[Deamon]

Originally Posted by Hawk66

Vaild question. I do not know exactly to which extend the modelling of ship physics is needed for a tactial simulator with no 3D graphics in the beginning. For starters, I would just like to get familar with this topic.

Well if your ship is nothing more than a symbol on the map then you can get away very cheap. In this case all you need is to get the acceleration and turn radia at different speeds right. And when you are on a destroyer type then it should loose about 40% of its speed in a hard turn and that is all that you need.

For drift by currents and winds you can do someting as simple as:

translation_vector = ship_velocity_vector + current_velocity_vector + wind_velocity_vector * air_drag_coefficient

And there you go. You can further improve the drift effect of the wind by taking the relative wind heading into account since when the wind blows from the front it will drift the ship much slower as when it would blow from the side.

You surely are familiar with vector math, aren't you ?

I think, you start with a very rough model and through iteration you improve it.

This is certainly the way to go.

But as long as you don't have a 3D environment you hardly will ever need more than what i described above. But if at some point you want to go far beyond that then you will need a serious study of fluid dynamics, ship dynamics and also oceanography + a wide range of engineering desciplines, this will be a never ending study. And no, there is no simple explanation for that. You touch here a highly complicated science. Even the 'simplified' papers are so math heavy that it will make you puke after just a few pages, well unless of course you are used to eat excruciating math formulas for breakfast every morning.

I am working on a more advanced model for my own sim and i am working for several years on it now and i am still not finished with implementing a simplified model of a simplified sciantific model. Whereas advanced means in comparison with what you usually get in most games and not necessarily in comparison with a full fledged sciantific model. That means i focus on the aspects that are noticeable and that affect ship handling, in the first place.

I started out with a quick and totally faked system after reading a good book on steamer maneuerving, just trying to capture the absolute dead minimum that such a system should have. I hacked it together in just a few months. I didn't expected much from this hack but boy i was wrong! I couldn't remember ever had such a blast during simple port maneuvering and just cruising around in any other game that i have ever played!

At this point i also realised how much the ship dynamics systems are neglected, in most games, neglected almost to the point of nonexistence and ridicule. Nowadays i can't even see this games anymore. Basically i have abandoned the gaming and fully focus now to push my own project through the finish line.

Anyway i then made the first development iteration for the ship dynamics system and the maneuvering experience improved significantly again. Even though this system was also far from being complete its dynamic nature never stopped to fascinate me and during each maneuvering phase i get to know some unexpected responses from the ship, much like in reality where you will not always be able to predict the responses of the ship. I was very pleased to see that IUF got this quality at this point already. When you actually simulate things instead of dumb the sim down to death then the gaming experience is so much more real and intens, when you have a lot of dynamic parameters and behind each and every is a meaning. I find that the feedback that you get from an elaborated simulator is enormous. Just some elaboration that goes beyond the average crap that you get in most "sims" already gives to the experience a new dimension. I am so sick and tired of "sims" where you drive the boat like a car and where the propulsion system also operates like that of a car. But most players are landlubbers and don't even notice that. I however felt liiterally betrayed after studying my steamer maneuvering book ( and some other things ) that deals with this subject exhaustively hence i abandoned this games alltogether. I can't believe i considered this games as simulators once.

Now i do the second iteration and the system is a lot more complete now and A LOT more complex. In fact it grew over my head and i had to put it on hold till my theoretical study has caught up

But finally i could focus my attention on to the finer points of ship dynamics. But now i need to extend my limited understanding once again. Overall i invested an almost unreasonable amount of resources into this area alone but was it worth it ? Hell, yes!

So, good luck.