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Originally Posted by Molon Labe
Even if you had the outside database information, wouldn't you still need a high fidelity sound propagation model that utilizes that information during the simulation?
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The database is out there. You could just pull the water temperature and salinity from the Levitus climatology. There's also public domain bathymetry out there and that drives the pressure terms dictating soundspeed. There's lots so nice simulations available online.
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Even if you could download data and plug that into the acoustic conditions of a DW scenario, you're still stuck with 3 low-fidelity SSPs and not many variables to use to tweak them.
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I was thinking more of a future subsim other than DW.
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*And one which would be a great feautre of a dynamic campaign engine! 
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You know, back when Microprose's Red Storm Rising was out, I think they hit the nail on the head by limiting it's scope to the US/Soviet confrontation in one theatre. If you do that it makes it possible to do a lot more like that.
Falcon I think was very smart, because it did essentially the same thing. If you want to do something other than North Korea, you have to download a whole seperate campaign.
Harpoon is cool in that it allows you to do any conflict globally, but the thing about it is that it also has an easily extensible database, and is a lot more abstracted. The more detailed you make a simulation, the more limited in scope you need to make it in order to do a good job. I don't think it's wise to try to make a simulation all things to all people. It never works well.
If I was going to make a subsim, I would make it very limited and ONLY worry about a hypothetical US/China confrontation in the western Pacific in a single timeframe 15-20years in the future. It would also have a detailed database of US, Japanese, Taiwanese and Chinese warships. I might also add UK and Australian warships and land units. It wouldn't even attempt to have a global database.
Submarines would be the only playable platform. They would include 688i, SSN21, SSGN and 774 classes. I don't want to have to build a flight simulator or surface ship simulator on top of a submarine simulator. I'd want to make the controls of those platforms and the way they behaved underwater as correct as possible. There's also a part of me that wonders whether it might be fun to give players the option of going into the engine room and playing with the nuclear power plant where they could adjust control rods and manage the various radioactive decay products. It seems like the engineering section always gets short changed in these games. If you can take the helm, you ought to be able to man the throttles too.
The thing about naval sims, though, is that they're necessarily more slow paced than an air simulation like Falcon. Sub sims are particularly that way. An individual submarine's mission might last weeks. In light of that, I'm not clear exactly how dynamic it would make sense to make it because from the submarines perspective, minute to minute changes in the war don't matter much. It's more like the day-to-day changes. A scripted campaign would seem much more natural.