- Physics Update - 11 August 2022
This update addresses the bug where stationary boats would often get swamped in rough seas a little too easily. It only really effected the smaller boats and you should find that they are now suitably buoyant! I've also tweaked some other physics settings such as rudder forces etc for many of the boats so they should handle more realistically at lower speeds. As always, the physics engine is a work in progress so let me know if you spot boats doing anything odd!
- Fish Physics Update - 10 August 2022
1. Updated all big fish to the same physics system as the boats so they now move a little more realistically than before. This includes the Bull Shark, Blue Shark, Sting Ray, Sunfish, Man o' War jelly fish and the new Clown Trigger fish. 2. You can now collide with big fish properly and they won't fly off into orbit! However, the Bull Shark is a big heavy fish so smaller boats may come of worse! 3. Added new Clown Trigger fish. Similar A.I. to the Sting Ray but more free swimming so can be at any depth although will come to the surface sometimes.
- Sealife Update - 8 August 2022
2 new species added to the fish pool... 1. Sunfish 2. Man 'o War jellyfish. The sunfish has similar A.I. to sharks and can usually be found swimming near the surface although they will also swim underwater. The Man o' War always sits at the water surface and doesn't move that much! I will be updating the physics engine for the fish to use the same buoyancy systems as boats. This should fix the issue of them flying away at extreme speed if you collide with them.
- Fish A.I. update and new fish species added - 3 August 2022
1. Updated fish A.I. so that they won't spawn on top of rocks or below/in/on terrain. 2. Increased fish A.I. polling rate so that they can spot obstacles and water depth faster. This should prevent them from trying to swim on land! 3. Increased the turning rate of all sharks so that they can get out of tight spots a bit easier. 4. Added Stingrays to the available fish pool - pun intended! 5. Sharks and Rays can now dive below the surface. Rays will tend to swim at the bottom more often but can still be seen at the surface. Sharks will prefer the surface but can dive and swim at the ocean floor. 6. Sharks and Rays will now spawn at a random size so you'll see a bit more variation between individual fish of the same species. 7. Increased the number of concurrent Sharks/Rays from 2 to 10 so that there is more chance you will see them seeing as they can now hide from you below the surface!…
- Hot fix - 3 August 2022
This should fix any issues with ports not appearing when loading from a save game. This update also includes a slight change to the ocean rendering so that it is a bit more reflective and less clear in the distance. This stops sharks from looking like they are flying when seen at a distance while maintaining water clarity close to the player.
- Maupiti Beautification Pass 1 - 2 August 2022
This updates the island of Maupiti adding some new features... 1. Island textures redone so they are much greener. 2. New coral assets imported. You can find the small coral sample area to the North West of Maupiti harbour near the 2 large rocks in the bay. Check out the screen shot on the store page for a more accurate location guide. Performance impact is negligible. 3. Various tweaks to the coast line to smooth the transition from water to land creating some nice beaches and shallow lagoons. 4. Added new rocks to the area. 5. Maupiti now has a smoking caldera! 6. Water clarity above and below the surface has been increased. 7. Underwater blur effect has been removed as you really want to see things clearly as if you are scuba diving. 8. Bluefin boat now has a bit more "pep" which is visible if you accelerate hard from slow speed as the nose will now pop in the air a bit more. I've al…
- Maupiti port optimisation & Ocean Adjustment - 1 August 2022
MAUPITI PORT I have now fully optimised Maupiti's port so performance impact is minimal when in that area. I'll be applying the same optimisations to all the other ports as quickly as I can. I would say the I've gained about 20fps in non-VR mode which should help smooth the VR experience out too. I think there are still some performance gains to be had with the other buildings that make up the villages round the island so I'll be looking at those as well shortly. OCEAN I have also adjusted the clarity of the water around the islands so you should be able to see fish etc much more easily as well as getting that crystal clear tropical water vibe! This paves the way for some underwater beautification such as coral, sea weed and more sea life. Stay tuned and Happy Boating!
- Oculus Quest 2 patch - 30 July 2022
Hopefully fixes the strange white artefact that can be seen near your nose!
- Minor fixes and improvements - 30 July 2022
1. You can now walk on terrain when in VR mode 2. You can now walk under the water in VR mode so you can go swimming with the sharks! (this is not a fully supported feature and you're basically walking on the terrain under the water level but it looks kinda cool!). 3. Minor optimisation to terrain reflections on the water. 4. Minor adjustment to clouds
- Walking on Islands (VR Only) - 28 July 2022
Re-enables the ability to walk on the terrain of islands. This is for VR players only. This only effects the terrain so you can't currently walk on rocks or dock areas. I'll add them shortly.
- Fish & Sharks! - 28 July 2022
This update re-enables the fish & shark spawners in game. Performance hit should be minimal but please let me know if you think it has reduced frame rates, It does take a little bit of time for the fish and sharks to spawn in but you should be able to find them fairly easily. Sharks have reasonable A.I. and will try to swim around objects and will not venture into very shallow water. However, it is possible that they'll get it wrong occasionally! Smaller fish have basic shoaling A.I. but can clip through terrain and objects. In very rough weather they can sometimes fly out of the water (sharks can also be effected by extreme sea conditions but to a lesser extent).
- Save Game Fix - 27 July 2022
This should fix save games not loading correctly. This bug seemed to have been introduced a few updates ago - thanks to Raymanbs for finding and reporting it :) ***UPDATE*** I've traced the cause of the save games failing to load to the world resizing system so, for the moment, I've disabled the world resizer until I can implement a proper fix.
- Performance Pass 3 - 19 June 2022
Another performance update mainly focused on the A.I. traffic system and trying to reduce the impact this has on frame rates. It's still not perfect but it is definitely better! 1. Optimised the A.I. ships so they use less CPU when further away from the player. 2. Traffic manager optimised to use less resources. 3. Added Cloud Shadow options in the Video Options area so you can switch between various modes. 4. Swapped the starting boat when the game loads from the Flounder to the Bluefin so VR players don't feel so boxed in at the start!
- Hot Fix - 18 June 2022
Noticed a few challenges with the A.I. nav buoys not linking to other correctly which was causing the A.I. to act a little strange!
- 2nd Performance Pass - 18 June 2022
1. All rocks now have LOD levels 2. Fornells harbour has been semi optimised 3. Fixed UI camera which was causing a slow down in VR 4. Cloud level adjust for better performance 5. Terrain LODs enhanced for better performance 6. Various other minor tweaks and fixes. As a benchmark I now get 16-18ms render times in Maupiti harbour. This is on a VIVE PRO2 running at full resolution of 2536 x 2536 @ 120hz per eye in Steam VR on a 2080ti. Gameplay feels perfectly smooth although there is some reprojection happening it doesn't seem to be noticeable in game. The biggest variation of fps in VR seems to be cloud level. Denser cloud formations do cause a slow down. I will be adding some configuration options so you can tweak clouds to your liking/system specs.
- Main Branch Performance Update - 17 June 2022
This applies the current BETA performance update together with some more performance enhancing updates to the main build. 1. Procedurally generated trees are now all instanced on the GPU. This means that any where that had large numbers of trees/palms (e.g Ko Lan) will benefit from a performance boost. 2. Above water terrain is now instanced correctly. 3. Underwater terrain has now been corrected to use the right LOD level 4. Maupiti port has been semi - optimised. Other ports have not yet been optimised. This essentially takes care of the easy to do optimisations. Ports still need a lot of work but I'm confident that I can significantly reduce the overhead in these areas. On a 2080ti i9-9900k @ 1920x1080p setting at Maupiti harbour I get over 150 fps now and easily tops out my frame rate limiter of 200fps when nearer the open ocean. At 5120x1440 it's a very steady 110fps in the same se…
- Performance BETA Update - 16 June 2022
I have now added a new Opt-in BETA for the performance pass update called "performancebeta". No password is required, just leave the field blank. Please follow the instructions on the forum to opt-in. This update is purely focused on improving both the VR and Non-VR performance of the game. I've already made pretty good progress... 1. Added loading bar to the initial start up as islands are now streamed in. While this doesn't actually speed up the loading process overall, at least now you can see that something is happening! 2. Rebuilt a lot of the tree instancing systems so they run faster and are now self contained per island allowing me to turn them off when not needed i.e. when you're too far away to see them 3. Baked a lot of the meshes for Maupiti's harbour area resulting in significant performance gains in this area. As a rough benchmark I have now gone from around 60-70fps at Ma…
- Ship Horns - 19 April 2022
All ships now have their own horn sound so you can Peep! and Parp! at other ships ːsteamhappyː By default the horn is mapped to "H". VR Players will also find a new "Ship Horn" button in all ship cockpits. Other Fixes 1. Updated buoyancy of the Flounder and reduced its initial ballast load. 2. Reduced the bow thruster power on the Jupiter
- Voice Commands & Quality of Life Improvements - 8 April 2022
This update brings together a number of important additions to Powerboat VR and sets them live in the public build. Voice Commands You can now control many different aspects of your ship using built in voice recognition. Obviously you will need a working microphone to make use of this update but it is perfect for those who want to run their ships from their "Captain's Chair" rather than take direct control. It is also an accessibility feature with the idea of being able to control everything via voice commands. Please see the forum and the guides section for a list of current voice commands. Time Acceleration You can now cycle between 1x - 8x time acceleration using the "Page Up" or "Page Down" keys. You can also adjust the time acceleration in the "Game Settings" menu. Relative/Sticky Controls - Non VR Only You can now toggle between "Absolute" and "Relative" steering/throttle controls…
- Voice Command Beta! - 7 April 2022
Yes, you read that right - you can now pilot your ship using just the power of your voice! The voice commands are part of the "newship" beta so you will need to opt into it to try them out. To use the voice commands you will obviously need a working microphone. Ensure it is working in windows 1st and that it is your default recording device. Voice recognition is not 100% accurate. It is more than likely the game will ignore your commands occasionally. Speak clearly and if you're having real trouble then try doing the windows voice training to improve detection. Unfortunately I cannot influence the speech detection system at all. I am using a Windows built in system so if it doesn't work I can't fix it :( VOICE COMMANDS There are 2 types of voice commands. "Standard" and "Autopilot". "Autopilot" commands deal with throttle and steering controls while "Standard" commands deal with every t…
