Transparent Ocean -project-

[Marhkimov]

For this mod project, the main goal... is to be able to see fubar's beautiful camo skins through the ocean surface.


As you probably already know, fubar has made a VIIB camo skin for the mediterranean theater. The real reason for needing camouflage (in real life) was to break up the image of a submerged u-boat from the air. But as it stands in SH3 right now, the water is 100% opaque, or 0% transparent. Some transparency, or even a little bit of transparency, would be nice. Of course, I don't plan on making the water super transparent. That would be unrealistic, and against my wishes.

If it is at all possible, I would like for increased transparency in the med, while still maintaining limited transparency in the atlantic and arctic.

I'll admit that this falls under the category of being totally "eye candy," but if anyone claims to know me, they'll know that I LOOOOOOOVE eye candy... Just take a look at most of my other mods....



I hope everyone understands my goals... And quite frankly, I hope that they are attainable...


I am theorizing that if we can see the top of our u-boat from underneath of the water, then I must believe that transparency is possible, the other way around. We might find a way to make it possible to see the bottom of our u-boat from above the water. I have heard that an SDK would be needed in order to achieve this, but I do not buy it. I'll bet that we can do this the old fashioned way... By working our tails off!


***And for those who might care to know or for those who might want to do further research, in real life this phenomenon is often called 'Secchi depth' or 'ocean turbidity'... 'Fresnel reflections' are also related.


I have done a little bit of editing in the 'scene.dat' file, but so far nothing has worked. However my results are promising.

This screenshot was taken from underwater. I 'tweeked' a few values in scene.dat in order to get this sort of bright effect:




If anyone has any ideas, comments, or helpful tips, please share. And if anyone wants to help me in achieving transparent oceans, be my guest. I will take all the help I can get!