Screwy buoyancy & waves

[Ramcourse]

In both GWX and stock, the ships behave oddly when you see them pummeled by heavy seas. There are some threads on improving this, but those are mainly concerned with improving the stability of the ships. I'd rather attack the source of the problem.

The problem is that the gravitational acceleration is effectively different for ships and for the water. In all cases I've seen, the water has a much higher gravitational acceleration than the ships. This causes hovering ships, and decks washing over way too much.

I suspect that the waves are governed with an undulating prescribed shape, which might have 'velocity' settings somewhere. I'd like to slow the waves down significantly. Does anyone have an inkling of where to start with this? Thus far, I have no clue where the wave motion is defined.

[Anvart]

Only a file list where you can find something about the waves...
...
..\data\Cfg\Sim.cfg - section [Mech]
..\data\scene.dat - EnvData & EnvSim controllers
...
Be bold...

[Wolfstriked]

I was very into trying to change the wave behaviors.I cant remember what I was doing though and it will take me awhile to get back into it....but I will start soon since I feel more can be done.Not much help for now.

[Ramcourse]

Thanks for the pointers to the wave mechanics. It turns out to be simple - but not easy.

I've got the swell and chop frequencies right, and I've adjusted the amplitude to match, but the ships seem to have too much moment of inertia. How is this defined in the ship models? Does anyone know if this is a global setting, or if mass distribution is defined otherwise?

[Anvart]

ShipName.sim... Try to play with object's mass, Gravity Center (gc_height, fr_ratio), object's drag (water resistance) coeficients in obj_Hydro... and may be something else.

[Wolfstriked]

This might peak your interest and further the push for Sh3.Its where I stopped a yr ago.:hmmm:I reduced the sea size so that at 15ms wind the sea is calmer(mainly because the physics look wrong at very high wind) but its still severe enough so that when played with "no stabilize view" the game is a bitch to target with accuracy.Go below and the scopes settle down with barely any movement.

2ms wind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC9Jm-Ft098&feature=context&context=C4ece786ADvjVQa1PpcFNqLQyohRH3EL_4HRoU8NvC Im2HFHlOruY=

8ms wind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXxtTuy9a-A&feature=context&context=C4ece786ADvjVQa1PpcFNqLQyohRH3EL_4HRoU8NvC Im2HFHlOruY=

14ms wind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffDsHjMkaHA&context=C4ece786ADvjVQa1PpcFNqLQyohRH3EL_4HRoU8NvC Im2HFHlOruY=

[Ramcourse]

Thanks again, but things got even more complex now.

I have thus far only been trying to get storm conditions right, and that looks fine with some ships, but fails awfully with others. The Cunard liners plow through the waves beautifully, and watching the Schnellboot struggle is very pretty. The small fishing boat, on the other hand, kind of floats down slowly through the air when the wave falls away under it. It looks really, really weird. The battleships are ridiculously stable, like they're on rails. Large merchants and modern tankers can't take it, and sink after taking a few waves.

The settings I've been playing with are to make the Scale of scen.dat node 14->Wind->WavesProperties->3->Scale = X=50 Y=0.56 Z=50
with node 14->Wind->WavesProperties->3->SeaSpeed = 0.38
with Sim.cfg Waves amplitude=0.6 and Waves attenuation=0.06

One could argue that this is more typical of a full gale than of Beaufort 7, which would be the max of 15 m/s of the game, but exaggeration is useful in testing.

It seems that the susceptibility to the local water level is different by ship. The actual floating physics are not clear to me. Does anyone have any idea how the physics are modeled?

[Wolfstriked]

Its a give or take thing.You can change the sea stats to blend with the ship changes and it looks great but then other sized ships look a bit off.The ship physics are basically like a see saw.Center pivot point and so if you have a large ship that is on two or three waves it gets a bit broken looking.This is why its better to keep the waves smaller to negate that IMO.At one point I had the most realistic looking violent storm but the ships looked wrong.:damn:

[Luno]

I think Thomsen released a mod which addressed bounciness in waves (heavy cargo ships become a lot harder to rock) and also kills the magic acceleration of all ships (If you've played the torpedo training mission, you know what I mean). I've yet to try the mod myself, but I plan to in the future.

[Ramcourse]

An extra complication: torpedoes are not affected by waves, exemplified by me just torpedoing a large tanker in the funnel.

I'll need to rethink this.