GWX night vision question for experienced GWX players

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Originally Posted by John Pancoast

Possible another wrench in the works; I'm using the "Malfunctions and Sabotage" option of SH3 Commander.

The only AI file I could see it's "Randomizedevents.cfg" file affect, which controls this option, is the sensors.dat file.

This .dat file has a visual node that I do not know the purpose of. But I bet you do

Anyway fyi.

Hi John,
Really sorry about getting so bleary. Felt like a Noob when I realized you had started this post, as you mentioned above. I was indeed over-tired. I think everybody is having a tough week so I'll try to spare my current excuses.

Sensors.dat controls player sensors. The visual node controls your watch crew.

AI_Sensors.dat controls enemy sensors.

(I anything I write here is stuff you already know, hope you'll bear with me.)

I don't think that the malfunctions and sabotage option would disable the visual sensor, but for the purpose of creating a sterile test bed, my advice would be to remove it and anything else that may interfere with it. If testing is aimed at a release, then a clean installation is essentially mandatory to remove all doubt of data contamination.

The SC-7 single mission is a good place to start in many ways for testing. Calm sea, calm weather, and full moon.... the lattermost doesn't do anything IIRC. However, speaking of the moon, I fixed its reflection with some help from Jeff Groves. I am considering redoing the whole 20k horizon mod using much data from GWX. When it was all we had, 16km was great, but it is really nice to get away from the floating units at distance. 16k is still a damn sight better than 8k at any rate.

Side note: Ran SC-7 again last night. Decks awash. Got between middle and port Black Swans. U-boat speed 3kt. Enemy bearing 270 and 90 respectively, meaning largest aspect profile presented to NME was greatest. Spotted from 3000 meter range this time, improved by 500 meters.

John, I don't feel like I can give you a really good answer relating to the visual sensors. More than once, the community here has thought that we had it whipped. I imagine you remember one or more of those instances. There actually isn't enough string to tie your boots. If I have to chose a problem though, I'd choose to have my watch crew see everything in the dark, as long as they didn't fail during the day.

I realize this isn't much of an answer. If further 'improvements' are made going down the road here at SS. I would hold them highly suspect until observed to be consistent after much use inspite of any mod builder claim upon release.

Iit is my impression that NYGM and GWX address the matter as best can be, compared to other sources, and probably in that order of effectiveness. Maybe you could tell us.better than many, where things stand relating to visual sensor performance, since you play both mods.

At any rate, that is my deep thinking for the night. Hope it was at least quasi-usful info.

EDIT: Also, yes.... the 'slider thingy' I was trying to remember was the Hsie configuration file night vison variable entries, pointed out by ivanov.ruslan early in this thread.

[John Pancoast]

Originally Posted by Kpt. Lehmann

Hi John,
Really sorry about getting so bleary. Felt like a Noob when I realized you had started this post, as you mentioned above. I was indeed over-tired. I think everybody is having a tough week so I'll try to spare my current excuses.

Sensors.dat controls player sensors. The visual node controls your watch crew.

AI_Sensors.dat controls enemy sensors.

(I anything I write here is stuff you already know, hope you'll bear with me.)

I don't think that the malfunctions and sabotage option would disable the visual sensor, but for the purpose of creating a sterile test bed, my advice would be to remove and anything else that may interfere with it. If testing is aimed at a release, then a clean installation is essentially mandatory to remove all doubt of data contamination.

The SC-7 single mission is a good place to start in many ways for testing. Calm sea, calm weather, and full moon.... the lattermost doesn't do anything IIRC. However, speaking of the moon, I fixed its reflection with some help from Jeff Groves. I am considering redoing the whole 20k horizon mod using much data from GWX. When it was all we had, 16km was great, but it is really nice to get away from the floating units at distance. 16k is still a damn sight better than 8k at any rate.

Side note: Ran SC-7 again last night. Decks awash. got between middle and port Black Swans. Bearing 270 and 90 respectively meaning largest aspect profile presented to NME was greatest. Spotted from 3000 meter range this time, improved by 500 meters.

John, I don't feel like I can give you a really good answer relating to the visual sensors. More than once, the community here has thought that we had it whipped. I imagine you remember one or more of those instances. There actually isn't enough string to tie your boots. If I have to chose a problem though, I'd choose to have my watch crew see everything in the dark, as long as they didn't fail during the day.

I realize this isn't much of an answer. If further 'improvements' are made going down the road here at SS. I would hold them highly suspect until observed to be consistent after much use inspite of any mod builder claim upon release.

Iit is my impression that NYGM and GWX address the matter as best can be, compared to other sources, and probably in that order of effectiveness. Maybe you could tell us.better than many, where things stand relating to visual sensor performance, since you play both mods.

At any rate, that is my deep thinking for the night. Hope it was at least quasi-usful info.

No reason to apologize for anything. Appreciate your time and effort.

Thanks for the sensor info. Interesting that that node controls the crew visuals; maybe there's something to this.
I'll disable the malfunctions/sabotage option tomorrow and give SC 7 a try that way too and let you know how it goes.
I do not recall if I was using that Commander option when I started this thread.

I agree with your other general thoughts about this. If nothing else, at least it only happens on clear nights vs. all the time.

Relating to visual sensor performance in GWX/NYGM, I wasn't going to mention this but since you asked........

Now and then I've had a few moments of "how didn't that escort see me ?" during an attack. ONLY at night does this happen.
Out of curiosity I have then purposefully hit flank speed and charged right at the escort to test it's reactions.

I've been able to smash into the escort with no reaction of any kind from it including after i've hit it.

Good weather, bad weather (no rain or fog though), everything in between.
Like the "hit it with a ball peen hammer" comment you made about stock SH3.
It doesn't happen often but it can obviously make me wonder if that brilliant night attack I just did was really that brilliant.
Had it happen yesterday in an NYGM attack. Stock NYGM environment/sensors. Same with other installs where it's happened; always made sure I had the mod's (including GWX) stock environment/sensors.
I should say I also had it in a Rub 1.45 install. (I've done all kinds of campaigns )
It too had H.sie's night vision and SH3 Commander malfunction/sabotage options in use.

I have posted various threads on this in the recent past here. Kind of funny; in doing research on this, I came across a thread about NYGM 2.0 where it was thought it needed a fix because the escorts were seeing the player sub first instead of vice-versa as it was thought it should be.
So I found a download of 2.0 and tried it out. I actually kind of liked it that way ! Without getting into which is right or wrong there are actually a LOT of examples in Blair's books of this happening; at night an escort visually saw the sub first.
Of course part of that could be as simple as one crew was more alert than the other, etc. But it wasn't completely unusual.
But anyway......

Thinking about all this, I wonder if it's not related to the Commander option because:

- there are old threads about how it shouldn't be used but I never saw a definitive statement why not. NYGM specifically says not to, again without stating why not. The malfunctions/sabotage functions themselves do work in NYGM, so I guess that's not the reason not to use it.
I also posted a thread asking "why not" but it never got answered. Do you have any idea why it's not recommended to use ?

- wouldn't others have mentioned it, if it happened and they weren't using the Commander option ?
Or maybe they all thought their attack WAS brilliant

Anyway, curiouser and curiouser.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

As for 'why not' to use the malfunctions/sabotage option, I can only hazard a guess: that the random sensor breakage method used, may not be able to avoid periodically breaking the visual sensor. (U-boat crew on watch)


Regarding smashing into the vessel, maybe you somehow slipped between its sensor arc sweep. I dunno. I've had WTH moments on occasion without clear cause or consistency too, but unless they show a pattern, I just try not to fixate on the matter.


Cheers, I'm going to go look at something shiny now.

[John Pancoast]

Originally Posted by Kpt. Lehmann

As for 'why not' to use the malfunctions/sabotage option, I can only hazard a guess: that the random sensor breakage method used, may not be able to avoid periodically breaking the visual sensor. (U-boat crew on watch)


Regarding smashing into the vessel, maybe you somehow slipped between its sensor arc sweep. I dunno. I've had WTH moments on occasion without clear cause or consistency too, but unless they show a pattern, I just try not to fixate on the matter.


Cheers, I'm going to go look at something shiny now.

Good points, thanks again.

[John Pancoast]

Some test results. All with stock GWX sensor files and GWX 16k environment. No other mods other than H.sie patch as below. *Sh3 Commander was not used in any tests.
GWX SC7 single mission.

1. No H.sie night vision applied. Stock GWX sensors.cfg file.
- I was able to graphically see ships immediately on mission start.
- AI crew first spotted them/announced same at 13k.

2. H.sie night vision patch applied. No change to GWX sensors.cfg file.
- same as #1 above.

3. H.sie night vision patch applied. GWX sensors.cfg file modified per his default instructions.
- Same as #1 above for my vision.
- AI crew ranges increased to 14 -15k. The slightly increased AI range would be due to the changes to the sensors.cfg file per H.sie's.instructions.

*Since no tests involved SH3 Commander, that rules out it's malfunctions/sabotage option being the cause of the long distance night vision in this mission.

15k meters = 9.3 miles.

There are examples in Blair's books of escorts seeing a sub (!) at around these distances at night so I guess it's not unreasonable for the opposite to happen.
That of course is assuming the escort skipper's report info. was correct; didn't have range wrong, not exaggerating, etc.

Anyway, it may be just a case of "it is what it is" regardless of whether it's "realistic" or not. I also believe I would get similar results in NYGM with a similar test scenario.
In other words, I don't believe this is solely a GWX specific item. More of an Sh3 one.

Hope this helps.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Originally Posted by John Pancoast

Some test results. All with stock GWX sensor files and GWX 16k environment. No other mods other than H.sie patch as below. *Sh3 Commander was not used in any tests.
GWX SC7 single mission.

1. No H.sie night vision applied. Stock GWX sensors.cfg file.
- I was able to graphically see ships immediately on mission start.
- AI crew first spotted them/announced same at 13k.

2. H.sie night vision patch applied. No change to GWX sensors.cfg file.
- same as #1 above.

3. H.sie night vision patch applied. GWX sensors.cfg file modified per his default instructions.
- Same as #1 above for my vision.
- AI crew ranges increased to 14 -15k. The slightly increased AI range would be due to the changes to the sensors.cfg file per H.sie's.instructions.

*Since no tests involved SH3 Commander, that rules out it's malfunctions/sabotage option being the cause of the long distance night vision in this mission.

15k meters = 9.3 miles.

There are examples in Blair's books of escorts seeing a sub (!) at around these distances at night so I guess it's not unreasonable for the opposite to happen.
That of course is assuming the escort skipper's report info. was correct; didn't have range wrong, not exaggerating, etc.

Anyway, it may be just a case of "it is what it is" regardless of whether it's "realistic" or not. I also believe I would get similar results in NYGM with a similar test scenario.
In other words, I don't believe this is solely a GWX specific item. More of an Sh3 one.

Hope this helps.

Hmmm. Just for the sake of redundancy, If I am reading this right, U-boat crew night vision extended out further/became worse using Hsie's recommended fix.

[John Pancoast]

Originally Posted by Kpt. Lehmann

Hmmm. Just for the sake of redundancy, If I am reading this right, U-boat crew night vision extended out further/became worse using Hsie's recommended fix.

Correct. That is because the visual fog factor setting in stock GWX sensors.cfg is 1.1, where H.sie recommends it be set to 1.02 for the night vision patch.


Per his instructions readme, a setting larger than 1.02 enables the player to see slightly better (further) and the AI crew slightly worse (shorter) distances.


So since 1.1 is larger than 1.02, the crew would see slightly better (further) with the 1.02 setting he recommends.


I haven't got a chance to mess with the setting in his H.sie.ini file that is part of the patch and he gives info. on about changing too.


That is next.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Originally Posted by John Pancoast

Correct. That is because the visual fog factor setting in stock GWX sensors.cfg is 1.1, where H.sie recommends it be set to 1.02 for the night vision patch.


Per his instructions readme, a setting larger than 1.02 enables the player to see slightly better (further) and the AI crew slightly worse (shorter) distances.

So since 1.1 is larger than 1.02, the crew would see slightly better (further) with the 1.02 setting he recommends.

I haven't got a chance to mess with the setting in his H.sie.ini file that is part of the patch and he gives info. on about changing too.

That is next.

Cool, I'll keep an eye out for your reports.

[John Pancoast]

H.sie.ini file change results:


- using settings at both ends of the range H.sie recommends produced only very marginal AI crew spotting differences.
Lowering the setting very slightly decreased the visual range, raising it did the opposite.
Visual spotting was still in the 13k+ to 15k+ meters range.


My vision stayed the same throughout.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Hmmm. Looks like things remain more or less where they started.


I wish we could know what value is being changed by the Hsie configuration file entries.

[John Pancoast]

Originally Posted by Kpt. Lehmann

Hmmm. Looks like things remain more or less where they started.


I wish we could know what value is being changed by the Hsie configuration file entries.

Yes, I was surprised that changing the .ini values had so little effect.