that most here appreciate your valid points but I do not recall, correct me if I'm wrong, reports
of in-game detections at those kind of ranges. Not that that is particularly pertinent as what the quotes reveal
is that real extremes may exceed our general gameing understanding. My point isnt that such extremes are
even typical but what is it reasonable to take as the modal range parameters ?

In sonar there isn't really any modal range, according to which one could assign some kind of definite range law for detection. In professional computer models of warfare, characterizing sonar performance is actually one of the most difficult things to do intelligently. It's very hand-wavey.

Sonar performance is so potentially variable, even within a single location, that to pick out any one range with one sensor and say, "this is what you're going to get," is absurd. Ask any sonar technician. What you get is what you're gettin' depending on where in the world you are, you might not get that tomorrow. Even on a very good system, sometimes you'll see amazingly long distances, sometimes, you'd almost be as good with a pair of binoculars looking for a periscope.

Have we become, with LwAmi 3.0, a trifle myopic when about to enter the new SAS 'playing field' post 1.03 Beta ?

Not necessarily. Depending on where you are, acoustic phonemomena like multiple convergence zones and super-duper surface ducts that lead to these kinds of very long ranges aren't really a big deal, because they're rare.

You especially don't see that sort of thing too often in most contemporary theatres. That's sort of what people are grappling with now. A lot of what was responsible, back in the 80s, for NATO forces doing so well in ASW was not just that the Soviets made loud boats and couldn't train enough in them. It was the oceanography. Northern lattitudes are just more friendly to sonar.

Currently, the places they're thinking about are in tropical or subtropical waters with a high sea surface temperature, so most places, except the very deep, are strongly bottom limited. Multiple convergence zones is something you'd generally think about in more northern lattitudes.

Ideally, yes, it'd be really cool if they could import some kind of global climatology into DW so that we wouldn't have to rely on the (inaccurately portrayed) SSPs that we have in the game, and capture a lot more of the variability of sonar performance. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. To REALLY build a detailed sonar model, requires some pretty heavy duty computing just to run it. Even then it's not accurate. All the existing research-grade sonar models to date are 2D. The ocean is 3D. People can build careers around making better sonar models.

I am sure that there are 'backroom ' folk who (rightly) would prefer to keep a discrete mist in front of our eyes and
will be very content that we simulate under possibly excessively restrictive conditions. :hmm:

There's nothing classified about modeling sonar. The people at SACLANT (NATO's big underwater acoustics lab), some people at SAIC (the company that makes the Navy's sonar models), and a guy at MIT recently published a book on it. It's called Computational Ocean Acoustics. It's fun stuff.

What IS classified is specific performance figures for specific systems. That's why everything you see out there is very vague and tends to lack the necessary qualifiers for us to actually make useful estimates of how good the sonar model in DW is.

DW has a lot of depth to it. It has as much depth as anything I've seen out there, in fact. Some things it does well, some things it doesn't. Have fun with it. There's a lot you can learn with it.