Night Skies

[Admiral Von Gerlach]

One of my instructors at University at Oxford many yrs ago turned out to be the Navigation officer on a British destroyer escorting one of the Malta Convoys, they ran into heavy fog heading to Gibralter and then as most know U boats of the 29th flotilla, Lufwaffe patrols, sorties from Italy, constant bombing, loss of ships from the convoy, and when they finally docked at Valetta, he checked his plot and route markings which were done entirely by sextant and calculatoins and log (ys they used logs back then) and he was off by 2 feet. He showed me his logs and charts, it was amazing. And there were thousands of those kind of navigators back then, ...... helps to remember and respect them all, on both sides.

the idea of dolpins is nice...but as stated, re that and the stars...lots of work for someone.

[Rockin Robbins]

If you want to see what's possible just fire up Patrick Chevelley's magnificent Cartes du Ciel, a free astronomy program for the PC that plots stars, planets and a selectable assortment of deep sky objects to your choice of limiting magnitude.

Unfortunately, supplying the real dark night sky to players who have never seen a truly dark sky in their lives would not be appreciated at all. I am just happy that the sky is represented to the fidelity that it is, with the stars in their accurate positions for date and time. The developers didn't have to do that. Nobody's noticed it anyway. The moon and sun are four times their actual diameters in the sky and the moon is at the wrong phase and in the wrong position. As a result celestial navigation with the stars in the game is really not possible.

As a side effect of attempted celestial navigation, all radar and visual targets, along with your sub's position on the attack and nav plot vanish. It's difficult for me to characterize a mod that kills the maneuvering board and TDC checks against the plot as a "reality mod." Celestial navigation was never envisioned when the game was designed and there is no way to make it work without making hunting and killing nearly impossible.

It would be great to have in-game celestial navigation. It would be great to have a sky that looked more real, with differences in the magnitudes of accurately colored stars. The colors would have to change with humidity and sky clarity, as all color vanishes with humid or hazy conditions. It would be great if they twinkled appropriately with changes in meteorological conditions. The Milky Way is astoundingly bright when you're offshore, hundreds of miles from any terrestrial lighting. In addition, there are dozens of naked eye deep space objects, the Andromeda Galaxy, M33, NGC 253, the Orion Nebula, North American Nebula, tons of stuff in the Sagittarius area, a dozen or so globular clusters, all easily visible in that kind of pristine sky. And then there are the planets all the way out to Neptune that can be seen through binoculars. Warning: all you city boys wouldn't be able to find Orion or the Big Dipper in a perfect night sky. You would be totally lost.

But how much would all this add to the game? If we navigated by celestial navigation, I could make the sale!

[Admiral Von Gerlach]

I recall nights at sea, it is indeed awesome, the southern cross, and the way the stars seems so intensly bright....... you and the ship seem wrapped in a otherworldy feeling and floating between the sea and the sky...and then duty recalls one to the deck with a thump. it looks like the game developers did pretty well with what they could do.

[Rockin Robbins]

OMG, you reminded me of the Magellenic Clouds! THOSE are the most amazing things in a pristine night sky! And Omega Centauri, which is in reality the biggest, baddest globular cluster in the sky, and easy naked eye object even from the suburbs of a large city. And NGC 5128, a giant elliptical galaxy in the southern sky, never seen by those who live north of me in central Florida. All this stuff is child's play with the naked eye in the southern hemisphere and a quarter of the northern hemisphere. A sky without them is most disorienting and unfortunate.

[vanjast]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

If you want to see what's possible just fire up Patrick Chevelley's magnificent Cartes du Ciel, a free astronomy program for the PC that plots stars, planets and a selectable assortment of deep sky objects to your choice of limiting magnitude.

Sounds interesting ... I'll check it out

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

As a result celestial navigation with the stars in the game is really not possible.

It's been done in SH3 already - One person got down to a 100m accuracy.
just methods and practice. On my first attempt I went from Kiel to Those SW islands off the UK + 1 week of overcast lousy weather coming around Scotland, and I was out by ~5km. I got a visual on the target island off to the one side

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

As a side effect of attempted celestial navigation, all radar and visual targets, along with your sub's position on the attack and nav plot vanish.

Well, we have to make it hard... it's great fun. Radar doesn't have to go. There are some moon mods around (no pun intended ), I haven't seen a sun mod. Will look into this.
I also find SH4's TDC a mission, but I suppose one has to use it.

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

But how much would all this add to the game? If we navigated by celestial navigation, I could make the sale!

I'll be getting down to tranferring SH3's Real Nav Mod to SH4 sometime soon. The great thing about SH4 are the maps Latitude and Longitude lines (SH3 didn't have these).

[NeonsStyle]

Hi,

Sorry for restarting this, I've been away n just got back...

I certainly don't think it would be easy. In fact I know little of how you guys do the awesome mods you do. So it seemed to me a reasonable request. lol Also cause I'd not seen it mentioned anywhere on the forum in the preceding months, I figured no one had thought of it.

It would be a real shame if stars are hard coded. As for life, yes there is a point, but really the only time it would pop up is if it's in visible range... one possibility is to build a model from debris... for instance popping dolphins is probably a bit much, but a basking whale might not be too much of a stretch.

Oh well, be nice if it could've been done.

Venus

[difool2]

The cetaceans could be imported from SH3 'easily' enough, couldn't they? Surprised really that they haven't been. And icebergs, for those who decide to brave the Antarctic Ocean...