Powerboat VR News

Quick update that hopefully completes the fuel usage simulations...

1. Added ability to purchase fuel at all ports.
2. Fuel now costs money to purchase (£1 per litre)
3. Fuel can also be sold at ports but at a loss.
4. Fuel levels are now stored against all owned vessels
5. Fuel levels are now saved in the save game file

Unless I find any major challenges this update should move into the live build on Friday.

The Fuel Usage BETA is now available for those that wish to test it out. For instructions on how to opt in please check out the "Current Public BETAs" post on the forum.

Each boat now uses fuel when the engine is running and has a unique fuel usage profile. It will be up to you to find the most efficient cruising speed for your journey as you'll need to balance fuel usage against speed.

To help you, there is now a new Fuel & Engine Performance page on the MFD. This will give you a more accurate Fuel Level readout as well as telling you the current Fuel Flow (Litres per minute REALTIME), Endurance (Hours REALTIME) and an Efficiency readout based on Litres per Knot of speed.

This should give you enough information to find an efficient cruising speed. However, if you need to get somewhere a bit quicker you can push the engines a bit harder than before which will give most ships a higher top speed at the expense of a much increased fuel usage.

I expect this dynamic to come into play more when there are stricter time limits on cargo missions and also when trying to out run bad weather.

BEWARE - If you run out of fuel your engine will cut out and at the moment there is no where to refuel but changing to a different ship will give you a full fuel tank again. Fuel tank levels are also not saved between game sessions at the moment.

I've also implemented the following changes....

1. Tweaked the physics of most ships so they drive a little better at high speed and can plough through waves a little better.

2. Tweaked the sky, horizon and fog colours to be a little more pleasing.

3. Ocean at night is now much much darker making visual navigation much more difficult.

4. Implemented a work around so that instanced terrain now works correctly when underwater. This should provide a nice speed boost for VR users. Non-VR users will also get a boost but it is probably less noticeable. The added side effect is slightly more detailed terrain.

5. Removed the "HEAT" gauge and replaced it with a working "FUEL" gauge on the HUD and Dashboard.

Feedback, as always, is very welcome.

This update includes the following changes...

1. Added a simple route line to world map which will show you where you need to go when doing "Quick Jobs". The route line is only visible on the world map by design as I don't want to make life too easy for you :)

2. Fixed the annoying bug on the MFD map which would stutter slightly when the floating origin system juggles the world around. Now it should be perfectly smooth all the time!

3. Added map markers for the Oil Rigs

4. Fixed an incorrect position on the ports which was causing some "Quick Jobs" to have the wrong distance and wrong price.

All boats now have their own engine RPM ranges displayed on the dashboard. Before, all boats would rev to around 6,500rpm which makes no sense for large diesel engines. This has now been fixed and is an important update for the upcoming fuel usage and damage simulation update...

I've also adjusted a few things in the hope of killing the GPU crash that still seems to occur occasionally.

This update is a total rework of the entire game. No longer is it just a "VR Experience" - it is now a fully fledged shipping simulator and aiming to be the most comprehensive ship simulator available.

You can take control of a wide variety of boats/ships all the way from a 3m R.I.B. to a 50m Oil Tanker.

The game fully supports both VR (including virtual controls) and Non-VR modes.

Full support for joysticks, joypads, wheels, pedals, mouse control, keyboard control or any mix that you want. All controls can be re-bound in game.

Full support for Ultrawide screens up to 32:9

Here's a list of the main changes...

1. 10 ships of varying classes (Sport boats, Powerboats, Transport vessels, Luxuary Yachts etc)
2. 5 islands based on real world locations spanning a 200km2 map and with 7 different ports (8 if you count the oil rigs!)
3. SatNav with depth charting
4. Working RADAR
5. Quick Job cargo & passenger transport missions
6. Full control remapping system from inside the game
7. Resolution adjustments and image quality settings now done from inside the game
8. Adjusted realistic buoyancy physics system
9. Dynamic sea and weather systems
10. Career mode to run your own shipping company
11. Cargo holds & ballast system
12. New Menu System
13. New visual effects such as engine smoke etc
14. Many many more tweaks & adjustments