Periscope/Binocs omitting docks in Harbors

[Dogfish40]

Ahoy Skippers!
Since I'm rounding out a carrier in 1.4 w'various mods this may be something that's already fixed in 1.5.
When I go into certain harbors, Java, any of the small harbors that we all love to raid from time to time, I have a comment about what we see (or don't see) from the binoculars, the periscope or the TBT. When I look through these items the docks are omitted! That is, I can see the ships but the dock that's blocking the view is gone. When I was leaving Java on this patrol I looked back at the harbor through the binoculars and the harbor was completly gone but the ships were there as if they were just anchored next to each other (the land is there as well).
I dawned on me that I may have hit the docks in one of my raids (I forget which harbor) because my TBT view was not seeing the docks that were blocking the shot, I sunk two perfectly good docks that night .
Anyway, does anyone else notice this or has it been fixed??
Thanx and Good Hunting
D40

[razark]

How far away from the docks are you? Could it be that you are too far away from the docks for the game to recognize that you can see them, and therefore they simply aren't being rendered? (I have no idea how close you need to be for them to render, but from using the external camera, it seems that land and docks are rendered well inside the range that ships are rendered at.)

[WernherVonTrapp]

I've seen this occur too. Quite often in fact, when I'm far away from the docks. This (I'm presuming) is a simulation of the curvature of the earth, since docks are usually much lower than the ships they service. The docks, in real life, will disappear first before you lose sight of the ships.

[Ducimus]

The game only renders stuff so far. However , some items clip at much shorter ranges. There's a legacy controller in the harbor dat files that is largely responsible as i recall. Ive fixed some items in TMO, but not all. Main reason why i personally haven't dabbed in it more is because fixing this will MURDER frame rates in some harbors.

[TorpX]

I notice this mainly when I'm leaving out of Manila. Cavite appears or disappears like a mirage. It seems like you have to be pretty close to see it.

[magic452]

That's the Navy's new stealth technology.
Can't let the Air Force have all the fun.

Magic

[commandosolo2009]

usually this is called 'hull down' and it's common with distance, since the piers are flat and of no vertical features, so no masts, no superstructure, so it mingles with the waters from afar. It's a graphic issue, that even the best of GPUs out there cant solve. Be careful though, as firing from long distances, often ends your eels up vis a vis with the pier docks. Ideally, you should use the PK to note obstacles on your attack. Try to attack only broadside ships. Head ons are a failure unless your angled right on and pretty close for visual.

[WH4K]

It's not just you. I've noticed this, and it's irritating.

For me, it seems to happen with every harbor, not just harbors of a certain size. Every time I go harbor raiding, the ships become visible first. The docks pop into existence once I reach a certain distance.

The method of viewing (TBT, periscope, binocs) matters not. With the unmagnified bridge view, the docks are being drawn by the time I'm close enough to see anything. But you can't set up torpedo shots from the unmagnified view, and getting close enough for the docks to appear when on the surface is usually suicide.

As noted, the "docks popping into existence" effect makes long-distance torpedo shots practically impossible. I generally have no choice but to barge right into a harbor if I want to sink anything.

The dock draw distance cannot be explained away as "curvature of the earth." If I can see a ship at dockside, all the way down to the waterline, I should also see the docks. They are by definition higher than the water's surface, and close to the ship.

I run SH4 with the U-boat missions, that is, v 1.5. Using TMO 2.0 only for now. I don't think any of that affects this phenomenon.

[WernherVonTrapp]

Originally Posted by WH4K

It's not just you. I've noticed this, and it's irritating.

For me, it seems to happen with every harbor, not just harbors of a certain size. Every time I go harbor raiding, the ships become visible first. The docks pop into existence once I reach a certain distance.

The method of viewing (TBT, periscope, binocs) matters not. With the unmagnified bridge view, the docks are being drawn by the time I'm close enough to see anything. But you can't set up torpedo shots from the unmagnified view, and getting close enough for the docks to appear when on the surface is usually suicide.

As noted, the "docks popping into existence" effect makes long-distance torpedo shots practically impossible. I generally have no choice but to barge right into a harbor if I want to sink anything.

The dock draw distance cannot be explained away as "curvature of the earth." If I can see a ship at dockside, all the way down to the waterline, I should also see the docks. They are by definition higher than the water's surface, and close to the ship.

I run SH4 with the U-boat missions, that is, v 1.5. Using TMO 2.0 only for now. I don't think any of that affects this phenomenon.

I raid harbors all the time too. It hasn't stopped me from sinking any of the ships I want to sink. I cannot see ships all the way down to the waterline from long distances. As I get closer, the hull becomes more defined. I never said that the effect was definitively due to curvature of the earth. I said it was a presumption because curvature of the earth does affect sight from a distance, even in airplanes. I never explained it away as such, so you misinterpreted me.
Nothing in this game irritates me to that extent. If it did, I wouldn't be playing it, it's just a game/sim. If docks are a few feet off the water, it would make sense that they are harder to see until you're up close. Now, if you are up close and still cannot make out the docks (night time not included), then there's some type of problem.

[Dogfish40]

Originally Posted by WernherVonTrapp

I raid harbors all the time too. It hasn't stopped me from sinking any of the ships I want to sink. I cannot see ships all the way down to the waterline from long distances. As I get closer, the hull becomes more defined. I never said that the effect was definitively due to curvature of the earth. I said it was a presumption because curvature of the earth does affect sight from a distance, even in airplanes. I never explained it away as such, so you misinterpreted me.
Nothing in this game irritates me to that extent. If it did, I wouldn't be playing it, it's just a game/sim. If docks are a few feet off the water, it would make sense that they are harder to see until you're up close. Now, if you are up close and still cannot make out the docks (night time not included), then there's some type of problem.

Yeah, It's not a show stopper or anything. I was actually wondering if it ever got fixed. Ducimus really explained it best and I checked it out last night in a way, so it's a way the game prioritises rendering objects. I have successfully raided ports without this problem but never realised that I was close enough to the docks that there was no apparent problem. Now that I know what it is, I'll have to make sure that my aim is sound if I can't see the docks.
Thanks
D40

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by WH4K

It's not just you. I've noticed this, and it's irritating.

For me, it seems to happen with every harbor, not just harbors of a certain size. Every time I go harbor raiding, the ships become visible first. The docks pop into existence once I reach a certain distance.

The method of viewing (TBT, periscope, binocs) matters not. With the unmagnified bridge view, the docks are being drawn by the time I'm close enough to see anything. But you can't set up torpedo shots from the unmagnified view, and getting close enough for the docks to appear when on the surface is usually suicide.

As noted, the "docks popping into existence" effect makes long-distance torpedo shots practically impossible. I generally have no choice but to barge right into a harbor if I want to sink anything.

The dock draw distance cannot be explained away as "curvature of the earth." If I can see a ship at dockside, all the way down to the waterline, I should also see the docks. They are by definition higher than the water's surface, and close to the ship.

I run SH4 with the U-boat missions, that is, v 1.5. Using TMO 2.0 only for now. I don't think any of that affects this phenomenon.

You are right about it not being due to curvature of the earth. Docks, cranes, buildings, everything will become invisible. It irritated me quite a bit too, for different reasons. I had wanted to use Celestial Nav. in the game and was taking bearings on landmarks. But this doesn't work very well when they just evaporate into thin air. Mountains, no matter how high, cannot be seen more than 10nm away. It's not very satisfactory.

Edit: I don't think any of the mods we have change this.

[WH4K]

Good point, even taller things such as cranes become magically "cloaked" from any sort of real distance. In "docks" I was including all manner of harbor structures.

It seems as if the first thing I see in a harbor - aside from the ships - is always the lighthouse beacon(s). But I don't think they're visible far enough out. Have to do some in-game testing to be sure. It does make sense that one would see a lighthouse's light before seeing the lighthouse itself.

Setting up torpedo shots at any sort of serious range in this game is pretty hopeless with stock optics & radar, and after reading about some of the other mod efforts, I'm realizing why. It's not only the severe limitations of our displays, whose rather pathetic pixel density (~110 ppi or less) prevent seeing sufficient detail at distances where subs historically set up shots. The in-game scopes have wrong fields of view, and the radar is a huge mess.

I'm going to need more mods than just TMO to fix that. Fortunately, others have done the heavy lifting, and it's just a matter of figuring out which mods to use.

[WernherVonTrapp]

Yes, that is a good point and something I didn't consider until you mentioned it. Especially the mountains. I had a few occasions where I thought I was close enough to known mountainous regions and couldn't see them but, I just never gave it much thought. I thought (at the time) it might be due to fog or some other weather phenomenon. The "docks" situation never really hampered or presented me with any real problems so, I just chalked it up to curvature of the earth along with fog, heat waves or any combo of weather conditions. I guess if I was trying celestial navigation, I might have been more aware of it. Then again, knowing me, I probably would've just gotten close enough to where I could see the landmarks.

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by WH4K

It seems as if the first thing I see in a harbor - aside from the ships - is always the lighthouse beacon(s). But I don't think they're visible far enough out. Have to do some in-game testing to be sure. It does make sense that one would see a lighthouse's light before seeing the lighthouse itself.

You're right about the lighthouses. I hadn't thought about them. They seem to be visible from a long way off (or the light anyway).


Does everyone else get the shimmer, where the masts seem to grow or shrink, from one moment to the next?

[Dogfish40]

Originally Posted by WH4K

It's not just you. I've noticed this, and it's irritating.

For me, it seems to happen with every harbor, not just harbors of a certain size. Every time I go harbor raiding, the ships become visible first. The docks pop into existence once I reach a certain distance.

The method of viewing (TBT, periscope, binocs) matters not. With the unmagnified bridge view, the docks are being drawn by the time I'm close enough to see anything. But you can't set up torpedo shots from the unmagnified view, and getting close enough for the docks to appear when on the surface is usually suicide.

As noted, the "docks popping into existence" effect makes long-distance torpedo shots practically impossible. I generally have no choice but to barge right into a harbor if I want to sink anything.

The dock draw distance cannot be explained away as "curvature of the earth." If I can see a ship at dockside, all the way down to the waterline, I should also see the docks. They are by definition higher than the water's surface, and close to the ship.

I run SH4 with the U-boat missions, that is, v 1.5. Using TMO 2.0 only for now. I don't think any of that affects this phenomenon.

Just to 'check it out' last night, I went into a tiny little harbor on the n/eastern tip of Celebes just to see if this would happen. Instead of taking the boat all the way in, I "flew" in on my magic camera. There were no ships in there at all but I noticed that as I was coming up on were the docks should be they weren't there until I got some 3 to 400 yards (something like that) from the spot. Then the docks materialized. So as Ducimus states below, the docks are rendered last. It's a priority issue (for want of a better phrase) and I'm going to have to find a good way to deal with it 'cause I like raiding ports!
Oh well, Good Hunting!
D40