[REL]Bad weather fix for SH3

[makman94]

fantastic news !! congratulations to all involved !!

ready to test here

[Draka]

To amplify a bit:

I've been leary of putting my oar in and complicating matters, but Hitman is correct. Fog is a suspension of water droplets in air, and any decent amount of wind will disturb that equilibrium so as to remove the fog. As a former long-time resident and sailor in the San Francisco Bay area, it is infamous there. The same holds true of higher temperatures as well, as the air can better absorb the moisture. The sun will literally "burn" it off in the absence of any wind.

On the other end, very strong winds literally blow off the tops of the waves, causing a similar effect from a different cause - lower visibility. The resulting spray is so thick as to be similar to the fog. Anything in between is clear as far as vision goes.

But as I am not familiar at all with the code and what it is possible to code in game, I will leave it at that.

[Stiebler]

Arctic weather:
Some interesting and detailed information about the wind speed in the Arctic: http://www.colorado.edu/Research/HARC/sobs_swinds.html

The average wind speeds look quite surprising steady, as well as strong, don't they? Around 35 mph. (17.11 yards/sec; ca. 15-16 m/s). This would be at the limit of what SH3 finds acceptable for its wind-speeds.

Thanks for the information, Hitman.

Stiebler.

[Stiebler]

@Draka,

Yes, many people have mentioned over the years that stronger winds should remove fog, not make it thicker. I suppose the devs just wanted a variable weather pattern.

It is because the weather has not varied enough after strong winds that users of SH3 have become unhappy.

Stiebler.

[h.sie]

Now I am totally confused. One week ago the job was to shorten fog periods by a small fix. Now, as the work is almost done, the situation changes. what went wrong???

[h.sie]

Ah, now I understand.....you want me to only shorten fog periods in conjunction with storm, but not with medium wind speeds??? But Hitman wants the opposite by saying " It would be therefore great if we could have the fog appear only in the maximum storms"

Until now I thought exactly the fog in conjunction with high windspeeds are the problem which is to remove, and now we want fog with high windspeed?

???

I go to bed now.

[Draka]

The problem lies in that fog and rain are related, but different. Both are a result of water particles within the air being no longer stable, and thus dropping out. This is a function of the temperature of the air changing - in this case becoming colder, and thus unable to hold as much water vapor.

Fog is a fine mist - thus easily subject to wind conditions. Rain is denser, and can come in everything from a drizzle to a full-on hurricane as far as wind speeds go.

The phenomenon of wave tops being blown off (known as spindrift) and having an effect on visibility come into play only at high wind speeds - Beaufort scale 9 (Strong Gale) and up.

Visibility is effected by all three, of course - but I really don't know how to adjust for the graphic effects aside from the crude one of limiting visibility. Thus the wish that wind speed effects "fog" only at lower and higher ends, while the middle area is only effected by rain.

In game terms, of course, there may be no way to distinguish between them.

Just for reference:

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/beaufort.html

[Yoriyn]

I think fog in the game do not represent only a real fog, but this is a general visibility condition in the game.

[h.sie]

Guys, nice to know about fog and its causes, but I am mainly interested in how this knowledge could affect my programming/algorithm.

I plan to measure independently from each other

1) length of high windspeed periods and
2) length of fog periods

If one of them is longer than a certain maximum value, I plan to force the weather to get better.

That is similar to what we have talked about when I started to look into the weather.

My question now is: Is my above described plan or idea okay?

If yes: Great.
If no: How should it look like?

Thanks,
h.sie

[Stiebler]

@H.sie,

Continue with the original plan. (Allow fog at high wind speeds, limit fog and high wind speeds when they appear too often.)

We cannot re-write the entire weather pattern. Neither is it possible to reconcile all different opinions.

The central idea is to fix the problem that ruins game play: repeated long periods (>7 days) of foggy storms when it is impossible to play the game properly.

Stiebler.

[h.sie]

@Stiebler: Thanks.

A different thought: If I remember right, after loading a saved game, the weather counter always starts at 0. That means, the first weather change occurs after about 30-40 hours.

Maybe one could try to initialize this counter to a certain value > 0 after game load, so that the first weather change comes earlier.

[NGT]

Originally Posted by h.sie

@Stiebler: Thanks.

A different thought: If I remember right, after loading a saved game, the weather counter always starts at 0. That means, the first weather change occurs after about 30-40 hours.

Maybe one could try to initialize this counter to a certain value > 0 after game load, so that the first weather change comes earlier.

Why?

(I think, mostly, we not save game with 15 m/s wind..., no ? And every patrol starts with good weather. Why to loose that?)

[h.sie]

@NGT: It was only an idea - for discussion. I thought it would be better if every mission DOES NOT start with the same weather.

But more important than that is, that every time you reload a saved game, you have to wait 30-40h until the weather changes, because the current weather counter is not stored in the savegame.

[Stiebler]

The patched envsim.act file that I am using currently changes weather after 24 hours anyway.

Doesn't matter whether you start from base or after a saved game. I don't know why.

Stiebler.

[h.sie]

@Stiebler: That behaviour you described proves exactly what I wanted to explain. The counter, which is responsible for determining the time of the next weather change is NOT stored in the savegame. Instead, it starts from 0 every time you reload that savegame.

Lets assume the time has come for a weather change, and now you save the game instead of continuing. If you reload that game, the counter starts from 0, that means, the next weather change comes not immediately, but after 24 hours.

Best solution would be to also store that counter, but I'm pessimistic that I'll be able to manipulate the data stream that is written during saving.

So as a compromise, I had the idea to initialise that counter to an certain value, so that you don't have to wait the full period for the next weather change.