New bearing overlay REQUEST tool for those who Navigate Manually

[dertien]

Originally Posted by Corsair

have to make an estimate of your speed/heading) Remember the scene in "Das Boot" : "It's been 14 days since we could make a sun measurement, I had to compute"

Hehe, yes that happened to me on my first real nav patrol. I was forced to wait dead at dead stop until the weather cleared. I had sailed for about 9 days in stormy weather without the chance of a fix. Was off around 200 Km off the estimated position because of this.

Superb

[heartc]

Oh yeah, watching the tutorial video now I realize several SHIII weirdness factors will come back haunting me I think: The crew being unable to stick to an ordered course (not making rudder adjustments unless the course is pre-plotted) and distances in KILOMETERS damn! Dantenoc is using some "Kriegsmarine" speed/time chart, but if distances were measured in NM in SHIII as they should it would be way less complicated and more realistic too. Luckily in the Atlantic you have less pin-point navigation to do than in the pacific with its many straits and proximity to land in some patrol areas. I can see how that would suck royally with SHIII's setup lol. Also, in SHI you could just check your speed gauge which would also display your travelled distance in miles, so you didn't even have to make speed/time calculations yourself.

[dertien]

Ah and since we are brushing the subject of manual nav and star sightings, a must to check out is this trhead about sextant navigation.

[heartc]

The speed charts are provided with GWX, and I added the large dials myself although they are not necessary as long as you have precision periscope mod installed and use the periscope or uzo to navigate using the "heading to view" key.

I see, thank you!

Peronally, if you're still running vanilla SH3, I would recommend moving on to one of the 2 mods, NYGM and GWX are both superb mods. I chose GWX because of the campaign enhancements and the historical accuracy of some of their sea battles. NYGM is just as great but, its just different. Read both mods FAQ's and manuals, and make a choice, you won't regret it, regardless of what you choose.

Hm, yes. I'm thinking GWX, but I know I will have a hard time dealing with the load times (I play DiD, but still), which are abhorrent already now and I'm not sure how my PC will handle it once "a lot is going on". I don't blame the mod, mind you, it's just that my PC is not exactly fresh from the factory. Also I'm unsure about the revised AI detection in GWX, while in NYGM about the revised sinking model. Not being able to make up my mind about these things, I'm still stuck at Vanilla or just play SH I.

[Corsair]

You should try it, mate... GWX has packed a lot of textures in .dat files, and if you can run stock SH3, you can run GWX. You might just experience a little slowdown in harbours, but you always have the possibility of installing "Harbor Lite" option.
I run on a laptop Centrino 1.8 Ghz / 512 Ram / 128 mb ATI video. The lowest fps I get is around 19/20 in harbours with the standard version.

PS : I take care of my system ( cleaner and defrag once a week) and use FS Autostart to stop unnecessary programs and services prior to launching the game.

[heartc]

Originally Posted by Corsair

I run on a laptop Centrino 1.8 Ghz / 512 Ram / 128 mb ATI video. The lowest fps I get is around 19/20 in harbours with the standard version.

PS : I take care of my system ( cleaner and defrag once a week) and use FS Autostart to stop unnecessary programs and services prior to launching the game.

Hmm, excellent. That would be exactly my configuration, just not as a laptop!
Also, I'm using Enditall already. Might check out the mods this weekend then.

[dertien]

Hm, yes. I'm thinking GWX, but I know I will have a hard time dealing with the load times (I play DiD, but still), which are abhorrent already now and I'm not sure how my PC will handle it once "a lot is going on". I don't blame the mod, mind you, it's just that my PC is not exactly fresh from the factory. Also I'm unsure about the revised AI detection in GWX, while in NYGM about the revised sinking model. Not being able to make up my mind about these things, I'm still stuck at Vanilla or just play SH I.

Loading times can be kept to a minimum, even with a machine that doesn't completely reflect the game's requirements.

For example: here's my rig:

Athlon 3200
Geforce 6600 SLI 256 mb
500 Megs of RAM
WIN Vista Beta 2 build 5834

What I did was this:

Disabled all themes (aero) and set up everything as being windows classic.

I searched the internet for a tweaking guide of my OS, and I switched off all unnecessary services using the command 'msconfig' in the run dialog box (winkey + r)
Be careful when checking/unchecking services that start up when windows is loading. Don't blame me if your PC wont start up anymore. Generally there are safe tweak methods found when searching for them in Google.

Then with all unnecessary services off I turn of MSN messenger and any proggies that suck up RAM much needed by SH3.

Then I open the task manager (ctrl-alt-del) and disable explorer in the process tab.
You're left with a clean desktop without any icons.

Start SH 3 by pressing ctrl-alt-del again and choosing file->new task-> run
browse to your sh3 folder and select the sh3.exe file

Last but not least, The lower you set the particles density in the video options of SH3 (restart required) the faster your missions will load. They eye candy will be less, but hey, you can't have it bothways.

if you wish to have the normal desktop with icons and start menu, just ctrl-alt-del and type 'explorer' without the quotes in the run new task box used earlier to start SH3.

hope this helps improving your load times.

[heartc]

Thanks dertien for the advise! Actually known and done most of that, including reducing particle density to 75%, but never thought about terminating explorer .

Stock SHIII runs pretty well and I guess the load times are kinda long for everybody with this game, just a fact of life. Maybe when they are rather long anyway, another 3 or so minutes in GWX won't bother me as much as I'm thinking now. I'll give it a shot.

[dertien]

Originally Posted by heartc

Thanks dertien for the advise! Actually known and done most of that, including reducing particle density to 75%, but never thought about terminating explorer .

Stock SHIII runs pretty well and I guess the load times are kinda long for everybody with this game, just a fact of life. Maybe when they are rather long anyway, another 3 or so minutes in GWX won't bother me as much as I'm thinking now. I'll give it a shot.

-Yep, gives me a 30 MEG extra ram, it's not much, but if you've got 500 only its better than nothing

- I 've got a loadtime of about 20 sec for the torpedo tutorial mission in the naval academy with this setting and 15 particle density. That's not that long is it ?

For careers it can be up to 5 minutes max loadtime, and I need to pan my view completely in the 3D screens to let it all be loaded into memory, and getting me a steady 25 fps.

[Corsair]

@ Dertien

A simplest way is to use FS Autostart... You can leave your PC setup as it is, FS Autostart will stop all programs and services (you define once for all what you want to stop) and will defrag memory. You usually free around 100 megs RAM in the process.
Once you exit the game, it will restart all the progs and services and you're back with your usual config.
I use it for all my games and it's very useful (and free...)

[Corsair]

Originally Posted by heartc

Hmm, excellent. That would be exactly my configuration, just not as a laptop!
Also, I'm using Enditall already. Might check out the mods this weekend then.

I have been using Enditall for years, but find FS Autostart to be better (memory defrag, stop services as well as programs and restarts everything automatically on game exit - no need to reboot) This tool is freeware and was developped by the MS Flight Sim community.

[heartc]

Since GWX was a bitch to d/l, I went for NYGM now. While I was completely FLOORED at first, I was even more so when my PC crashed into reboot on both attempts of doing a patrol. First time it happened shortly after I was out of Brest, the second time I managed to get out further, SW of Ireland. Both times it happened when accessing a different station via the slide-out station menue on the left side of the screen. Once with the crew icon, the other time the command room icon. Until it crashed, the performance was splendid as was the gameplay.

SHIII stock never CTD'ed on me. I installed NYGM via JGME. I can only think of one thing which might result in that error: During install, I thought the remaining space on the drive I had SHIII on was enough, like 1.4 GB. Seemingly however, unpacking the mod and then installing, with JGME effectively duplicating the files, I ran out of space in the middle of the install. The horror. At the same time JGME stopped. I figured it could not possibly have installed correctly like that, even though JGME said Mod was applied, so I removed it right there via JGME again, cleared up space, and reinstalled. Maybe since the mod was not completely installed the first time but must have been stopped in the middle of the operation, I could imagine this leading to an erratic removal/reinstall. Prolly my whole SHIII is now totally ****ed up. The strange thing is it works great until it reboots, and I could access those aforementioned stations multiple times before w/o any problems. Those crashes came totally randomly and out of nowhere.

Are my assumptions correct or could it be something else, maybe something kown, which would not require a complete re-install? Damn, I'm pissed off.

[Corsair]

Sorry have no idea. My NYGM version is installed via JGME, and it worked fine from the first day on.
May be a corrupted download file ? Are you sure you have 1.4b patch installed ?
I am affraid the only good way left to you is to remove everything including the SH3 folder in My Documents, re-install stock game, apply patch 1.4b and NYGM 2.2 + update 2.3...

PS : don't know if it's vital, but I always reboot computer before launching the game.

[JohnnyBlaze]

I'm clad I could help, Dertien.

[heartc]

Originally Posted by Corsair

Are you sure you have 1.4b patch installed ?
I am affraid the only good way left to you is to remove everything including the SH3 folder in My Documents, re-install stock game, apply patch 1.4b and NYGM 2.2 + update 2.3...

Yes, 1.4b was applied and it was a totally clean install.
I gave it another go yesterday (actually, this morning lol) on the same install and what I did prior to that was to

-increase the Windows swap file from 1000 to min 1500 max 1500,
-clear up more disk space on the drive SHIII is installed, so that there are now 2.4 GB,
-change keyboard in main.cfg back to German (NYGM advised to copy the modded one from SHIII directory into the My Documents one manually since there was no automatic way of doing that, and this way I had US keyboard enabled).

Dunno how much of that was voodoo, but so far, SHIII has not rebooted the PC again - *fingers crossed* -, even though things got real busy with heavy storm / fog / overcast and I've made passive radar contact with a reported large convoy and am now laying in wait.

I figure I might have run out of virtual memory before or something to that effect, albeit the swap file was already set at 1000 mb, because I noticed a performance decrease prior to the second reboot crash. Or maybe just over 1 GB was not enough free disk space on the drive SHIII is on, which is not the drive where the swap file is btw.

I hope it was / is not a gfx card driver problem, since I've read up on the forum and someone has seemingly had the same problem (but with GW1) and needed to update his drivers. The thing is, I cannot update the drivers since when I do, the PC won't reboot anymore telling me the power cable to the card is not connected, albeit it is. Don't ask me why.

BTW dertien, I just noticed I heavily derailed this topic. Sorry, I hope you don't mind.