Sh3.exe and Asdic in shallow waters

[Hitman]

2. Concerning the influence of the sea floor: From my knowledge the influence of the sea floor on the detection probability varied a lot depending on the nature of it. At the moment it seems that you would always gain from the sea floor Any plans to make this random so that sometimes you benefit from the sea floor and sometimes you don't?

That's correct, I know it well from playing Dangerous Waters! Mud bottom absorbs the pings and returns no echo, rock reflects a lot. The uboat hull reflects the ping, so the rock bottom actually hides it better because it gives a lot of false return, while mud outlines the hull echo return in the sonar against a echoless background.

Also, on IRON COFFINS the thermal layers are constantly said to hide the sub.
I sugest you skilled modders consider implement this also !!!!

Thermal layers are already in the game, and SH3 commander has a feature to put one at random at mission start. However, it will stay fixed all the time, so it could be nice if though code one could add changing thermal layers

[Hitman]

So, you don´t have vampire night view (uboat crew) on NYGM? I know that NYGM have different visual sensors for AI ships but uses the same (stock) for uboat crew. The settings for visual uboat crew sensors are in Sensors.dat and in the Sensors.cfg as you know.

Isn´t possible to correctly adjusted the vampire night uboat crew using neither the Sensors.dat or sensors.cfg without messing with day visual sensitivity and so on. This is an old well knowing issue that never was fixed.

Probably NYGM (as it is in GWX) just have a heavy settings on the light settings but this is for sure messing with day and (even worse) evening/dusk sensibility too. This was too tested a lot some years ago and nobody found a real magic setting that solve the problem. When you raise these settings your crew continues to make visual detections at maximum range, just delayed a bit more, but as it is random, not so rarely it detects at 16km at night!!

Since the 16km mod this annoyance is much more noticiable (in 8km isn´t that bad). What the big mods did was then try a compromisse between settings on the above files, visual section, but this is far from good or realistic.

If you have the time try a second look on the matter, testing the max/usual visual detections by the uboat crew in game at day, dusk and night. You will see that at night the crew can visual detect ships at much more high distance than it will be plausive. (to not say a totally irrealistic).

Well, i´m here only trying to atract your attention and, perhaps, the desire to work on this issue , but obviously I/we can understand and I agree that we/you/anyone just want to work at first on issues (mods) that are interesting for ourselfs...sh3 is an endless work for modders, you know.

The vampire vision bug was more or less solved; it was the periscope sensor, seeing through its casing (Remember sensors in SH3 are not hampered by objects) what cause that effect. As we know, SH3 uses a chief sensor, the one with most range at any time, so when night fell and the crew switched to night mode and their vision decreased, the periscope sensor did NOT and could still see very far away, telling the crew there was a ship, and the crew yelled "Ship spotted" to your annoyance. Setting the periscope sensor to the maximum desired night detection range cured the problem more or less -and explains why you can't easily lock ships at more distance ... the lock is lost because the sensor loses them.

Having said that, the real problem with the SH3 visual sensors is that it is calibrated with regards to time of day and to some degree to environmental darkness, but NOT to rendering. What I'm saying is that the perfect sensor would be one where the crew NEVER can detect something that actually is not rendered on screen by your videocard, or at least not rendered with a minimum colour contrast (So that you can actually spot the difference and outline the target, making crew spotting it realistic enough). Multiply this for the virtually limitless configuration of player screens/gamma settings, and you get the picture!

It is almost impossible to please everybody, and actually I always thought that the modders should add a simple contrast card graphic stating "For this sensor mod to work convincingly, set your monitor so you can actually differentiate between the 3rd and 4th grey scale squares" or whatever.

I have no idea if Stiebler can identify the code that renders a ship on screen, (It could theoretically be detected by using a mission in perfect weather and aproaching an stationary target that is outside visual and rendering range - 20 kms in SH3) but if somehow the spotting of it could be blocked unless it is rendered on screen, then we could have taken a step in the right direction.

Oh, and if you guys want to continue discussing this, I suggest we open another thread so as not to hijack the original one

[Rubini]

Hitmann,

Just a quicky reply to not continue to hijack the thread: I can´t agree with you that periscope sensor is the culprite. I have tested this several times, for example setting mine (periscope sensor) to 2km maximum and continues to have 16km night vision detection sometimes. And when in periscope depth with it raised, my maximum detection is then about that 2km that i setted. The fix for vampire night view is very simple (obviously in it´s idea at least ) - just cutting the max visual sensor distance on memory based on the light of the environment (from midday to midnight) and its done.