Maximum draw distance

[BigWalleye]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

The question then becomes "Okay, you can see ten miles. Is that the horizon, meaning the waterline of the target ship? Is it the top of the superstructure? The top of the masts? Or the top of the smoke coming from its funnels?

A simple and fairly accurate approximation (good to within 6%) is distance to the horizon in nautical miles is equal to the square root of the observer's height in feet. So for 16 feet (5 meters, an good number for the eye level of the lookouts on a VII), the distance to the horizon is 4 nm. For the distance to see something over the horizon, the distance is the sum of the square root of the observer's height and the square root of the object's height. A typical merchant ship has its highest point about 25 m above the waterline, or about 81 feet. That's 9+4=13, so the lookout could see the top of the ship's mast at 13 nm. Putting that back into metric units, 13 nm is 24 km. That's to see the extreme tip of the highest mast. At 20 km, the lookout could see a point 15 m above the waterline, say the top of the ship's superstructure. So the 20 km horizon seems like a good practical limit. It certainly is not the distance at which a lookout could see smoke, though.

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by BigWalleye

It certainly is not the distance at which a lookout could see smoke, though.

A good point. And it isn't just a matter of ships' smoke; beyond a certain distance mountains and land masses will just disappear.

[Pisces]

Hydrophone sounds and game stuttering start appearing when a unit get's into a 34km radius circle. So I guess visuals isn't beyond that.

[sik1977]

Thank you all for replying, but unfortunately the discussion somehow turned into a maximum visual range at sea... which was not what I wanted to know (I am so disappointed in myself for not being able to explain my query)...

So basically I wanted to know in 'game engine' terms, whats the maximum distance/radius from my submarine at sea that ships get physically drawn by the game engine so that a theoretically unlimited visual/hydrophone range can pick it up (and display as an actual ship through external cameras and not just as a radio contact) ...

What basically I want to determine is, that once I have damaged a ship in a convoy, and dove (dived) to evade its escorts, and later got back to shadowing the convoy at a safe distance and attempt another run at it after over taking it (at a safe distance) to sink the damaged ship (which didn't sink despite taking damage) - HOW FAR can I get from the convoy/ship before it stops getting drawn and only remains on the map as a contact?

The reason its important to not let the ship out of physical draw range is because the game engine somehow manages to forget the damage the ship took and resets the damage (as if the ship repaired itself) and I would have to start from scratch. I have seen this with all sorts of ships as well as warships left stationary after multiple torpedo hits and almost sinking (but managing to stay afloat while listing heavily), but later as soon as you move out of draw range (not visual range, which can vary due to fog/light conditions), they start moving at regular speed.

The answer below regarding 34km may be what i am looking for, so if anyone could confirm this? because 34km seems more than what i have experienced mostly before ships stop getting drawn (and only remain on the map as contacts).

Thanks.

Originally Posted by Pisces

Hydrophone sounds and game stuttering start appearing when a unit get's into a 34km radius circle. So I guess visuals isn't beyond that.