Very Interesting Visibility Results

[MarkShot]

This was inspired by another thread discussing tracking in bad weather.

* Back Ground *

Testing done with SH3/GWX 1.03 and 16km option.

I set up a custom mission with stationary ships: my sub and tankers about ever 500km diagonally.

In Mission Editor, you can vary:

- Time
- Wind Speed
- Precipitation
- Clouds
- Fog

* Findings *

Note: Crew spotting is defined as meaning the game engine plots contacts on the nav map and calls out "ship spotted".

(1) During daytime, the maximum range which your watch crew is able to spot ships is not impacted by wind, rain, clouds, and fog. Basically, the crew is able to see to about 6km.

(2) During daytime, the angle off your bow that the crew is able to spot ships is quite dependent on wind, rain, clouds, and fog. So, distance is not impacted, but the angle off the center line of the keel is very much impacted. In very clear conditions, the crew spots contacts easily 60 degrees off center. In very poor conditions, the crew has trouble with anything beyond 10 degrees off center.

(3) In daytime, there is a huge variance between what the AI can see and what the human player can see. In the worst weather, the human player can mainly spot only out to about 500-600 meters, where as the AI can still spot out 6km.

(4) It looks like the speed of spotting may be impacted by environmental conditions. More testing would be needed.

(5) I have definitely AI spotted ships further than 6km in actual game play. It would appear that another untested variable has to do with contact's motion or speed.

(6) The range the player is able to spot ships in clear conditions appears to greatly exceed the capabilities of the AI. It appears in poor conditions that the exact opposite holds; the AI is able to spot to a much greater distance.

* Discussion *

It was very interesting to find out that player spotting and AI spotting are entirely different. It also interesting to see that there is some form of peripheral vision affect modeled for AI spotting which probably doesn't make any logical sense, since a watch crew should be scanning in all directions.

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Perhaps, some of you heavy duty modders can explain some of this to me, since it is all kind of counter intuitive.

(1) Why does angle off of bow matter?

(2) Why is AI spotting the same distance wise?

(3) Why does the AI spot better than the player?

Finally, what implications are there when one is actually playing the game and on patrol?

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One thing which I take away from this is that in good conditions when expecting contact at any moment, you should be on the bridge looking yourself. However, in bad conditions, you are better off depending on the crew. (Of course, the other option is to use sonar in bad conditions which has much greater range than eyeballs.)