Hmmm - seeing this post and the GWX neutral bouyancy thread got me interested in finding out what's really happening with the bouyancy modeling in GWX. So, before playing with this new combo mod or the neutral GWX fix, I just fired up my GWX install (using SH3 to change the water transparency to 20 - hope that didn't break something by accident) and played around with it - got some rather interesting results (all done with sea floor of 104m):
1. Initially, I dove to 100m and went to all stop. My boat slowly rose (over about 20 minutes) to 83m, and then stopped there, staying at that depth for several hours without rising further.
2. I noticed the dive planes were still showing "down", so I hit "A" - the dive planes leveled out, and the boat rose further - taking about 20 minutes to reach 69m and then stopping there for hours without rising any further.
3. I then ordered a depth of 105m by clicking on the depth dial - the boat sank slowly to 87m, then leveled out and stayed there for hours. I then ordered 118m - the boat sank to 98m and stayed there. I then ordered 130m, and the boat sank to 103m and sat about 1m off the sea floor for hours. I then ordered 140m, and the boat finally slowly settled onto the bottom and stayed there for hours - no damage was incurred.
4. I then ordered a depth of 88m - the boat rose to 73m and stayed there for hours.
5. From the surface, at dead stop, I ordered 104m. The boat descended to 87m and then stopped, staying there for hours.
6. All of the above was done with the crew evenly distributed as they would normally be. Just to check, I sent everyone forward and ordered some further descents. The pattern mentioned in 1-3 above repeated itself, without any change (boat stayed on even keel the whole time, just as it had before).
My conclusions? First, the depth-keeping/accuracy deviations of GWX seem to worsen at greater depths, as most people have focused on maybe a 2-3m difference near the surface, but this seems to have widened to somewhere around 20m at around 100m depth. Such depth variations could prove rather troublesome if you're trying to operate underway near the bottom - at least the error seems to be on the high side, which should lead to fewer bottom collisions than if the error were the other way around.
Second - I may have to try out the neutral bouyancy tweak to see if that fixes this behavior - I'd hate to give up some nice surface dynamics, but there's just something fundamentally distracting/disconcerting to me about not being able to rely on my crew to reach and maintain the depth I order.
But, third, I'm gonna have to try these depth-keeping tests while underway, because I never really go to "all stop" unless I'm trying to listen on my hydrophones (which only lasts a few seconds) or unless I'm trying to put the boat on the bottom for repairs, which this set of tests at least shows should be possible with GWX. So, if these depth variations only show up at dead stop, they really don't seem very significant to game play after all.
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