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"Thick Haze" question


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I was fooling around with the mission editor and setup some simple missions to test out U.S and Syrian tank capabilities. Basically 4 M1 abrams tanks (one platoon) against 20 T72s (two companies of Republican Guards armor) on a flat desert maps at various ranges beginning at 1000, 1800 and 2800 meters. The skill level for both side was set at "typical".

Under clear conditions, whether at night or day, the results are as expected, the US tanks usually wipe out all the Syrian tanks in a few minutes with little casualties, with better results at long range and at night.

However, when the weather is set to "thick haze", the results are totally different, the Syrian tanks are able to approach to close range before being spotted, allowing the Syrians with their 5:1 superiority to wipe out the US force while losing only 1/3 to 1/2 of their force.

So what is "thick haze" supposed to represent? "fog"?, "sand storms"?

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Well, I can't say for certain what "Thick Haze" is supposed to represent in-game, but I can tell you what it means to me IRL.

In the high desert, where humidity is always low, it's not something you'd really ever experience. But anyone who has spent time in a high temperature, high humidity area, especially coastal areas that experience temperature inversions, can tell you all about thick haze.

In hot air, when the humidity gets up above 90% and little or no wind, you can get a situation where the air becomes supersaturated with moisture. This really cuts down long range visibility -- everything just sort of gets swallowed up by a grey-white mist. It's kind of similar to a light fog, but less substantial and the effect is more subtle at first. Fog seems substantial; you notice it the second you see it. Haze just sort of gradually makes everything get more and more blurry and washed out, until everything merges in to an indistinct grey mass.

The thick, hot air can also create unusual optical effects, not unlike mirages. Haze can be deadly to pilots; it blurs and distorts the horizon. Many a General Aviation pilot has flown into IFR conditions created by haze without really realizing it, and done a controlled flight into terrain.

No sure if the above helpful, but anyway, that's what the term "Thick Haze" means to me. In game effects as described sound plausible. I also imagine the effects of something like a smoky pall from a large fire (whole town burning, or a forest fire), might be pretty similar.

Cheers,

YD

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One supposes when you're close to the Damascus megalopolis with the Mediterranian nearby the combination of population center air pollution and humidity may drastically cut visibility sometimes, just like it does when a July low pressure system settles over the Boston or Phoenix area. Water-soaked hot air full of particulates. Doesn't sound like it would much help your fancy IR display... or your respiratory tract!

Ah, to live someplace where you're unfamiliar with dirty muggy city air. Sounds like a dream smile.gif

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While in Lybia in the desert we had once some "moderate bad weather", heavy overcast and about a force 6 wind. Visibility dropped seriously. Though you could see probably about 1000 mtrs or even more, everything further off then 500 mtrs was seriously blurred. You also really didnt want to look into the wind, without some good goggles.

Lighting also dropped a lot, more then you would expect, as the sand blocked a lot of sun.

I easily can imagine a force 8 or higher wind dropping visibility much further.

I never heard of fog conditions around that area, I would think the water temperature/air temperature/moisture ratio would prevent that. But I could be very wrong smile.gif .

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In the daytime scenarios I tried, under "Thick Haze", tanks would show up between 500-1000 meters. At that range, the Syrians hardly miss and their munitions really mangle up the Abrams.

Before reading Yankeedog's explanation, it had not occurred to me that "haze" might be an environmental condition on its own. This is what wilkipedia has to say about "haze" :

Haze is traditionally an atmospheric phenomenon where dust, smoke and other dry particles obscure the clarity of the sky. The WMO manual of codes includes a classification of horizontal obscuration into categories of fog, ice fog, steam fog, mist, haze, smoke, volcanic ash, dust, sand and snow. [1]

Sources for haze particles include farming (ploughing in dry weather), traffic, industry, forest fires and peat field fire.

Seen from afar (e.g. approaching airplane), haze appears brownish, while mist is bluish-grey. While haze formation is a phenomenon of dry air, mist formation is in humid air. However, haze particles may act as condensation nuclei for later mist droplet formation

800px-

Haze would appear to be more prevalent around urban areas although I guess it could also occur out in the desert with all the air pollution around these days. I also found this interesting tidbit:

Infrared (IR) imaging may also be used to penetrate haze over long distances, with a combination of IR-pass optical filters (such as the Wratten 89B) and IR-sensitive detector.
so should 'nt the Abrams fancy, schmancy IR targeting capability be able to see farther through the 'Haze?
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Huh. I guess what I've always thought of as "Haze" is technically "Mist" (i.e., obsuration due to very high water content in air), rather than "Haze" (obscuration due to high content very fine particulates in air), though it sounds like the practical effects for the purposes of a wargame like CMSF they're pretty similar.

Live and learn.

Cheers,

YD

YD

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I presume "haze" and "thick haze" in the game also includes mist, fog and sandstorms (based on Bertram's description), although it's hard to say since "fog" and "sandstorms" do not appear visually in the game (unlike CMx1). Hopefully, the visual effect will be added in future by a patch or module.

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I think BFC said they went for a modern day desert war first because it would let them front-load the coding they really needed in the game engine while giving them extra breathing room to tackle the periphiral stuff at a later date. CMSF has been all about getting weapons and ballistics and spotting and LOS up to snuff. Next title they should have the luxury to think about stuff like snowfall, fog and flowing water. Hopefully.

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Originally posted by MikeyD:

I think BFC said they went for a modern day desert war first because it would let them front-load the coding they really needed in the game engine while giving them extra breathing room to tackle the periphiral stuff at a later date. CMSF has been all about getting weapons and ballistics and spotting and LOS up to snuff. Next title they should have the luxury to think about stuff like snowfall, fog and flowing water. Hopefully.

I have no issue with the "modular" approach which seems to be the way all wargames are designed now. I am hoping that future improvements or features will be made available retroactively to update CMSF. Steve alluded to this possibility a few days ago when he mentioned that improvements to the core engine through patches may be made available separately from modules.

Third wire has adopted that approach, new features introduced in their more recent sim (War over Europe) were made available through patches to update their older titles (Strike Fighter:Project One & War over Vietnam), all of which share the same core engine.

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