[REL] RIK007 SH5 Water for SH3

[rik007]

All!

Update 28-9-2010:
Refeshed links as some have been reported death.

Update 9-4-2010: Updated v0.9 - 20 Km only
Corrected a bug in the 20 Km version (corrupt sky)

Update 6-4-2010: Added v0.9 (16 Km and 20 Km)

- Fix for 'flat sun issue' with Ati-cards: added more halo to the sun.

I expect that Nvidia can better stick to v0.8 as I expect they will see to much halo effect. Maybe somebody can test it with a Nvidia card to prove that.

Update 2-3-2010: Added v0.8 (16 Km and 20 Km)

- Better (small) ship behavior by applying slightly different approach of the waves
- For 20 Km solved issue with ships sitting low in the water
- Corrected as far as possible dark color faces bug on bridge

Update 15-2-2010: Added v0.7 - 20 Km version (see below)

As the high tides of Silent Hunter III soon is coming to an end I present this mod to the community as a tribute to SH-3’s glory and to its successor: SH-V. Inspired by the first screenshots I tried to create some aspect of the atmosphere as a sneak preview into this mod.
As a novice modder I started using WAC 4.1 as a basic but after gaining experience a decided to start all over again using the GWX-files for implementing of my own ideas and directions. Dark sea and much slower waves will create a different feeling compared to all well known environmental mods:



Sunset at 0m/s. Still you have waves, moving calmy. A compromise between total stillness and movement.


Mediterranee. Windspeed 4m/s. It’s a blue sea with some green. I checked my holiday pictures (Greece, Spain, Turkey) for that. Underwater it is blue-green. The environment is the warmest of all three. From here it will get worse. Do not expect warm sunsets but that’s the way it is in the Atlantic and Atric. At 4m/s the waves in this mod will move fastest. At higher (other) windspeed waves will move slower and slower giving a feeling of massiveness enforced by the slower waves. The idea of having a dirty sky when there are no clouds is of course concept of M.E.P (courtesy of Makman94). So I created my own from cirrus clouds.


Atlantic. The sky is bleaker and the sea is darker. It gives an icy feeling and pale sunsets/rises.


Artic. Everything is paler and darker and it is certain you will not likely want to be a victim of exposure. I tried to express the nature I encountered in Sweden with its introvert beauty.



At night I used a concept I read from books which still puzzle me. Like Jurgen Oesten told in his adventure with the Malaya battleship – you can download the movie from: ftp://216.98.55.11/emea/sh3/videos/ – they saw shadows of a ships at night. I still wonder what that meant. Didn’t they see ships but only their shadows? Or did they mean their silhouts? Well, the idea of silhouting is used in this mod giving good playable. Picture is taken from the lighter night version included in this mod.


Evening picture with new cloud texture.


After sunset


On the conning tower


Moonrise...



... and sunset

What about Storm and overcast ?


Storms have now become spectacular. In this situation the slowness of the waves give the idea of ‘how am I supposed to survive the next one?’ I love storms by now I watch it again and again.


Windspeed 15 ms. In storm waves do not move fast as these are massive amounts of water (about the size of your house). I had a hard time avoiding anomalities in waves tops. Polygon effects: If that means the squary wave structure then I did all I could to avoid that.

If you are not convinced about the slow sea speed please check it out:



Or





Windspeed 8 ms. ‘Rik! How long have you been modding ?? 200 hours, 300 hours? You lost all sense of time! Where is your wife?’


... Yeah! Where is she?


you must find her

Thinks to consider:
· Not for the fainted hardware as it draws 20% less fps than GWX 16km. Overclock your hardware accordingly
· In case you have shimmering please use another driver/nhancer combination.
· Big waves mean that the conning tower will have a bigger chance to be above the surface. I am not sure that means a higher rate of detection. If that is the case please adapt the periscopedepth for your boat making it one meter deeper in the cfg file. I increased it with 80 cm
· I fixed a small bug in GWX at which the foam texture changed color when firing a torp with event camera on. Especially at night it could be seen.
· It’s GWX 16 KM based. I have an 8 Km version but it has some issues to be solved.

During campaigning the game is stuck in the Atlantic scenary. This means you can sail where ever you want but you will always see the Atlantic sea. There for in this mod I included several variants. When you are campaigning in the Mediterranean you can activate the Mediterranean mod with JSGME so you then have the Mediterranean sea in the campaign. Same with the artic.

I like to thank:
· Kpt. Lehman for GWX and OLC for his contribution to environmental modding
· Hansolo78 for his great mod and concept of the WAC 4.1 environment. You helped me drawing the line between not modding or modding. Thanks you mate!
· Makman94 for his great mod and idea’s

Also:
· Ubisoft for their excellent sequel. Keep it up!
· Rubini for his great mods like the lifeboats and say great to you in Brasil
· Tomcattwo for his speech mod
· Racerboy for his effects mod
· Neal Stevens for his great site – regards from Holland – hope to shake hands once again
· DivingDuck for his superior diving angle’s and open hatch mod

Anybody who wants to upload the mod to the subsim site is free to do so. I hope you all enjoy it!

December 2009, Rik007

Download:

Version 0.9: 20 Km version (using Hitman's unofficial 20 Km version for GWX 3.0):

Bug with corrupt sky texture (flicker) is fixed in this version:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/cg5hmm...%2020%20Km.zip

16 Km version:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dhl1zz...3.0%20V0.9.zip

Update 6-4-2010: V0.9 advices for ATI-card users:


Update 2-3-2010: Version 0.8 adviced for Nvidia card users:

- Better (small) ship behavior by applying slightly different approach of the waves
- For 20 Km solved issue with ships sitting low in the water
- Corrected as far as possible dark color faces bug on bridge

16 Km:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dd5jdi...3.0%20V0.8.zip

20 Km:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3bf4y1...%2020%20Km.zip

Hope you like it!

[kiwi_2005]

Wow!

[vickers03]

nice work!
did you increase the rendering distance for high sea
waves? if yes, how would you do this?

[rik007]

Originally Posted by vickers03

nice work!
did you increase the rendering distance for high sea
waves? if yes, how would you do this?

Yes for all waves: increased the LodFactor in scene.dat. Drawback is impact on performance so you need to find the optimum.

[Magic1111]

Hi !

Wow, looks very good ! I´ve download it and I´ll test the Mod...

Thank you for your work, rik !

Best regards,
Magic

Hey Rik. I think you Patch Structure is wrong. In some of your versions you have the misc folder and scene.dat not in the data folder, but also before!

[SeaWolf U-57]

Originally Posted by Padvotke

SH5 water huh ? Are you sure ?

If you have a short while click here and watch the 3D engine short for SH5 and there is also some more pic's then decided

http://www.silenthuntermods.com/foru...hp?topic=224.0

[rik007]

Originally Posted by SeaWolf U-57

If you have a short while click here and watch the 3D engine short for SH5 and there is also some more pic's then decided

http://www.silenthuntermods.com/foru...hp?topic=224.0

I need to mod harder...

Very impressive. However the waves are still moving way too fast. Check for example around 0:59.

[SeaWolf U-57]

Originally Posted by rik007

I need to mod harder...

Very impressive. However the waves are still moving way too fast. Check for example around 0:59.

I think its speeded up
you have done a good job for sure

[rik007]

Originally Posted by SeaWolf U-57

I think its speeded up
you have done a good job for sure

Thanks very much!

[rik007]

Originally Posted by Yoda1976

Hey Rik. I think you Patch Structure is wrong. In some of your versions you have the misc folder and scene.dat not in the data folder, but also before!

I see it. It is in the med files and the brighter version do not work properly. Corrected and tested that in the 0.6 version.

[SquareSteelBar]

Originally Posted by rik007

...Like Jurgen Oesten told in his adventure with the Malaya battleship – unfortunately these films are offline at the Ubisoft site – ...

Hi rik007,

maybe that's what you're lookin' for...:

SH3 Videos

Cheers,
SquareSteelBar

[rik007]

Originally Posted by SquareSteelBar

Hi rik007,

maybe that's what you're lookin' for...:

SH3 Videos

Cheers,
SquareSteelBar

Thanks SquareSteelBar, the Malaya is there. Good story by the way.

[jdkbph]

Hi Rik007.

Great job on the environment. I think the slower waves make for a much more realistic "feeling" ride, with respect to the boats moving through and over the waves. The surface and sky colors look great.

There are two things I wanted to mention though...

First, even in the dark, or stormy conditions, where the surface is a murky or dark grey color, the view from under the surface is still a brilliant blue. I'm thinking it should be as dark/murky/grey as the surface, or maybe even more so.

Second, on a bright day in good weather (as in your second screen shot above), when I look out from the bridge, the waves in the middle to far distance, seem to be "sawing" back and forth in opposite directions and at a high rate of speed. I know this is just a rendering thing - the waves aren't actually doing that - but I was wondering if you (or anyone else) is seeing this as well, or if it's just an artifact of my particular set up. I'm running a 260 GTX video card at anywhere from 100 to 200+ fps.

Thanks

JD

[rik007]

Originally Posted by jdkbph

Hi Rik007.

Great job on the environment. I think the slower waves make for a much more realistic "feeling" ride, with respect to the boats moving through and over the waves. The surface and sky colors look great.

There are two things I wanted to mention though...

First, even in the dark, or stormy conditions, where the surface is a murky or dark grey color, the view from under the surface is still a brilliant blue. I'm thinking it should be as dark/murky/grey as the surface, or maybe even more so.

Second, on a bright day in good weather (as in your second screen shot above), when I look out from the bridge, the waves in the middle to far distance, seem to be "sawing" back and forth in opposite directions and at a high rate of speed. I know this is just a rendering thing - the waves aren't actually doing that - but I was wondering if you (or anyone else) is seeing this as well, or if it's just an artifact of my particular set up. I'm running a 260 GTX video card at anywhere from 100 to 200+ fps.

Thanks

JD

For your first point: the water is actually darker than in sunlight. I think water is still blue as the color is a property of what is dissolved in it and from my experience in a overcast situation I remember it is still blue underwater. But I will try to check some nature documentaries for that. The grey color at the surface is actual reflection. I live 5 minutes from the sea and I noticed the surface color is for a large part reflection. The actuel watercolor in the North sea is always the same: a murky grey brown is (sun or rain).

The second point as you describe it look like texture shimmering. it becomes less when you do not move. I use nhancer to get rid of it (AA 16Qx, AF16X) and then with my card (8800) it didnot work for every driver version so you have to try. I even had to revert back to a lower driver version at one point as it hurt my eyes. You see it with distant small waves or when you slowy move the viewpoint around with the mouse. I fully solved it. I use Nhancer 2.4.5.