Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: SKYNET-011 on May 24, 2010, 04:15:16 pm
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...that in all this time, nobody has started an underwater themed FS2 mod :P
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After you! :pimp:
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Yeah I don't think a mod like that would go too far, you know? :nervous:
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I toyed with it a couple of years ago--basically removing all the nebula poofs and just having blue distance fog--but then I found AquaNox (http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/aquanox) had already done it.
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...that in all this time, nobody has started an underwater themed FS2 mod :P
First problem: gravity. Movement in Z-axis would be controlled by buoyancy as well as pitch attitude and thrust.
Second problem: Attitude of ships. Basically, submarines typically stay upright. You would have to code the AI to mainly maneuver in pitch and yaw, keeping roll movements very subtle.
Third problem: surface of the ocean, as well as the bottom...
Summa summarum. It would be relatively easy to set up lighting and other stuff to look fairly like underwater setting. It would be a task of surprising difficulty to get the gameplay to work out to give the same illusion, rather than very slow spaceships in limited visibility.
Technically, with a working atmospheric flight model it should be trivial to change the density from air to water. Too bad we don't have an engine-included atmospheric flight model. Nuke has some script based atmospheric physics stuff, but I don't know what degree of completion it is in.
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i dont know, stick it in the pacific which has an average depth is 4.1 kilometers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific#Overview) and you have a lot of depth to work with, other oceans, perhaps not just terrestrially and you have a lot of scope for variety, using multiple sky boxes and SEXPs to flick between them might help with the visuals
...that in all this time, nobody has started an underwater themed FS2 mod :P
First problem: gravity. Movement in Z-axis would be controlled by buoyancy as well as pitch attitude and thrust.
Second problem: Attitude of ships. Basically, submarines typically stay upright. You would have to code the AI to mainly maneuver in pitch and yaw, keeping roll movements very subtle.
Third problem: surface of the ocean, as well as the bottom...
Summa summarum. It would be relatively easy to set up lighting and other stuff to look fairly like underwater setting. It would be a task of surprising difficulty to get the gameplay to work out to give the same illusion, rather than very slow spaceships in limited visibility.
Technically, with a working atmospheric flight model it should be trivial to change the density from air to water. Too bad we don't have an engine-included atmospheric flight model. Nuke has some script based atmospheric physics stuff, but I don't know what degree of completion it is in.
as for "realistic" handling, this is the FS2 engine so i would recommended doing as :v: and throw out the physics book and concentrate on making it enjoyable. computer managed buoyancy would counter gravity if you want some plausible technobable.
subs staying relatively upright is desirable on modern subs with free standing crews to prevent injury it is not a requirement from a pure navigational point of view so a one man sub with a pilot strapped in wouldn't have this problem and non fighters don't tend to roll in the FS engine especially when following waypoints, trial and error with waypoints ans setting 4-5 digit role times in the tables would nearly eliminate this. If you dont want the hassle and have a far future setting then just say that there is a gravity management system attached to the subs so crews can move freely even under the harshest maneuvers.
i suppose it all comes down to what ere you are thinking off, anything up to and including near future would be extremely hard work for the reasons Herra Tohtori points out, anything a good distance into the future would be doable and could be rewarding but would require near total conversion levels of work.
a surface could be done with a thin pof with the no collision flag set
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Well, you could just do it like how AquaNox did it. You could never reach the surface, though I don't recall how they did the upright-ness of subs. You could hit the bottom though, not that that's much of an issue now since BP has missions on the moon surface and whatnot, right?
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Well, you could just do it like how AquaNox did it. You could never reach the surface, though I don't recall how they did the upright-ness of subs. You could hit the bottom though, not that that's much of an issue now since BP has missions on the moon surface and whatnot, right?
The Babylon Project also has missions above an asteroid. They work...well, okay, but you have to be careful with them because the AI does not handle surfaces well.
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Yeah I can tell. The AI has enough trouble with Hecates and Arcadias. I can see them just bouncing off the surface repeatedly.
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...that in all this time, nobody has started an underwater themed FS2 mod :P
First problem: gravity. Movement in Z-axis would be controlled by buoyancy as well as pitch attitude and thrust.
Second problem: Attitude of ships. Basically, submarines typically stay upright. You would have to code the AI to mainly maneuver in pitch and yaw, keeping roll movements very subtle.
Third problem: surface of the ocean, as well as the bottom...
Summa summarum. It would be relatively easy to set up lighting and other stuff to look fairly like underwater setting. It would be a task of surprising difficulty to get the gameplay to work out to give the same illusion, rather than very slow spaceships in limited visibility.
Technically, with a working atmospheric flight model it should be trivial to change the density from air to water. Too bad we don't have an engine-included atmospheric flight model. Nuke has some script based atmospheric physics stuff, but I don't know what degree of completion it is in.
the flight model is adequate for flight simulation but combat is still a long way off. but its just a matter of coming up with an atmospheric model representative of the ocean, i believe it would have a fixed density top to bottom. though im not sure if pressure varies at all due to temperature. theres probibly a practical model available somewhere, and its probibly a simplified version of whats used for the atmospheric model. buoyancy wouldn't be that difficult to implement.
right now the flight model is kind of simple, only really using a single object. its also very linear right now, torque simulation is rather simple. control surfaces are not yet simulated. im gonna need to come up with a multiple object approach so that the model can be broken up into various elements, wings, fins, fusalage, ect, each with its own lift and drag characteristics, perhaps a degree of control to simulate control surfaces. these bodies could also be made buoyant. but it requires a major overhaul of the data structures in the current model.
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im gonna need to come up with a multiple object approach so that the model can be broken up into various elements, wings, fins, fusalage, ect, each with its own lift and drag characteristics, perhaps a degree of control to simulate control surfaces. these bodies could also be made buoyant. but it requires a major overhaul of the data structures in the current model.
You cannot be serious.
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I remember playing a bit of some old PC game featuring a craft that acted as both a submarine and surface craft (it sort of automatically transformed when you were running on the surface) that had an arcadey rail-shooter sort of feel, similar to that of StarFox. (I have no idea what it was called, though...something with "Tiger," maybe?) We could presumably already pull something like that off in the engine.
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can i ask why is it so important to have a realistic flight model?
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can i ask why is it so important to have a realistic flight model?
Because if you don't, then any underwater mission is just spaceflight in blue space.
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Mongoose, I believe you mean the game "Tigershark".
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can i ask why is it so important to have a realistic flight model?
Because if you don't, then any underwater mission is just spaceflight in blue space.
and FS is an arcade shooter in space and is one of many games that prove "realism" isn't necessary to be fun. OK so it would be FS with blue backgrounds, guess what if the story and the missions are executed well it will be a far superior mod to one with an atmospheric/aquatic modeling system and only mediocre story/mission design. yes these features would be cool, yes they would greatly expand on the engines applications, yes i would like to see them but frankly they are a nicety not a requirement
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can i ask why is it so important to have a realistic flight model?
Because if you don't, then any underwater mission is just spaceflight in blue space.
and FS is an arcade shooter in space and is one of many games that prove "realism" isn't necessary to be fun. OK so it would be FS with blue backgrounds, guess what if the story and the missions are executed well it will be a far superior mod to one with an atmospheric/aquatic modeling system and only mediocre story/mission design. yes these features would be cool, yes they would greatly expand on the engines applications, yes i would like to see them but frankly they are a nicety not a requirement
The main issue I would have with that that there would not be any "upright" position and the peculiarities of submarine combat would be largely unappreciated.
With a hydrodynamic physics model, this would largely be solved automatically, as the players (and AI when done right) would need to stay in upright position while traveling straight and level.
Secondly, calculating pressure would be trivial if you had a surface (and overlaying barometric pressure) on the ocean to start with. Below certain depth, ships' hulls would start taking damage. This would allow an unseen tactical perspective - ships with stronger hulls could go deeper than ships with lighter hulls. Submarines can't dive as deep as you might think. Take for example the large nuclear submarines - Ohio class has test depth of 240 metres, while its entire length is 170 metres. Akula class has test depth of 400 metres and length of 175 metres, German Type VII U-Boot from WW2 had test depth of 230 metres and calculated crush depth of 250-295 metres and total length of 67.1 metres.
So, in most environments, the bottom isn't so much of importance, but surface most certainly is.
Also, since a lot of submarine warfare used to be directed against surface vessels, you would lose a lot of that if there was no way to model the surface, and surface vessels accordingly.
Then there's the matter of detection systems. Active detection paints you as a target, while passive detection would basically mean listening noises carefully, and that would depend on how fast the targets are moving and how much noise they make while doing it. That would, technically, be doable with radar with blipping dots, detection distances etc.
Then there's the matter of boundary layers which cause problems to detection.
And what would you use as weapons? Torpedoes? With automatically locking torpedoes in FS2 style, that would very fast end up in repetitive and boring gameplay. Projectile weapons, under water? Blegh. Beams as lasers? Better but still unplausible.
As a whole, I think there are ways to cleverly mimic some of these things in FS2_Open engine, but it is not very well suited for this kind of thing.
Besides most of submarine combat happens BVR, and there aren't really any observation windows or cameras to be used either - it's done with just sonar data. If you wanted to do something in shallow enough water that sunlight actually illuminates things, then you would need to deal with stuff like how the surface waves affect the lighting, how currents move things, etc. etc. And modeling of marine animals...? :nervous:
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im gonna need to come up with a multiple object approach so that the model can be broken up into various elements, wings, fins, fusalage, ect, each with its own lift and drag characteristics, perhaps a degree of control to simulate control surfaces. these bodies could also be made buoyant. but it requires a major overhaul of the data structures in the current model.
You cannot be serious.
hydrodynamics and aerodynamics are exactly the same. the only difference is the density of the fluid.
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hydrodynamics and aerodynamics are exactly the same. the only difference is the density of the fluid.
Well, not exactly the same. Air typically doesn't undergo phase changes when temperature rises or pressure goes low enough. In proper hydrodynamics you need to take into account things such as cavitation, which happens when the water converts into water vapour - this happens on fast-spinning propellers and is basically the cause of the bubbles coming from them. It causes stuff like increased noise and loss of efficiency, and can even break propellers as the shockwaves from emerging and collapsing bubbles hammer the metal.
Then there's the extreme version, supercavitation, which is used for example here: VA-111 Shkval Supercavitating Torpedo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shkval)...
Water also is much less compressible than air, but yeah, with simple fluid dynamics water and air behave like any other fluid, only the density and other properties of the matter (like viscosity) vary.
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hydrodynamics and aerodynamics are exactly the same. the only difference is the density of the fluid.
Well, not exactly the same. Air typically doesn't undergo phase changes when temperature rises or pressure goes low enough. In proper hydrodynamics you need to take into account things such as cavitation, which happens when the water converts into water vapour - this happens on fast-spinning propellers and is basically the cause of the bubbles coming from them. It causes stuff like increased noise and loss of efficiency, and can even break propellers as the shockwaves from emerging and collapsing bubbles hammer the metal.
Then there's the extreme version, supercavitation, which is used for example here: VA-111 Shkval Supercavitating Torpedo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shkval)...
Water also is much less compressible than air, but yeah, with simple fluid dynamics water and air behave like any other fluid, only the density and other properties of the matter (like viscosity) vary.
so noted.
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can i ask why is it so important to have a realistic flight model?
It'd be kinda cool.
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can i ask why is it so important to have a realistic flight model?
Because if you don't, then any underwater mission is just spaceflight in blue space.
and FS is an arcade shooter in space and is one of many games that prove "realism" isn't necessary to be fun. OK so it would be FS with blue backgrounds, guess what if the story and the missions are executed well it will be a far superior mod to one with an atmospheric/aquatic modeling system and only mediocre story/mission design. yes these features would be cool, yes they would greatly expand on the engines applications, yes i would like to see them but frankly they are a nicety not a requirement
QFT.
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Realism is the cancer that is killing games.
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Realism is the cancer that is killing games.
QFT.
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You people are whimps! Realism done right is the best stuff out there!
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You people are whimps! Realism done right is the best stuff out there!
Yes. Because quite often, fact is stranger than fiction.
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If you think about it, FS is closer to underwater mechanics than it is to space mechanics. In space, you have no restistance, so FS completely failes its Newtonian check. But underwater, you would have to keep applying thrust to move at a constant velocity, and stopping would cause to you stop proceeding forward due to resistance over time. You could abstract the controls to the point that you don't have to worry about buoyancy, even with present day technology. You would simply use your elevators and rudders to move through the water, and it'd be easier to model than a flight sim because you don't even hardly have to worry about gravity. Face it, FreeSpace is closest to modeling underwater physics already than it ever was to space or flight. The same thrusters tech that's used in FS now could be used for attitude adjustments as well, eliminating the need for the wings possibly altogether. Then you just need some weapons that make sense underwater...
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Realism is the cancer that is killing games.
QFT.
tell that to fans of flight sims and racing games.
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Sims aren't exactly games a lot of the time :P
The hardest of the hard tend to forego any classical game elements altogether in favor of simply offering you missions to play and perhaps a dynamic simulated campaign.
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Realism is the cancer that is killing games.
QFT.
tell that to fans of flight sims and racing games.
Speaking as a lover of flight combat games and racing games, the best ones are the ones that prioritizes simple gameplay and predictable mechanics over hard simulation.
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Realism is the cancer that is killing games.
HATE HATE HATE HATE. :mad:
If you need me, you can find me sobbing in the corner with my dream-game.
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Mongoose, I believe you mean the game "Tigershark".
Yeah, I think that was it. I'm assuming it wasn't very popular, though, as there isn't even a Wiki page for it. :p
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Realism is the cancer that is killing games.
QFT.
You all must suck very, very, hard at actually flying, driving, and thinking like you're actually 'in the game'.
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The challenge or "thrill" you get from the game shouldn't have to come from the task of controlling the vehicle you are using, but rather from the level design or game balance.
When the controls are simple and predictable, immersion isn't broken so long as everything in the game is consistent. Realism has little to do with immersion. Oftentimes, when I think of true simulation games, I think of games that were very difficult to control, and often had awkward UI's and keyboard layouts, and the action seen on screen was more often than not, sub-par. To put it simply, the "true simulations" did little to simulate the feeling of actually being in an airplane, on a sub, or in a racecar.
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Well then it's ****ty game designers rather than realism that's killing these games then, huh?
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Have you ever even played games like, say, Grand Prix 2, RFactor or IL-2 series?
The vehicles are part of "level design" and "game balance" in simulators. And the challenge and thrill of playing IL-2 comes from shooting other pilots down and avoiding the same fate. Some enjoy ground attacks, but I prefer to fly against human opponents. It is a test of skill in controlling your airplane, making it do what you want it to do. Tricking your opponent into doing mistakes, while avoiding them yourself.
With a complex simulation underlying in the game world, there are millions of options you can do. If you have a working knowledge of flying in reality, it's easier to put in use in a simulation than a more arcade-y game. If you don't have a working knowledge of aviation, you can even get one from the game. And by that I mean basic understanding of how flight dynamics works.
The controls might be complex but, in reality, not any more than FreeSpace with its gazillion wingman and targeting commands. Basic fighter flying doesn't involve the more sophisticated features like level bombing target sight data inputs. But they're there in case you want to try your hand at them.
And I have to say there IS something rather nice about dropping 1000 kg bombs from 3000 metres dead on through the enemy carrier flight deck... I don't do it often because the climb to altitude and the flight to target and back takes simply too long - I prefer fighter action. But sometimes it's a nice change of pace, especially if you have wingmen on TeamSpeak flying bomber formation or escort fighters.
To me, realism has everything to do with immersion - assuming the game is supposed to be about real events, places or vehicles. Inaccuracies in physics like stupidly simplified flight model makes the game unplayable for me, with no real challenge on that department, and thus most likely boring. Part of the excitement in flying airplanes in IL-2 is how hard it can be and how much concentration it takes to just land some of the airplanes, nevermind lining up for a shot, hitting people while diving at 600 km/h, avoiding crashing into them, avoid overshooting them, avoid stalling, avoid ripping your wings off from excess speed or g-forces, avoid blackout, and most importantly, avoid letting people get into advantageous position for them.
It might seem like a lot of things to avoid, but it all blends into one continuity that makes the game (or simulation) fun, challenging and difficult to master.
I love it. I don't expect you to share my sentiment, but please don't drop statements like "realism is the cancer that is killing games" since it's simply false. Or do you consider abstract games like PacMan or Tetris the pinnacle of gaming?
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I'm not a fan of realistic games (or simulator games for that matter) either and I often feel that a lot of new games could be better if they didn't tried to follow the rules of the real world so strictly. Of course, the whole point of a simulator game is that they do exactly that. :p
I like how Herra instantly gets his panties in a bunch though :lol:
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****ty game designers is part of it, but its my personal opinion that ****ty Game design is at least partly a result on a game designer spending a better part of their development cycle creating an accurate physics and control scheme (or photorealistic graphics) rather than good level design, fine tuned game balance or an immersive story.
Realism in a game based on a historical time period (like IL-2) is fine.
However, when you start mixing realism with fantasy, things often go awry in the worst ways imaginable. And it isn't entirely the fault of the designers. Most development companies work to a tight schedule and do not have luxury of putting equal effort into all aspects of a game. It's my firm unwavering belief that when you are working on a game based on science fiction rather than science fact, it is more important to work on ease of play and story immersion, than a true-to-life physics model. (However, a physics model that at least makes sense to the game's universe is equally important, but mathematical perfection is not something they should be expected to strive for.)
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I like how Herra instantly gets his panties in a bunch though :lol:
Ah yes, panties. The immortal group of undergarments allegedly waiting for every opportunity to get in a bunch. We have dismissed that claim.
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whats really killing games is a lack of fresh ideas. the same molds are being used to cast new games. it really has nothing to do with the realism of game physics. you might have good graphics and no real gameplay, or you can have gameplay but horrible input code, you could have real physics and dry content. just because youre not into simulation (and its no different from not being into rpgs, fpses, or rtses) doesnt mean that simulation is killing games. thats like saying mmorpgs are killing games (they are of course :D ).
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I like how Herra instantly gets his panties in a bunch though :lol:
Ah yes, panties. The immortal group of undergarments allegedly waiting for every opportunity to get in a bunch. We have dismissed that claim.
I'm General Battuta and this is my favorite post on the forum.
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I like how Herra instantly gets his panties in a bunch though :lol:
Ah yes, panties. The immortal group of undergarments allegedly waiting for every opportunity to get in a bunch. We have dismissed that claim.
I'm General Battuta and this is my favorite post on the forum.
CLI..
Ok... that's a bit too far... :P
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Back on topic: Aquanox is an FPS disguised as an underwater sub simulator.
It's predecessor Archimedean Dynasty is the real deal: arcade simulation of advanced submarines in a post apocalyptic underwater setting with a plot and complex missions.
(Nowadays PCs are fast enough to play it well on Dosbox).
There are a number of concessions I'd make for gameplay:
-Subs should be able to dive a lot deeper.
-Subs should be faster and steered like planes. (There are such designs, heck you can make your sub a lot more nimble if you rely on the Bernoulli effect (lift) instead buoyancy).
-You could make bombers buoyant designs and fighters lift designs. The later have to keep moving to maintain depth, but are faster and can dive quicker. Buoyant designs can rise faster.
-Add thick armor, so subs could take a lot more pounding without being crushed.
-Actually fighters and bombers could altogether dispense with air if they used oxygenised liquid breathing systems - so could capships, but let's say people can't be immersed in the stuff too long or their skin dies (actually true), and capship needs time to "flood all compartments" with breathing liquid.
-Add some fluff about super cavitating drives (your "jumpdrive") on big carriers with smaller subs as escort.
-Add green lasers for close in zapping, gryojet guns for medium range spray & pray, super cavitating guns for long ranged sniping and torpedoes for long ranged volleys and super cavitating torpedoes as capship weapons.
-Normal torpedoes can be shot down. Same goes for supercavitating torps, but they're really fast.
-Normal torpedoes could be "plentiful" (half a dozen on a fighter, two dozen on a big bomber), while supercav torpedoes are big things, a fighter may carry two, a bomber six.
-Small supercavitating torpedoes could be the "new weapon" of the game...
-...that you can counter by super cavitating gun turrets...
-...or explosive mines since:
-Super cavitating weapons can be destroyed by shockwaves as disruption of their cavitation bubble results in massive forces acting on them. (These forces also arise normally, but only to the carefully designed cavitator surface while their bubble is intact). So "flak-burst" can protect a ship from these weapons.
-You could also deploy buoys that release a gas curtain. Then the attacker has to either dive below the curtain or use special multi-stage weapons that use conventional drives to cross the curtain. (At that moment they're slow enough to shoot down).
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Well... Anything doing supercavitation is essentially blind, deaf, dumb and damn noisy. Given that such object is by definition surrounded by air bubble(s) and that most underwater sensors sorta require direct contact to water such weapons would be mostly rocket style (which it is) with possibly some being wire controls. Unless something new has come with those.
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it seems military subs usually make use of both hydroplanes and buoyancy. research submersibles usually use thruster fans instead of hydroplanes simply because they dont go fast enough to really make use of them. then you have personal subs like deep flight which maintain positive buoyancy and require forward motion to stay submerged, but this is the kind of sub you would want to use as a fighter. currently they cant go nowhere near the depth of a navy sub. if paired with a liquid breathing medium, maybe that depth would be possible. the problem with breathing a liquid is that it would still need to contain oxygen, and completely ignore the fact (at least in the abyss) that oxygen under extreme pressure essentially becomes a narcotic.
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it seems military subs usually make use of both hydroplanes and buoyancy. research submersibles usually use thruster fans instead of hydroplanes simply because they dont go fast enough to really make use of them. then you have personal subs like deep flight which maintain positive buoyancy and require forward motion to stay submerged, but this is the kind of sub you would want to use as a fighter. currently they cant go nowhere near the depth of a navy sub. if paired with a liquid breathing medium, maybe that depth would be possible. the problem with breathing a liquid is that it would still need to contain oxygen, and completely ignore the fact (at least in the abyss) that oxygen under extreme pressure essentially becomes a narcotic.
...actually you're not quite correct either.
What divers have to deal with is partial pressure. To put it simply, if you have a gas mixtures with 70% X, and 30% Y, then the partial pressure of gas X at pressure Z is is 0.7 times pressure Z.
That's why you can dive deeper by putting ever more Helium into your mixture (essentially lowering the partial pressure of both nitrogen and oxygen).
However with liquid breathing mediums, all of that goes out the window:
The reason why gases under high pressure become narcotic or poisonous is thanks to the fact that more and more gas is present in the same volume. This result in more gas being dissolved into your blood for each breath.
With gases already dissolved in liquid this isn't a problem. Further more liquids are incompressible so the pressure that acts on them doesn't matter. If you have just the right amount of oxygen dissolved in your breathing medium, than the lungs can't extract more from them than what's already there. The amount of gas won't increase even if the pressure does.
...so no. The Abyss got it exactly right. (However they did get other things wrong, and the alien tech is just way out impossible).
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How'd this thread go on so long without mention of Blue Submarine No. 6?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arjslNGI-u0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XQDhz5Pdso
Sadly the better action scenes saddled with LQ and poor song...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4r5ohdPGmQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRE2TpOWI8w
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I would prefer the yellow submarine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNyJXG-M3Cs)... :P
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Mongoose, I believe you mean the game "Tigershark".
Yeah, I think that was it. I'm assuming it wasn't very popular, though, as there isn't even a Wiki page for it. :p
Assuming GOG doesn't have it that is... checking... nope. Until they do, use HOTU I guess unless you can find it on ebay.
EDIT removed HOTU directions;
You can find it on Amazon rather cheaply. ;)