UZO range - am I cheating?

[pampanito]

I have just started using the Mod combining Manuel Ortega extended visibility and Beery water 1.44. The resulting night sky is IMHO the best to date and probably will become definitive, but I am a little unnerved by my newly-acquired ability to sight vessels at long range by night.

Does anyone know the effective range of UZO in a clear, moon-lit night? Would I be cheating if I use the UZO to locate targets at ranges of 15000 or so?

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by pampanito

I have just started using the Mod combining Manuel Ortega extended visibility and Beery water 1.44. The resulting night sky is IMHO the best to date and probably will become definitive, but I am a little unnerved by my newly-acquired ability to sight vessels at long range by night.

Does anyone know the effective range of UZO in a clear, moon-lit night? Would I be cheating if I use the UZO to locate targets at ranges of 15000 or so?

15,000m!??!??! Are you kidding? That sounds WAAAYYYY too far, from everything I've ever seen or heard, even for a clear day much less at night.

I tried the Beery Water 1.44 mod but took it back off again - I much prefer the blacker sky of the stock 1.4b w/ RUB1.43 than the too-bright/too-blue color night sky I was getting with the Beery Water 1.44 mod. I didn't have it on there long enough to spot any ships at night with it, but I'm already somewhat concerned about the fact that since RUB1.43 my watch crew now seems to be able to spot ships out to about 8,200-8,500m at night (I still can't see them myself at that range, but my crew can) with just RUB1.43 w/ RUB patch - even that seems a bit far to me, but I haven't had a chance to locate any real good sources on spotting distances IRL yet to confirm what they should be.

[tycho102]

You can get locks on ships outside of visual range. Avon Lady has locked ships at 30km, and someone else reported nearly 50km. Personally, I've gotten locks at maybe 20km.

Just rotate the scope/UZO while hitting the "L" key a lot. It's a very quick lock, lasting only about a quarter of a second, but it's enough to see the range and the type.

[rulle34]

Originally Posted by pampanito

I have just started using the Mod combining Manuel Ortega extended visibility and Beery water 1.44. The resulting night sky is IMHO the best to date and probably will become definitive, but I am a little unnerved by my newly-acquired ability to sight vessels at long range by night.

Does anyone know the effective range of UZO in a clear, moon-lit night? Would I be cheating if I use the UZO to locate targets at ranges of 15000 or so?

This is all discussed in this thread: http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopi...=asc&start=375

[pampanito]

Originally Posted by rulle34

This is all discussed in this thread: http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopi...=asc&start=375

Thanks, I will read all 18 pages!
Just to clarify it however, I was asking for the UZO 'perfect night' range in real life, not in SH3.

[oRGy]

Nobody seems to know.

Ingame the visual sensor detection algorithm is so complicated that it seems impossible to reduce the nighttime detection by very much.

In reality, apparently, it depended on various factors such as moon, clouds, sea state, etc.

On a calm, clear, moonlight night, I wouldn't be surprised if people could see out to 10km+. They would see the black silhouettes of ships against the lighter sky and against the stars. If you spend any time in real seas you'd know that the Beerywater sky is actually much more accurate than the stock SH3 one, by the way.

Of course, in SH3, moonlight is not simulated at all. Instead there's an ambient light to ships in all situations.

[Gammel]

i use those values for the sensors.cfg file (/SH3 folder/data/cfg)
Visibility mod here too.

Visual range factor=1.75
Visual light factor=1.2

you can make the changes with notepad.

@Pampanito,

would you like to try the new values and post some feedback?

Just change the values and continue your campaign, it won´t break anything.
You can easy go back to the old values if you comment them out with a ";" before doing changes to the file.


Also there is a new sensors.dat file out (Jungman) that limits general spotting to 16km, but i havn´t tried out so far.
This thread is now drifting strongly toward the mod-forum, sorry.

But to go ontopic again: does anyone have good sources for spotting ranges in clear nights.
Battlereports from the ww2 pre radar japanese naval forces would be interesting, they were famous for their optical spotting abilities.

I´ve already googled for that and the abilities of the so called "Nachtgläser" (a special binocular for night spotting the germans used) but didn´t find any useful information.

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by oRGy

If you spend any time in real seas you'd know that the Beerywater sky is actually much more accurate than the stock SH3 one, by the way.

Maybe so - I've never been out on a u-boat (or any boat for that matter) at night in the mid Atlantic, so I can't speak from first hand experience, but I've been outside at night in lots of areas of the world (including some Carribean islands and fishing boats a ways off the Pacific coast, as well as port cities and coastal and inland areas in China, Egypt, Sweden, England, Scotland, France (Channel ports, Atlantic and Med coasts), Germany, Italy, US, Canada, Brazil, etc.) and I have never seen any night sky as bright blue as the one I was getting with the Beerywater 1.44 mod - maybe it's just my machine/video card (although I'm just using stock settings with my X800XL card and 21" monitor that look normal with everything else I'm using - I haven't screwed with gamma/color or other such settings that would seem likely to screw up the colors), but it just doesn't look very "real" on my screen for some reason

Is there a particular line or two of a .cfg file somewhere that controls the amount/brightness of the blue color in the night sky so that it would be fairly easy for me to run a series of tests to see if I could make some small modifications to the Beerywater mod's night sky color that might look better on my rig, by any chance?

[pampanito]

Originally Posted by Gammel

i use those values for the sensors.cfg file (/SH3 folder/data/cfg)
Visibility mod here too.
Visual range factor=1.75
Visual light factor=1.2

you can make the changes with notepad.
@Pampanito,

would you like to try the new values and post some feedback?

Just change the values and continue your campaign, it won´t break anything.
You can easy go back to the old values if you comment them out with a ";" before doing changes to the file.

Much better!
Have completed a patrol with the above settings, I sighted three single ships:
1. Night, overcast with no stars, light fog. Ship sighted at 6,900 metres.
2. Night, overcast with no stars. Ship sighted at 7,400 metres.
3. Day, clear. Ship sighted at 13,700 metres (visible on binoculars).

Looks most reasonable to me, I think I will keep going with the above values. Thanks for the hint!

[jason210]

Originally Posted by pampanito

Would I be cheating if I use the UZO to locate targets at ranges of 15000 or so?

Just to back up those figures above....

There are two things to consider. Geometry and aerial perspective.

The Geometry:
The distance to the sea's horizon is about three and a half times the square root of the height of the periscope, in meters. After this distance, the sea begins to hide the ship. This distance is what? About 5.5Km?

The height of the ship is say, 25m, then this can be seen over the sea from about 17.5 km.

To find out how far the ship can be seen, add the two together:
17.5 + 5.5 = 23km. After this the sea hides the ship completely.

Then you have to consider the effect of geometrical perspective on the part of the ship that is not hidden by the sea - ie the upper parts. Typically these will be very small in size. Think how a big ship that is just 7km away appears very small in the eyeglass. You can hardly see it. Of course zoom factors play a part here, but you'd have to have very good magnification to see the tops of masts at this distance. Smoke should easily be visible though.

Aerial Perspective
This is the tendancy for particles / vapour in the air to fade objects over distance. This varies greatly, but on extremely clear days mountains can be seen across the sea that are over 100km away. I read just now on a web site that in San Diego, it's sometimes possible to see San Clemente Island, which is 123Km from the coast. Also, in Malaga, Spain, I've often seen the Atlas Moutains in Africa, which must be a good 150km away. They say that 200KM is about the limit, though.

So we can say that if you have good optics (with powerful magnification), and it's a very clear day, then you should be able to pick the upper parts of a ship up to 20KM away - if you knew where to look!

[Gammel]

very interesting info, jason210!
Can you tell us something about nighttime, too?

Anyone has infos about those "Nachtgläser" Binocular.

Herbert Werner (Iron coffins) also wrote about them in his book.
He wrote that he tooked one of these special binoculars from the boat to watch an airraid on a german city at night while his boat was in port. Anyone remember that passage? I guess that bombed city was quite far away...

[jason210]

Originally Posted by Gammel

very interesting info, jason210!
Can you tell us something about nighttime, too?

No, not really. At night time the physiological aspects of night vision play a part, in addition to the things I mentioned above, and this depends on many factors and varies from person to person and so I guess it would be difficult to quantify. My night sight is crap (too much SHIII!), but my wife can see like a hawk at night!