Interactive Crew and Gauges in 3D

[toby66]

For me a very important feature that would give the new sim a lot of the "being-there-feeling". It's obvious much metter to interact with the crew and sub than with an interface.

[perisher]

Instead of eye-candy like a 3D crew I would much rather have greater control over my boat. I would give up a lot of graphic reality for indepenant engine and motor controls, some control over the ballast tanks, and more realistic compressed air systems.

[OddjobXL]

As someone relatively new to both SHIII and SHIV, I have to say that the lack of the ability to interact with the crew was the very first thing I noticed. Why? Because in that first training mission you load into the command center. And nobody there responds to you except that one officer with the evil gleam in his eye and that's only to confirm your orders (a pity I can only barely hear what any of the crew says). So you try messing around with controls. But none of them respond. In some ways I wish I hadn't picked up SHIII first to practice my submarining because if I hadn't I wouldn't know what I was missing!

But judging from that alone is pretty shallow and there's alot to like in SHIV. Maybe, if this game is based on the same engine as SHIII, there are hooks in there for animated and responsive crewmen? Might this not be something modders could correct? At the very least Ubi should pry open the old code-hooks so modders can get in there and give it a shot if they haven't already.

[Trout]

This is a great analogy because there are MANY people out there who like to be 'hands on" with the manipulation of equipment. There are many thousands of people who have DLed fully clickable cockpits for MSFS, and I would argue that a submarine is at least as fun a "machine" as an aircraft to manipulate.

Also, the more things that you do with the 3d interface, the better the immersion factor of the game. I dont spend as much time "inside" the subs in SH4 as I did in SH3 and the value of the game to me is much poorer for it.

Why did they bother doing 3d interiors if they dont want to take advantage of them?



"In the MS Flight Sim world, these would be called Dynamic(interactive) Virtual Cockpits. MS continued to improve upon it in succesive versions of it's sim. To me, SH4 has gone backwards in this area rather than improve upon what they gave us in SH3, although this is just one aspect of the Silent Hunter sim."

[OneTinSoldier]

Good post, thanks Trout. I'm glad you liked my analogy.

perisher's post was also good. I feel he maked a good well reasoned point.

Cheers

[Rykaird]

Originally Posted by perisher

Instead of eye-candy like a 3D crew I would much rather have greater control over my boat. I would give up a lot of graphic reality for indepenant engine and motor controls, some control over the ballast tanks, and more realistic compressed air systems.

The first on my list would be control of the dive planes. Second would be the tanks.

At the end of the day, only part of the enjoyment of the game is sinking enemy ships. The immersion of operating the sub itself is a big part of the experience.

I would point out that some of the add ons for MSFS - like the popular B17 add on - don't allow you to engage enemies or drop bombs at all. But you do get to set all of the controls and fly a B17, and there's a lot of joy in that.

[Skyhawk]

First, I need someone to show me in which aircraft, and in which default version of MSFS where there is an interactive flight crew that adds to the immersion of said flight-sim. It doesn't exist. The analogy is not a good one IMHO because I'm here to tell you that no matter if you can reroute fuel from your aux tanks or not, it would be the flight engineer who would do that sort of thing in a multi-crew aircraft, not the PIC (pilot-in-command). Being able to click on the switches and do that yourself adds nothing to the immersion factor of the sterile cockpits of large ATP aircraft in MSFS. A flight engineer that you can see who states, "Roger, fuel selector switch to left auxillary tank." as you watch him reach up and flip a switch, that I can buy. But this simply doesn't happen in MSFS multi-crew aircraft.

I absolutely believe that the absence of the crew ("eye-candy") for more detailed "clickable" sub controls would not add to the immersion at all. MSFS is an excellent example of precisely that.

IMHO, the interface is merely a substitute for verbal communication with my crew when playing SH4. To have SH4 operate the same as a clickable virtual cockpit in MSFS would suspend all illusion of a virtual sub-crew, same as it does in any default version, of any multi-person flight crew aircraft in MSFS.

How many Boeing or Airbus airline transport aircraft have a flight crew of one? How many WWII submarines have a crew of one?

A sterile cockpit and cabin is just that. Same goes for submarines without any stretch of logic.

I agree completely that the "clickable" virtual cockpits in the default C-172SP Skyhawk of MSFS add to the immersion factor. However, in any aircraft that has more than a single PIC for a flight crew these "clickable" virtual cockpits work against the immersion factor, and destroy it altogether (username=Skyhawk, got my PPL in '98).

Do I want the same for SH4. Nope. No way, no how.

Good analogy? I beg to amicably disagree with that. To each their own, this is merely my opinion, costs the same .02 as anyone else's, no disrespect intended.

I will however bet you dollars to pennies that if you get rid of the crew "eye-candy" for more "clickable" sub controls, there would be a HUGE outcry that goes something like. . .

"Where is my crew!!!!". :hmm:

Regards

p.s. For the record, I chose the middle ground in the poll.

[Fearless]

Well I do notice that if you're in the conning tower and give a radar or sonar request, the guys at those stations look at you and respond. same as when they detect something. So does the OIC in the control room. To be honest, makes no difference to me if it was there or not.

[Rockin Robbins]

Sometimes the addition of hardware we don't even think about greatly increased demand on the hardware. My brother just bought a 22" LCD. Great! But the native 1600 x idon'tknowwhat (it's a wide-screen monitor) doubles the pixels, doubling the workload on his graphics card. Guess what happened to his frame rates?

Similarly, we are perilously close to two games that are unplayable on the majority of computers in the marketplace. Adding interactivity always results in greater demand on the machine running the program. This reduces the market for these games and makes those with marginal machines very unhappy with game performance. I bought my copy of SH4 from such a player, who blamed not his machine but the game.

SH3 could have greater interactivity because it was lighter in the graphics category. Some, including myself, would say that was a very good trade and I enjoyed the immersion factor resulting from that. Add the advanced graphics from SH4 to SH3 and I fear you have reduced a very high percentage of happy players' computers to expensive paperweights. They would become unhappy players instantly.

SH4 has the shiny new graphics, which also increase the immersion factor. Just load up leovampire's Living Breathing Ocean and try not to spend inordinate time on deck just enjoying the way your sub interacts with a truly lifelike ocean. Reality nazis *raises hand sheepishly* find themselves activating the external camera just to experience the ocean in its real magnificence. But if you add the interactive gauges and controls, plus crew interactivity to SH4 and again I'll bet my bippy that the game comes to a screeching, impotent halt.

With the present state of reasonably affordable hardware, these two approaches to immersion are mutually exclusive. Sure, there are probably 30 of us here at Subsim that have computers hefty enough to run the UberSim, (and I'm likely not one of them although I purposely built my machine to play SH3) but our cash isn't enough to support publication of the game.

It's all a compromise to produce the greatest number of players who can afford the game and can successfully run the software to a performance level that they will enjoy the game. We get no free lunch.

Wait five years. If enough copies of SH3 and 4 have sold to make another sim possible the amazing stuff will wait that long.

[capcup007]

Perisher wrote:

Instead of eye-candy like a 3D crew I would much rather have greater control over my boat. I would give up a lot of graphic reality for indepenant engine and motor controls, some control over the ballast tanks, and more realistic compressed air systems.

I completely agree with this. Multiple detailed 2D screens as in SH2 with fuctioning dials would be just fine for me.

[longam]

I always favored the 2d controls in MSFS over 3D mostly because of clarity; I feel the same in SH4. The 3D environment is nice to give some emersion to the game as said before. Standing in the control room is cool as the boat rocks back and forth and give me the feeling of being there, and of course jumping up on the bridge and so fourth.

The crew just being there compared to FS is a huge plus even if all they do is look at you and flap there lips now and then. As far as compared to SH3 this seems the same to me because I didn’t interact with them either. Hmm, I missed that part I guess.

[SteamWake]

Ive seen the planesman flip me a bird once :p

No really here Ill find the thread.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...ghlight=finger

[oldmanau]

i would like the 3d because i would like to watch my crew and myself running around and screaming obsenitys as we go to the bottom.:rotfl:

[leovampire]

there is a post for it with examples of what he was talking about in the Mod's forum just is a time consumming thing so give him time and we should all have this in our games.

And SteamWake it happens when your at silent running and the planes man is putting a finger over his mouth to say SSSSSSSShhhhhhh like please be quiet type of gester when a DD is near the sub above you.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Welcome to SUBSIM oldmanau


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