Todd Wasson

Hi, folks. I hope you'll forgive the non-offshore boating nature of my first post here. I'm developing a speed boat simulator that some people here might find interesting:

http://www.performancesimulations.co...oat-simulator/

There's no demo yet. Hopefully in the next few months I'll have something people with a decent gaming rig can try for free and buy at a reasonable price.

I'd love to get some feedback from you guys. Let me know what you think, you might even influence how it develops! Feel free to leave comments and questions in this thread or on the web site itself. If there's no interest in smaller speed boats here, let me know and I'll move along to calmer waters.

Mods: If this isn't the right forum for this, let me know and I'll delete and repost this somewhere else (or you can just move it as you see fit). I figured the "general boating discussion" area might be as good a place as any.

Waterboy123

That's pretty cool, I'm not going to lie. If you rig a variable speed fan up in front of you so you also felt the effects of speed would be pretty wicked as well, especially in the winter months

Todd Wasson

Thanks

Ha, that's a clever idea with the fan and could be fun. Maybe with an Arduino you could control the fan speed by linking it to the speed of the boat.

phragle

iTrader: (3)

if your going to have the wipeout be blow overs, the boats should be cats, with the V's you coulld program in so rather interesting chine walk....

Todd Wasson

Well that's just it: There's nothing in the code at all that tells the boats to chine walk or blow over. It just happens as a result of the physics code naturally.

3pointstar

WOW this looks like a blast!!! excellent work!! I wish I had your talent!

Couple of wants --

1. (no offense to the outboard folks) Please let's have some IO's there. If I'm going to play I want to have the biggest meanest HP toys out there- especially since no gas cost is involved!!!
2. Roar of the engines
3. Gages including trim control a must
4. Wave and wind parameters-- something a little short of a hurricane would be acceptable
5. The use of variable speed fans would really add to enjoyment-- I've got the kids all lined up to spray water on me with a spray bottle
6. For us novices -- a docking exercise complete with the distractions of spilling drinks on the driver during the maneuvers, bumpers not deployed, a wife yelling to slow down
7. If you really want to get fancy -- putting the boat in the water and of course getting the boat centered on the trailer, smoking the tires up the ramp and of course dropping the transmission-- adding ramp rage would be over the top.

Again, I'm looking forward to the finished product

All the best

3pointstar

glassdave

iTrader: (1)

kinda like real life . . . just happens because of physics



Thats great! looking forward to seeing/playing a demo.

SkaterMike82

Is it going to have offshore V's and cats or only Allison/ Action Marine lake boats ? Would be great if it would have an offshore experience feeling of rough water and running against other boats, choosing different power plants, wheels, setups, graphics etc. Great idea.

Todd Wasson

GlassDave:
Yep! It just happens because of the physics. The first time it blew over and then later when it porpoised and chine walked without ever writing code to tell it to do any of that, I knew I was on the right track.

SkaterMike82:

Right now the plan is to do the initial release with small-ish outboards on calm water lakes/rivers only. If the demand is there and it's popular enough to pay me to do it full time, anything is possible. Without promising anything, I would like to do offshore boats too, but it's a technical leap to do so because of the wave/boat interaction. (F1 and jet boats on small channels would also be interesting). That might take months and months more work to come up with some fancy system to handle all that though. I've heard of guys spending two years doing nothing but water waves, and those don't even interact with any objects most of the time.

On top of that I'm not sure if that would work well with the Oculus Rift. People tend to get sick pretty easily in virtual reality, and having a boat rocking and jumping off waves constantly might be a recipe for dirty keyboards. Still though, it is something I'm interested in. The big offshore boats are super cool, and it'd be neat to maybe be in an enclosed cockpit out on the ocean with the engines screaming in your ears, even more so in virtual reality via Oculus Rift. With the inboards I could make use of the engine simulation stuff I've written too maybe, so you could choose the camshaft, intake/exhaust runner dimensions, and so on.

That'd be pretty wild, but it's a lot of work so we'll see how things pan out. After fourteen years developing simulations, I've learned that one can very easily turn a one or two year project into a ten year thing by getting a little too excited about every possible thing that could be done, so I've got to be somewhat careful and not get too carried away.

In short, it's a big job to do waves like that in a way that interact with the boat like I'd want them to where the boat influences the waves in return, so sadly that won't be something that comes along unless this sim takes off enough. Even then it'd be a maybe, we'll see. If you hit the "like" or "share" Facebook buttons on the page in the link, you might help me drum up enough interest to have a good launch. Seeing a lot of people enjoying the possibilities is good for the motivation too...

3pointStar: Great list, thanks! One quick note on guages: There are some working gauges on a couple of the videos on the page at least, including jack plate and engine trim. There was no way I'd make a boat sim without at least those, that's half the fun of driving a boat!

I can do character animation. Maybe the wife wagging her finger at you on the dock or waving at you to come in after you've been on the water too long would be funny.

SB

iTrader: (1)

If the above ever happens, please give us 1/2yr to 1yr heads up before it's available to the public.

It will take me that long to plan shutting down work for a year.