Wind gone, now back

Nothing is static. Not even in computers. After running 12 months of testing, my RealWind (c) suddenly coughed up an error. Something about a problem with the windsource.

Wind is back online

What does that mean? It means flags, mills, windsocks and windmeters stopped changing. Huh? Lemme explain... For the past year the windtoys at Tradewinds YC have been displaying real wind imported from Copenhagen. Well, most of them... not the flags on the flagpole there on the left. Not yet. Tasha is very sensitive about that flagpole.

Yay! It works again...

However, just about anything else rotates according to wind from RL, and if you touch them, they'll even tell you the current wind and weather.

Windsock too

So where am I going with this? Don't get me started... For now this was just an update. I haven't been online for ages, but someone was nice enough to observe and tell me about this problem. Someday - when I find the time - I might release a box of windsources and windtoys to play with. It can make hundreds of sims have coordinates wind conditions - automagically. After that... who knows...

Me unwinding after a job well done

Maybe I'll stick it into a boat and see what happens... Sailing on real wind would make quite a difference from all those synthetic winds we have today. Synthetic winds have certain benefits, such as being able to set the wind right - right before a race. However, most synthetic winds serve the excact same wind to all boats. Puffs, lulls and shifts. Not much fun in tacking on a shift if everyone else gets it too...

Send out the buoys

I've been fiddling with race marks lately. It's fun. I want them to look like real race marks and in many ways I also want them to behave like real buoys. High visibility is a high priority. It is hard to plan tactics for a rounding when u can't see the friggin mark.

Visibility is good

These three pass the visibility test. The one on the left (NE) is about 250 meters out. I think that's pretty good visibility. A green nav buoy at one third the size would be almost if not completely invisible at that distance.

Yeah

Sailors perspective? Here's me fetching a mark. It's not a giant mark, but they are around 2.5 meters tall. Some of it is under water. Real marks do that, and that makes them create wake from the current.

and the third

So here's the third one. Next up is the one back home which is achored so that you can push it aside. It will seek back to it's original position at a suitable slow pase - as if there's a long heavy anchorline or even a chain at the bottom.

Back home

Yup. There is is. Thanx for joining me on this little tour round the waters east of Tradewinds. If you had half the fun I had, then I had twice the fun you had. On a more serious note: Once I am done testing this, I'll put them in a freebiebox and stick that in the boathouse.