More Variable Weather??!!

[Blacklight]

I've tried the above modifications and they DO seem to make a difference in the weather I've experienced.

You can also cheat kind of and save your game constantly while in good, pristine weather. Then you'll have perfect weather the whole trip ! (I don't do this though )

[difool2]

Yeah after 3 more days in my current patrol it is still working. Had a change after 2 days from calm winds & clear skies to partly cloudy and 12 knots, then in one 24 hour period the wind went to 15 knots and the skies back to clear again. I wonder if the change window (WeatherRndInterval=1) is one day tho not one hour as Subtype Zero intimated, because I haven't seen more than 1 change per day. If that is the case, and in vanilla it is a 12 day window, and not 12 hours (with said window resetting when you reload the save), then no wonder nothing ever happens!

[Subtype Zero]

Ah, feedback! Just when I thought the thread had died!

Difool2: No apologies necessary. Half of what I say is probably wrong, so no worries there! Glad to hear that your changes are having some effect. Steibler and I have found that wind direction is the variable that is most likely to change, it almost always changes to some degree every 32 hours or so. Wind speed, unfortunately, seems to get "stuck" at certain speeds, certainly at 15 m/sec. Steibler and I are currently debating if it also gets stuck at 0 m/sec. Stiebler did find that the presence of rain always boosts wind speed up by 7 m/sec, so there cannot be rain with winds of less than 7 m/sec

With regard to WindRndInterval variable: The mission editor states that this variable can be set from between 2 to 96 hours, so I assume we are talking about hours, not days. Also, research by Stiebler and I have found that this variable apparently does not effect how quickly the weather changes from one pattern to another, but instead, how quickly the weather transitions from one state to another when the game has determined a weather change is due (if that makes any sense)!

[Subtype Zero]

Blacklight: Yes, frequent saves freezes the weather pattern to whatever it is currently. Theoretically, if you make sure to save no later than every 32 hours, your weather pattern would never change from winds of 5 m/sec with partly cloudy skies, no rain, and light fog. I haven't tested this yet, however. Conversely, if you are in heavy wind, rain, and fog, go to a TC of no more than 512 and wait. As long as you do not save, your weather will change (a little or a lot) approximately 32+ hours after your previous weather change.

[mcf1]

It works great for me
thanks

[Subtype Zero]

GlobalExplorer: The weather in SH3 really sticks in my craw, as well. I don't mind the fog and the rain so much, but that wind!!! It's almost as if the Devs never heard of rain and calm wind! Unfortunately, weather patterns in SH3 appear to be largely hardcoded. Modders can only effect, to some degree, the speed and frequency of weather changes. However, I do have some good news! You can expect to see a request for beta testers from Stiebler and I in the near future. We are currently working on a little project that we hope will address at least some of the weather concerns of the SH3 community. No promises, however.

I really like your idea of weather reports. From what I understand of the code, there is actually 2 weather patterns stored in memory: the present weather and the "changed" weather. If we could somehow read the changed weather ahead of time we could then "predict" it and send it via radio message (with allowances for errors in prediction--whoever heard of a weatherman who is right more than 40% of the time, anyway)!

Lastly, I also enjoy SH Gen. very much, although it did kill my previous career when it sent me on an intelligence gathering mission inside Dunkirk harbor in early April, 1940. I believe my life span from the time all the search lights and tracers went off was about 25 seconds!

[Subtype Zero]

Thanks MCF1!

[Stiebler]

@Subtype Zero:

Please check PM.

Stiebler.

[Subtype Zero]

Stiebler--Check your PM, mate.

[Blacklight]

Another thing to consider is that North Atlantic storms are pretty insane and I always get my worst weather in the North Atlantic. Things always calm down for me a little the closer I get to the equater.

You know, I may be wrong, but the weather seems to be spread out among latitudes. IE.. maybe like 4 or 5 northen letter boxes all the way accross the top map will seem to have one weather pattern. When you go down below then, the next 4-5 letter boxes along a certain latitude seem to always give me a change of weather. I've actually experimented. One line is just south of the English Channel it seems. The weather however seems to continue along lgroups of longitudes so it seems that the weather is developing along large bands of longitude on the map.

Some further testing will be needed to verify this.

So far, it seems that the top of the map from Canada to Britain has one weather system, and below Britain to middle Africa and accross to South America has another weather system.

It may be the map has 3 separate weather systems that each act separately as Sub Zero's theory goes.
As I said.. I'm going to do some more research on this.:hmm:

[Subtype Zero]

Blacklight--

I have forwarded your observations to Stiebler and am awaiting his comments. Have you been able to confirm anything via testing yet? However, I suspect it will be very difficult to confirm anything because so many variables and random variation are involved. Good luck, though!

[difool2]

Well I think I just found a very big piece of the puzzle.

Subtype Zero: "Theoretically, if you make sure to save no later than every 32 hours, your weather pattern would never change from winds of 5 m/sec with partly cloudy skies, no rain, and light fog."

You are running WeatherRndInterval at 2, correct? Well, I run it at 1, and I just had a weather change after an in-patrol reload after...yeah you guessed it 16 hours! I also remember earlier in the patrol that it changed after about that time on a couple of occasions, but never any quicker than that (despite what the editor might say-that may have been typed in by some ignorant copy writer for all we know). So subject to further tests, it would appear that you may get changes after every:

WeatherRndInterval x 16 hours.

The chance of it actually changing at that time still needs more data to pin down, but now that I know the actual interval determining that after a sufficient number of trials should be a piece of cake. I can also see if I can catch a change "in the act", so to speak.

The default game has that variable at 5, so if you are running vanilla you will never see any changes if you are reloading after every three days (80 hours). No wonder the weather seems to get "stuck" for what seems like forever! I wonder what would happen if you used a non-integer for that value, like .1-changes every 2-4 hours? In any event the rates of change I do see now seem to be about spot-on: a storm for a few days, then clearing and/or low winds for awhile, then another storm. I do wish that "partly cloudy" encompassed a whole range of cloud types, from drifting scuds to puffy cumulus to an altostratus "mackeral" sky, and in fact partly cloudy seems to be the least common of the 3 kinds of cloud cover (clear and overcast being the other two of course).

I will continue my patrol some more and check and see if all of this holds.

[difool2]

Quick followup: apparently there is a little randomization occurring with the change window-i.e. it isn't always going to be 16 hours on the dot, but 16-18 hours I've found. Or perhaps 17 hours +/- 5% * 17 (or +/- an hour each way).' I also caught the beginning of a change-rain slacked off, then stopped, visibility improved from socked in to overcast, then about a hour later winds died down and it became partly cloudy.

[John O]

Any new info on this weather fix. I made the changes using WeatherRndInterval=3 last night but am in the middle of a patrol off NYC so I don't have any results yet. Weeks of storm on way over and after resupply. I'm really tired of stormy weather most of the time and hope this works.

[snwcrsh]

I implemented the changes, set to Interval to 2. I'm out of Wilhelmshaven for 80h, crossing the Noordsee. So far the weather has not changed, it's 4 km/h winds from 0.

Will take a while till I can report results as I am playing TCx1