[WIP]RealNav Panel for GWX + OLC

[Nico71]

That's awesome! I have a question: how did you solve the camera angle problem that causes some serious distortion and throws off the sextant reading? I have fiddled with the camera settings for a while, and when I managed to have Polaris in the correct postition on 60°N, it was way off at, say, 20°N, and vice versa! I tested everything between 60° and 75° view angle, and 73° seemed to work best, but still not precise enough! Finally I gave up on it. But now I am really curious!

[Nico71]

Vanjast used the NYGM cameras.dat IIRC. The view angle is 75° or so. But when I set the angle to 75° in OLC, Polaris is out of view at 60°N, and the whole view is skewed somehow. Just to be on the safe side, I strongly suggest some thorough testing before anyone starts a patrol!

Well, what we really need is a moveable vertical scale, just like the compass in periscope or binocs view. This would settle the problem once and for all.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Nico71

Vanjast used the NYGM cameras.dat IIRC. The view angle is 75° or so. But when I set the angle to 75° in OLC, Polaris is out of view at 60°N, and the whole view is skewed somehow. Just to be on the safe side, I strongly suggest some thorough testing before anyone starts a patrol!

Well, what we really need is a moveable vertical scale, just like the compass in periscope or binocs view. This would settle the problem once and for all.

Can't say I know much about this real navigation stuff (though I'm very much in favour of realism generally speaking) but do I understand you correctly in that you require something that can measure an angle of elevation? Between the horizon and the sun, or something?

If so... depending on how high you need to be able to measure the angle... I can think of a way to do that.

Please don't tell me you need to be able to measure it all the way up to 90 degrees though (sun directly overhead).

[Nico71]

No, I think 60-70° will be sufficient for game purposes. Using real nav further up to the north doesn't make much sense in the game because of the distorted map. It looks like a mercator at first glance (which would be of great value in navigation), but it isn't! In real life, something like 180° are required, though.

The problem as far as I understand it is the fishbowl effect that throws off any reading by some margin. If we could move the object of interest (i.e. Polaris) into the center of the FOV, this problem wouldn't exist any more (I think). The binocs might be useful for this. In real life, the navigator has to align the sextant with the horizon manually, but in the game this is hard to accomplish, distorts the view and limits the readings to a maximum of 60°. By shifting the view upwards, we might be able to achieve more precision (we are currently in the weird situation that determining the longitude is easier and more precise than the latitude).

[NealT]

With all that this mod and others have...we almost have ourself a SHV on our hands...

Or am I really off-base here?

:hmm:

[Nico71]

Now that I'm thinking about it.....there is indeed such a scale in the game already: the range indicator of the deck gun! Maybe it is possible to mod it in a way that the angle can be displayed (not in the deck gun view, of course, but in the binocs or so!)

[onelifecrisis]

Are you sure that's the problem? In theory the fishbowl effect shouldn't cause a problem, unless I'm misunderstanding something, in which case the method I have in mind should work.

Forgive me if this is old news - as I said I know nothing of real navigation or its mods - but you could set the "on deck" camera fov to something like 90 (horizontal, thus giving you a vertical fov of 67.5) and add a draggable, transparent scale to the GUI, which has a height of exactly 768 pixels and is marked from 0 to 67.5 degrees, looking something like this:



Then you just align Polaris with the centre of the screen (that is, the horizontal centre - it can be anywhere vertically) and drag this scale so that the 0 mark is on the horizon, and voila.

I don't see why that wouldn't work. :hmm:

Edit: cross posted - sounds like we were thinking along similar lines.

[onelifecrisis]

So this Vanjast fella has in fact already created the thing I just suggested, but you're not getting 100% accurate readings from it? That's strange. Assuming his scale is accurate, and that you have your camera angle set the same as his, I'm pretty sure this fish-eye effect shouldn't matter. :hmm:

[Nico71]

Vanjast's sextant is calibrated for the NYGM cameras.dat. Perhaps this is the culprit! What I have seen in my own testing is a non-linear vertical distortion. As I have described above, I couldn't get the angle right so that it works on all latitudes. But then I didn't test the new cameras.dat, yet. However, by using the binocs to measure the elevation, I think we might be able to get better readings and in the range of 0.1° or so. At the moment it is still a little bit on the coarse side.

[onelifecrisis]

A binocular elevation guage which works like the binocular bearing guage is, I'm pretty sure, not possible.

Something like Vanjast's sextant, with (as you said) the proper camera angle, seems to me like the way to go... but maybe someone else will be more helpful.

Sorry, I thought I had an idea but it turns out to be old news.

[Nico71]

Originally Posted by onelifecrisis

A binocular elevation guage which works like the binocular bearing guage is, I'm pretty sure, not possible.

Something like Vanjast's sextant, with (as you said) the proper camera angle, seems to me like the way to go... but maybe someone else will be more helpful.

Sorry, I thought I had an idea but it turns out to be old news.

But what about the deck gun elevation scale that I have mentioned above?

[onelifecrisis]

It's not an elevation, it's a range, and that camera doesn't even move vertically.

[AVGWarhawk]

This work is absolutely beautiful!

[Nico71]

These are good news indeed! If it works near the equator as well, you have won the jackpot! And yes, 1° off is about right (give or take, as we don't have a real sextant anyway that would allow more precise readings)