During the last Tradewinds Boat Builders Show (Feb 15th-22nd), hosted by TYC at Dex, Becca Moulliez» introduced her new project: the BWind engine and the BWind Buidlers Kit aka BBK» .
At the same time, lot of builders have displayed their own creations based on this new engine. Tasha Kostolany is doing a great work organizing boat shows, and I highly recommend you to have a look at the forum and the online documents she provides for more information. A must see, a must read.
Last minute: I also recommend an interview by Liv with Becca, posted to sltyc.com
In brief: Becca brings here a new concept of sailing engine, first intended for cruising under all “SL-weather” conditions, even if no wind setter is available around. Her main concern was to provide us with a very low-lag engine, and the key she found is to use a new concept of “wind presets”. After having experienced with success this development in her own boats, she now provides a “Do-It-Yourself” kit, packaged in a full perms keelboat available for free at TYC. This BBK (BWind Builder’s Kit) will allow every boat builders to give life to their creations, without any knowledge in scripting. A complete documentation is provided within this kit for this purpose, and is also available online thanks to Tasha in a “Building for Dummies” document. Maybe Becca’s project won’t meet racing afficionados wishes: they will miss compatibility with race wind, windshadowing, wwc features (waves, current…) … Those one will rather focus on boats such as Fizz-engine based ones, for a best realistic racing experience. But this is (so far) out of the scope of this project, primarily intended for cruising lovers. However Becca is still working day after day on this kit to introduce new features. Apparent wind is implemented, and I enjoyed the “No sailing by numbers” feature (even if I’d prefer true telltales than colors…a detail). All of us, having tried this boat, have been impressed by the very low lag impression, which is very nice for a cruise. After Kanker, and Mothgirl, Becca joined the pantheon of benefactors of the community in the field of boat building. Give it a try !
It is best to leave the floor or give the keyboard to Becca, so she will better describe in more details her own baby:
Idea behind the BWind…
Becca: Some time ago i was asked by some notable members of the Mowry Bay Cruising Club to work on a new simpler cruising wind model applicable to a basic Tako sailing engine. They needed to rely upon a low-lag, low-weight sailing engine and they were impressed by my Tako modified scripts that were already very light. After a lot of trial and errors I found a good way to script a new Cruising Wind Engine model that’s fully independent from current Racing Wind Engines and works perfectly in any Sim, even if a Windsetter is not available. My model works using Wind Presets… I stripped all original Tako SLSA Wind Model’s equations and i added a new concept preset based engine that proved to be very fast, (loads wind presets immdiately) and extremely low-lag. In theory a builder using my scripts may add an infinite number of wind presets, that non only include wind speed and direction, but many physics parameters needed to finetune the boat performance under various conditions, starting from the assumption that in Real Life boat performance is very affected by different wind conditions. Extending the model, this may affect any physic variable, including friction, waves, boat lift, drag, payload weight etc etc… This differs much from the original Tako concept that has a number of fixed tweaks that apply only once under different wind conditions…
Lag Factor
Becca: My BWind preset model loads all needed parameters for a given wind set only once and doesn’t need any update until a new wind preset is needed. The result of this is it will not impact on a given boats lag. So far i have been testing this engine extensively, even under extreme conditions, where there are many (like 20) boats sailing close in the same Sim. I have experienced a very low lag pleasant sailing and crossing sim borders doesnt affect much the boat behaviour… under normal conditions you feel a slight “bump” even when carrying a crew of 4-5 buds even when wearing AOS/HUDS and medium prims accessories. Under extreme lag conditions the performance is still quite good and you can control the boat easily. I have been experiencing only a few crashes sailing I’d say over 20000 Sims.
How it works…
Becca: My boats usually have 6 speed presets (8, 11, 15, 18,21,25 knots) and 8 wind directions presets… (N,S,W,E,NW,NE,SW,SE); each speed preset needs to be carefully tweaked to fit the boat behaviour.. depending upon the kind of boat you build. This is only needed for speed presets obviously… and only done once. To activate a cruising wind preset you type in chat the direction you need (like ‘ne’ without quotes) and the speed you want (like ’11′ without quotes). All my boats default to a 15 Knots, West wind preset.
BBK – Current Features
Becca: The original Becky’s Baby Sloop 1-36 is still available for FREE in some selected locations in SL, like Tradewinds Yacht Club, Shiffsratten Yacht Club and Triumphal Yacht Club. The BBK (BWind Builder’s Kit) Keelboat, released on the 15th of February, 2010 is currently available at Tradewinds Yacht Club and extending the original Sloop includes :
- Tacking animations for the helmsman
- Rotating sails based upon a personal model (Tako compatible), supporting numerous different sails.
- Apparent Wind model for a more realistic sailing experience.
The KIT is packed into a cute 14 Prims only generic sculpted Keelboat, built with the generous help of friends like Tasha Kostolany, Manul Rotaru, Balduin Aabye and Neron Blanco. Many others like Liv Leigh, Bri Hasp, Orca Flotta, Tory Micheline, Aquarius Paravane helped testing or hinting. The boat is fullperms and freely available at TYC and includes a complete Builder’s documentation.
Note: The original Release Speech has been published by Tasha Kostolany.No Sailing by Numbers?
Becca: We dont want to sail by numbers huh? Inspired by my personal Fizz experience i tried to provide a closer to real-life sailing experience based upon sensation more than numbers…. I provide a minimalistic Textual Hud that includes only the basic needed informations that you should have while sailing a simple Real Life boat, like generic Compass direction indication (including degrees) , loaded wind preset and boat speed. I have stripped all Sheet and Wind angles informations and added a colour based “virtual telltales system” and a Wind/Sheet Ratio information (always keep that to 2.0), that tells you how you’re doing while trimming sails… When the hud is RED your sails are too loose, YELLOW fairly poor, GREEN optimal and CYAN too tight… I find this very fun… you dont need to check parameters a lot and, more or less like in RL sailing, you concentrate more on controlling rudder and trimming sails. The BBK includes an extended textual HUD as well, showing more parameters.
Current Limits and the Future
Becca: Current released model doesn’t include an independent sails control… this means youre not controlling each sail independently… i will provide full support for this option later on… I’m working on a realistic Gennaker/Spinnaker boost model, that’s currently under test; an independent jib control with winging feature is under test as well. I have also under test boat-lift model suitable for multihull boats that lift differently under various wind conditions… This is a different heeling model. In order to eliminate the problems of the submerged pontoon of a cat when heeling, the whole boat is lifted out of the water (depending on wind conditions) so that the lee side of the boat is still on the surface of the water. Future releases will include a Dynamic Heeling upon trimming , that’s also under development at the moment, for a more realistic behaviour. All of these features added still has not adversely affected the performance of my test boat over sim lines and has proved to be reliable. I am also testing a Crew Module that should allow active crewing on BWind boats, trimming individual sails. This is at the moment in VERY Alpha development stage.
About racing winds…
Becca: The motivation of this scripting model was really for low-lag funsailing and long-range cruising needs. It’s really not meant to replace the more precise intricacies of the various racing winds. With this wind engine you can’t set manually a 223,45° 8,75 knots wind 
btw do you really need this?… I had no time to fully check the WWC Setter compatibility, especially when wind shadowing, current and waves height is needed… Btw there are already many excellent racing boats available in Second Life, so if you need a very good racing boat you should consider buying one if you didn’t already . This is really beyond the purpose of my Sailing Model, that once again is meant for low-lag funsailing and long-range cruising needs. By the way I will probably introduce soon a new WWC Receiver based upon Mothgirl Dibou’s current release, designed to better fit BWind features. At the same time I could not find good resources about Kanker Greenacre’s SLSA Racing Wind. Therefore i could not test that option. At the moment I’m not planning a future’s release date and I don’t know if all of the above mentioned features will be freely available.
Becca Moulliez - February 2010
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s really a fantastic job! Thanks to BWind, sailing and exploring in SL is now much better. Congratulations Becca.
For me, the top 5 key qualities of Becca’s engine are:
1) Sailing with performance
2) Cool to explore SL
3) Easy to use
4) Quick to rez
5) New way and new trend
Thanks for all, Becca.