Hydrophone

[Adam84]

Hi all

One thing I loved about SH3 was diving to just below periscope depth and listening out for the sounds of ships whilst going ahead slow. Found this quite rewarding as i'd come across ships I would have missed on the surface. I want to know how much this is possible with SH5 even in its current state, I have not bought it yet.

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[jwilliams]

Originally Posted by Adam84

Hi all

One thing I loved about SH3 was diving to just below periscope depth and listening out for the sounds of ships whilst going ahead slow. Found this quite rewarding as i'd come across ships I would have missed on the surface. I want to know how much this is possible with SH5 even in its current state, I have not bought it yet.

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Yes this can still be done. however the last patch has bugged it slighly. and you need to stop all engines atm. hopefully the next patch will fix this.

[SabreHawk]

Yes you can do this, and just as jwilliams said. Stop engines. And as i fortunately finally found out, the mousewheel is used to operate the rotation.
But I always even in SH3 shut down motors cause it still was too much to be able to hear a very distant ship. And in that quiet, I could hear one that my sound guy couldn't. Was so faint though that even at ahead slow I wouldnt have made it out.

[Turm]

Yes, works much the same as in SH3, but harder to hear anything when the engines are running.

However, in SH3 you could adjust the volume control on the hydrophone panel to up the gain (or something to that effect), which helped emphasise the sound of other ships in comparison with your own engines. In SH5 the volume controls appears to do nothing whatsoever! Except for the 3D knob rotating...

Hopefully that functionality will come back in a patch.

[Adam84]

Thanks for responses, encouraging to hear. Was definately one of the most rewarding aspects of the game and one i'll hope to do in time with SH5.

[karlbrunnere]

can one use the hydrophone and send out a ping to estimate the distance to a ship somehow?
or do u have to buy some extra device for the u-boot to do that?

[PortoFerro]

That would be active sonar - did the Boats have that in WW2?
But Map Contacts on is even better than that, just pretend the data is coming from your "Sound Guy"...

[Frederf]

Yes, U-boats had active sonar (S-Garat) but not on all boats. I believe it was short range active pinging very similar to the active sonar sets on USN fleet boats in the Pacific. I know that the USN active gear could also listen on the high frequency side of things (all active systems have the potential to be used passively).

[Adam84]

Originally Posted by karlbrunnere

can one use the hydrophone and send out a ping to estimate the distance to a ship somehow?
or do u have to buy some extra device for the u-boot to do that?

I dont think they liked to do that for fear of giving away their postion, I think they'd just sit and listen. Finding out depth under keel requires a ping but not finding ship distances (could be wrong!).

No matter if you have the GHG or KDB hydrophones they are both sweeping when surfaced. Well ok GHG theoreticly that is beneath the waterline theoreticly could pick sound contacts to certain level but the KDB type hydrophone is always sweeping the air when surfaced. Isn't this annoying ? Moreover when soundoperator is relaxing the sonar equipment is active. This always bugs me..

[molotof]

I think so yes, you must need a sonar equipement, not only a hydrophone.
I notice that i don't have any contact with the second hydrophone (the experimental one ), the first upgrade make me deaf nice

[SabreHawk]

Well last night I found that just as in SH3, my sound guy can't hear things that I do. So, on this first offical patrol, off the eastern coast of Britain I have been the one to actually hear our first contact.
With motors off, I could near a verrry faint sound of a merchant's screws.
At about 2:10am game time, I finally got tired and went to bed but had managed to get close enough to where gosh he surely can hear this now, cause we are nearly in visual range cause with the periscope up, my watch officer has reported "smoke on the horizon" and give a bearing.
I even gave Denno the level 1 "total revealing" ability and still he has not reported a thing.
Yet still when I man the hydrophone I can clearly hear it.

This even after I had Olaf feed everyone a special meal.
Well when I come back to this save the fog will likely be gone and we'll have this ship clearly spotted and our first kill will be in the bag.
But no thanks to Benno..............

[Robert82285]

Originally Posted by karlbrunnere
can one use the hydrophone and send out a ping to estimate the distance to a ship somehow?
or do u have to buy some extra device for the u-boot to do that?

Curious, Nobody has really answered this question... Does anyone know ?

Does SH5 have the S-Great Sonar ( Active Sonar ) Upgrade ?
Can One send a "Ping" to the enemy to estimate the targets range In SH5 ?

Because if not.... this is going to be really ruff to intercept, or estimate targets course underwater using 100% Realism. in General IMAO wouldn't be able to effectively use real plotting techniques like you could in SH4 and SH3 submerged...

Hopefully I'm wrong

[Fmilk]

Originally Posted by Turm

In SH5 the volume controls appears to do nothing whatsoever! Except for the 3D knob rotating...

Hopefully that functionality will come back in a patch.

And I was just beginning to wonder is it only me...