Need help with sub visuals

[Armistead]

Trying to find a better balance with my personal env. and crew sub visuals. I can adjust to where crew has basically to the horizon vision, but they still see too far at night. With all the subvisual nodes, is there one that determines night visuals only. I thought it would be the one with shorter ranges, but doesn't do much.. Basically playing with the sub visuals in library, USSupParts and minor tweaking to Cfg. Last adjustment, I see about 8nms during the day, OK, I can see the ship myself, but crew see 5nms at night when I can't see the ships at all. I could figure it with time, but hoping someone could spare all the testing.

Oh, one other issue, if you increase visuals to basically the horizon, you obviouly get a lock and can ID the ship with TMO's auto ID. I like the long visuals, but don't like being to ID ships I can't make out. How to I cut this feature back off and make it where you have to pick yourself like in stock.

[Armistead]

I figured it out.....

[Bilge_Rat]

so what is the answer? I would be interested to know.

[arnahud2]

Me too...

[Armistead]

You adjust ranges in Library

SH4/Data/Library/USSubParts/SensorData

You'll find 3 visual nodes inside in a row, seems it starts around node 29. Just increase ranges

Also inside the Library itself is another sensorvisualsub.sim where you can adjust visuals.

Then you can tweak with the sh4/data/cfg/sensorscfg to fine tune the above.

The trick is finding realistic ranges that work with the env. mod you use. They're several factors in scene dat and env files that effect visuals for sub and AI. Some env mods have really dark nights with dark horizons and often the enemy sees you before you see him, can even happen during the day that the enemy shoots at you before your crew sees him. I use my own enviroment mod and use a lot of moonlight, so horizon with the moon you can see to the horizon, away from the moon it's fairly dark. IMO your sub crew should spot the enemy before he spots you.

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by Armistead

Trying to find a better balance with my personal env. and crew sub visuals. I can adjust to where crew has basically to the horizon vision, but they still see too far at night. With all the subvisual nodes, is there one that determines night visuals only?

Not that I know of.

I looked at this same feature a long time ago and came to the idea that the function of the AI's "day compared to night visuals" were backward to what they should be. I found through testing, that when you set the AI's visuals to give you a fairly realistic night visual capability, the day visual was so far off the enemy couldn't find you, even sitting almost next to the target. Setting the day visuals to work as expected, caused the night observations to be too good to be true! Completely backward of what it should be. It seems the visual parameters are set to just one "default", then the rest of the visual variables (crew competency, target surface size, day/night) are added or subtracted from it. I'm suspecting the same is true with your own subs crew capability.

I've seen this kind of mistake before with the hard coded features of the game (not every feature can be tweaked by us). The game with its first patch gave us the Imperial units of measurements (yards/feet) for an American WWII simulated wargame?! Yea!! They finally got something right. Yet, the hard coded conversion of turning yards into meters when manual targeting (for a player using the Metric system) was incorrect until patch 3. Both Metric and Imperial measurements were in yards shown on the Position Keeper until version 1.3. Some sort of hard coded parameter had to be changed to get the measurements to read as expected. I've felt that the day/night visuals for the AI (and maybe the subs crew) were similar in oversight.

In your last post, you state you may have found a "trick' around this, within the "sensordata" files in a couple of places. If so, that's great news!! I would like to think there is a "work around" to this backward day/night visual issue.

......can ID the ship with TMO's auto ID. How do I cut this feature back off and make it where you have to pick yourself like in stock.

I did a quick look, I couldn't find a keyboard entry for "ID Target" on TMO's keyboard "Data/cfg/Commands.cfg" file. So, I guess there's nothing to change there.

The "ID Target" button appears on the Orders Bar along the bottom in two different stations....the Periscope, and Bridge stations.

To remove this button from the two stations, "deactivate" TMO from the game using JSGME. Find TMO's "Data/Menu/cfg/OrdersBar.cfg" file. Make a copy, then open with NotePad. Go to the [Station3] that's the Periscope Station entries and find the last entry as below:




"Comment Out" the Button10 entry (add the semicolon {;} to the front of the three lines).

Do the same in [Station4] the Bridge. This time you'll need to change the ButtonNumber system after "commenting out" the "WP_Identify_target" entry. Just move the remainder of the ButtonNumber's count, up one number, to fill in for removing the "ID Target" button. Save your work, and put the TMO OrdersBar.cfg file back in it's place.

[arnahud2]

Thank you Amistead for your explainations. If you're perfectly right, you pointed out a BIG issue, still present despite the last (and now old) patch ?

I always found annoying that enemy merchant could see my "little" sub before my crew can spot them, especially at night time...

So, this could be an horrible bug never fixed ?

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

Not that I know of.

I looked at this same feature a long time ago and came to the idea that the function of the AI's "day compared to night visuals" were backward to what they should be. I found through testing, that when you set the AI's visuals to give you a fairly realistic night visual capability, the day visual was so far off the enemy couldn't find you, even sitting almost next to the target. Setting the day visuals to work as expected, caused the night observations to be too good to be true! Completely backward of what it should be. It seems the visual parameters are set to just one "default", then the rest of the visual variables (crew competency, target surface size, day/night) are added or subtracted from it. I'm suspecting the same is true with your own subs crew capability.

In your last post, you state you may have found a "trick' around this, within the "sensordata" files in a couple of places. If so, that's great news!! I would like to think there is a "work around" to this backward day/night visual issue.

Little confused by your statement that " you set the AI's visuals to give you a fairly realistic night visual capability, the day visual was so far off the enemy couldn't find you, even sitting almost next to the target."

Anytime I refer to AI, I mean any jap sensor, but so far I'm only messing with the subvisuals for US. I'm not getting the backward effect, just the same effect. The effect I'm getting is the night visuals match the long range day visuals. I don't mind seeing to the horizon during the day, but don't won't those ranges at night, but maybe it can be resolved somewhat.


In Library USSubparts/SensorsSubUS.sim you have 3 visual nodes. I can't say for sure, but I believe these are connected to each weather type in Env. Testing seems to confirm this. What do you say?

Also in Library you have the sensorvisualsub.sim, that seems to have a general effect on visuals. I've just started comparing the AI enemy, but don't find a file like the one in USSubparts with 3 visual nodes, just the overall visuals and visuals for each ship class. Course then you can tweak numerous values for US with sensors. cfg and AI with sim.cfg and numerous other factors come into play.

If there is any trick, it's basically this, increasing all the ranges for USSubs, then tweak cfg sensor values to increase or greatly decrease other values to get night ranges to tone down, such as light. The real trick is getting your env. settings right for night, mostly with any value that effects light at night, course env. and scene dat have great effect on visuals for all.

The difficult part is getting a realistic env look that seems reasonable with sensors at night. How dark should night be; how far should you be able to see with moon light and how much moon light is reasonable...on and on..?
I'll show some SS's of one of my env looks at night.

Understand I'm not explaining things to you, sure you're aware of all this, more talking to myself and hoping you can clue me in on anything I'm missing.

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by arnahud2

Thank you Amistead for your explainations. If you're perfectly right, you pointed out a BIG issue, still present despite the last (and now old) patch ?

I always found annoying that enemy merchant could see my "little" sub before my crew can spot them, especially at night time...

So, this could be an horrible bug never fixed ?

As far as toning down merchant visuals. I haven't messed with the enemy AI much, but each class has a visual range, so you can tone down merchants without effecting escorts. You have to understand they're possibly 100's of values that effect each other.

I agree I've always hated being seen before my crew can see. To a degree the crew should see what you can see, but not really the case. Heck, with some mods like TMO, at night, often the crew can see what you can't. Reasonable night surfact attacks are difficult, often you get blown up by a escort your crew hasn't spotted. I honestly think the fix is there, but it will take a new env mod and a total reworking of all sensors.
I've been playing and working on it for over a year, env work is very time consuming when you're trying to get a realistic look with realistic sensors, so much so I think most just settle for a balance.

[Armistead]

Capt S,

Here are a few SS's for comparison. I probably have 100 different env mods, but these as an example.

This is TMO alone, nights are fairly dark regardless of the moon. My eyes are older, but can barely make out the horizon from water, but can't see ships.



Here is some added moonlight to TMO. The overall effect is increased visuals for all.



Here is one night look, added moonlight, light on clouds, lighter cloud color near the moon. I also increased width of reflection, lil too much here, but you get the point.


Same as above, but going away, horizon is fairly dark and your visuals change.





With more moonlight, one thing I found shocked me. I don't know if angle of moon effects visuals, but I was attacking a convoy with moon behind them, crew got a good long range visual and they didn't seem to notice me. Why setting up the attack, next thing I know I'm getting blasted by a escort behind me that my crew didn't call out about 8000 yards away. I didn't have radar and it was a subkiller group I probably put in the area. It really seems moon position/angle in sky does have effect, but need more testing.

[TorpX]

I can't help you with your project, Armistead, but the screenies look real nice. I especially like the 2nd one.

[Fifi]

Yeah, awesome shots!

The first one is probably the closer to real life imo.
Regarding the moon position and its light slightly blurred with clouds.
Love it!

Second shot is strange...sub should be not lighted this way with moon behind it

[TorpX]

I think these screenshots will look different to us, because of our differing monitors and settings. I can hardly even see that there is a sub, in the first one. Very dark for me.

[Armistead]

The first SS is TMO alone, many like it as is, but I like more light around the moon and clouds near the moon, plus TMO is a lil blue for me. The nights are a lil dark for my old eyes as well. It's all a matter of personal preference, some like one look, others another. Main thing for me is the visual aspects of light at night. I like planning my attacks with the moon light as a factor regarding what I see. Course no moon, night get dark.

Another sample, more lighting effect on clouds, less halo light and water reflection, but horizon away from moon is still dark. I play with different moon textures, maybe a lil large.



Basically same shot as above, only changes are clouds, but has great impact on light.




Yet another look



Few more


Think in this one I started adjusting filter values as well, more constrast and sharpness.



You could get 1000 different looks, just got to decide what look best works with sensors.

[TorpX]

They all look pretty good, but I rather favor the first one.

I agree about the moon; when full or near full, it should make a big difference in light and range of vision.