Submarine module(s) with proper ocean floor maps

[upyr1]

Some submarine modules would be awesome especially if we get a proper ocean floor and improvements to the asw systems 

[Northstar98]

DCS already has a semi-accurate depth map, and last time I checked, underwater transparency modelled too (though fairly simplistic, nothing like say for instance, SH4).

As for submarine modules though? Personally, nah, the timescale between aircraft and submarines is just too large, though I'll admit this is a mission editing issue. Plus, any submarine would have to be incredibly simplified to the point that you might as well choose another game.

The other turn off for me, is that DCS is nowhere close to even getting the naval environment on the surface there, and probably won't within the next decade. 

And improvements to ASW systems (well, they'd need to start first) is probably 1/20th of the things you'd need to do before we get anywhere near to submarine modules, and I could probably write a book on the subject.

Edited December 31, 2021 by Northstar98

[bies]

Play Sonalyst's "Dangerous Waters" a few days. You will have same basic understanding of submarine and naval warfare and what needs to be implemented to make it worth the effort.

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

It's a case of balancing potential with reality. There's an audience for subsimming to be certain and I'm amongst them. There's an audience interested in ASW operations and I'm amongst them.

However, is that audience big enough to justify the time and potential performance overhead that would come with it? Too hard to say. It would be nice to see DCS branch out into other aspects of combat, but submarining may be out of the realm of practicality. Not possibility, of course it's possible but we shouldn't trouble ourselves with what is possible and think more about what is practical. You're going to have to create a load of new systems for the sim, render the sea floor in a much higher level of detail, and develop a much higher level of detail for water physics. This could all denigrate performance of the sim and ED's already seeming to reach the upper limit of its audience's willingness to put up with system demands. No amount of "Just deal with it or upgrade" from the usual suspects will change that.

Plus, the Early Alpha model will not work on a submarine module. While a Viper can be used just fine without certain systems, a submarine needs all of its major systems to survive. This business model is pretty important to ED.

The final and most serious hurdle is classification; submarines see a level of classification even more stringent than fighters at times.

It's just not likely.

Edited December 31, 2021 by MiG21bisFishbedL

[upyr1]

10 hours ago, MiG21bisFishbedL said:

It's a case of balancing potential with reality. There's an audience for subsimming to be certain and I'm amongst them. There's an audience interested in ASW operations and I'm amongst them.

However, is that audience big enough to justify the time and potential performance overhead that would come with it? Too hard to say. It would be nice to see DCS branch out into other aspects of combat, but submarining may be out of the realm of practicality. Not possibility, of course it's possible but we shouldn't trouble ourselves with what is possible and think more about what is practical. You're going to have to create a load of new systems for the sim, render the sea floor in a much higher level of detail, and develop a much higher level of detail for water physics. This could all denigrate performance of the sim and ED's already seeming to reach the upper limit of its audience's willingness to put up with system demands. No amount of "Just deal with it or upgrade" from the usual suspects will change that.

 

Even if Eagle doesn't do naval modules, the water physics is something they need to improve over time. While I expect to see system requirements to improve quite a bit after ED introduces multi-core support and vulkan I think this would have to be something Eagle introduces overtime so that the system requirmets aren't calling for a cray. 

 

10 hours ago, MiG21bisFishbedL said:

Plus, the Early Alpha model will not work on a submarine module. While a Viper can be used just fine without certain systems, a submarine needs all of its major systems to survive. This business model is pretty important to ED.

This is a quite valid point,  Eagle loves their early access and this could be a problem

 

10 hours ago, MiG21bisFishbedL said:

The final and most serious hurdle is classification; submarines see a level of classification even more stringent than fighters at times.
It's just not likely.

 

this would be a problem with newer submarines I think we would be limited to WWII boats if we get any

13 hours ago, bies said:

Play Sonalyst's "Dangerous Waters" a few days. You will have same basic understanding of submarine and naval warfare and what needs to be implemented to make it worth the effort.

will that work on Windows 10 or 11?

[Northstar98]

1 hour ago, upyr1 said:

Even if Eagle doesn't do naval modules, the water physics is something they need to improve over time.

While it's something I would very much love to see, as well as improved physics in general for naval units (and ground units, hell and even aircraft, especially AI ones) why do they need to do it?

One thing I was excited about with the Hornet is that it was originally stated to get the Mk40 Destructor and Mk63 Quickstrike naval mines (both bottom, influence mines, converted from Mk83s, but earlier this year they dropped from the list (despite the Mk 40 still having its model present in the files) and all we got was 'subject to change' which, being honest, was pretty irritating, especially when these are weapons the Hornet should have, and they were on the list for years.

1 hour ago, upyr1 said:

While I expect to see system requirements to improve quite a bit after ED introduces multi-core support and vulkan I think this would have to be something Eagle introduces overtime so that the system requirmets aren't calling for a cray.

AFAIK, DCS already uses multi-core support for sound, so there's that. But as for performance, underwater stuff is more or less just flight stuff but more simplified, a simplistic flight model would do. Just right now there isn't anything.

Active SONAR works in basically the same way as RADAR, but if you want to take into account covergence zones, thermoclines and surface ducts (mostly dealing with essentially refraction and reflection) I'm guessing these will have to be raycasted, but I'm not a developer.

1 hour ago, upyr1 said:

this would be a problem with newer submarines I think we would be limited to WWII boats if we get any

I'd say WWII is doable, you can even find handbooks on torpedo attacks, such as this one. But even with these, DCS has a lot of catching up to do before it gets close to something like SH4.

1 hour ago, upyr1 said:

will that work on Windows 10 or 11?

Straying thin to 1.15 but if it doesn't there's Cold Waters, and you'd at least need to do something akin to Cold Waters for submarines in DCS. Here's its manual, if you're interested.

[upyr1]

2 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

Straying thin to 1.15 but if it doesn't there's Cold Waters, and you'd at least need to do something akin to Cold Waters for submarines in DCS. Here's its manual, if you're interested.

I'll look on the web. for that answer I saw a bundle with it free

2 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

I'd say WWII is doable, you can even find handbooks on torpedo attacks, such as this one. But even with these, DCS has a lot of catching up to do before it gets close to something like SH4.

That is an understatement for sure. The question though is if there is enough interest and what would people expect to see. With the size of the maps, its obvious a player won't be able to simulate a full patrol the fun part would be the convoy raids. 

[Silver_Dragon]

Ocean floor maps was implement some years ago on the TDK (Terrain Develop Kit) to add realistic floor maps.

[upyr1]

3 minutes ago, Silver_Dragon said:

Ocean floor maps was implement some years ago on the TDK (Terrain Develop Kit) to add realistic floor maps.

I wasn't sure what the status was on the ocean floor

[Raisuli]

I'd love to see AI submarines with accurate weapon models.

Actual submarine combat is the most boring thing ever done.  Even if the mission plan is to pop off a few tomahawks there's just not that much to do but get launch authorization and push a button.

You can spend days setting up a shot on another submarine and for the few minutes the fish are running it can get a little tense, but otherwise a lot of coffee to stay awake.

Aft of the tunnel it's just another day and a few EOT bells; depending on the boat you might get to shift pumps.  Oh, sonar might pitch a fit if you spin the throttles to fast.  That gets exciting.

In the end you get wet or you don't.

 

[Silver_Dragon]

Has some key with require implement to get a realistic submarine (player or / and AI) simulation.
-A realistic sonar system and sound environment.
-A propper DM on ships with compartiment flodding and fire effects.
-Prooper torpedo funtionality, and propper sonar sensors.
- A realistic Naval AI.
- Rebild all naval formations and taskings.
- And many more.

As I talked on the future, that will required a exclusive Naval team with build that features. The actual naval environment has zero realistic and require building first some contruction blocks before run them. If ED like rise DCS to the level of some old WW2 and Modern older simulators has a big road to make first and many hours develop them with specialized personal (also similar to the DC enginiers).

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA319320.pdf

Edited December 31, 2021 by Silver_Dragon

[IcedVenom]

Submarines require many crew members to operate optimally and they're very complicated. Proper submarine simulations are out there but they're not easy and I don't think video games really suit submarines unless you really "gameify" them.

Edited January 2, 2022 by IcedVenom

[cfrag]

On 12/31/2021 at 5:30 PM, Northstar98 said:

underwater stuff is more or less just flight stuff but more simplified, a simplistic flight model would do.

That sound you almost hear? That's a couple of thousand hydro-engineers giving aerospace engineers a very dirty look. Most boats float because of buoyancy, a function that is mostly influenced by the water's salinity, temperature and density which submarines use to their advantage by equalizing their total density using water tanks to 'float' at a certain depth. Airplanes fly because of aerodynamic lift that they generate with a differential of air flowing over/under their wings or (in case of helicopters) rotors. There is very little commonality between those two models except that the downward force must match the upward force for an equilibrium. If you think that's sufficiently similar -- it would be a bit like saying brain surgery can be done by following simplified chess rules because they both somehow involve the brain. 

So, yes - I'm all for a good water model in DCS for realistically simulating the behavior of ships and (eventually) submarines. It's anything but an 'underwater flight model' though: it would require an enormous investment into DCS's core.

[Northstar98]

10 minutes ago, cfrag said:

That sound you almost hear? That's a couple of thousand hydro-engineers giving aerospace engineers a very dirty look. Most boats float because of buoyancy, a function that is mostly influenced by the water's salinity, temperature and density which submarines use to their advantage by equalizing their total density using water tanks to 'float' at a certain depth. Airplanes fly because of aerodynamic lift that they generate with a differential of air flowing over/under their wings or (in case of helicopters) rotors. There is very little commonality between those two models except that the downward force must match the upward force for an equilibrium. If you think that's sufficiently similar -- it would be a bit like saying brain surgery can be done by following simplified chess rules because they both somehow involve the brain. 

So, yes - I'm all for a good water model in DCS for realistically simulating the behavior of ships and (eventually) submarines. It's anything but an 'underwater flight model' though: it would require an enormous investment into DCS's core.

 

On 12/31/2021 at 4:30 PM, Northstar98 said:

But as for performance, underwater stuff is more or less just flight stuff but more simplified, a simplistic flight model would do. Just right now there isn't anything.

You missed that bit.

[cfrag]

6 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

You missed that bit.

My apologies - I read this as meaning that a simplified flight model would suffice to model submarine operations, and we'd simply have to wait for subsurface modelling and then could use a simplified flight model under water. I was trying to make the point that a flight model is wholly unusable for submarine vehicle modelling.

Edited January 2, 2022 by cfrag

[Northstar98]

1 hour ago, cfrag said:

That sound you almost hear? That's a couple of thousand hydro-engineers giving aerospace engineers a very dirty look. Most boats float because of buoyancy, a function that is mostly influenced by the water's salinity, temperature and density which submarines use to their advantage by equalizing their total density using water tanks to 'float' at a certain depth. Airplanes fly because of aerodynamic lift that they generate with a differential of air flowing over/under their wings or (in case of helicopters) rotors.

There is very little commonality between those two models except that the downward force must match the upward force for an equilibrium. If you think that's sufficiently similar

I think it's sufficiently similar for the context of my quote, unfortunately, you seem to have completely missed it:

"But as for performance, underwater stuff is more or less just flight stuff but more simplified, a simplistic flight model would do. Just right now there isn't anything."

I'm saying we could do what AI flight models have; a simplified model that only accounts for the very basics of forces (note I don't mean just port over AI SFMs from aircraft and just apply it to a submarine, just in water but something in the same ballpark of complexity) as right now naval units don't even have that.

And obviously buoyancy is different to lift.

EDIT: saying a "simplistic flight model" was probably not for the best on my part. I meant this could have similar complexity to AI simplified modelling, but right now they don't even have that. Ultimately the modelling would be somewhat similar (definition of basic forces, moments and momentum).

Edited January 2, 2022 by Northstar98

[Silver_Dragon]

3 hours ago, IcedVenom said:

Submarines require many crew members to operate optimally and they're very complicated. Proper submarine simulations are out there but they're not easy and I don't think video games really suit submarines unless you really "gameify" them.

 

Thats always, has some modern and ww2 simulators with someone like see a more realistic aproach into DCS. About hard to learn, has always at a new module, start to learn the basic and the details of the new environment.

And of course the synergies, a air module centred on a ASW environment start a complete gameplay on the simulator.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Silver_Dragon

[Northstar98]

2 minutes ago, cfrag said:

My apologies - I read this as meaning that a simplified flight model would suffice to model submarine operations, and we'd simply have to wait for subsurface modelling and then could use a simplified flight model under water. I was trying to make the point that a flight model is wholly unusable for submarine vehicle modelling.

You're alright no worries.

In my amended post above (was supposed to be an edit, not sure what happened), I've hopefully highlighted what I meant.

Of course modelling submarines exactly like an aircraft would be incorrect. The "flight model but simplified" bit was more referring to things our flight models do that wouldn't be applicable or necessary for a submarine model (such as departures from controlled flight.)

A simplified model where the forces are actually considered, both from changes in buoyancy and forces from control surfaces would absolutely be sufficient for me, and even submarine simulators don't go into the details you brought up.

But right now there's no modelling of any kind, submarines just move vertically up and down when changing depth (when in reality it's more akin to flying underwater), it doesn't account for momentum properly, or drag. 

[upyr1]

4 hours ago, IcedVenom said:

Submarines require many crew members to operate optimally and they're very complicated. Proper submarine simulations are out there but they're not easy and I don't think video games really suit submarines unless you really "gameify" them.

 

 

1 hour ago, Silver_Dragon said:

Thats always, has some modern and ww2 simulators with someone like see a more realistic aproach into DCS. About hard to learn, has always at a new module, start to learn the basic and the details of the new environment.

And of course the synergies, a air module centred on a ASW environment start a complete gameplay on the simulator.

 

I always figured that a DCS Naval mod should have you in the captain's chair so you can get updates from the different stations and are focused on command instead of micromanaging everything 

Edited January 2, 2022 by upyr1

[Northstar98]

Just now, upyr1 said:

I always figured that aDCS Naval mod should have you in the captain's chair so you can get updates from the different stations and are focused on command

For a submarine you only need manoeuvring, fire-control and SONAR anyway. The latter would probably be the most difficult, but it's going to be simplified anyway.

[upyr1]

 

On 12/31/2021 at 2:15 PM, Silver_Dragon said:

Has some key with require implement to get a realistic submarine (player or / and AI) simulation.
-A realistic sonar system and sound environment.
-A propper DM on ships with compartiment flodding and fire effects.
-Prooper torpedo funtionality, and propper sonar sensors.
- A realistic Naval AI.
- Rebild all naval formations and taskings.
- And many more.

As I talked on the future, that will required a exclusive Naval team with build that features. The actual naval environment has zero realistic and require building first some contruction blocks before run them. If ED like rise DCS to the level of some old WW2 and Modern older simulators has a big road to make first and many hours develop them with specialized personal (also similar to the DC enginiers).

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA319320.pdf

 

Agreed on all of that.  Eagle needs to set up two teams- and have them do whatever is necessary to make some high quality Naval and land modules 

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

6 hours ago, IcedVenom said:

Submarines require many crew members to operate optimally and they're very complicated. Proper submarine simulations are out there but they're not easy and I don't think video games really suit submarines unless you really "gameify" them.

 

I think Upyr1 and others may have Silent Hunter 3 & 4 in mind for this. It'd certainly be interesting, but my overall question will always be about the overall performance of the software in the wake of such an addition. 

The real hurtle, which was mentioned earlier, is time scale. You abuse the hell out of time acceleration in the Silent Hunters for good reason. Coastal defense boats would be the natural choice, think Gotlands for a modern era and Type II's for WWII. Even then, the time scale is going to be an issue and (much like the idea of adding playable infantry operations) could be just a bridge too far.

[upyr1]

3 hours ago, MiG21bisFishbedL said:

I think Upyr1 and others may have Silent Hunter 3 & 4 in mind for this. It'd certainly be interesting, but my overall question will always be about the overall performance of the software in the wake of such an addition. 

The real hurtle, which was mentioned earlier, is time scale. You abuse the hell out of time acceleration in the Silent Hunters for good reason. Coastal defense boats would be the natural choice, think Gotlands for a modern era and Type II's for WWII. Even then, the time scale is going to be an issue and (much like the idea of adding playable infantry operations) could be just a bridge too far.

Right now we don't have enough ocean in DCS for a proper patrol, so as I said earlier a well built mission would need to focus on the combat and not the patrol 

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

Then it's not a very faithful recreation of the submarining experience, really.

[upyr1]

1 hour ago, MiG21bisFishbedL said:

Then it's not a very faithful recreation of the submarining experience, really.

we would need maps with more ocean then. Though I think combined with other ship and aircraft modules I think it could be a good fight.