Sim8 feedback

[Dr.Sid]

Here is the new version:

http://subsim.questions.cz/sim8.zip

New features:
- periscope
- map
- new sky with daytime changes
- better autopilot
- trim tanks
- better terrain (glitches mostly fixed, basics of texturing scheme)
- some other minor invisible stuff
- 3 subs: Akula, 688, S-class.

Other important facts:

The terrain texture is just one tile borrowed from some user mod for Wings over Europe I found on my HD. I will give proper credits soon. I hope I could borrow the whole tileset, or the author, because it's great.

There are 6 tiles of terrain included, covering Gibraltar to Alps. If you zoom the map you will see that resolution of these areas is better. That means terrain is available there. In places not covered by the terrain tiles there is flat sea bottom with depth 100m.

The S-class has no movable parts at the moment. Also the physics modeling is still same for all the boats.

Sun moves on the sky at correct speed. If you want to play with sunsets, you can make it 60 times faster or move it backwards, check included controls.txt how to do it. This combines with normal time compression.
Btw. the screenshot with mountains and a sunset was done in the Alps.

Also note that 688 is right behind the Akula. Here is why: jump into the Akula's scope, turn back the scope, and sail straight away. At some distance you will be able to see 688 vanish behind the horizon, in other words, roundness of the Earth. With increased view distance you can enjoy whole Mallorca hiding under the horizon.

Scope is washed at depth 65 feet or so. 60 is actual recommended PD.

Please report problems or any other feedback in this thread. I'm interested in FPS again, especially if they are much lower then the previous version (since sky rendering is quite raw at the moment).

[OneShot]

Just gave it a try and depending on my location I get close to 2000 FPS (like in the middle of the ocean) once I see land it drops to meager 700 FPS .. lol

A few suggestion from the top of my head ...

- A keystroke to close the MBT and thus have a state between Dive/Surface
- An in-game clock, maybe set to Zulu for the ship (and if you really wanna go overboard another one set for the actual time at the location).

I'll see if I can come up with something else after playing around with it a bit.

[Dr.Sid]

I plan these controls for the MBT:
- open/close vents
- low pressure blow (slow, only from shallow depth, needs vent mast raised, which could be automated).
- high pressure emergency blow (any depth, consumes HP air).

[goldorak]

I have only one suggestion : make visibile the magnification (zoom) factor in the periscope view. How about enabling night vision ? :biggrin:
Oh and last thing please make the periscope visible on the akula and 688 models.

[Dr.Sid]

I have only one suggestion : make visibile the magnification (zoom) factor in the periscope view. How about enabling night vision ? :biggrin:
Oh and last thing please make the periscope visible on the akula and 688 models.

Yeah yeah .. all planed. In fact I think scope magnification should go in steps, and AFAIK 688 has only 2 steps.

[Zachstar]

Why use an addon tileset when you got the best sources for worldwide terrain? (SRTM)

[Dr.Sid]

SRTM is height only AFAIK.

Btw. some notebook intel chipsets does not like this version, I'm working on some fix.

[Zachstar]

Let me ask. Have you attemped loading a SRTM tile with a landsat overlay?

[Dr.Sid]

landsat is too huge. GTOPO30 height alone is 2gigs. That is 2 bytes per 500m. For color you need 3 bytes per 10 meters at least. Even land only would take just impossible amount of data. I don't run Google. Only way I see is to have tilesets and terrain-type map which will say which tile is used where, with possibility to replace SMALL areas with more specific tiles.

[Zachstar]

That is why you use a generalized (FS98 quality) resolution.with of course tile replacements in small areas.

heck even 50mb worth of data for height and 30MB for texture would give you ok looking mountains and general features. You do not need a TB worth of data for a subsim..

perhaps for the time being it may be just a better idea to use the water depth map (I assume you have that right? and get that working as the bottom layer before adding in the land later.

I will attempt to find out how you can get a low resolution global map.

[Shadows_Fall]

Doesn't work for me, every time I start it, it crashes.

[Zachstar]

Sid I have attached an image from FS98

FS98 happened before SRTM data could be filled and shown so they used older sources and still got some good effects.

For a subsim you really do not need much more than this. And therefore do not need much SRTM global data.

[Dr.Sid]

Doesn't work for me, every time I start it, it crashes.

What about some hardware/software info ?

Anyway try this version (exe only). The sky rendering is quite simplified in this version, but it helped one other user. It's the best I can give at the moment.

http://subsim.questions.cz/sim8a-exe.zip

[Shadows_Fall]

That works, but it's really jerky, and blurry.

System:

Microsuck Winblows XP PRO SP2
Intel Celeron 2.20 ghz
768 MB RAM
Intel 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Controller
Driver version: 6.14.10.4342
Driver date: 6/21/2005

[Molon Labe]

What about some hardware/software info ?

Anyway try this version (exe only). The sky rendering is quite simplified in this version, but it helped one other user. It's the best I can give at the moment.

http://subsim.questions.cz/sim8a-exe.zip

Crashes immediately on startup.

[Molon Labe]

Here is the new version:

http://subsim.questions.cz/sim8.zip

New features:
- periscope
- map
- new sky with daytime changes
- better autopilot
- trim tanks
- better terrain (glitches mostly fixed, basics of texturing scheme)
- some other minor invisible stuff
- 3 subs: Akula, 688, S-class.

Other important facts:

The terrain texture is just one tile borrowed from some user mod for Wings over Europe I found on my HD. I will give proper credits soon. I hope I could borrow the whole tileset, or the author, because it's great.

There are 6 tiles of terrain included, covering Gibraltar to Alps. If you zoom the map you will see that resolution of these areas is better. That means terrain is available there. In places not covered by the terrain tiles there is flat sea bottom with depth 100m.

The S-class has no movable parts at the moment. Also the physics modeling is still same for all the boats.

Sun moves on the sky at correct speed. If you want to play with sunsets, you can make it 60 times faster or move it backwards, check included controls.txt how to do it. This combines with normal time compression.
Btw. the screenshot with mountains and a sunset was done in the Alps.

Also note that 688 is right behind the Akula. Here is why: jump into the Akula's scope, turn back the scope, and sail straight away. At some distance you will be able to see 688 vanish behind the horizon, in other words, roundness of the Earth. With increased view distance you can enjoy whole Mallorca hiding under the horizon.

Scope is washed at depth 65 feet or so. 60 is actual recommended PD.

Please report problems or any other feedback in this thread. I'm interested in FPS again, especially if they are much lower then the previous version (since sky rendering is quite raw at the moment).

This version is running OK for me, about 60 fps. Terrain looks good, but an odd change in illumination occurs when viewing from directly above.

The scopes are working fine, except that I can't see the raised periscope masts of the other subs. :wink:

[Dr.Sid]

That's ok, mast are not there yet.
Molon Labe, you too have Intel graphics controller ?

Btw. if any of you two with crashes wants to cooperate send me PM, it would be best if it was someone from Europe, because of the local time.

[Dr.Sid]

That strange illumination is supposed to be reflection of the sun on the water. Since it's done per-vertex at the moment (since that is simple) and the mesh is VERY sparse, it only looks good from larger distances, so zoom out and you'll understand. Water will be completely redone in the future, so don't cry yet.
Anyway if you still don't understand, then maybe I don't understand .. send screenshot in such case.

[Molon Labe]

That's ok, mast are not there yet.
Molon Labe, you too have Intel graphics controller ?

Btw. if any of you two with crashes wants to cooperate send me PM, it would be best if it was someone from Europe, because of the local time.

Nope, nVidia

[goldorak]

Nope, nVidia

Try a different set of drivers maybe that will help.

[Dr.Sid]

Don't bother with drivers .. we are in phase when all mistakes are most probably mine.

[Bubblehead Nuke]

Yeah yeah .. all planed. In fact I think scope magnification should go in steps, and AFAIK 688 has only 2 steps.


A 688 search scope has more than 2. Then there is a 'doubler' that can be used with any of them to mag up even more.

But this is far in the future I am sure. There will be time for more research later.

Great job btw, but I am sure you are already aware of that

[XabbaRus]

Just had a play around with it. Much impressed. I'll try and get some more models as time goes by.

[Dr.Sid]

For people who had crashes with sim8, please try this version, it uses different approach for sky rendering (which will be used anyway as it is much faster).

http://subsim.questions.cz/sim8b.zip

The sky is not final yet, the night-time needs some work, all I want to know now if it crashes or not.

[goldorak]

For people who had crashes with sim8, please try this version, it uses different approach for sky rendering (which will be used anyway as it is much faster).



The sky is not final yet, the night-time needs some work, all I want to know now if it crashes or not.


I tried this version even though the last one didn't crash for me but I found a bug. I don't know if its because of the game or because of the graphics drivers.

So with triple buffering enabled, the fullscreen version is corrupt and when I alt tab back into windows desktop the screen of the simulation is completey black. This happens irrespective of antialising and anisotropic filtering settings.

With triple buffering disabled, no problem whatsoever. All works well with or without filters being enabled.

Edit : ok this bug happens also with the version 8 of comsubsim.

[Dr.Sid]

Pretty strange. Buffering is quite hidden from OpenGL .. and under no circumstances it should affect the resulting image. I guess yet another driver bug. What's your GFX card ? I should write these things down.

[goldorak]

Pretty strange. Buffering is quite hidden from OpenGL .. and under no circumstances it should affect the resulting image. I guess yet another driver bug. What's your GFX card ? I should write these things down.

Its an ATI x1950pro with drivers 7.10

[Dr.Sid]

I found some articles talking about bugs with this card and OpenGL games. At the moment all I can say is don't use triple buffering.

[goldorak]

I found some articles talking about bugs with this card and OpenGL games. At the moment all I can say is don't use triple buffering.

Sure, the game works beautifully without triple buffering. :smile:

[SpookyMuFu]

okay, I have a few suggestions for the scope view, a compass that shows scope direction would help a lot and something to show when the scope is pointing to the front of the sub would also help, when at PD you cant tell which way your looking or when you're looking infront of you.

[Dr.Sid]

okay, I have a few suggestions for the scope view, a compass that shows scope direction would help a lot and something to show when the scope is pointing to the front of the sub would also help, when at PD you cant tell which way your looking or when you're looking infront of you.

Sure .. is planed.

[Red Ocktober]

the sim looks like it's really progressing nicely... great looking scenery and models... i really liked the underwater view... looks quite believable...

i know that putting together something like this is no small task, but it looks as if you're well on your way to making something that'll be quite an experience...

kudos to all involved...

feedback...
everything ran fine... both sim8 and 8b... held constant 60 fps on a Geforce 7300gs, 2 Gig win vista system...

i know it's at an early stage... one suggestion that should be easy to implement immediately would be to close and disable periscope view below periscope depth... maybe add an 2d interior view for now (i read that you want full 3d walkaround interior eventually) with readouts for depth, deck ange, speed etc overlayed on 2d...

again, great job...

btw... what are you programming this in (i read c++ and OPenGL for the graphics, but are you using a game engine or gfx lib), and what model format are you using...

--Mike

[XabbaRus]

Sim8 has been working fine for me with no problems. What is the next stage? GFX seem to work, ship controls work too. ARe you going to refine ship control before moving on to operational side of things, eg sonar etc...?

[Dr.Sid]

Next state is possibility to build ships from parts and simulation which can handle it, which is almost done. This should allow different subs as well as surface boats.
Collisions come next, at least some rough version. And then we can shoot first torpedoes.
Meanwhile graphics still needs some work, especially particle system has to be finished (same basics are already done), so we can have cavitation, wake, splashes and explosions.
Then the other things .. sound, sonar, scripting language, ai, network layer and so on.

Red Ocktober: at the moment there is only OpenGL, OpenAL, OS api (win32 at the moment only) and I think I'll use libraries for ogg and jpeg. I do not use any so called 'game engine' if you mean that.

[Molon Labe]

Next state is possibility to build ships from parts and simulation which can handle it, which is almost done. This should allow different subs as well as surface boats.
Collisions come next, at least some rough version. And then we can shoot first torpedoes.

I would have expected stations/sensors before weapons. But, weapons do segue from physics modeling rather nicely. What will be the earliest way weapon effects are simulated? I was thinking something along the lines of some amount of abstract hull damage being flagged, which in turn results in a variable amount of flooding based on the current depth of the damaged platform. Cumulative flooding would have an effect on buoyancy (hence the physics modeling segue). You'd eventually have to compartmentalize the platforms so that you could cap cumulative flooding.

No matter how you do it though, any accounting of flooding will give you a far superior model to the damage/hit points model SCS uses.

[Dr.Sid]

We'll see .. I think the damage model is one of the lesser pains. Most subs would die from one torpedo anyway. But it really will not hard to beat SCS in this area.

[Molon Labe]

We'll see .. I think the damage model is one of the lesser pains. Most subs would die from one torpedo anyway. But it really will not hard to beat SCS in this area.

Yep. But it won't just be torpedoes eventually. Depth charges, guns, missiles, etc may come into play. And I'm sure you'll have skimmers eventually too.

And there are also collisions. It would be cool if the simulation knew the difference between the San Fran hitting a seamount at what... 600, 800 feet (?) and the same collision occurring below 1200 feet with a much quicker rate of flooding.

[Red Ocktober]

sounds like you've got a lot ahead of you Doc... but at least you seem to have a sound plan... straight OpenGL and c++ eh... impressive... i have an idea of how much work it must've been just getting this far...

i may be able to contribute a bit here and there as far as models go... an interior or two perhaps, if you decide to go that way... i am working on a sub sim of my own, but what i'm doing is geared in a different direction, and
depending on the subs, there shouldn't be any intersection...

anyways, continued good luck... be watching from the sidelines for now...


--Mike

[Red Ocktober]

for the Doc...

http://www.lighthouse3d.com/opengl/glsl/index.php?ogloverview

some stuff about shaders and OpenGL i found usefull...

--Mike

[Molon Labe]

Going back to graphics for a moment... are there any plans to make the opacity of the water variable (e.g. on sea state or depth/bottom type)?

[Dr.Sid]

Yes, absolutely. The way AI handles it could be tricky though. This has major effect on how sub is detectable from air. But I'm thinking about these too.

[XabbaRus]

Any more progress? Sid do you want some surface ships? I've been thinking that for the moment I might as well send you all my 3DS models I did for SCX and DW so you can have some stuff then later on I can look at refining my models with more moving parts.

[Dr.Sid]

I would use some surface ship in 3DS.
Progress is somewhat unclear at the moment, I'm doing plenty minor things now, nothing major, except maybe the nightvision (which is complete).

I think I'll finish the simulation during the weekend, and I must give some time to the map too (drawing symbols, showing depth, and drawing waypoints maybe).