Powerboat VR News

Quick update to the BETA....

1. Added option to the "Game Options" menu to set the maximum number of A.I. traffic in the game. This value is stored and used each time the game starts. Default is 10, but the maximum is now 100 for those with powerful rigs or who like really busy sea lanes.

2. Optimised the A.I. traffic manager so it uses less resources when dealing with fewer A.I. vessels.

3. Setting the Maximum A.I. Traffic to zero will now disable the entire A.I. system freeing up all resources.

4. A.I. will now drive at more realistic speeds for that vessel (i.e. a lot slower than you can currently drive them!).

This now completes the current stage of A.I. traffic and I shall move this into the main public build on Friday unless anyone spots any major challenges between now and then. ːsteamhappyː

Next stage is to add suitable night lights to all A.I. vessels so that they can be seen visually in the dark as well as on RADAR. This hopefully shouldn't take too long and might make it into Friday's update.

Once this is complete I think the next stage will be to add a few more islands and a few ships.

Quick update to the A.I. Traffic Beta.

1. Added the FerryCat to A.I. pilotable boats.
2. Added the Sea Buzzard to A.I. pilotable boats.
3. Increased number of A.I. traffic to 40 vessels!
4. Minor fixes to some of the water effects

This is probably about as far as I'm going to go with the A.I. traffic currently as I want to move on to adding lights to the vessels for night time navigation.

I will be adding a menu configuration to select the maximum number of vessels to spawn so that you can tweak it to your preference and you'll be able to go way above 40 vessels if you so wish!

Performance of the A.I. system seems pretty good. Even with 40 vessels being simulated I still get 120fps at 1440p for the most part. Main slow down is anywhere that has palm trees and/or ports as neither of these assets have been optimised yet - that's another thing on my to-do list!

I think the main requirement of adding some life to the map has been achieved. I do want to take the A.I. further so that they have some collision awareness as well as getting them to dock/undock at ports, but for the moment I think this will do :)

1 . Added the oil tanker and the jupiter in the A.I. controllable boat list.

2. Added and corrected waypoints around the islands to help the A.I. navigate a little better.

3. Tweaked the initial spawn system to distribute the A.I. boats a little more evenly over the map while still placing some close to the player.

4. Fixed a bug with the waypoint collider so that it is not a solid object.

Quick update for the A.I. Traffic BETA

1. A.I. Traffic are now visible on the RADAR and leave a green trail as they move. This works much like a real RADAR and gives an indication of not only direction but also speed - e.g. the longer the trail the faster the vessel is moving.

2. Increased the number of active A.I. vessels from 10 to 20!

3. Minor fixes to A.I. to stop them getting stuck at waypoints.

4. Adjusted the initial spawn criteria so that they can spawn within visual range when the game starts. This allows traffic to appear near the player straight away. Placement is random so sometimes there might be a lot of traffic nearby, sometimes they might be a long way away.

5. Tweaked the wake trails of A.I. vessels as they are quite CPU intensive.

Next thing is to get the other current vessels added to the A.I. list

A new beta is available called "aitraffic" please check out the pinned forum post of how to optin.

This beta adds 10 A.I. controlled Flounder vessels to the map who will drive round on random, but logical routes. I haven't fully finalised the routing system so it is possible they might get too close to land on some islands.

A.I. vessels will continue to exist as long as they remain inside a 20km bubble around you. Your visual range is 15km so there's a good 5km buffer where even though you can't see them, they are still being tracked within the game and will prevent any ships blipping out of existence as soon as you lose sight of them.

Currently A.I. vessels are pretty dumb and have no knowledge of your position or any other A.I. vessels. This will be improved later so that they will try to avoid a collision. Ideally they will follow maritime rules for collision avoidance.

They also cannot dock and will not attempt to go inside ports or other enclosed water ways, but I'm hopeful that this will be possible. I also want to get AI vessels to spawn docked in the ports to add a bit of life there too :)

A.I. positions are also not currently saved into save games but they will be shortly.

Feedback on A.I. doing silly things and/or performance issues always gratefully received on the forums :)

The next stage will be to increase the number of active vessels to see how far the system can be pushed. Ultimately there will be a config area to setup the maximum number of AI vessels.