Determine"Altitude" of various Fresh Water Lakes?

[Hevii Guy]

Thank-you, everybody, for the time that you've all taken on this!

What is it you are still trying to achieve that has not been achieved

I'd simply like to choose any ship (or any combination of ships) from my AI list and have them sail in my current area of engagement without having to open and edit scenario codes (or ai/model internal properties) everytime.

I'm actually quite surprised that nobody has brought this up earlier and that what seems to be such 'fundamental' functionality isn't a default. Is there a reason why it shouldn't be?

...without having to open and edit scenario codes...

Oh yeah, I just remembered: I'd still be left with having to edit the latitude and longitude coordinates of the ships in the scenario files...

[wlbragg]

OK, that is crystal clear. Hm, going to have to think about that. That is just not the way the AI works. By design it is setup to use a fixed route at a "starting" fixed location. You wanting to redesign the way the AI system works for some AI and have them start automatically near your aircraft.

Problem is the existing route is hard coded by lat/lon coordinates. If you move them using nasal I think they will teleport back to the predefined coordinate when the next leg is reached.

So you have to at least make a new scenario for all the AI you want to use and not assign a route (flight plan) to them. But then to get movement you have to reinvent the wheel and make a flight plan for them in nasal instead of using the AI manager.

This can all be done but the pain to gain is high when all you have to do now is just make a new scenario for any ship at the location you want with the elevation hard coded. Now, if indeed the class of AI that floats (ship, carrier, etc) all default to 0 elevation (or sea level) then maybe a note to the developer list to also include polling for lakes and not just a default of sea level is in order. Then you can at least eliminate the step of having to use nasal at all, just the normal AI scenario system.

[Hevii Guy]

...maybe a note to the developer list to also include polling for lakes and not just a default of sea level is in order...

This would be great ! However, it must be remembered that surface elevations of many bodies of water are dynamic as one moves downstream. Hence, it's very important to apply the coordinates which are actually under the keel at any time. Using a hard-coded elevation for most large lakes such as any of the Great Lakes (and, of course, the Bodensee as I've discovered), and certainly for all navigable rivers, wouldn't be realistic.

[wlbragg]

Hence, it's very important to apply the coordinates which are actually under the keel at any time

Right, thus the discussion of ground based AI and the possibility that they track the elevation as they follow their "flightplan" (route). If they do indeed do that then they should be able to pass that functionality to water based AI.

[Hooray]

I was under the impressoin that there's basically no terrain/elevation data available underneath any water bodies, i.e. that these are "modeled" using merely holes - is that wrong, i.e. are we actually able to run proper elevation queries (which would obviously be awesome, but also kinda unexpected) ?

[Hevii Guy]

...under the impressoin that there's basically no terrain/elevation data available underneath any water bodies...

It would be quite cool if bathymetry were functional (imagine the possibilities, "Yellow Submarine" et al!). However, I really don't think that this is the case. It seems to me that currently, all water surface levels are simply relative to Mean Sea Level.

[Thorsten]

I was under the impressoin that there's basically no terrain/elevation data available underneath any water bodies

No, there's nothing 'underneath' water surfaces, they are a landclass just like others - which however means that the water surface has an elevation, a roughness and all the other things any terrain type also has and respond to elevation queries the same way - you're just not getting water depth that way.

[wkitty42]

yeah, there's nothing under the terrain or the water... just take the UFO for a flight and go under the world to see what's what

[Hevii Guy]

...just take the UFO for a flight and go under the world to see what's what...

AI ships, pretending to be submarines

* presently