Celestial Navigation Revisited

[CommanderU]

Cheers, this helped a lot.

[JeromeHeretic]

I did some sun measuring today and it looks, that sun in SH3 world goes every year exactly in the same way (and leap year day is ignored and simply sun is setting and rising in the same time as day before). It's cool, because there's no need sun almanac for all years of war, byt only one for whole age. :-)
Stay tuned, more to come, now i must read Bravo's text about this fuzzy clocks in SH3, because i measured the same sunset and sunrise in the same time on 0N 0W and on 0N 30W, which is not possible. So where is f*cking GMT?

[JeromeHeretic]

BTW: I found one interesting rule. When sunrise is for example in 5:56, so sunset will be in 17:56. Rule is simple, sunset is in exactly the same minute as sunrise, so we have sunrisehour:X sunsethour:X.

Edit: This rule failed. Works only on equator and only sometimes. :-)

[JeromeHeretic]

Originally Posted by reaper7

[...]
where %02d:%02d updates the text values.

Will see if I can do a workaround, if not the Modded Map that 11Bravo made can be used to see the timezone for localtime.

IMHO it's not important. I can easily live without local time, but hardly need GMT. Will be nice to see GMT on interior watch in my uboat...
Did you do any progres with this problem?

[JeromeHeretic]

Originally Posted by vanjast

Longitude is not too much a problem... but it's Latitude that's way off - correcting this to USNO's almanac will be interesting.

Yes, i must to do a bit more tests, but it looks like there is possibility to create a funcional almanac for SH3 Sun, which will be fake in the same way as sun in game.

[JeromeHeretic]

Originally Posted by Wolfstriked

I ask this because one has to set the land spotted TC speed to low so you have time to change course but this causes the terrible TC when traversing the Kiel canal issue.I have my near land TC speed set to 128 and its worlds better but I have also finished patrols only to crash into land.With manual navigation this will become very apparent.

I did my own tuning of vajnast's real nav mod, so NO can plot search patterns (me not). It's needed let enabled commands for ploting patterns and one "return to course" one, because NO is not returning to course automaticaly after ploting of the pattern. For me is boring drive uboat in patrol grid and drive search pattern by myself and traveling through Kiel kanal too. So i have near land TC set to 1024 and using NO autopilot patterns for Kiel kanal route. For real nav friendly people i want prepare buoy way at the Brunsbuttel side of canal which will navigate you to right position from where to let plot NO route back to Kiel. I think it's good compromise between reality and fun in game. In fact, captain is not working all work alone, for this boring jobs have his officier, isn't it? :-)

[JeromeHeretic]

Originally Posted by vanjast

Maybe Hsie might be able to look into this, if not he can contact me :-)

It could be nice if Hsie will be able patch engine for GMT on screen clock!

[JeromeHeretic]

Well, here it is. The sun almanak for north hemisphere.
This is a time of the moment when the red light turn on/off.
I did it like this, because different settings of grafic card (and different mods too) may cause a different view of the sun. So when you want to measure moment of sunrise/set respectively moment of redlight turn on/off, you must measure time when lower limb touch horizon, then measure time when upper limb touch the horizon and difference between this two number divide by two.
Like this when sunset: ( uppertime - lowertime )/2 + lowertime = redlight_on_time
Like this when sunrise: ( lowertime - uppertime )/2 + lowertime = redlight_off_time

rise set
0N
1.1 0602 1803
1.2 0613 1813
1.3 0612 1812
1.4 0603 1803
1.5 0556 1756
1.6 0557 1757
21.6 0601 1801
1.7 0803 1803
1.8 0606 1805
1.9 0559 1759
1.10 0549 1749
1.11 0543 1743
1.12 0548 1748
21.12 0557 1757

10N
1.1 0619 1746
1.2 0625 1801
1.3 0617 1806
1.4 0600 1806
1.5 0546 1807
1.6 0541 1813
21.6 0544 1818
1.7 0546 1820
1.8 0553 1818
1.9 0553 1805
1.10 0551 1746
1.11 0553 1733
1.12 0604 1733
21.12 0615 1741

20N
1.1 0637 1728
1.2 0639 1747
1.3 0623 1801
1.4 0557 1810
1.5 0534 1819
1.6 0524 1830
21.6 0526 1836
1.7 0528 1838
1.8 0539 1832
1.9 0547 1811
1.10 0554 1744
1.11 0604 1721
1.12 0621 1716
21.12 0632 1722

30N
1.1 0658 1707
1.2 0654 1732
1.3 0629 1754
1.4 0553 1814
1.5 0521 1832
1.6 0504 1850
21.6 0505 1857
1.7 0507 1858
1.8 0523 1848
1.9 0540 1818
1.10 0556 1741
1.11 0617 1709
1.12 0640 1656
21.12 0653 1701

40N
1.1 0724 1642
1.2 0713 1713
1.3 0637 1747
1.4 0548 1819
1.5 0505 1848
1.6 0440 1914
21.6 0438 1923
1.7 0442 1924
1.8 0503 1907
1.9 0531 1826
1.10 0600 1738
1.11 0632 1653
1.12 0705 1632
21.12 0720 1635

50N
1.1 0800 1605
1.2 0739 1647
1.3 0648 1736
1.4 0542 1826
1.5 0442 1911
1.6 0405 1949
21.6 0400 2001
1.7 0404 2001
1.8 0436 1934
1.9 0519 1838
1.10 0604 1733
1.11 0653 1632
1.12 0739 1557
21.12 0757 1557


60N
1.1 0905 1500
1.2 0822 1605
1.3 0705 1719
1.4 0532 1836
1.5 0407 1947
1.6 0305 2050
21.6 0254 2108
1.7 0259 2106
1.8 0350 2019
1.9 0501 1856
1.10 0611 1726
1.11 0727 1557
1.12 0838 1458
21.12 0904 1450

70N
1.1 0 0
1.2 1003 1423
1.3 0737 1648
1.4 0513 1855
1.5 0249 2107
1.6 0 0
21.6 0 0
1.7 0 0
1.8 0158 2208
1.9 0425 1931
1.10 0624 1712
1.11 0841 1444
1.12 0 0
21.12 0 0


80N
1.1 0 0
1.2 0 0
1.3 0927 1500
1.4 0418 1955
1.5 0 0
1.6 0 0
21.6 0 0
1.7 0 0
1.8 0 0
1.9 0213 2133
1.10 0702 1632
1.11 0 0
1.12 0 0
21.12 0 0

[complutum]

I have read the hole thread and find it awesome.

Is there any news on it?

I have noticed the author has been away so long.

I hope he is still developing this.

[Karl Heinrich]

Having been considering working on something similar, including a fictional almanac as it were, I am absolutely blown away by the work here. Again some greater progress towards real celestial navigation. If only that pesky save game drama can be fixed...

I hope there's still a future for this project as its very very promising indeed. Staggeringly impressive work 11Bravo.

[JeromeHeretic]

Don't be afraid, now i'm working on coastal navigation. I got a list of 23779 lighthouses and lightboats, now i'm working on cleaning it, remove duplicity, reducing to relevant only (there is a lot of river lighthouses which are irelevant for SH3) and so... It's a lot of work about it and cost a lot of time, so progress is slow.

[Karl Heinrich]

That sounds fantastic Jerome... something that had been on my to do list. I'm actually working on a slightly secret SH3 nav project myself at the moment and that would be MASSIVELY useful, would you mind if I sent you a PM?

Similarly I've been working on my project for a long time and it's a lot of hard work, but wel all know these projects and the love we put into them are always worth it

[JeromeHeretic]

Well, about PM, go on!
BTW: If you have some (not secret) TODO list, write it there, can be usefull tell who will do what and avoid paralel work on the same problem.

About lighthouses - My idea is, that at the end there will be list of relevant lighthouses and program which will be able import this list to any locations file. Like this import of lighthouses will not depend on certain configuration (or supermod).
(Of course by this way is not problem to "precook" instant location file for all well known megamods, with usable generator it's trivial...)

Now i'm searching for solution how to import lighthouses to map. Only method, which i can do at this moment is append lighthouse list to save file visible as "X" marks in map. (The same X what you can point in map by map tools.) Usable, but not the best solution IMHO.

[Karl Heinrich]

That sounds great. Nope, I don't have a non-secret todo list right now, so there should be no doubling up of work - but good suggestion, I think it's always best to share what you're working while working on it.

Your work sounds superb for coastal navigation, I don't know if you saw my thread from earlier this year - http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=205416

Hmm to make it so it would work with all supermods sounds tricky, as you say using the X would be very useful even if not the most elegant approach - but I would be very happy to see it with just the X.

Will send you a PM later today sir (just headed off to work now... )

[JeromeHeretic]

FYI, there is table with all lighthouses, which i have: http://www.ucw.cz/~jerome/lighthouses.html (it's BIG, so be prepared for slow load of page!)

Now it's raw data, without any modifications, later there will be visible changes what my scripts and me do for SH3 implementation.