Tutorial: Work out your precise coords in SH3

[Karl Heinrich]

Apologies if there is already a thread for this, but I thought I'd share some of the work from my top secret nav project

Now you can always use the black and white border marks to work the method below to work out minutes and seconds of lat/long. Unless you're using a map with coords on, the method below is probably the quickest way overall.

It might look a little convoluted but it's really simple once you've tried it a couple of times.

Please feel free to give it a try, I'd love to see your results. If anything is unclear at all, just let me know

How to work out your precise Long/Lat Coords in SH3

First we need to know the following key measurements.

SH3 uses equirectangular projection for its game world so the distance between each degree of latitude and longitude is exactly the same. However, the devs made it slightly larger than the real world, so we need to work from the following:

1 degree lat/long = 120km

And for our minutes and seconds of lat/long:-

0.0333km = 1"
0.1km = 3"
0.5km = 15"
1.0km = 30"
2.0km = 1' 0"

You can fill the blanks in later.

Where does it work?
This should work anywhere on the map, and as I have used SH3 measurements it should still be proportional to the real world, so you should be able to put your results into Google Maps and get the same spot.

I'm sure with a bit more testing we can break it...

An Illustrated Example
I loaded up a game with the boat in berth at Wilhelmshaven. For simplicity's sake.

Longitude

Using the ruler tool I then measure from the boat to the Prime Meridian



This gives us 973.2 KM east of the Prime Meridian



We now need to break that into degrees, we know a degree is 120km so:-

973.2 / 120 = 8.11

So we know that we are at E08 (E because we are east of the Prime Meridian).

But now we need to convert the remainder 0.11 into Minutes and Seconds

To get 0.11 as a measurement of km we multiply it by 120:

0.11 x 120 gives us 13.2km

We know using the measurements at the start that 2km is 1' (minute) of Lat/Long in SH3

It's easier to work from the highest even number, so leaving the 1.2 for now, 12 / 2 = 6. So that's 6 minutes of longitude.
We can now update our co-ords to E08 6'

But there is still the pesky 1.2 remaining.

We know 1km is 30” (seconds), and 0.1km is 3” of Lat/Long, then 0.2 is 6”

So our 1.2 gives us 36”

So our full Longitude is E08 6' 36”

Latitude

We do the same from the Equator to get our Latitude.



So here we have measuered 6420.9

6420.9 / 120 = 53.51

So, again we know that we are N53 (because we are north of the equator).

The remainder is worked out as 0.51 x 120 = 61.2km

For my simple brain I work this out at 60 / 2 = 30'

The remainder 1.2 if 1km is 30” and 0.2 is 6” gives us 36”

This gives us a complete Latitude of N53 30' 36”

Our full co-ords are then: E08 6' 36” N53 30' 36”

Pop that into Google Maps... We are the green arrow













So please give this a try yourself and let me know your results, it would be good to see a screenshot comparison.

It is worth noting here that in the background of the game, distances are measured to 3 decimal places, the ruler only provides us 1 decimal place.

This means the maximum margin of error is 66.66 metres or 2” (seconds) of lat/long. For our purposes that's nothing at all. It is almost exactly 1 boat length of a Type VII.