[REQ] Can someone mod the rain?

[TDK1044]

I encountered my first storm today, and although the sea and the wind were truly excellent, the rain looked very poor in my view. Not very believable at all. Any chance of a rain mod?

Regards,

Terry

[ReallyDedPoet]

Agreed on that one, strange given all the other visuals are a step up from SH3, rain
is the same.

RDP

[joea]

FPS considerations?? :hmm:

[ReallyDedPoet]

Trying to think of some other games with great rain effects:hmm:

[TDK1044]

Originally Posted by joea

FPS considerations?? :hmm:

I honestly don't think so. I just think the current rain looks more like drop out on a video tape than rain. It doesn't look like water falling from the sky at all. Any modification to the rain would be an improvement.

[Chock]

With regard to the appearance of the rain from a graphical standpoint, I think it does actually look okay in the daytime, where one would expect things to look very grey and diffused, but at night it looks far from convincing, the grey colour clashing terribly with the blackness of the night.

However, the thing that p*sses me off about the rain, is not so much how it looks, as its duration and how it affects your watch crew's abilities.

I've had situations where I can quite clearly see targets, yet the system has 'decided' I can't, as evidenced by no eternal view being available of them (external view being my one concession in the realism settings at the moment, since I want to check out FSAA). Consequently I can't get a TDC lock and my crew fails to report ships until we're practically fending the things off with a bargepole.

'Ship spotted sir!' - 'Yes, thanks for that Hawkeye, I wonder what we'd do without your uncanny ability to spot ships that I've been stalking for the past six hours.'

Given that I live in Stockport, England, which is approximately eight miles south of Manchester (otherwise known as The Rainy City), I'm very familiar with how visible things are in rainy conditions, and while distant objects might be not very clearly delineated, I can still see them. In actual fact, the County of Staffordshire, to the south of me, gets more rain, but even then, on the many occasions I've been driving there in bad rain conditions, there have only been two occasions where I recall rain affecting visibility drastically, forcing me to pull over and wait it out, but the wait was not long.

So, the visibility issue in SH4 is compounded by the fact that the rain storms last far too long in my opinion, yes I know it can get bad in the Pacific, and there are rainy seasons, but since it appears to be a global setting for the sim, I can't do what a real skipper would do, which is monitor weather reports and head for somewhere that has better visibility, which is the obvious thing to do if the weather is so bad that it's affecting operational capabilities. My last career patrol had me in rainy weather from Pearl all the way to Honshu and back to Midway, that's a hell of a raincloud that can cover 3000 miles of ocean and blow in two different directions, and it certainly never happened a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In such circumstances, I'd be abandoning my sub and considering building an Ark, as that is weather of Biblical proportions.

I'm going to see if I can modify the rain a bit, but I suspect that the duration and how it affects crew visibility is more in need of modding than the appearance.

[FAdmiral]

[quote=Chock]
I've had situations where I can quite clearly see targets, yet the system has 'decided' I can't, as evidenced by no eternal view being available of them (external view being my one concession in the realism settings at the moment, since I want to check out FSAA). Consequently I can't get a TDC lock and my crew fails to report ships until we're practically fending the things off with a bargepole.

'Ship spotted sir!' - 'Yes, thanks for that Hawkeye, I wonder what we'd do without your uncanny ability to spot ships that I've been stalking for the past six hours.'
quote]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It doesn't even have to be in rain conditions to observe this type of reporting.
I see the ship in the distance (maybe just a shadow outline) but it takes my
crew XXminutes to get the sighting so I can get the lock and ship type. If
there were a button I could push (keyboard letter) that would let the crew
see what I see, that would be very nice. Don't know if it can be done thought.

JIM

[E.Hartmann]

Originally Posted by reallydedpoet

Trying to think of some other games with great rain effects:hmm:

Stalker has some pretty intense storms with ran in it.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Originally Posted by E.Hartmann

Stalker has some pretty intense storms with ran in it.

Have not played it, looks intense

[Kataki]

FAdmiral and Chock, are you playing with eviromental effects off? Spotting ships is much more difficult with that on and the game probably simulates that as always on and affecting the crews visual ability.

[hawk2495]

i too have had that problem with the enviro fx off. and it always seems to be when im tracking a huge euro liner. dont know what to make of that, but my crew wont spot it until im 600 yds from it and god forbid i slow down to avoid hitting it because it just slips away and they dont travel at 5-10 kts they usually run 17-20. ok ranting over....

[CaptainCox]

I think the Graphic aspect of this can be modded to look nicer...have to look at it, maybe later today. Problem is to check it quickly, is there a "Patrol" or something that starts with Rain, or is this totally random. Cause if you start testing stuff it will be totally annoying if one have to wait for the weather to change every time one loads in. Another option would be to use a "Tweak File" of course...might look at it later on.

[Chock]

Re games with good rain/storm effects...

The storms and rain that I really liked, appeared in the first 'Pirates of the Caribbean' game (which was basically Sea Dogs 2). They were truly impressive, however it was difficult to sit back and enjoy them as they really damaged the hell out of your ship, nevertheless, they did (and indeed still do) look really cool.

[CaptainCox]

I think you might tweak this using the "MiniTweaker" and "nvdrifter's" "Scene.dat Tweak File"


LINK TO THE SCENE.DAT
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=110960

The problem again is how to test it FAST!, as you have to wait for bad weather to see the effect.

[FAdmiral]

Here is a thread that may be just the answer to weather testing....

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=112806


JIM