Ferry system through installment 3 posted

I’ve now posted the rollup of the ferry system through Installment 3,  The only things new since Installment 2 are an excessively detailed Swartz Bay terminal with a lot of stuff no one will ever see and a somewhat experimental rise and fall bow wave effect that has been added to the wake file for the larger ferries. There is a lot more that I hope I can do with this idea, but I think the effect file posted looks better than the old one. If you like, you can always stick with the old version. If you are using CYYJ scenery, which is quite close to Swartz Bay plus addons that consume a lot of resources there may be computer horsepower related problems.

This installment follows the same pattern as with the first two, but it’s still worth looking over the updated instructions. The files are all linked on links page under PNW AI ferry system as before. Same file names, just updated files. Download the .pdf documentation on that page for more info.

A rise and fall bow wave for the PNW ferry wake effect

Now that P3D v2.5 is displaying my wake effects without the sawtooth problem, I’ve started to work on them again. In looking at the AI boats in the almost done Swartz Bay model, the lack of any sort of wave on the side hull made the boats look lifeless, like zombie boats. I’ve been playing with a bow wave (a wave, not a horizontal bow wake) for some time without getting very far, but I’ve now made a rise and fall bow wave that at least seems to add to the look rather than detract as do some of the frothy foamy effects that have been used at times. The texture for it comes from the bow wave of a WSF ferry so that part is reasonably authentic. Here’s a short video. Notice that the port and starboard effects are not perfectly synced, but I don’t think that can be remedied.

4-21: I’ve revised the bow wave so it now looks a lot better to my eye, especially in P3D with 3D waves. I’ll try to update the video soon.

Swartz Bay terminal nearly finished

The Swartz Bay terminal is nearly finished. The 500 pictures of the area I took on my little vacation to Victoria over spring break were very useful to say the least.  Here’s a link to a little video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhfS7mC5VZE

The resolution is low and it’s jerky, but I hope you get an idea of what the scenery will look like.

Revised Refuge Cove scenery download

To eliminate conflicts between my Refuge Cove project and later ones, I have revised the download and the instructions. If I forgot something, please send me a note. If you have already installed Refuge Cove, there is no need to re-do it. The only difference would be some minor fixes to some of the scenery objects. However, if you do update, be sure to delete the old traffic file for the AI tug; it’s now included in the other files.

I plan to revise the Entrance Island download in the same manner soon. I hope that this will make adding these earlier projects to the PNW ferry system quite easy. There are inevitable tradeoffs however, including the need to download large files when you might only be interested in one small part.