Cylindrical Earth

[Blood_splat]

Real navigation would be neat, because you would get some form of job satisfaction out of it.

Oh by the way group hug.

[Frederf]

Originally Posted by Nisgeis

Nope. From the first post:

The OP then went on to talk about one thing he had seen, which was the map. The thread title is a bit misleading though.

Ahem, I intended for this thread to spend a little time on each subject merely titled in a cozy way about the first topic, but since this thread has been utterly dilluted with worthless crap, it's probably best to make a new one for at least the next topic.

Originally Posted by Hitman

I think what confused many people is that in SH3 the map is cut and you can't do a full turn around the earth, while in SH4 you can scroll the map and get again to the point you started from.

I have no problems with a projection map, but it is a pity that the projection used is not adjusted to compensate the curviture of the earth. The are such 2D maps, called "Mercator projections" and it would have been a nice thing to have

SH3's map was weird. You could sail around the world but only 3-4 times (IIRC). When you sailed east you could arrive back at your original coordinates but you weren't technically in the same spot you started. The map was actually a really wide flat world where the Earth was repeated about 5 times over. If you kept sailing one direction you'd reach the end of the map after a few times around the globe.

SH4's map didn't have that but it had problems connecting across the 180° longitude, where radio stations wouldn't reach over the line and there was that attack map torpedo graphic bug.

Mercator projection IS A CYLINDRICAL PROJECTION. All projections of a 3D globe onto a 2D plane distort information. There is no magic projection that makes the distortion go away. The real fix is to separate the mapspace and the worldspace.

Originally Posted by martes86

But all along I thought that we got plane projection in SH3 and 4, and that SH5 was getting an all new system, but it seems I was terribly mistaken.

I think I heard it from you or from whomever you heard it from. I guess I was mistaken too. If SH5's world is different from SH4's it is not drastically so.

Originally Posted by guynoir

they didn't feel like they could do proper justice to the later years

In that sense, I'd rather it end in '43 than paint an inaccurate picture of the end of the war

Off topic but I agree with this view completely.

Originally Posted by Webster

as a UBI dev, when you can lose your job for saying the wrong thing or even speaking about an "off limits" subject that you and i dont see as a big deal then no they cant always defend themselves. sometimes defending themselves can cost them their job.

Let's just say I have antagonism toward the "development process" based on the results. There may indeed be a bevy of gold-hearted programmers allowing themselves to be overlorded by stupid management but fat lot of good that does us. I've seen a few game developer communities where the devs are free to have an open and honest relationship with the customers and it has always been positive. However your usage of the word "respect" borders on abuse of the English language. Every time it's used it has less and less meaning. If a concept cannot be expressed in a way that avoids the word "respect" it's a pretty big clue that said concept is full of hot air.

Originally Posted by paul_kingtiger

A global game world is not an easy thing to create and plotting a great circle on a Mercator projection (while easy enough for a Navigator) requires some training to do. I can see why they have chosen not to.

It does screw up distances though at high latitudes which is a problem for a Uboat sim. But to do it, we'd need it to be automatic (some programming work here) or/and a more extensive set of navigation tools.

It's not easy for the layman but trust me that math and programming-savvy types consider it only a moderate hurdle. If the SH devs want to make a modern sub game where you might sail under the polar ice cap, they will have to reinvent the wheel AGAIN. Going back and having to rewrite your stopgap code has got to be more costly than just doing it right the first time.

Originally Posted by Chad

As a indie-programmer, when I created a world, I could make it spherical, but to add water and other such effects, it had to be flatted, like Millers cylindrical projection, as the water code I was using called for a plane that used a bit of trigonometry to simulate the waves. I have no idea how to curl it back up into a sphere or anything like how earth really is.

You confuse the worldspace with the actionspace. The water rendering only happens in the action space which is small enough where doesn't have to be spherical apart from horizon dip effect. One can think of the actionspace as a small stage touring the globe. The stage doesn't have to mimick the globe in shape exactly, just enough for the required local effects. Shipping traffic outside of the actionspace, inside the worldspace, is not bobbing up and down in a liquid, but simply a small statistical model likely not involving more than 6 variables such as position, type, speed, and heading.

[malkuth74]

Originally Posted by ryanglavin

DRM has infected us all, expressially when none of us have played it.

This is going to be a funny month. Next week I get AVP, then next week I get Napoleon Total War, then after that I get SHV.

So I have been on a lot of forums lately surfing around, even the mass effect one. And it seems that forums are full of these types of complaints all the time now.

The DRM is bad, but I love SH Series and will stick with it. But get ready for huge complaints and negativity from others soon. I actually think some people actually look for new released games, find the forums and post complaints. Even though they don't have a game.

But oh well. I will have mine the 2nd march.

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by elanaiba

1) I am not in any way superior to anyone here and never pretended such. I may not be allowed to speak on certain matters or post whatever I want, and I'd say that goes against being all powerfull as the demigod accusation may imply.

2) I respect very much the community here, and frankly, its for them that I work. Like any man, I may fail in some of my endeavors.

2010 best post of the year candidate.

[martes86]

Not much more to add here after the fire, other than a big thumbs up for Dan, Neal, Webster, and anyone else mature, constructive and intelligent enough not to fall for the trolls' tricks.

Originally Posted by Rip

I'm not. I am just glad Neal didn't yell Crash Dive, and make us all dive into the front seat.

That'd have been hilarious!

[AngusJS]

Could the SH map center on the North Atlantic, say by using 45 degrees N as its "equator", so that the main area of operations would suffer from the least amount of distortion?

[theluckyone17]

For what it's worth, I'd love to see the world model described by Frederf implemented, hopefully for Silent Hunter 6 . Anything that increases the realism is a plus in my book.

Goldenrivet, I second the motion.

Neal, thank you.

Elanaiba, thank you.

[Bilge_Rat]

I dont see why UBI should change anything, it is infinitely more simple programming a game using a flat world.

Most players never even realized the SH 3/4 game was flat and it has no practical impact on the game, other than a arbitrary visibility limit.

In SH 4, where the distortions are huge compared to SH 3, I had done some checking on fuel usage and travelling time between various points on the SH 4 map and what it should be in the real world, but the difference is not really noticeable....especially after the novelty wears off and you start warping from point to point...

[Nisgeis]

Originally Posted by Frederf

You confuse the worldspace with the actionspace. The water rendering only happens in the action space which is small enough where doesn't have to be spherical apart from horizon dip effect. One can think of the actionspace as a small stage touring the globe. The stage doesn't have to mimick the globe in shape exactly, just enough for the required local effects.

I hope SH5 is an improvement over SH4 in this regard. SH4 has a round Earth, flat sea thing going on. It mimicked ships being obscured by the horizon by making them sink lower into the water, the further away they were. The only problem with this was that you could see the waterline and then the horizon behind it, rather than seing the hull obscured by the horizon.

[martes86]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

Most players never even realized the SH 3/4 game was flat and it has no practical impact on the game, other than a arbitrary visibility limit.

You're very wrong about that. It does affect navigation (if done emulating real procedures and all that). Since it doesn't project on a spherical model, distances are distorted, and the realism goes away the moment that sailing to some place in the sim doesn't take as long as it would in the real world. Also, as pointed by Nisgeis, flat has issues with horizon-line sight.

Cheers

[Frederf]

Originally Posted by AngusJS

Could the SH map center on the North Atlantic, say by using 45 degrees N as its "equator", so that the main area of operations would suffer from the least amount of distortion?

Theoretically yes, the "line of no distortion" is where the cylinder intersects the globe which can be any pairs of latitude. The cylinder can cut through the globe such that the equator region is projected inward and has a contraction distortion while the pole regions have an expansion distortion.

Originally Posted by Nisgeis

It mimicked ships being obscured by the horizon by making them sink lower into the water, the further away they were. The only problem with this was that you could see the waterline and then the horizon behind it, rather than seing the hull obscured by the horizon.

I thought SH3 was like that but SH4 had a better solution? That's terrible and explains why it's so easy to spot ships in SH3 and SH4, they are so drastically highlighted by being off the horizon.

It should still be reminded that a spherical worldspace and a spherical actionspace are two entirely independent concepts. Either could be addressed in any order or combination without interdependence. Silent Hunter could get a curved actionspace (or localspace if you like) and retain the old, flat worldspace or vice versa.

[slowworm]

Originally Posted by elanaiba

I know I'm tired and I'm missing something but we've always used a cylindrical projection. Sh3,4,5.

It's not you. Most folks don't realize the mercator map projection is cylindrical.

What I really wanted was a true spheroid. Oh well. Maybe SH6 with real star and sunshots with a sextant and sight reduction tables......

[elanaiba]

In SH5, it would be even much more important that REAL distances are taken into consideration. As ships and convoys can reroute dynamically, distances are an important factor.

Of course, there are ways around that, and there's a number of problems associated with spherical worlds. One being that you have to take the time to implement it and make AI work with it.

SH3, SH4, SH5, all have ships going down "under the horizon" to make up for the earth curvature.