Fabulous ship choice David. Are you able to visit the Aurora for research? Are you able to show some progress shots?

The Battle of Cape Spada is not as well known to Australians as Sydney's loss at the hands of Kormoran. On paper it appears as if the Italian cruisers had a superior position. The destroyers operating with Sydney couldn't reach the Italians with their guns, leaving 16 6" guns on the Italian side with which to counter Sydney's 8 6" guns. I've come to believe though that in reality the Italians were at a considerable disadvantage. The Italian cruisers had been built as a response to the large French destroyers with the emphasis on speed at the expense of protection. These cruisers were barely armoured and very vulnerable. In addition they were unstable gun platforms with serious roll issues making fire control difficult. To top it all off getting the range was made difficult by shells of variable weight, variable charges and guns prone to jams. On the day the Italians attempted to use their speed advantage but Sydney's fire was accurate, even switching targets a number of times during the engagement and scoring hits on both the Italian ships with fatal results for Colleoni.

Regarding the sea surface, I believe that rendering ocean accurately is just about the hardest thing you can do in this hobby. My results are nothing more than many hours of experimentation with shader settings. I am still not happy with the look of it (particularly close to the camera). I have found that shaders which look OK on a flat plane often look awful on a wavy mesh (the mesh I'm using is the same one I created in trueSpace years ago). I'd also like to be able to animate my oceans but this is impossible at the moment. I envy those with plugins like dreamscape (and the Max to use it with).

What are you using for rendering? If it is Kerkythea I would be happy to share my test scene with you.