So still only 8 km visibilty?

[hyperion2206]

Originally Posted by Immacolata

No AA and now this. Sigh. What is next, they recycled all the sounds from SH3? I think this 8000 meter thing is a big deal to me. It was in SH3. If you cannot spot smoke plumes from far away how are you supposed to see enemy ships when not using that hacker map "gods eye view"?

Screenshot or it didn't happen.

Since I don't have the game I can't prove it. We just have the word of a dev. I could give you the link to the interview but that wouldn't help you or do you speak German?

[RickC Sniper]

Perhaps the view distance limitation has to do with balancing multiplay??

[Immacolata]

Originally Posted by RickC Sniper

Perhaps the view distance limitation has to do with balancing multiplay??

No, just a BS limitation inherited from original SH3. It was modable tho, but at performance cost.

Im really thinking about cancelling my pre-order right now. Seems the game is shipping in poor shape.

[DaMaGe007]

They have been touting a 20km (or 20 miles) vis range for sh4 on the forums for some time now, for it to be released with an existing 8km range and metric without imperial is a disgusting display of corporate arogance from UBi. Especially when its rather easy to make it 16km as shown by the mod for sh3.

They should have delayed the game atleast to provide the things they have prommised.

"^#%$ the user, we are UBi$soft!"

Im disapointed in Ubi they really dont seem to care about reputation.

[Immacolata]

Originally Posted by DaMaGe007

Im disapointed in Ubi they really dont seem to care about reputation.

They want to beat EA. They think that by being sufficient evil they will beat EA in their own game. Maybe they forget that EA releases some of the most well tested and bugfree pc games. Start with that Ubi, you already have the corporate greed/evil theme in place.

Back to the topic:

How do I increase my horizon?

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Immacolata

How do I increase my horizon?

BUMP!

[THE_MASK]

I think maybe that when the devs say 20klm visibility means how far the player can see but the AI is still the same 8klms . Look at the mountains in some of the screen shots , definately more than 8000mts .

[Laffertytig]

sorry excuse my maths so how many metres in a mile then i thought it was 1000?
ive read a book called iron coffins written by a uboat commander who said that smoke stacks could be spotted up to 20 miles out on a good day.

i mean really, how hard can it be to implement and the argument about affectin game performance doesnt cut it. id be happy to just to see black lines to simulate smoke at that distance or even just a darker patch of sky to simulate it.

we wont know for sure until more people have the game for sure i guess. i really hope this 8km range isnt so

[hyperion2206]

Originally Posted by Laffertytig

sorry excuse my maths so how many metres in a mile then i thought it was 1000?
ive read a book called iron coffins written by a uboat commander who said that smoke stacks could be spotted up to 20 miles out on a good day.

i mean really, how hard can it be to implement and the argument about affectin game performance doesnt cut it. id be happy to just to see black lines to simulate smoke at that distance or even just a darker patch of sky to simulate it.

we wont know for sure until more people have the game for sure i guess. i really hope this 8km range isnt so

There accounts of smoke stacks being seen over 20 miles or so but you've got to keep in mind that they were really hard to see. I guess it's impossible to see this on a screen and that could be a reason why the devs did not bother to include it.

[Yak]

I was finding contacts discovered in the permafog at about 7.5, whether thats miles or KM I don't know.

The perma fog was a real dissapointment...

[Zero Niner]

Originally Posted by Laffertytig

sorry excuse my maths so how many metres in a mile then i thought it was 1000?

1000m = 1 km
1 mi = 1.61 km = 1,610 m
1 nm = 1.852 km = 1,852 m = 1.15 mi

[Der Teddy Bar]

The visibility fix for SHIII works for SHIV.

Unlike SHIII doubling the visibility from 8000 to 16,000 metres does not bring with it a large performance hit. In fact it is almost non existent. On medium quality with the SHIV 8000 metre world I get at 1024 x 768 (windowed) 27 frames per second, with the 16,000 metre world I get 25 frames per second!

When I put the horizon out to 24,000 metres my frame rate hit was 20%, i.e. from 25 to 20 frames with the medium graphic settings as per the options menu.

My computer is a P4 2.6, 1Gb memory with a ATI 9800 Pro 256Mb video card running 2 x 21” monitors. So it is far from flash or even meeting recommended requirements.

The formula for visual distance to the horizon based on the height of eye is: Distance (nm) = 1.14 x sqrt(height of eye in feet)

This formula can be found here with an accompanying table of visual distances based on height of eye: http://www.eagleoiltankers.co.uk/def...seahorizon.htm

In the real world, based on clear day under normal conditions, a person standing on the conning tower deck at an assumed height of 30 feet would have the horizon appear at a distance of 11,000 metres or 6.3 nautical miles.

At a distance fractionally less than the horizon, we can expect to see all the ship down to the water line. Just it will be really really tiny…

For a ship which is over the horizon, say the Large Modern Composite Freighter with a mast height of 100 feet, we could theoretically expect to see the top of the masts when the ship is 24,000 metres (13.1 nautical miles) away. Of course realistically this would probably be closer to 20,000 metres (10.7 nautical miles).

For 16K change the ZMax value from 1000 to 2000
For 24K change the ZMax value from 1000 to 3000

Note that this is just a player visual tweak and does not make the AI see any further than it currently does. For the AI it will require the sensors.dat and the ai_sensors.dat along with the releveant cfg files to be adjusted.


Credit for the SHIII 16k world in alphabetical order is Kpt. Lehmann, Manuel Ortega, Marhkimov, Redwine, Rulle34, Seeadler and others I may have forgotten.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Der Teddy Bar

The visibility fix for SHIII works for SHIV.

Good to know.

[nattydread]

Hmm, a 8km vis cap is a bit disappointing. I was really hoping to get a thoroughly developed game and not just a prettier re-make of SHIII. When targets begin getting thin late in the war, long range detection will be the only way to make contact at times.

So often I read of subs catching the thin, whispy glimpse of smoke on the horizon with no idea what it was, then spending half the day chasing the smoke down to determine what it is and kill it.

What amazes me is that they coul dset up accurate target solutions from just smoke. They could determine speed, track, range, etc...from just smoke! Granted it took time and periodic data input to get it eventually.

[Immacolata]

Originally Posted by Der Teddy Bar

The visibility fix for SHIII works for SHIV.

Unlike SHIII doubling the visibility from 8000 to 16,000 metres does not bring with it a large performance hit. In fact it is almost non existent. On medium quality with the SHIV 8000 metre world I get at 1024 x 768 (windowed) 27 frames per second, with the 16,000 metre world I get 25 frames per second!Of course realistically this would probably be closer to 20,000 metres (10.7 nautical miles).

For 16K change the ZMax value from 1000 to 2000
For 24K change the ZMax value from 1000 to 3000

Note that this is just a player visual tweak and does not make the AI see any further than it currently does. For the AI it will require the sensors.dat and the ai_sensors.dat along with the releveant cfg files to be adjusted.

Sounds good. At least that is one less worry about the game. So you can change this yourself by just editing a file? Which one? I don't have the game but someone else might want to fix it themselves.