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Thread: Speed boat simulator in development

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    Default Speed boat simulator in development

    Hi, folks. I'm developing a speed boat simulator that some people here might find interesting:




    More information and videos here:

    http://speedboatsim.com

    While it's not for sale and 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.

    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" might be as good a place as any.

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    very cool- great work-love it

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    Thanks!

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    I've created a forum at the site for discussion on the speedboat simulator: http://www.performancesimulations.co...oat-simulator/

    I'm new to the forum software so am not sure how it works yet, but it looks like you might be able to sign up and subscribe to the forum so you're notified upon the simulator's release.

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    Just need to change the motor sound to Two stroke sound or change the motor on boat. Four cyle sounds on a out board sound funky, Steve

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    Yeah, I agree. Thanks for saying so.

    It's tough to find suitable samples and very expensive to record a specific engine. Ideally I'd go for a Merc 300XS, but we couldn't manage to find one to record.

    I've got one other sample that's a four cylinder, still a four stroke but it might at least sound a bit closer to an outboard if it's sped up to the proper frequency. One of these days I'll make a comparison video with both sounds and let people chime on which one they prefer. If the sound guy ever locates a proper engine and it can be recorded for the right price, I'd replace this one and save it for other boat types.

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    Cool. You might add some standard hazards: stumps, wakes, wind, gators, jumping fish, and the like.

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    I like the idea of variables.
    This is awesome !. I've been waiting for a game like this for ever. More so one that also has racing and in cockpit view. Must include formula tunnel hulls !!. Lol.
    You could win credits to upgrade your boat & motor. Even incorporating tow vehicle and trailer for at the ramp launch scenes. Hull & engine, choice, paint jobs and engine modifications with after market parts Including performance props.

    When the prop blows out getting up on the plane, the engine sound needs to rev higher every time the roost kicks up.
    You could have a damage meter for hitting debris both on the prop and the hull Effecting speed. This could also include blowing motor from over revs or Heat etc.
    Maps are usually what make or brake a game. So I think a selection of good maps and race course venues would be needed.
    Start entry level low budget. Race to win coin and upgrade your rig or achieve next level.
    Get Mercury to sponsor the game and they could give you all the Merc on heat sounds you need or tell them your going to OMC . Lol
    The race never stops

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    Thanks, I'm glad you like it.

    Cockpit view is the main draw, that's the most important one. Once I'd added that I really wanted to see some flybys, especially to see how the boat was flying and so forth. That turned out to look pretty cool so I kept it as part of the simulator. It's very useful as it turns out for tuning the hull.

    These videos don't show it yet, but you can do force vector visualizations and see the waterline drawn around the hull so you can see exactly what the boat is doing. You can see it all right through the hull from any angle. (I meant to make a video of that, thanks for the reminder.) It's quite useful for tweaking the pad height/width/length (and a bunch of other things) to get the wetted area minimized for maximum speed. That's best done from outside the boat of course. I figure a few tech nerds like me will enjoy that.

    I'm doing this alone so can't get too carried away with bells and whistles like career modes, multiplayer or AI racing, and all that kind of stuff or it'll take years to release something. The physics are so processor intensive (thousands of forces per boat) that you can't really do a lot of boats anyway. The current plan is to release a version fairly close to what it is now, just a pure simulator with no racing in it. The idea right now is to tinker with the hull design and see what it does.

    If sales justify it then I'll look into doing more, maybe add a financially driven game mode like you talked about where you buy parts and so forth. I'm not sure yet. I do have rent to pay like everyone else, after all, so I may just start with what customers want the most and go from there.

    Maps: Yes, I do want to have a lot of lakes and rivers to run on. Probably I'll release a free demo that runs on the Oculus Rift and regular monitors with one lake in it only (probably the one in the video which is the lake I grew up on), maybe restrict some of the boat settings or something like that. Not totally sure just yet what I'll do, but I appreciate the ideas.

    Tunnel hulls: Yes, that's something I'm interested in. Some sort of F1 style boat would be great fun. It takes a really long time to write a procedural boat mesh generator like this though for a separate hull type, so the first release will probably just be the v-bottom outboards like shown in the videos. It's customizeable though, you can change length, width, deadrise angle at the front and rear, etc., I think about 19 different parameters. I added jackplate setback too the other day which affects the boats quite a bit, so maybe it's 20 parameters now.

    I put some Mercury 300XS decals on the engine and it looked great. Licensing is an issue though. Working with manufacturers can be very expensive and cause huge delays depending on who gets involved (they have a tendency of telling you what you can and can't do, must and must not do, etc.). It's usually a recipe for major headaches, so I'll probably avoid that. I've done that in another project I worked on and it wasn't really worth it. It depends on the particular people involved, it can work or it can just be a horrible, expensive experience.

    Anyway, this leads me to ask all you guys a question: I'm thinking of probably a $25-$30 price tag for the first version for those that enjoy the free demo, basically what you see here plus more lakes and rivers, the ability to at least color the boat maybe. Without any other boats to race against, it's just you playing with your own boat designs on the water alone to see how they work, would you be inclined to go for it?

    The trouble is if it needs racing it could take many, many more months, maybe an extra year of development. So I can't get too carried away here. The price would reflect that though.

    Thoughts?

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    Oh, one other thing you mentioned was the prop RPM. Yes, I agree, I would really like the prop to ventilate there and especially when it planes initially. This is easier said than done so I'm not sure if the first release will have that, but it's definitely something I want. As a kid, our family had a custom 18' fiberglass Switzercraft, silver and red metalflake, with a 175 HP Merc. It would ventilate hard when it planed while trimmed up at all, rpm would go way up, then it would hook hard when the stern got over the bow wave and shoot off like a rocket. I'd really like to capture that again. This is of course the same thing that you're talking about with the rooster tail. I agree it'd be very cool and it's up very close to the top of my list on the physics side. Just got to figure out a way to do it...

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