Will SW use magnetic north for compasses?

[Fearfactor]

As many people know, IL2 has always used true or 'geographical' north for the compass to point to. But of course it's unrealistic as compasses point to the magnetic north. This was due to making the game engine more simplified and therefore one less thing to process, not that it could not have been done for IL2 a long time ago. It is a lot more complicated to have the magnetic north modeled, no doubt. Since there is a good bit of variation that changes as one moves east to west. Anyone know if SOW will use magnetic or true north??

[Skoshi Tiger]

I don't know, but it would cause all sorts of problems.

First you would need to take into account the magnetic variation for each map and time period. Magnetic variation changes slightly over time, so to be meaningful you have to model that change over the period covered by the sim.

Charts should be marked with the amount of variation and how much change would occour each year.

If you were going to that detail you'ld probably want to magnetic deviation for individual aircraft and have compas correction cards displayed in the cockpit.

How useful this sort of information would be in the sim would be debatable.

If your flying as the RAF, I'm not sure how much map and compass work will be needed, Hopefully we'll be vectored onto our targets by radio then we'll just take fixes on the local pubs (landmarks) and follow the roads and railway lines back to base!

Cheers!

[AndyJWest]

I think that given what Oleg (or was it Luthier?) recently said about the way SoW models a spherical Earth, modelling the difference between magnetic and true north shouldn't be that difficult. Whether it is that significant on a relatively small map like the BoB one is arguable though - magnetic compasses are prone to larger errors than the minor differences you will see over the map, I'd have thought.

[proton45]

I've been hoping that the stars would be modeled correctly...I think it could add a level of realism, if you had to dead reckon by the night sky on long bomber missions.

[BadAim]

It's all speculation at this point but I'd sure think so, given the attention to detail of the rest of the project.

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by proton45

I've been hoping that the stars would be modeled correctly...I think it could add a level of realism, if you had to dead reckon by the night sky on long bomber missions.

lol ... well many long range bombers from the period had sextants

but to be actually useful they would need to include an astronomical almanac/ephemeris with star positions for the entire war

i somehow doubt many people would bother learning astral navigation plus very few missions will be long enough to actually need it

[AndyJWest]

i somehow doubt many people would bother learning astral navigation

Allied navigators were certainly taught it:

From here: http://aafcollection.info/items/deta...1!title!up!100

[Rodolphe]

...

And You'll probably need to get the appropriate Air Almanac (A.P. 1602)









...

[jameson]

Surely it was cloudy and over cast on July 11th 1940?

[Blackdog_kt]

For simulator purposes, astral navigation can be as easy or as complicated as you want to make it. If you want to calculate latitude then of course you'll need a sextant and an astronomical almanac. If you just want a rough confirmation of your instrument headings, then you just have to locate Polaris.

Truth is, variations in star positions over time are somewhat small. It's important if you want to calculate latitude, but not so much if you want a rough estimate of your heading.

If i were to make an educated guess, i'd say that astral navigation will not be a big issue in the sim. In late war scenarios where long range bombing is commonplace there will be electronic navigation equipment, so astral navigation will probably be a backup in case of instrument failure. For the early war scenarios like BoB, the distances are small enough that they can probably be navigated by maps and compass.

I still would love to see a realistic representation of the night sky and some navigation tools to draw up flight plans (something like the tools that Silent Hunter 3 had for example), but i don't think it's going to be a complete necessity right from the start of the new simulator's life. If we get an accurate night sky, then maybe a 3rd party/community mod will give us the tools to use it as well...after all most of the navigation and plotting tools in SH3 were also community made additions and then they were integrated in an official patch.

This is what i'm hoping for, if SoW is as moddable as we've been led to expect then Oleg's team only has to make an accurate engine (granted, it's a big "only" and not a small task) and we can make additional tools ourselves to "plug in" to it. Imagine for example the potential use of scripting. You could write a navigator script that calculates these things for you and adds some error to make it interesting and realistic. Then, you call up the command/radio menu and order your navigator to give you position data, latitude, or wind drift. The script calculates it, adds maybe a 2%-3% error and pops up a message on your screen with the answer...and the best thing is that if the engine can support things like that, we will be able to do most of it ourselves and distribute it just like we do with missions and skins, no need to tax the development team futher.