The "clearest" thunderstorm in history?

[DataKing]

Greetings and salutations,

I recently downloaded the 5.2 and 5.3 upgrades, and re-started my campaign as the Germans. (Btw, I am glad to see the unit cost bug fixed...I had WAY too many units before ).

After creating my core and support units (taking quick notice to see that it was a defensive mission vs. the Poles) I went to the deployment screen and began to set up units. I noticed that I had excellent visibility (reaching to the edge of the map when the terrain permitted) so I figured it was a clear day in Poland.

Imagine my surprise when I started the battle and found that I was in the middle of a thunderstorm! I was even more surprised to find my visibility range was 255! That's nearly 13 klicks (approximately 8 miles for us Americans).

Am I doing something wrong? Has anyone else encountered this, or is it just a weird glitch? BTW I did remove my MECH and STEEL files before installing the upgrades.

Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you.

[Jeff Norton]

European weather can get a little weird at times...

No, it seems you did okay. I installed it this weekend for a buddy and did the same. It seems okay, but his hardware is better than mine and FASTER!!!

You may want to delete the STEEL.PFT file. It does cause some strange problems... It will be recreated when you start the game.

-Jeff

[ddearing]

I also had this happen, but playing as the Soviets. The scenario was at 0300 in a thunderstorm.
I would suspect that the visibility calculation is unsigned, so we're really seeing a -1 (which is 255 interpreted as a signed number) being generated.

[hnh3_sp]

Is this fixed in v7? I am just curious, as it still happens in 6.1 (just had a 255 vis sandstorm <img src="biggrin.gif" border="0"> )

[skukko]

I think you have just had bad luck. I just tested 4 generated battles in differend fronts and this weather value of 6 (-thunderstorm/sandstorm/ anystorm) did randomly set visibility at noon to 6-14 in 7.11. So I'll guess its fixed, or then I had better luck <img src="wink.gif" border="0">

mosh

[Larry Holt]

Paul Vebber has said before that weather and visibility have been decoupled. People were complaining that in ver 5 visibilities were too low too often.

For now weather seems to effect ground movement rates but not visibility. Ver 7 does not address this. Its cleaned up OOBs and a new mech.exe that eleminates some MC bugs.

I have never seen a 255 vis but I suppose its possible.