Showing off the new instrument panel and some of the dynamics resulting from extreme engine trim and jack plate adjustments.

Forces view showing aerodynamic and hydrodynamic force vectors. This also shows a blue outline where the boat touches the water to visualize the wetted surface area of the hull. This is handy for tuning the hull shape to get it really flying.


http://www.performancesimulati ... /boat-sim-forces-view.png

No wayyyyy... Force mode? :o
According to some wiseguy here in lfs forum,it's the biggest cheat out there!

PS. Oh,yeah,I remember those old good times with hours spent with Eliminator boat duel!

That is a really cool project, Todd, always interested to see the developments.

I've read your page, I think the hull design stuff sounds great given how the physics look. I'm sure you have a long list of other features you'd love to implement given the resources.

Thanks, guys. I'm having fun with it.

Features: I'm trying not to get too carried away there. It's easy to fall into a never ending trap of adding new stuff and never releasing anything. Got to pick and choose carefully.

Any plans to add a 3D wake to the water surface, so you can drive (sail? pilot?) through/over it?

Not for the first release. If sales are good enough I would like to do that, but would want to do it properly with a good fluid dynamic simulation. I wouldn't want to fake it with some cheesy wake effect. Doing it the way I'd like is a tricky issue though because you need an enormous computational mesh (major CPU or GPU hog, and the frame rate is already pushing the limits on the Oculus Rift with a 680X card). I have some ideas for this but won't know what's really feasible until I try them.

Can I ask you guys which engine sound you prefer? The red boat or the blue boat? Neither one is really a set of recordings from a 2-stroke outboard, but these are my only options right now so it'll have to be one or the other.

The blue båt I guess. .

Red for sure, blue sounds like a lawnmower.

Ok, how about this one?

Forums are up and working at the new site now:

http://speedboatsim.com

Anyone interested in this project can register and sign up for the forum. I'll try to figure out a way to send everybody there an email when it's released so you're among the first to know.

The videos look interessting. Can not say more because no download
Will this work with wheel and have ffb? Would be nice to drive something with ffb wheel that is not a wheeled vehicle.

I'd love to see this done properly as a game. The best mix of car and boat racing.
0 - 120 kph in 2 seconds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4S3GjCyc9A

2014 NZ finals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X8lGrQVt00

Quote from Racer X NZ :

2014 NZ finals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X8lGrQVt00

First time seeing something like this. Insane!

Wheel and FFB: Eventually, yes. I don't have a wheel at the moment so haven't done FFB for it yet. My family had an 18 foot, 175 HP Switzercraft that did a little more than 60 mph. So I learned first hand that FFB on an outboard boat like this is quite interesting. The individual prop blades have their own angles of attack as they spin around that's different on different sides of the prop depending on what direction the water stream is coming in from. If you trim the engine down (pitching the engine so the propeller shoots back and downwards a bit), the steering pulls hard to the right. So hard in fact that if you let go of the wheel it can snap and flip the boat. If you trim it up the other way, it lightens up to where you don't have any FFB. Trim up further and it reverses. So it turns out that the FFB is a pretty good way to tell whether the prop is pointing in the right direction or not.

Then there's dynamics from steering too, but it's mostly trim effects. I'm modelling all the necessary stuff for the prop, all those torques are there, so it'll be interesting to try to do the FFB like that. I don't know if people might find it really strange or what. Boaters that know how it is in reality might enjoy it, sim racers that have never touched a boat will probably think something is broken. So I'll be sure to have a hydraulic/power steering option that just tries to keep the wheel in it's current position all the time.

Jet boats: Yes, those jet sprint boats are very cool. I'm not getting very good turning performance right now in the simulator though so I'm not sure if I'll be able to do those. There must be something special about the design of those sprint boats that lets them turn at such incredible lateral accelerations. Mainly the center of gravity has got to be incredibly low I think. Even if I drop the center of gravity right down to about the waterline in the sim, I can't even come close in the simulator to the turning performance of those sprint boats. They're a bit of a mystery to me at the moment. Seems just about everybody that sees my sim mentions those, so maybe it might be worth a try at some point.

Derpa derp.

It might be funny if going too fast messed up the driver's face.

A Facebook page for Design it, Drive it: Speedboats has just been started. Those with any interest in the boat simulator will get more information there as development continues.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/405024603032224/

Ha! Ok, this was a fun first. I got collisions working, so naturally the first thing I did was run the boat over a little point that sticks out in the lake. It jumped a lot better than I thought it would.

First shot at a trailer:




Also started a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/designitdriveitspeedboats

Ok,
1: prop hits the ground and.......
2: boat moves with no input.
3: music, really.....
4: take onboard with whats said and keep going with your dream,

Yes, it has issues ATM. So, sort them and create a great game.

Thanks for the comments.

Music: Yes, that seems to be a common sentiment so far. I seem to be about the only one that feels inspired by the music. I'll probably try something else.

Moving without input: That's what real boats do at high speeds. It's called "chine walk."




Discussion:
http://www.aeromarineresearch.com/publications/HB_Jan2008.html


At lower speeds there can be "porpoising," which is an up and down bouncing movement.

40 seconds in:




Discussion:
http://www.aeromarineresearch.com/publications/PB&R_Aug2012.html

In short, there are all kinds of dynamic instabilities with boats which is what makes them so interesting to drive. Many of them move quite a lot without any input or waves, and they do so differently depending on speed and jackplate/trim settings, not to mention prop torque effects when changing throttle input. That's part of the fun of high speed boating, just keeping a seven or eight foot wide boat going straight when balanced on a one foot wide pad of water at high speeds can keep you very busy.

Prop hitting the ground: Depending on what you hit, in reality usually the engine bounces up with a loud bang and you can indeed keep right on going. Often the lower unit hits, not the prop. If nothing breaks, this is what happens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePikk-W0jvk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kff4w5OXt74

Either way, I figured I'd cut a little corner here and have an unbreakable boat/engine/prop just for a little extra "jump the sandbar" type of fun, so you can get away with hitting things a bit harder than you might be able to in reality.

It won't balance itself.

Have you given any thought to turbocharged v12 engines?

Are there boats using them? Maybe some of the big offshore powerboats? I don't know, I'm just focused on outboards at the moment. If it sells well enough I'd like to do more types of boats though.