Can Aircraft See You At PD?

[Schöneboom]

Just when I thought I'd run out of noob questions...

I have not yet tempted fate in this way, but someone must know: Can aircraft see your hull through the water at periscope depth on a sunny day (and attack you)? Even if we don't have SH4's transparent water, perhaps the visibility is modeled for the aircraft lookouts.

I reckon even before radar they can see the periscope, or rather its wake, so I generally raise it only at slow speeds, and very briefly.

Vielen Dank!

[Sailor Steve]

I'm pretty sure they can't, which is too bad; they could in SH1, and that made harbor raids exceedingly tricky.

[Brag]

In RL, in murky waters and a sunny day, they can see your shadow if you're close to the surface.

I don't know if this is modeled into SHIII or GWX. I go down to 20 meters when cruising under water.

From an airplane,I have seen whales submerged about 10 meters.

[Nuoz]

That's not a "nub" question. In fact i also don't know the answer to that myself, so i'm "nub" too. These kinds of questions keep interest in the forums. It's so much more fun when people talk about the game imo.

[Schöneboom]

Danke an Alle,

So, I take it there's no dispute about the raised periscope & its wake -- aircraft can see that in good weather, correct?

Re the submerged hull -- not knowing SH3's inner workings, I don't know if the water is moddable to create a small "bowl" of visibility at PD. In effect that would be like an inverted version of thick fog, in that water refraction would make it very hard to see the U-boot until almost overhead (for ex., within a 500 m diameter circle) and then down to only about 15 m deep. And of course this visibility would be gone entirely at night & or in poor weather.

Hmm, maybe I better not give Kptlt. Lehmann any more ideas!

[Thniper]

Originally Posted by Schöneboom

Hmm, maybe I better not give Kptlt. Lehmann any more ideas!

Sshhhh! ... Keep it secret, keep it safe!
Can you make this thread disappear?

Though I think this is a hardcoded issue, otherwise they already would have changed it!

Happy hunting!

[Wilko]

I always travel at 80m when submerged with a bit of depth under me and come up tp PD for a quick look, well actualy it is to break the boardom of staring at the map or listning to the hydrophone but once I do raise the scope it is usualy for a quick scan and then back down fast and decend back to safer depths

[TarJak]

In SHIII they currently can't see you but they certainly can kill you if they saw you submerge and they drop bombs or DC's on where you are. If you are quick enough on the C key you should be OK but don't hang about at PD unless you are sure they don't know where you are. If you pop your scope up and they spot that you'll know about it.

[Brag]

Originally Posted by Thniper

Sshhhh! ... Keep it secret, keep it safe!
Can you make this thread disappear?

Though I think this is a hardcoded issue, otherwise they already would have changed it!

Happy hunting!

Yes, be careful what you say. Kpt Lehman and his devilish GWX crew are on Winnie Churchill's payroll.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Well, technically we could make visual sensors (enemy crew) see you below the water.

The trick that is needed to make it so the enemy can only spot you underwater when they are right on top of you... as opposed to underwater thousands of meters away... is even possible. We could even set it to a specific negative depth... though it would be a fixed setting.

What would be needed is to simply add a new very short range visual sensor to the AI_Sensors.dat... just angle it sharply downward and create a maximum angle so that it cannot see very far into the distance horizontally.

Why we are not going to do it...

1) This sensor would have to be added to HUNDREDS of units already in GWX. (surface, land AND air)

2) It would RARELY come into play as the enemy would need to be VERY close to you and would require you to be at very shallow depth... and even then it should not be 100% effective.

3) Probable 1,000,000,000,000 users posts screaming at us and cursing our geneology.

4) Doing so would create weeks of work (maybe months) for this one issue alone... followed by much testing and adjustment.

5) The GWX Dev team would mutiny due to the unexpected volume of work that suddenly appeared... and probably call for a team vote with the following choices on the ballot:

a) Throw Kpt. Lehmann overboard without his helmet and respirator at Grid AK22.
b) Throw Kpt. Lehmann overboard without his helmet and respirator at Grid CD36.
c) Throw Kpt. Lehmann overboard without his helmet and respirator at Grid FD15.
d) Throw Kpt. Lehmann overboard without his helmet and respirator at Grid GN43.
e) Resuscitate Kpt. Lehmann after each dunking and do all of the above... wash, rinse, and repeat.