**RELEASED** Improved Skies & Reflections

[rulle34]

Originally Posted by Manuel Ortega

Redwine, you have said it: why not increase AI to 18km instead of reducing visual to 16km?

I didn't make my mod to get a limited visibility of 18km, or 17, etc... I basically increased all parameters to get more distance, as much as possible, and when I obtained an equilibrated parameters balance I could say: 'now we can see ships at 17,500m. But there is not any hex value called max_visibility_distance=17500 that can be tweaked as you wish, it would be a lot esier this way.

I don't know how to reduce the visibility to 16 km. In fact the present 18km was by chance. Instead, I would encourage all of you to investigate how AI ranges work and tweak it to get those 18 km. And still better, to found how to fix the visual limits at night (super-vision). I think this research would give us more possibilities to reach realistic visibility distances. We must increase it, not reduce it.

Please don't misunderstand me and don't think that I don't want to collaborate. All the opposite. It's only that I think that for obtain a future 30km mod, for example, we must reach the 20km, not 16km. And the limit is now imposed by the 'partialy unknow' AI engine.

Hello Manuel!
I have full respect for your work and thoughts about increasing the visibility and in this I agree in general. But as it is now "visibility" is devided in to two different things, and it''s important to sort this out:

1. When crew reports "ship spotted"
2. When you actually can see something in the horizon

With the 16 km visibility these two things have the same distance. , and that's was what i wanted to achieve with this mod. Personally I dont think it's realistic or fun to have my crew report a "ship spotted" at a distance of 18000 or 20000m when I can't see anything myself. First after setting the boat at flank speed in the direction they reported and first after a viewing distance at about 16000m Im able to actually see the ship my self.

About nightvsion, I and others have made lots of tweakings in sensors.cgf to obtain some realistic nightspottings, and I think we are close to a good balance.

Im in for an increased visibility, but Im not in for an increased visbility where only my crew can see anything. I want these distances where we both can see something to be the same. And if it's possible to do this Im in for that. But I don't want this to be some arguments abut what is better 16km or 18km or 20km etc.

But I do want to keep in mind what we mean by "visibility".



With this as background, I have a question for you Manuel and Redwhine:
Do you want to increase the visibility range for only when crew can report a "ship spotted" and you self have to wait several kilometers before you actually can see something in your binoculars, or do you want to increase the visibility so the distance is the same when crew reports and you self can see it in your binoculars?

[Redwine]

Originally Posted by rulle34

With this as background, I have a question for you Manuel and Redwhine:
Do you want to increase the visibility range for only when crew can report a "ship spotted" and you self have to wait several kilometers before you actually can see something in your binoculars, or do you want to increase the visibility so the distance is the same when crew reports and you self can see it in your binoculars?

I cant speak by Mac.... but if i not understand bad, he is working to reach a real visibility values for both player and crew.
It means he need to found how to enlarge the "world bubble" into where the game start up to modelate the objects to be watched.
Manuel "Mac Mollo" Ortega.......Master !!

Talking for me..... a reduced crew spoting range of 16km looks unreal for me.

As i wrote before, swiming in the west coast of Cozumel, i can see with no glases no UZO, construction in the other side of the Cuzumel channel, it has 19.5km wide.

Flying you can spot a ship at 20 miles, and you can see if it is a Carnival or Royal Caribean...... of course a sub is not flying but if you do not take in account atmospheric humidity or dust in suspension...... if you use an horizon calculator, you will found, from a conning tower of 4m you can spot the 65m mast tops of a Warships from near to 40km.

Of course fog can reduce those values.

In my opinion, only a personal preference, y prefer to have a real spoting range in my crew, even if my own is unreally reduced to 17.5km.

Just a personal choice.


About the options here, Ortega's (Mac) Mod, has a "World Modelation Bubble" increased from default 8km up to 17.5km.

At 17.5km you can see smoke stacks, and at about 16.5km you can see the ships.

I do not know why for, all you have the WO limited to 16km, because Ortega's default is 20km. :hmm:

May be due your mods installed, but my point is :

To reduce the "World Modelation Bubble", from 17.5Km down to 16Km is hard and complex.....

Then ...why not to increase the WO and Crew Spoting range from your 16Km up to 17.5Km ? :hmm:

A crew spoting range>>> "ship spoted sir" of 17.5Km instead of 16Km is not to much diference and is not unreal

And is an easy way to solve the problem stablished here

17.5Km is anyway under real values in a clear day for a big ship. :hmm:

As wrote before, i am using the Ortega's default 17.5Km "world bubble" and my crew has a 25km or 30km spotting range, i can adjust it at my pleasure.

If you dont like 25km, or 30km, you can put both together at same value........ Ortega's default 17.5km, called 18km in "folk spelling" :P

Best regards, Red.

[Manuel Ortega]

No, I'm not working on another visibility mod. Not at the moment, until AI system is more understandable, at least for me.

Another thing, inspired by the Redwine commentary... when you people talk about non-visible ships until 16 km, I understand that you mean ship smoke, isn't? I don't know if I said that there is a parameter called EarthRadius or similar, that defines the curvature of the horizon. I had to tweak it too, because ships were not visible at about 10 km with default game values.
All of you must know that seeing a ship at 17 km from a uboat bridge is barely impossible. You only can see masts (high masts), and smoke at that distance. With a little of maths you can verify it.

With a simple change of that EarthRadius value (multiply it x10 for example), Earth will be flat and a ship could be entirely visible at that distance (17-18 km). But you know that it is totally unrealistic

Also, I didn't touch the 'lock target' feature distances. It has a limit of 16km, because locking a target at 17 km when it's not visible is also unrealistic.

But I can assure that ships are visible at 17.5 km (smoke), and of course at 16 km.

[Redwine]

The matter Manuel is they do not spot the ships.....
they spot the top of the masts and follow some times the convoys looking the top of the masts.
It is well modelled in SH1.

Look at this......

http://radarproblems.com/calculators/horizon.htm

From a conning tower of 4m, and a theoretical clear day.....

You can spot the 30m masts tops of a cargo ship from near 26.7Km.

And a 65m mast tops of a Warship from 35.9Km.

Considering a small ship as a destroyer, its bridge and its radar antenas may be at 15m over the sea level, looking it from a coning tower of 4m it will be visible at 21km.

To start up to see the ships under 17km ...about 16.5 as in your mod...... is not bad.

And the horizon (zero height) will be at 4.23 nautical miles about 7.8km, look bellow.

http://www.boatsafe.com/tools/horizon.htm

About the smoke columns, it is correct, in your mod, smoke columns appears first than the ships, smoke is visible a little bit under 18km and ships start up to take body a little bit under 17km.

Un abrazo, Red.

[rulle34]

Originally Posted by Manuel Ortega

But I can assure that ships are visible at 17.5 km (smoke), and of course at 16 km.

Smoke is "visible" for me! That's great
Do you have the RWR ranges (radar warnings) fixed in the sensors.dat file also so this will work as it should?

[303_Michcich]

Is this mod RuB 1.44, HT 1.46 and Cmdr 2.2 compatible ? Beery, any plans to include this in future RuB/Cmdr ?