Need Help Using OLC Compass

nodlew · 01-02-10, 10:36 PM

I really like the manual targeting aspect of the OLC ubermod, but there are some other changes that are requiring some getting-used to. The map tools are different, and in the case of the course-plotting cursor, less explicit\accurate than the ones for GWX. Now it is a compass rose with no numbers. And the huge, beautiful, extremely fast and simple to use slide-out compass rose for GWX is gone now as well and all I am left with is a relatively tiny compass I can bring up on the left of the screen. Which I would accept gracefully, except this compass--apparently my only compass--does not even show my heading relative to North on a scale of 360 degs, which is what my crew are reporting ship contacts at. Ship, bearing 85, long range. I find myself on the map screen trying to use the protractor which only goes to 180 deg, trying to add and subtract my way to some clue as to where the enemy ship is relative to me, which is made doubly hard by the fact that my ship's position is not even visible on the map at any except the largest scale of magnification, where the little circle representing me is encompassing kilometers of ocean.
The OLC compass shows my heading relative to Noth on a Decimal scale. 90 deg is now 2.5, 180 is now 5. Can any of you much more intelligent fellows tell me what method is used to quickly translate the one into the other? Or is there a compass I am not seeing?

comet61 · 01-03-10, 12:14 AM

Though I am far from being the expert here I was sort of in the same boat as you are now. I tried OLC for awhile, and it it a great mod, but in the short run...wasn't for me for various reasons. This is why I switched over to (Manos) MaGui mod. It intergrated with GWX3 quite well. There are some subtle differences between MaGui and OLC. Many of the navigation/AoB tools are available, and some are a little different. The only thing I can probably wish for if there is ever going to be an upgrade to Magui is ...larger dials. I got spoiled using Raphaels GUI mods and when I went from GWX/Raphaels to OLC then to MaGui I had to re-learn the setup. It was a minor adjustment.

The bottom line for me was Manos MaGui was better for me than OLC, MaGui is almost the same as OLC, but not completely.

Check it out here: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=157376

Hitman · 01-03-10, 06:44 AM

Quote:

does not even show my heading relative to North on a scale of 360 degs, which is what my crew are reporting ship contacts at. Ship, bearing 85, long range.

AFAIK the bearings that the crew announces are always relative, i.e. based on your Uboat's bow, and not on the true North

nodlew · 01-03-10, 03:03 PM

What I meant to say was--the compass does not show my heading on a 360 deg scale juxtaposed against the 360 magnetic compass showing N,S,E,W and all the little points in between. I know that the sighting reports, sound contacts, etc are on a 360 deg scale relative to my Bow at 0 deg. If you have the two side by side, it is very simple to see where on the mag compass the sighted ship is. Ship at 50 deg--my 50 equates to 20 NNE etc. With the inner ring of the compass adding up to 10, things become confusing. If the crew reported sightings at, say, 2.5 as Due East, things would be a little simpler (except the compass units are so tiny, the inner ring is rendered useless in the OLC mod). I have seen compasses like the one in OLC's mod before--perhaps it is a historically accurate one. But I'll be damned if I've figured out how to use it yet. Wikipedia was no help.

nodlew · 01-03-10, 03:05 PM

Thanks for the tip, Comet. I'll check it out.

Pisces · 01-03-10, 07:13 PM

I think the 0-9 scale is (in real-life) supposed to indicate the last digit of the course. I mean that it would spin at a faster rate as the larger full 360 degree disk. Because the big 360 degree disk is not precise enough. It would be similar to the 0-9 gyro dial on the F6 page, except for course instead of gyro. Stock Sh3 never modelled it (the smaller 0-9 degree image was static), and nobody seems to have ever wondered about those funny 0-9 numbers. Well, some probably did but it was never followed up with a conclusion or a mod.

OLC'gui does have a compas readout. It's a ribbon type in the lower left part of the screen. It's just not possible to select a course with it. With a bit of practise you'll see you can set course accurate to within a degree or two on the compass on that 6 dial panel. If you really want accuracy (not neccesary for the most part) I suggest you apply this mod(let) I made based on OLC's gui, to include the compass on all mouse cursors. Then setting course with the waypoint tool is piece of cake. (hmm, maybe it allready has that compas image, I totally forgot what it was like)

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...postcount=1308

nodlew · 01-04-10, 02:28 AM

Pisces, since becoming a Subsim Forum member you have been my greatest source of help and explanatory information. I appreciate it very much. I did re-download the OLC tutorial videos from your Filefront page, by the way, and they worked. Thanks for that as well. Still trying to master the Attack Disk in conjunction with the Range and AOB Finder (that thing needs a less generic name. That's not a name, that's a description--and an incomplete one. If you're going to call it that, OLC, you should call it the RANGE, AOB, AND SPEED FINDER. One could call it the Swiss Army Submarine Gadget). I appear to use the Att Dsk correctly about 20% of the time. There's a lot of opportunity to make errors, and they can multiply. Small error in range + small error in AOB + small error entering AOB on Att Dsk + target decides to make a small turn to port= why is the target going away from me and not across my bow as I'd planned? There are some things that have to be practiced to become ingrained--like knowing when to subtract the AOB from 0 deg and when to subtract it from 180 deg, and how to enter the AOB into the Att Disk correctly (port, starboard) and which rings to read various info from. I'm getting it down. Although for targets at extreme visual range, which is where you want them to find their course and plot an attack, I think the R&AOB is bound to become less accurate and more a matter of informed guess-work and taking multiple readings to finally get things nailed down. Oh well, complexity and difficulty are the things that make the simulation, well, a simulation. Hence fun.
Anyway, still practicing. I've got torpedo targeting down very well. I used to routinely try to close to within a km to take a shot. Now, if target course and speed are constant, and the seas are close to reasonable, I think nothing of taking shots at up to 2km (and over) and am very surprised and irate if I fail to see the target go boom. Using the AOB finder, I'm far more confident that I'm close to the actual AOB of the target ship and have its speed accurately. Now I take under the keel shots at well over a km at targets moving briskly at all sorts of AOB angles. I'm far more flexible--lethal.
Will download that mod you mentioned right now. It's 2:27 and Hughesnet doesn't care how much I download.

Hitman · 01-04-10, 08:22 AM

Quote:

I think the 0-9 scale is (in real-life) supposed to indicate the last digit of the course. I mean that it would spin at a faster rate as the larger full 360 degree disk. Because the big 360 degree disk is not precise enough. It would be similar to the 0-9 gyro dial on the F6 page, except for course instead of gyro. Stock Sh3 never modelled it (the smaller 0-9 degree image was static), and nobody seems to have ever wondered about those funny 0-9 numbers. Well, some probably did but it was never followed up with a conclusion or a mod.

Yes your guess about the digits is correct, but no, your mention that nobody asked/researched it is wrong

I did it, and found the answer after some time. Bobchase created a working vernier for the compass, and I got it to work with the big slideout one, only I never released it. It will come with my future GUI mod, in which I'm working already 8 months

but is close to ready

nodlew · 01-04-10, 04:55 PM

Pisces, downloaded the map tools and they make life easier. I understand about the compass now and am learning to live without the luxury of a nice, large, user-friendly compass. It's getting easier with practice to use the protractor to add\subtract my way to target's bearing. The compass you added to it (the protractor) helps a lot.

Pisces · 01-04-10, 05:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nodlew

... Still trying to master the Attack Disk in conjunction with the Range and AOB Finder (that thing needs a less generic name. That's not a name, that's a description--and an incomplete one. If you're going to call it that, OLC, you should call it the RANGE, AOB, AND SPEED FINDER. One could call it the Swiss Army Submarine Gadget). ...

I'm glad to hear you are starting to get the hang of it. Another perverted soul!

The speed mark was not originally part of the functionality (in real life or by OLC). I just had a clever moment one day and figured out a way to abuse the thing because the scales of the stopwatch didn't totally match to my liking. (I was alot more nitpicker-ish in those days) I got my Kriegsmarine pocket knife out and carefully avoided the delicate optics. Well, I convinced OLC to add it in. So it doesn't really deserve to be called a 'speed finder'.

I too do hate the long name for it. But it fits the bill. It's a translation (using the terminology we are accustomed with in the game) of what that german website page calls it: "Doppelbild-Entfernungs-und Zielkurswinkelschätzer" or translated: "double-image range and targetcourse-angle estimator". Since OLC (and Hitman and Joegrundman) couldn't get the dual image functionality simulated that part had to go. But the rest is as clear and descriptive as can be.

nodlew · 01-04-10, 08:31 PM

Impressive. What do you guys do in real life? Design airplanes? Moon rockets? Me, I can write a song that the birds will stop and listen to, but the workings of mechanical computers which perform trigonometric functions is, shall we say...far afield of my area of expertise. Much less my forte. The thing scares me a little. I suspect magic at work--and not the good kind.

Anyway, I'm glad you scratched the dang thing, because I can't shoot him if I don't know how fast he is, and I far prefer the scope method to the watch method, it being more accurate, and it requiring the rotation of a dial which makes me feel important.

"Doppelbild-Entfernungs-und Zielkurswinkelschätzer"

Ain't the German language hilarious? I've gotten to the point that I don't have to read the subtitles anymore. I understand SH3 German conversationally. But I can only talk to computer Germans with extremely limited vocabularies.

So it goes...Kurt Vonnegut.

Hitman · 01-05-10, 03:11 AM

Quote:

Ain't the German language hilarious? I've gotten to the point that I don't have to read the subtitles anymore. I understand SH3 German conversationally. But I can only talk to computer Germans with extremely limited vocabularies.

The beauty about the german language is that it can be used to build completely new words by simply dragging one after the other. And the good part is that any german speaker will inmediately understand this new word

and its meaning. It also has very, very precise meanings, so no wonder it was the benchmark language for anything science related in the 19th century and a good part of the 20th

An interesting thing: Not long ago I was in a german bookstore and had the opportunity to have in my hands the same book written originally in english, and translated to german: The german one had a good 60-70 pages more

than the english. Reason? Because the english is a language with a huge weight placed in connotations and double-meanings of words and phrases, whereas the german is absolutely precise in every word. Hence, to fully explain the subtle additional meaning in a sentence written in english, the german translator has to use a copule more words.

nodlew · 01-06-10, 03:45 AM

Precision is the enemy of Poetry. Poetry exists in the limbo regions of a language where connotation grazes or misses its mark and the meaning of a particular word, or phrase becomes a matter of guesswork in a vast, perhaps infinite realm of implication. English, Italian, French, Spanish, and Japanese are the powerhouse languages of poetry. English being dominant in this, because it is the dominant language of the human species. Lucky us to be native speakers.

You don't hear much about German poetry. You hear jokes about absurdly long tinkertoy German words to describe inane objects. Also going against it, is its dissonance. Not a smoothly flowing language, but one composed of jagged outcroppings of sound. Not unmusical, but the music is more Hard Rock where the music of Italian or Spanish is more Easy Listening. English, having appropriated huge portions of the vocabularies of other languages becomes a language which can be played in any style--Rock, Jazz, or Elevator.

Not observations related to any relevant point, just some musings.

01-02-10, 10:36 PM	#1
nodlew Engineer Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Virginia Posts: 202 Downloads: 572 Uploads: 0	Need Help Using OLC Compass I really like the manual targeting aspect of the OLC ubermod, but there are some other changes that are requiring some getting-used to. The map tools are different, and in the case of the course-plotting cursor, less explicit\accurate than the ones for GWX. Now it is a compass rose with no numbers. And the huge, beautiful, extremely fast and simple to use slide-out compass rose for GWX is gone now as well and all I am left with is a relatively tiny compass I can bring up on the left of the screen. Which I would accept gracefully, except this compass--apparently my only compass--does not even show my heading relative to North on a scale of 360 degs, which is what my crew are reporting ship contacts at. Ship, bearing 85, long range. I find myself on the map screen trying to use the protractor which only goes to 180 deg, trying to add and subtract my way to some clue as to where the enemy ship is relative to me, which is made doubly hard by the fact that my ship's position is not even visible on the map at any except the largest scale of magnification, where the little circle representing me is encompassing kilometers of ocean. The OLC compass shows my heading relative to Noth on a Decimal scale. 90 deg is now 2.5, 180 is now 5. Can any of you much more intelligent fellows tell me what method is used to quickly translate the one into the other? Or is there a compass I am not seeing?

01-03-10, 12:14 AM	#2
comet61 Sparky Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 151 Downloads: 240 Uploads: 0	OLC mods Though I am far from being the expert here I was sort of in the same boat as you are now. I tried OLC for awhile, and it it a great mod, but in the short run...wasn't for me for various reasons. This is why I switched over to (Manos) MaGui mod. It intergrated with GWX3 quite well. There are some subtle differences between MaGui and OLC. Many of the navigation/AoB tools are available, and some are a little different. The only thing I can probably wish for if there is ever going to be an upgrade to Magui is ...larger dials. I got spoiled using Raphaels GUI mods and when I went from GWX/Raphaels to OLC then to MaGui I had to re-learn the setup. It was a minor adjustment. The bottom line for me was Manos MaGui was better for me than OLC, MaGui is almost the same as OLC, but not completely. Check it out here: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=157376

01-03-10, 03:03 PM	#4
nodlew Engineer Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Virginia Posts: 202 Downloads: 572 Uploads: 0	Maybe wasn't clear... What I meant to say was--the compass does not show my heading on a 360 deg scale juxtaposed against the 360 magnetic compass showing N,S,E,W and all the little points in between. I know that the sighting reports, sound contacts, etc are on a 360 deg scale relative to my Bow at 0 deg. If you have the two side by side, it is very simple to see where on the mag compass the sighted ship is. Ship at 50 deg--my 50 equates to 20 NNE etc. With the inner ring of the compass adding up to 10, things become confusing. If the crew reported sightings at, say, 2.5 as Due East, things would be a little simpler (except the compass units are so tiny, the inner ring is rendered useless in the OLC mod). I have seen compasses like the one in OLC's mod before--perhaps it is a historically accurate one. But I'll be damned if I've figured out how to use it yet. Wikipedia was no help.

01-03-10, 07:13 PM	#6
Pisces Silent Hunter Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: AN9771 Posts: 4,904 Downloads: 304 Uploads: 0	I think the 0-9 scale is (in real-life) supposed to indicate the last digit of the course. I mean that it would spin at a faster rate as the larger full 360 degree disk. Because the big 360 degree disk is not precise enough. It would be similar to the 0-9 gyro dial on the F6 page, except for course instead of gyro. Stock Sh3 never modelled it (the smaller 0-9 degree image was static), and nobody seems to have ever wondered about those funny 0-9 numbers. Well, some probably did but it was never followed up with a conclusion or a mod. OLC'gui does have a compas readout. It's a ribbon type in the lower left part of the screen. It's just not possible to select a course with it. With a bit of practise you'll see you can set course accurate to within a degree or two on the compass on that 6 dial panel. If you really want accuracy (not neccesary for the most part) I suggest you apply this mod(let) I made based on OLC's gui, to include the compass on all mouse cursors. Then setting course with the waypoint tool is piece of cake. (hmm, maybe it allready has that compas image, I totally forgot what it was like) http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...postcount=1308 __________________ My site downloads: https://ricojansen.nl/downloads

01-04-10, 02:28 AM	#7
nodlew Engineer Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Virginia Posts: 202 Downloads: 572 Uploads: 0	Thanks again Pisces, since becoming a Subsim Forum member you have been my greatest source of help and explanatory information. I appreciate it very much. I did re-download the OLC tutorial videos from your Filefront page, by the way, and they worked. Thanks for that as well. Still trying to master the Attack Disk in conjunction with the Range and AOB Finder (that thing needs a less generic name. That's not a name, that's a description--and an incomplete one. If you're going to call it that, OLC, you should call it the RANGE, AOB, AND SPEED FINDER. One could call it the Swiss Army Submarine Gadget). I appear to use the Att Dsk correctly about 20% of the time. There's a lot of opportunity to make errors, and they can multiply. Small error in range + small error in AOB + small error entering AOB on Att Dsk + target decides to make a small turn to port= why is the target going away from me and not across my bow as I'd planned? There are some things that have to be practiced to become ingrained--like knowing when to subtract the AOB from 0 deg and when to subtract it from 180 deg, and how to enter the AOB into the Att Disk correctly (port, starboard) and which rings to read various info from. I'm getting it down. Although for targets at extreme visual range, which is where you want them to find their course and plot an attack, I think the R&AOB is bound to become less accurate and more a matter of informed guess-work and taking multiple readings to finally get things nailed down. Oh well, complexity and difficulty are the things that make the simulation, well, a simulation. Hence fun. Anyway, still practicing. I've got torpedo targeting down very well. I used to routinely try to close to within a km to take a shot. Now, if target course and speed are constant, and the seas are close to reasonable, I think nothing of taking shots at up to 2km (and over) and am very surprised and irate if I fail to see the target go boom. Using the AOB finder, I'm far more confident that I'm close to the actual AOB of the target ship and have its speed accurately. Now I take under the keel shots at well over a km at targets moving briskly at all sorts of AOB angles. I'm far more flexible--lethal. Will download that mod you mentioned right now. It's 2:27 and Hughesnet doesn't care how much I download.

01-03-10, 03:05 PM	#5
nodlew Engineer Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Virginia Posts: 202 Downloads: 572 Uploads: 0	Thanks for the tip, Comet. I'll check it out.

01-04-10, 04:55 PM	#9
nodlew Engineer Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Virginia Posts: 202 Downloads: 572 Uploads: 0	Like the map tools Pisces, downloaded the map tools and they make life easier. I understand about the compass now and am learning to live without the luxury of a nice, large, user-friendly compass. It's getting easier with practice to use the protractor to add\subtract my way to target's bearing. The compass you added to it (the protractor) helps a lot.

01-04-10, 08:31 PM	#11
nodlew Engineer Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Virginia Posts: 202 Downloads: 572 Uploads: 0	You came up with that? Impressive. What do you guys do in real life? Design airplanes? Moon rockets? Me, I can write a song that the birds will stop and listen to, but the workings of mechanical computers which perform trigonometric functions is, shall we say...far afield of my area of expertise. Much less my forte. The thing scares me a little. I suspect magic at work--and not the good kind. Anyway, I'm glad you scratched the dang thing, because I can't shoot him if I don't know how fast he is, and I far prefer the scope method to the watch method, it being more accurate, and it requiring the rotation of a dial which makes me feel important. "Doppelbild-Entfernungs-und Zielkurswinkelschätzer" Ain't the German language hilarious? I've gotten to the point that I don't have to read the subtitles anymore. I understand SH3 German conversationally. But I can only talk to computer Germans with extremely limited vocabularies. So it goes...Kurt Vonnegut.

01-06-10, 03:45 AM	#13
nodlew Engineer Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Virginia Posts: 202 Downloads: 572 Uploads: 0	Re: Precision Precision is the enemy of Poetry. Poetry exists in the limbo regions of a language where connotation grazes or misses its mark and the meaning of a particular word, or phrase becomes a matter of guesswork in a vast, perhaps infinite realm of implication. English, Italian, French, Spanish, and Japanese are the powerhouse languages of poetry. English being dominant in this, because it is the dominant language of the human species. Lucky us to be native speakers. You don't hear much about German poetry. You hear jokes about absurdly long tinkertoy German words to describe inane objects. Also going against it, is its dissonance. Not a smoothly flowing language, but one composed of jagged outcroppings of sound. Not unmusical, but the music is more Hard Rock where the music of Italian or Spanish is more Easy Listening. English, having appropriated huge portions of the vocabularies of other languages becomes a language which can be played in any style--Rock, Jazz, or Elevator. Not observations related to any relevant point, just some musings.