This update adds a new boat to the roster - the Flounder! I've also now added place names and icons to the GPS map so you can see where the ports are and any land marks such as light houses etc.
The Flounder isn't quite finished yet, but is driveable in both VR and non-VR modes. The main area that needs work is the wheel house which is a bit ugly at the moment.
The Flounder itself designed to be a starter cargo vessel and is based upon an old fishing vessel that has been converted to carry a wide variety of cargo. It's not fast but it can carry a good amount of cargo in 2 internal and 1 external bays.
Speaking of cargo and external bays - these are not visually modelled (although weight and centre of gravity calculations are) but they will be soon. This goes for any other vessel that has visible/external cargo bays - soon you'll be able to see the cargo attached to the ship!
OTHER UPDATES
1. Rescaled all cargo sizes to a standard cubic meter (m3) and weights are based on realistic values e.g. 1 m3 of oil is 862kg while 1 m3 of petroleum is 737kg .
2. Ship cargo hold capacities are now calculated in cubic meters and I physically measure hold sizes to make sure they fit inside the 3D model correctly.
3. GPS map now shows ports with names, light houses and other points of interest/landmarks.
4. All textures resized to power of 2 - this not only helps conserve GPU RAM but also graphics drivers don't like them and can cause a GPU crash. You know when this happens as the game will sound like it is still running but the screen will be black or frozen. Let me know if you encounter this happening & if you can remember what you were doing at the time it will help track down any that I've missed!
UPCOMING UPDATES
Next week will be mainly focused on expanding the number of islands to flesh out the cargo network.
Future islands will be around 1/4 - 1/2 the size of the current Menorca island (20km2) - so 5km2 to 10km2. I think this is plenty big enough when some of the vessels only do around 20kts! Islands will still be based on real world terrain - just scaled to fit.
Having smaller islands allows me to not only increase the terrain detail but also the density of objects such as rocks, buildings, trees etc and they also don't take so long to build. I may rescale Menorca and Long Island at some point as well as the actual length of coast line is huge!
I shall also be creating a world map so that you can see the entire area in one go. This will be important when plotting your route between islands as your GPS should NOT be you primary navigation tool especially once GPS/Electrical failures are modelled and the navigation Buoy network is setup! This is fairly true to real life as Captains are taught not to rely on GPS equipment.
Until then - Happy Boating!