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Old 04-11-06, 04:49 PM   #1
greyrider
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Default sh3 grid protractor

reporting contacts using km grid coordinates

when looking at the map in sh3, did you ever wonder how u-boats, or any vessel with a radio for that matter,
could report contacts with very reasonable accuracy?
after all, sh3 did not give us any kind of protractor that would give us the ability to report contacts in a
grid reference system. its a big ocean out there, with alot of cold water, at present there is only a grid name to report
a contact. ( example BF-17 )



even looking at one km grid, say bf-17, thats a big chuck of ocean, i measured on the map, its length and width,to get
a km grid area of one grid, and the total area of the grid square is 19440 km.

so by reporting a contact by the grid name, would tell us we would have to search an area 19440 km.

this is too much of an area to search for a contact, it overexposes the u-boat to an incredible decree of danger, and a
tremendous waste of fuel to find something you might never find.

so, i believe ubi has radio contacts sent to players as a red icon, if its enemy, some other info is there if you click
on the contact icon,depending on what realism setting you have, because there is no grid reference system,

so lacking that, they send an icon contact, with information, that simulates the plot all ready done.
before i get into showing you a grid reference system, and how to use one, i just want to say that it is totally impractical
to use this grid reference system that i will demonstrate, it takes to long to build, does not move with you.

but what it shows you is how to use a grid reference system, this is essential for reporting, and calling indirect fire.
this is how its done in real life.

the map is hard to work with, the magnifications should be changed, i can get this to work well on the 150 km map,
and it will work on the 50 km map. in order to use a GRS, on higher magnifications, we would have to break the km grid down even further.
but for demonstrations purposes, ill use the 150 km map. this GRS will reduce the area of search or reporting down to
194.4 km, alot less territory to cover that 19440 km, but still a large piece of ocean to search.

this is, or something like it, should be incorporated into sh4.

to begin, this is a picture of a grid reference system, i am showing you the fourth of four pics taken,
i will come back to this later, and explain things.




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Old 04-11-06, 08:40 PM   #2
don1reed
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I guess we have the Devs to blame for the 'distorted' Mercator Projection of the F5 screen, because on a real KM chart of the Nord Atlantischer ozean Nr.1870 G1, BF25 as used in your example is really a square and not a rectangle, and would have been a lot easier to divide into the KM planquadrats.

On a real chart, the grids only begin to deform from square to rectangle about 55°N, and then they get longer in vertical aspect rather than horizontal due to the narrowing of Longitudes at higher latitudes.

I've resolved to believe the F5 screen is just 'eye candy' and hardly usable to actually navigate upon. When I've tried to sail Great Circle (GC) courses, or Rhumb line (running a real navigation program in the background) using actual Geo coordinates as start and finish, the azimuths sailed come no where near the destinations.

I'm not a computer guy, but I suspect it's caused by the same reason Letterbox movies have margins above and below the movie. (x, y ratio)

With luck, maybe the devs of SHIV will use a navigation program as their base for a chart screen.
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Old 04-11-06, 09:45 PM   #3
Threadfin
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The u-boats used 4-digit grids, which essentially is what we have now in SH3, but broken down into more boxes within the grid. Looking at the sinkings shown on u-boat.net, you can see each location is shown as something like EC 2586, which at least is a bit more specific than EC 25.
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Old 04-11-06, 11:04 PM   #4
Dowly
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As Threadfin said:
http://uboat.net/maps/grid.html
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Old 04-12-06, 07:30 AM   #5
greyrider
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you know, after thinking about this for a while, i dont think i want to touch this subject with a ten foot pole.

it would mean putting the whole sh3 world in a grid reference system, and probably couldnt be modded anyway.

and don reed is so right, the squares should be squares, not rectangles, we dont relly have the means to report anything either.

but, for the guys that would not know how to use a grs, ill still try to explain it.

the image is a grid protractor, this is whats used to find a 4, 6, 8, or ten digit grid reference.

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