[REL] Kosh 9km Visibility Mod

[Ducimus]

>>FFT cranked up visual fog factor to 0.5 from stock 1. This means that you can visually detect the enemies at 14km or more!

When i upped visual detection for the watch crew, i got very blatant and heavy handed because it drove me nuts when i could see ships clearly, yet the watchcrew sat there dumb as doornails. Admitdly this is one aspect ive been working on the last couple of days trying to tone it down to more beleiveable levels.


RE, FTT's sim.cfg visual settings: (old version cited btw)

light factor 1.75 means they see LESS in the dark.

Enemy surface factor means how much surface area of your sub the AI can see. (basically the smaller the number the farther away they can see you)

Speed factor of 9 essentualy means you have to be traveling faster at or faster then 9 kts to produce the type of movment the AI will notice.


>>So basically, you would have been detected by the Destroyer anyway with FFT, but perhaps you would not have been able to see him turn towards you until he was a bit closer steaming at full speed, without the 9km mod.
>>

Somethings not right here in that visual detection right now with the stock scene.dat sucks ass. Even with the visual adustments ive made. I find it weird how when you change the scene.dat, now all of a sudden the AI is super human.

[Probex]

Thanks for your explanations, Ducimus. I was wondering about those parameters. It's just so weird the way the DEVs named all those things.

I poked around the scene.dat, but I simply can't find a way to make the game engine start rendering objects further. It is obvious that they are created further, but the visual rendering distance seems to be at 9km, or 10000 yards.

Any ideas?




S!

[Ducimus]

Honestly keeping the visuals around 9KM is a goodthing. This game requires a bit of horsepower to run, and if sh3 is any indicator, a 16KM distance will come at the cost of performance.

Im thankful you posted your mod for three reasons:

1.) some of the adjusments i made are no longer neccessary

2.) the limited vision was driving me nuts. Ive been waiting for a mod like this since day 1

3.) Ive been retuning AI and player visuals, and havent nailed down the fine tuned settngs yet. So your mod is appearing when i could really use it the most. I havent looked at it yet, im assuming it works great, and id like to redefine my visual settings around this mod if your ok with that.

[Probex]

That's cool then.

I imagine that doubling the visual range would really slow down some machines (mine included, lol).



S!

[donut]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Somethings not right here in that visual detection right now with the stock scene.dat sucks ass. Even with the visual adjustments Ive made. I find it weird how when you change the scene.dat, now all of a sudden the AI is super human.

I have felt that The AI. is Almighty/to strong,or difficult since SHIV Beta was received,& although I loved SHI,This could be the kiss of death for SHIV. Sorry to sound fatal,but it is my love for the Pacific Theater Subsim Ops.that urges this Post.
I am thinking,perhaps the AI. code rewriting,has influenced game play to an AI. control freak. Surely, if true,This will turn people off. Others have said,"This game does just what it wants".
Ducimus,Your FtT.,is the best effort/patch, so far. IMHO.
No one seems to be talking about the next patch from UBI.,wondering if/when? :hmm: No rant here I'm just begging for a profitable/positive solution. I also see promise,of what might be the best PC game,in the world.

[Hitman]

This game requires a bit of horsepower to run, and if sh3 is any indicator, a 16KM distance will come at the cost of performance.

Teddy Bär posted this here some time ago in this very same forum:

The visibility fix for SHIII works for SHIV.
Unlike SHIII doubling the visibility from 8000 to 16,000 metres does not bring with it a large performance hit. In fact it is almost non existent. On medium quality with the SHIV 8000 metre world I get at 1024 x 768 (windowed) 27 frames per second, with the 16,000 metre world I get 25 frames per second!
When I put the horizon out to 24,000 metres my frame rate hit was 20%, i.e. from 25 to 20 frames with the medium graphic settings as per the options menu.
My computer is a P4 2.6, 1Gb memory with a ATI 9800 Pro 256Mb video card running 2 x 21” monitors. So it is far from flash or even meeting recommended requirements.
The formula for visual distance to the horizon based on the height of eye is: Distance (nm) = 1.14 x sqrt(height of eye in feet)
This formula can be found here with an accompanying table of visual distances based on height of eye: http://www.eagleoiltankers.co.uk/def...seahorizon.htm
In the real world, based on clear day under normal conditions, a person standing on the conning tower deck at an assumed height of 30 feet would have the horizon appear at a distance of 11,000 metres or 6.3 nautical miles.
At a distance fractionally less than the horizon, we can expect to see all the ship down to the water line. Just it will be really really tiny…
For a ship which is over the horizon, say the Large Modern Composite Freighter with a mast height of 100 feet, we could theoretically expect to see the top of the masts when the ship is 24,000 metres (13.1 nautical miles) away. Of course realistically this would probably be closer to 20,000 metres (10.7 nautical miles).
For 16K change the ZMax value from 1000 to 2000
For 24K change the ZMax value from 1000 to 3000
Note that this is just a player visual tweak and does not make the AI see any further than it currently does. For the AI it will require the sensors.dat and the ai_sensors.dat along with the releveant cfg files to be adjusted.

Credit for the SHIII 16k world in alphabetical order is Kpt. Lehmann, Manuel Ortega, Marhkimov, Redwine, Rulle34, Seeadler and others I may have forgotten.

No matter how Teddy explained it, I still can't understand exactñy what I must tweak to increase visibility Any help appreciated

[panthercules]

bump - so, nobody knows what file Teddy was talking about tweaking here to try to fix this? Sure seems like it would be worth a shot.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Nice

RDP

[Der Teddy Bar]

For SHIV to have a horizon of 16 or 24 kilometres you will need to edit the SHIV scene.dat.

To access the ZMax value add the following lines to your scene_dat.txt file.

Add this...
[32]
DropDownName=Horizon
search,Camera,1,Single,+11,ZMax

Editing the Zmax value is all that is required.

Note that this is just a player visual tweak and does not make the AI see any further than it currently does. For the AI it will require the relevent dat & cfg files to be adjusted.


I hope that this helps.

[NefariousKoel]

And where is the ZMax value located? After that addition or in a different file?

Thanks!

[panthercules]

So, since I cannot find a "scene_dat.txt" file, am I safe in assuming that it's actually inside the "scene.dat" file? I've never really messed much with .dat files, though I do remember trying a little bit with Pack3d or something like that back in SH3, trying to get to some .tga files or something. That program doesn't seem to have survived onto my latest PC build, so I don't have anything at the moment that can deal with a .dat file - is there something better to use with SH4 or should I go try to find my Pack3D again?

[Probex]

Thanks a lot Teddy. Just one little CAMERA word in the whole file and you found it, lol


I will play with this shortly and see what can be achieved. Retuning all the AI might take some more time.



S!

[Der Teddy Bar]

You will find the scene_dat.txt file as part of the install of the excellent SH3 Mini Tweaker program by Timetraveller.

The scene_dat.txt is what tells the SH3 Mini Tweaker program what to look for and in what.

Once you have the program installed you can find and edit the scene_dat.txt file and add the italic part below.

[32]
DropDownName=Horizon
search,Camera,1,Single,+11,ZMax

NOTE: the number 32 within the [ ] is to be the next consecutive number. That is, if your last number was 31 as is the case with mine, the you use 32, if you are using robbierob2005's improved Scene.dat Tweakfile the last number is 32 so you would need to use [33] instead of [32]

NOTE: you will need to point the SH3 Mini Tweaker program to the SHIV directory as it by default looks for and adds in the SH3 directory.


The SH3 Mini Tweaker program with the scene_dat.txt loaded with the change above will then have a drop down menu, the last in this case which will then give you access to change the ZMax value.

[Observer]

Use this updated file for minitweaker to change zmax in the scene.dat.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/0yjiu7

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by Observer

Use this updated file for minitweaker to change zmax in the scene.dat.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/0yjiu7

Much obliged - just gave it a try, changing the zmax from 1,000 to 2,000 as indicated above - now to go try it in game and see what happens.


Thanks