Scale Question

[TriskettheKid]

So I was doing my favorite thing in SHIII and SHIV (namely, sneaking into enemy ports and blowing **** up), when I noticed something....off...with my fish and the ships I was attacking.

Is it me, or do the torpedoes seem a tad bit larger than they should be?

For example, I launched a few fish at this Fuso I found near Hiroshima, sitting in that pocket where the water gets deep.

According to the manual, the Fuso has a draft of 9.4 meters. Now, I don't know how big a diameter the US torps had, but they couldn't be more than 1m across (I think the biggest were, what, 21 inches or something?).

Yet when my fish got near the Fuso, it seemed llike there would be NO way one could stack 5 fish against the side of the fuso, let alone the 10 or so it would take to equal her draft.

Am I right here? Are the torpedoes scaled wrong? Or is it the size of the ships?

[switch.dota]

Torpedo scale most likely. The reason is probably eye candy.

[TriskettheKid]

So it's more likely torpedo scale than ship scale?

Hmm...for some reason I remember surfacing next to an Ise back in v1.0 (when no one would fire at you in certain ports, etc), and I couldn't help but notice that even though I was in a Porpoise, the 205.5m long Ise did not seem like it was 205.5m long. I say this because my 90m (91m?) sub seemed like it was over half the length of the ship.

Were my eyes playing tricks on me, or are the Sub and torps scaled up a bit?

[Radioshow]

I have thought this as well. The ships do appear somewhat larger if you get really close in free view but the ships still do not seem to be as BIG or maybe as long as they should. This may be a result of being represented on a 2d screen(monitor) or scaling in the game. Eye candy could be one possible reason, make the torps and sub easier to see with more detail. As I am not a programmer and a mediocre modeller(I'm an A/V guy) I cannot say for sure, but I have seen scale issues in most pc games to date, most specifically, space sims.

[TriskettheKid]

I don't think it's a question of the camera.

When I've used free camera to get as close as possible to a ship before the torp hits, when the torp finally strikes, it looks HUGE, and I know for a fact that it shouldn't be so big.

I see this problem all over. When I went after the Soryu, it looked BIG from a distance, but when I closed within 1000m, it looked....less big.

Maybe it's a problem of where ships sit on the water. Last night I had to recon a harbor. After I did, I tried to take out the two destroyers I found docked. They had drafts of 3.6m and 2.9m. Based on what I've read, Mark XIV's were 21in across. Yet, despite the torp moving along so shallow that it would breach the water's surface at times, it was still HUGE. I mean, it's supposed ot be 2/3 of a meter across, yet it looked like you could fit, at most, 1.5 of these torps stacked on top of the other before you were below the ship's draft.

So what is it? Is it that the ships just aren't as big as we're being told they are? Is it that our subs and torps are actually BIGGER than they should be?

[tater]

Porpoise, 308' next to Hiryu, 746'.

Hiryu should be ~2.4 times as long. She is.

Looks fine.

tater

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by tater

Porpoise, 308' next to Hiryu, 746'.

Hiryu should be ~2.4 times as long. She is.

Looks fine.

tater

:hmm: Hrm whats Tater up to now ???

Dealing with the enemy now ? :p

[tater]

Oddly enough that CV didn't fire a shot at me.

"Heave to! Prepare to be boarded!"

I'll be in great shape if the Prize Court doesn't screw me.

tater

[Prof]

Well, the submarines in SH4 seem to have draughts much shallower than real life (look at tater's screenshot of the Porpoise!), so is there a chance the ships have shallower draughts than real life too?

That would explain why the dimensions could all be correct, but the torpedoes would look large when measured against the draught of the target.

[TriskettheKid]

Then yes, I'm assuming that my problem comes from one of the following:

1. Certain ship sizes in-game might be incorrect (I think this was actually noted by someone, but I'm unsure if it's been fixed by now in a patch or mod).

2. Torpedoes are scaled incorrectly, either for eye-candy or they are just scaled wrong.

3. Ship drafts are wildly off.

I'm guessing, after having done a bit more testing, that it's a combination of 2 and 3. Is there any definitive work on this? Are ship drafts really that shallow? Is this a scale issue at all?

[nattydread]

It could be that are view is a bit fish-eyed, providing us with a panorama size veiwing area smushed onto our screen. Perhaps we get to see as much horizontal area as we would normally see after sweeping the eyes or the head.

The human eye has about 200 degrees of viewable arc when looking straight forward(no sweeping of the eye or head), but much of that is periphery that degrades rapidly in detail and color as we spread out from the center. Only about 10 degrees vertically and horiontally at the center of that viewable area is high fidelity. To see anything in detail filling out more than that 10 degrees would require we sweep the eyes and/or turn our head..something I doubt is modeled. We still see outside the 10 degrees, but or brain fills in the missing detail, but that "filler" of course degrades in accuracy the father into the periphery the objet is

[TriskettheKid]

It's not that at all.

Look, next time you're playing, and you fire at a target with a decent draft (7m+), switch to external view. JUST as the fish is leaving it's tube, pause the game. Now, I don't know about you, but something's just not right. The widest Torp used by the US was 21in across, which means that one should be able to fit at least 4 between the water's surface and the keel of a Salmon-class sub. From what I've seen as the torp leaves the tube, this seems to not be the case.

Un-pause the game, and pause it once the torp closes in with it's target. Again, the largest torp you can be firing is 21in across, at a target with a draft that's 7m+. The torp is clearly a little too big.

Unless, as I have stated, the problem is that ALL ships sit too high in the water.

[Prof]

Originally Posted by TriskettheKid

Unless, as I have stated, the problem is that ALL ships sit too high in the water.

As who stated? :hmm:

Look at the submarine when firing. The torpedo comes out of a tube in the bow of the sub. You should be looking at the size of the tube diameter (which should match the torpedo diameter) relative to the full height of the submarine hull. The tubes look right to me, which means the torpedoes should be right. It's not something I've examined closely though...I might have a look when I get in tonight.

[TriskettheKid]

But like I said, the Mark XIV was 21in in diameter. The Ise, for example, supposedly has a draft of around 33ft. You should, theoretically, be able to fit at LEAST 15 fish , stacked on top of each other, between the water's surface and the keel of the warship.

That just doesn't seem to be the case.

It's the same with merchants.

[tater]

Park next to (practically touching, facing the same way) an ise, fire a fish, and snap a picture.

Easy enough to do.

BTW, the comment that it might be FOV related is absolutely correct. FOV can certainly distort things. That's why anyone who take good screen shots in Il-2 always uses the most zoomed in view since it's the setting that matches the human eye most closely. Any other FOV fisheyes the image, and planes look small, and the wings, etc away from the center get odd looking.

tater