VampireNightVision Bugfix

[Anvart]

Originally Posted by h.sie

I can only repeat myself: ...

...

[makman94]

hello guys,

is there any subsimer that is having a list of the real effective ranges for the radar,sonar and hydrophone types devices that sh3 is using ?

or ,can direct me to any good sites for getting these data ?

one more question : does any moder knows why the game's engine is not rendering ships to more than 20km ? (is this correct ? i have read something like this at forum).
maybe ,now, by hacking,we could manage to make the game rendering to larger than 20km distances (i guess that creating the 3d models for larger than 20km enviros will not be a problem)

[h.sie]

...regarding new 'projects': I make a rest now after V16B release.

[makman94]

Originally Posted by h.sie

...regarding new 'projects': I make a rest now after V16B release.

sure H.sie , as long as you like ! you allready have done much more than the expected
just wondering why is not possible to have ships rendering further than 20km

[reaper7]

Originally Posted by makman94

sure H.sie , as long as you like ! you allready have done much more than the expected
just wondering why is not possible to have ships rendering further than 20km

Hi Mate, I'd Imagine the Dev's placed a limit on the ship rendering distance due to PC limitations at the time.
So in theory with today's more powerful PC's this limit could be increased much further.

Is there a method to test the actual player bubble (The sphere around the uboat at which ships are rendered by the engine) to confirm it is 20KM, or how can I find the actual player bubble distance.
If I can get the exact figure I may be able to trace back into the code to see if we can change it .

[makman94]

Originally Posted by reaper7

Hi Mate, I'd Imagine the Dev's placed a limit on the ship rendering distance due to PC limitations at the time.
So in theory with today's more powerful PC's this limit could be increased much further.

Is there a method to test the actual player bubble (The sphere around the uboat at which ships are rendered by the engine) to confirm it is 20KM, or how can I find the actual player bubble distance.
If I can get the exact figure I may be able to trace back into the code to see if we can change it .

don't even know if sh3's engine is rendering till 20km .
will send you some files to test John in which you will be able to see further than 20 km. just need to prepare them

[Hitman]

It is 20km, I checked it when doing the extended version for GWX3. The ships vanish exactly at the distance and it is noticeable that the rendering of them stops.

Furthermore, no units is even taken into account by the game if it is more than 40km away. At more distance it is just a theoretical dot from which only its position is calculated. But even if it finds another enemy unit nothing happens.

[makman94]

Originally Posted by Hitman

It is 20km, I checked it when doing the extended version for GWX3. The ships vanish exactly at the distance and it is noticeable that the rendering of them stops.

you have 'moved' the 3d fog model Alberto to more than 20km (by creating a bigger 3d model) ? also the objectrelativeZmax must be set to 1 in order to be at max the rendering of ships
have you tried these experiments in order to avoid redoing them ?

i am suspecting that ships are not rendered, exactly becuase we have altered these objectrelativeZmax values to be close to the max of fog's 3d model . (the sky dome is about 25km radious in 20km enviros so the smaller fog 3d model is determing the 'limits' so far ,afaik)

Originally Posted by Hitman

Furthermore, no units is even taken into account by the game if it is more than 40km away. At more distance it is just a theoretical dot from which only its position is calculated. But even if it finds another enemy unit nothing happens.

can you explain this more detailed ? seems it is the key to our theme ...but i can't understand exactly what you mean

[Gammel]

I'd vote for a beta release of VampireNightVision bugfix -> compatible with stieblers addon for 16A3
SH3Sim.act is altered by both mods.
Can someone tell what will i loose from Stieblers mod when overiding with the VampireNightVision bugfix Sim.act? Thanks and Advance.
h.sie and stiebler - those are great mods you did, thx for all the work.

[h.sie]

@Gammel:

Thanks. Please wait until the release of V16B during February. After release, I'll work together with Stiebler in order to create his "Addon" and make his amd my Fixes compatible.

Currently, overwriting his Sh3Sim.act can cause problems, even CTD.

[Magic1111]

Originally Posted by h.sie

I'll work together with Stiebler in order to create his "Addon" and make his amd my Fixes compatible.

That´s very good news that you do a "Joint Venture" with Stiebler!

Best regards,
Magic

[Hitman]

you have 'moved' the 3d fog model Alberto to more than 20km (by creating a bigger 3d model) ? also the objectrelativeZmax must be set to 1 in order to be at max the rendering of ships
have you tried these experiments in order to avoid redoing them ?

This was a long time ago, so I can't say which size I tried. What I remember is that there was a hardcoded limit, and that the ship effectively dissapeared from render before the fog wall, and in a very different way to how it did when it vanished in the fog -it was like suddenly cutting it with scissors, not difussing it. I positively know from trying later in SH4, that in that sim the limit was 20 kms -and I doubt that it was cut back from SH3, instead it was the opposite. Sh4 was expanded to 20kms in the 1.4 patch because the devs also confirmed that the game wouldn't anyway render the ships further away.

But yes, making a test could be worth it.

can you explain this more detailed ? seems it is the key to our theme ...but i can't understand exactly what you mean

If you look at the campaign/mission editor you will better understand what I mean. Units are simply moving dots along the programmed waypoints and the computer only keeps track of their position. When the player is 40 kms away from any of those "dots", the computer starts taking into account what the dot really is, i.e. a friendly or hostile unit, convoy, etc. At more than 40 kms from the player, it's just a neutral moving dot. Otherwise the game would be lagging if, on the other side of the world, there was an engangement between axis and allied units that got too close together

This is confirmed by the devs and also when we worked on the radar mod for SH4 --> The real life radar could detect things up to 80 kms away, but in the game any unit placed in the mission more than 40 kms away did not appear in the radar. It simply was considered by the comnputer a "position", and unless the player gets inside that 40 kms radius, the game doesn't bother looking at what it is. So it doesn't appear in the radar, because it is not physically placed in the game.

[Kafka BC]

Originally Posted by Hitman

...the ship effectively dissapeared from render before the fog wall, and in a very different way to how it did when it vanished in the fog -it was like suddenly cutting it with scissors, not difussing it.

Are you fellows talking about the 20 km environment?

I imported the sky and fog models from a 16 km environment (I don't remember which one) into a stock scene.dat in the environment I made for my use. I noticed somewhat the same effect that you stated at somewhere around 17,200 meters. A ship looked like it was being pulled through a wall. I wondered what was causing it. Is it because the game stops rendering at that distance with a 16km environment or does it still render out to 20km and it was the fog model that I was observing? I am very curious.

[Hitman]

@Kafka:

No, that's not the rendering limit. What happens is that the fog wall is there.

Let me explain a bit:

In SH3 you have three 3D models that make the environment you see.

-First is the sky dome. That's where the stars, sun and moon are rendered and it's the one most far away from you.
-Second is the clouds dome. This one goes parallel to the first, but on a smaller size, so the clouds are rendered obstructing the view or sun, moon, stars
-Third, at sea level, is the fog model. This one has a slight curvature upwards at the limits, where it joins the sky & clouds domes. That way there is no "blank" space between sky and sea.

What happens is that as ships reach the point of that curvature upwards, they vanish into the "fog" as they get cut by the 3D model. Clever tweaking of the fog values/colours in the environment files makes this a good transition where the ship just becomes faint and dissapears, but overall what happens is that it gets cut by a solid plane.

Now, independently from that, no 3D model will be rendered beyond 20 kms, so even if you stretch the clouds, sky and fog domes to, say, 50 kms, you will still not see ships that are more than 20 kms away.

Here is an excellent post from Seeadler with graphics explaining how it all works:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...9&postcount=70

[Kafka BC]

@Hitman

Thanks for the explanation and Seeadler's post ...ended up reading most of the thread. I kind of figured it worked something like that, now I'm sure. I did not know that there was a 20 kilometer rendering limit though, good to know.

I'll have to try importing your 20 km models and fool around with them when I have a chance.