Hi, guys. I thought there might be a few people around here that might find my latest development project interesting. Something a little different, anyway. It supports Oculus Rift and triple monitors as well.

http://speedboatsim.com

There are a couple Rift videos there for anyone that's got one, starting with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOxXjc8D3RM

If this might be up your alley at all, let me know what you think.

I bet it handles like a boat I jest, of course. Looks interesting, and the in-depth simulation is very appealing. It's unlikely that I'll get my hands on a VR set any time soon so I'm hoping that it doesn't blow over.

Haha, right? Yeah, it doesn't feel connected to the track at all either.

As a sound guy I must pick on this one, looking from the video you posted the pitch of the engine sounds are wrong. It sounds like the engine is doing 2x the rpm the tachometer shows.

Still interesting project, I'm not into boats really, but gotta admit when the Oculus consumer version will be out I might be tempted to try this out.

Quote from BigPeBe :

As a sound guy I must pick on this one, looking from the video you posted the pitch of the engine sounds are wrong. It sounds like the engine is doing 2x the rpm the tachometer shows.

Still interesting project, I'm not into boats really, but gotta admit when the Oculus consumer version will be out I might be tempted to try this out.

Good ear. It's actually sped up 50%.

What I've got here is a V8 4 stroke sample when I really need a V6 2 stroke. The main frequency of a V6 2 stroke is 50% higher than a V8 4 stroke, so it's sped up to fit. 2 strokes really scream.

I'm awaiting a proper 2 stroke V6. If it comes through it'll be replaced with a totally different sound.

How can I play this game?

Not just yet, it's too soon!

Give give! Add telemetry data for Fanaleds support and we're ready to go!

Seriously though, looks really cool, and I'd love to give it a try if you ever need some testers. I've always wanted a realistic boat sim, since others are just rubbish.

And I always wanted a sequel to this:


It looks really good actually (Todd's game, not Live and Let Die).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvXDBJWvUWM

Check out the sounds here (3.05), wheel support and your in !

And this for real sounds !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59eCi3BNFWE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyQM9yFFg1M
Actually the last one was a US vigorous rubbing vid, claim 65 mph, didn't get over 58 mph.

Thanks, guys. For sound, my ideal would be this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rebIoTEJDI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDtb-QNeekw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57CXKOCWvVI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHSQj-F-fpw

F1 outboard engine on a dyno:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZkxJJrB9ZM&index=7&list=LLJPkUELk8PSyAIioegAVS7g


I just love the 2 stroke V6 outboard sounds because they sound like they rev to the moon since there's twice as many exhaust pulses per second as there are with a 4 stroke. As a kid, my family had a Merc 175 HP that snapped and snarled a lot like the ones in a couple of the videos above. This was on an 18' custom Switzercraft that did a little better than 60 mph. Back then they didn't have 4 strokes. Those just sound boring in comparison. Ideally we'd get a Mercury 300 XS (2 stroke) recorded.

This is an exciting one too even though they've got music going on top of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUWJGQp062M


Bose: What are (is?) Fanaleds? Are those for the F1 style rev LEDs people make that go above the steering wheel? If so, that's an interesting idea indeed.

Sinbad: Ha! I hadn't seen that one. My friend had an Amiga for awhile when we were kids, they were really amazing at the time. Our favorite game back then to play on it was probably Jet.

Quote from jtw62074 :

Good ear. It's actually sped up 50%.

What I've got here is a V8 4 stroke sample when I really need a V6 2 stroke. The main frequency of a V6 2 stroke is 50% higher than a V8 4 stroke, so it's sped up to fit. 2 strokes really scream.

I'm awaiting a proper 2 stroke V6. If it comes through it'll be replaced with a totally different sound.

Well that makes sense. Just out of curiosity I had a little go with this one, I used a 4 stroke V6 sound samples as a base and it seems it's possible to do a quite believable 2-stroke version out of them. First I sped it up by 2x (of course). Then I did some EQ stuff to the original sample that wasn't sped up and tuned down some of the frequencies that my ear recognize as induction and exhaust tones, so it was more of a "mechanical" sound after that. I then mixed these two samples together. By adding the "half sample" on top of the sped up one it gives a little deepness to the sound so it doesn't simply sound just only sped up.
Toning down the mid frequencies (exhaust and induction) in my experience is needed because if you simply put to samples together other playing in half the speed, it just sounds like the engine is miss firing on half of the cylinders.

I would gladly do some more, but sadly my source samples are from an existing game (GTL) so I don't think this stuff could be released to the public.

Interesting. I don't do a whole lot with samples myself. I helped out with the ones for VRC/VRC Pro years ago which weren't exactly award winning, but did the job well enough.

Did you ever see my procedural audio stuff?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKnfO3LFPls

This is all running in a compute shader and is a real time engine simulation. The gas dynamics in the exhaust system produce the sound directly. Unfortunately I can't really get away with doing the 40 or so billion computations per second on top of a video game. It works, but it hits the frame rate and unfortunately at this point, I still think good professionally done samples still sound better. Maybe some day, but it's not ready for prime time yet, sadly. Shame really, good audio is expensive and this would have really cut down on costs.


Do you play with FMod's engine sound designer by chance? If you can produce some good audio mixed up with FMod that isn't ripped from another game, I might be interested in buying it. Right now I've got Greg Hill (iRacing and others) doing the audio, but more samples might be welcome if the price and quality is there. It's a thought anyway, if not now, you could shoot me an email a few months from now if you get the bug to give it a shot. Good audio to me is extremely important and ranks right up there with physics.

I'd be interested in hearing what you did with the GPL samples either way if you feel like sharing. Of course I won't use anything you send me without your permission, even for a video.

Yeah I noticed those videos about your engine audio simulation, it's interesting. If you ever get this stuff to a level that can simulate a really realistic sounding engine audio it would be very good. Even if it would be CPU intensive, I'm thinking it could be used as a base for creating samples, just record the stuff it creates and use them. Considering how troublesome it is finding good source material for engine sounds, this could be a good alternative.

I have played a little bit with the FMOD, altho not much and I'm not 100% comfortable using it, I have mainly just converted some of my earlier work from GMOD games to Assetto Corsa. My feeling on the FMOD currently is actually that it just seems to add an unnecessary layer of complication to the whole process of creating sounds. It's a possibility that my opinion might change tho, if I at some point learn to take better advance of the all the features it has.

I would gladly be part of creating some audio to a project like this one day, but I have to admit that I simply don't have the source material. I have lots of it, but it's mainly the result of my habit of always archiving the good stuff from all the games and mods I come by. I use this stuff as a base to create engine audio, but as you may have guessed I make them for my personal use only. After creating an engine sound from using games and mods from 5 different sources, asking and getting permissions for publishing could be quite the pain.

If you already Greg Hill aboard, you are probably in good hands already. IMHO Iracing might just have the most realistic sounding engines currently.

If I feel like making all the needed samples ready at some point, I will probably test them in some Gmod game quickly and if I feel happy enough with them I'll send you PM if you are interested in checking them out.

Yes, that's been my thought exactly. One version that runs live like the videos, but then another one that spits out samples. I've had a couple indie developers express interest in that.

This actually runs on the graphics card if you can believe that. It's all done with a compute shader, otherwise there's just no way to run that in real time with somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 billion computations per second. A single core on a CPU last time I checked did maybe 1.3 billiion, so it's on another level computationally speaking. I was amazed that it actually ran with the boat simulator on top of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAO7SMqUfI0

It's a cool concept, something I thought of almost 20 years ago but didn't have the programming knowledge to pull off back then. I've done several CPU experiments over the years trying different ideas. The ultimate was to try bunging it onto a compute shader so it'd run on the graphics card like this one. Last summer I succeeded, but unfortunately it's still a bit too resource heavy. It's doing almost nothing on the CPU itself other than copying a small amount of data to the sound buffer now and then. Depending on how much you're doing, using the graphics card can mean cutting into the frame rate pretty badly.

So it was pretty close, my best attempt yet probably, but fell just a bit short on the audio quality and computational resource side unfortunately. As graphics cards continue to get faster, one of those problems will fix itself, but the other will take some more thinking and work. In the meantime I've decided to just use samples for the boat sim. Maybe some day I can improve the other thing to the point where it could be used for professional audio like you said. Given the cost of audio production (especially recording samples), there's got to be some money there. Someone suggested I just keep the tool to myself and produce sound files to put on the Unity Asset Store and so on.

Anyway, I'm not happy enough with the quality to go there just yet. Maybe some day.

FMOD: What I liked about this, at least in regards to Unity, is that once I learned more or less how the system worked I was able to drop in Greg's audio just as he'd produced it. This is really nice from a workflow standpoint because if a guy sends me something new, it just takes a few minutes to get it in and running exactly as he designed it complete with the cross fading and everything. I have no idea what it's like to actually do that side of it though, I've not used the designer for anything myself other than to tweak a volume blend or something.

Keep in touch on the audio. If you come up with something, even months from now, it'd be nice to hear about it. You never know...

I might not have the programming knowledge to really understand all that goes in behind creating something like that, but still your post is an interesting read.

I'll make sure to pm you if I get this thing sounding like I want.

I wonder how it simulates this:

Yep, it does it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKTXxzPPMo0

I meant - G-force simulator

Ah, I suppose you'd need a motion platform for that. A couple people have asked for it. I don't know yet, we'll see. It'd sure be cool.

Here's a new vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os07IiyGYnA

speaking of oculus
when will virtual rc get support... well i guess whenever the res is high enough for cars to be mroe than 1 pixel but still i think that could be neat

Quote from jtw62074 :

Ah, I suppose you'd need a motion platform for that. A couple people have asked for it. I don't know yet, we'll see. It'd sure be cool.

Here's a new vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os07IiyGYnA

Looks good. I guess it's as much about simulating the water as the boat?

In the mean time, here's a further pitch for the game design.

Live and Let Die + Sega Bass Fishing.

VRC- I quit the project almost a year ago so can't say (hence the boat simulator now). My guess is that it would be a major undertaking mostly because of how the GUI works. They'd either need it to operate on your monitor while you're in the car setup and menus and so forth, then change to Rift mode when you get on the track, or the whole GUI system would have to be completely rewritten from scratch, something that probably took a year or longer to do the first time around with all the redesigns and so forth. That would be a major undertaking at VRC, and with the internal dynamics of the company itself it would just drag on and on forever. I'll be surprised if VRC ever has Rift support. They want it, but wanting it and getting around to doing it are two different things.

Another issue you pointed out too is the pixelation and the size of the cars. I have a Z800 headset (an older VR head set with two physical screens) that didn't seem to have as much pixelation as the Rift which could run VRC. It was cool, especially seeing the car rotate in front of you on the pit table a foot or two from your face, but as you suggested, the typical view is "big track, tiny cars" which needs that to be a lot better than it currently is. I think with the Rift in the current state you would barely be able to make out the cars. They'd be little colored blobs of a few pixels most of the time probably.

I could be wrong, but even if the Rift was perfect in that regard I don't think you'd see Rift support in VRC for years to come. Without airing any laundry, there are reasons I finally left the company.

Sinbad: A guy I'm talking with is doing a nice looking fishing game:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/wip-the-angler-game-first-person-online-fishing-simulator.282584/

Quote from sinbad :

And I always wanted a sequel to this:


It looks really good actually (Todd's game, not Live and Let Die).

*khe-khem*

There's no way I could ever make physics that good.