In 1996 radar was working in this way

[Marko]

(image gently taken from Neal web site)

early SD with only range of tagets for air contact, SJ for surface (A-scope in the 1942 and adding PPI in 1943) not that crap with unreadeable range numbers that i dunno if they are miles, yards, feet, or light years and i must guess bearings.

C'mon guys we are in 2007 and at least if you puts smiles on the right screen please add a clone of puzzle bubble on the left so i can spend some time playing something funny.

tnx and best regards

[tommyk]

Amazing how nice they look! Did they actualy worked?

[Rotor]

Originally Posted by tommyk

Amazing how nice they look! Did they actualy worked?

They worked splendid! - without any patches....

[Subnuts]

Originally Posted by Rotor

They worked splendid! - without any patches....

Well, except when you'd get a radar contact, come within visual range, and your watch officer would never report a ship spotted!

[Frenssen]

Fixing the radars should one of the first priorities to fix as it really affects gameplay. My SD radar can detect ships 18nm miles away. The next moment my watch cries out "aircraft spotted" and my boat is bombed to pieces

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by tommyk

Amazing how nice they look! Did they actualy worked?

In fact they worked so well that ships would not be seen sometimes because the island behind them dominated the radar screen. Lots of fun.

[tommyk]

Originally Posted by Marko

Amazing! Is that from Silent Hunter 1? Who has more screenshots? I want that kind of detail (or better) in 2007!

edit: ah, found some (danish) http://www.silenthunter.dk/shi/review/review.htm

[heartc]

Yeah, in fact, from an exclusive technical point of view, the "old" sims often were far more accurate than those of today. They lacked a proper physics model, maybe even a proper "3D as it would look in Real Life" model, but they got the numbers and facts down pretty much accurately. SHI is an excellent example for that. The radars alone were really excellent. And I tell you, from reading some first hands account about Submarine Warfare in the Pacific, they read just like my patrols from SHI, all things considered! Having this destroyer coming up on you in the moonlight, not yet firing cause he can't quite see you, but has a general idea about your pos. Angle on the Bow Zero, bearing 180°, speed - don't matter for that - range - irrelevant. You fire 2 torps from your stern tube. They go directly for him - but hold, he sees the wakes from your steam driven torps, makes a hard turn for the right. Should have fired a spread. But anyway, cause of the brake he had to make, you have enough time to disappear into the darkness, make a turn, and he never finds you again.
It was almost eery when I had this encounter in SHI, and only a few days after read exactly that kind of account in Edward's L. Beach "Submarine!".

Another good example would be "Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe", a flightsim from 1991. When you flew a Mustang or similar plane that was more maneuverable than the German 190, and you did outturn him, he did not just continue the turn like an idiot waiting for you to get a lead solution on him, but instead he bugged out and used his superior acceleration to seperate and then came back later. In "Il-2" or "Forgotten Battles", or any other WWII flightsim which came out in recent years, the "non- Turnfighters" are dead meat cause they will keep try turning against you even when you are in a superior turnfighter, instead of using their speed or climb advantage against you.

Yet another example is Jane's F-15 vs. Jane's F/A-18. In Jane's F-15, you got an EXCELLENT air to ground radar, where you could take accurate radar pictures from any given area on your scope, under realistic constraints like the real thing - in Jane's F/A-18, which came out only 2 or 3 years later, they changed some things about the graphics engine, and your air to ground radar was basicly gone - it was just a blur with a few "spikes" on it, worse than Falcon 3.0 or Tornado had in the early 90s.

I sometimes really wonder what the heck is going on in the minds of some devs.
Not to bash SHIV though - I really think it has a great feeling to it and in many ways indeed has resemblance to the sims of the golden sim era. But still, there are simply things being done or not done which make no sense and I simply have to ask myself "WHY (did you not stick to something that has already been done perfectly 10 years ago)???"

[Sgian Dubh]

Right on Marko!

I just asked a similar question in another thread because I don't see land in the surface scope.

I may have to fire up SH1 (sitting on my HD as I type) just to have come fun with the radar again.

[heartc]

Originally Posted by Sgian Dubh

Right on Marko!

I just asked a similar question in another thread because I don't see land in the surface scope.

I may have to fire up SH1 (sitting on my HD as I type) just to have come fun with the radar again.

If you do, I suggest you use the latest Dosbox (0.70), set cycles to auto and core to dynamic (check the "Classics" forum on this site here, topic "New Dosbox version out" or something similar). This version of Dosbox, with those settings, is the best one for SHI yet. Some people have had success with the VDM sound method, where you will be able to achieve time acceleration greater than 256 or 512, but I myself never got it to work this way.

[tommyk]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

In fact they worked so well that ships would not be seen sometimes because the island behind them dominated the radar screen. Lots of fun.

Ah, thats what I would expect if you dont have a doppler radar they would hardly be visible in front of a noisy island echo...