I vote for the following points:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wisq
1(b). Maybe it's the thermal layer — I know there are situations where you can hear things at huge distances due to thermocline refraction. I believe this would be a transient thing and would come and go, which is not what actually happens in SH, but maybe SH can't model that and so they just gave the hydrophones longer ranges to emulate it.
2. Maybe surface ships, particularly military ones, are just a lot quieter now. This certainly makes some sense to me — it always seemed like I was mostly picking up ships by their engine and propeller noises, and we have much better engine and propeller designs today.
3. Maybe it was just that everything was so shallow. Most of the mission, I was cruising in depths of only 50m or less. I seem to recall that shallow water makes sonar trickier, mainly because of its acoustic properties but also because you can't stream the array very far.
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About #2
True, back at that time they didn't have the know-how and the technology to perform DSP on the acoustic signals... The signal was processed by a pair of human ears.
But on the other side the ships, even military ones, did a lot more noise (orders of magnitude).
And then there is the difference in how the two different games (I dond't know directly SH4 but I assume it is identical to SH3, the one that I know) model the sensors/acoustic environment aspect... And it is here that we find the greatest difference.
For DW, there is an old thread by Dr.Sid that examine the whole thing, here:
DW sound propagation model measurements
EDIT: I think you could find very intresting this thread too:
Underwater acoustics for dummies
The modeling of the sensors/acoustic environment in SHx is crude at best if confronted with DW... But that's fair, IMO.
Even so, after a year playing SH3 I recently starded the desire to improve a little the "hydrophones aspect" in SH3. I installed the "New Sh3 Hyprophones layers by Rubini v2.0" mod and that made the trick for me. Nothing revolutionary, mind you, but something very worthwhile IMO that give the game more substance (now, every time a get a contact in the hydrophones I can get away with a rough estimation of its range and in some tactical situations I have to choose between going down and listen better VS staying at PD but with a limited detection area).