Sorry to make the first thread here a less-than-kind one, but I'm a bit disappointed.

 

This isn't a Simulation title.  It belongs somewhere like Xbox Live Arcade.  I don't mean that in a bad way, it's just that this is to SCUBA as Flight is to Flight sims.  It's just missing too much to wear the title of Simulation.

 

First, a quick background on myself:  I've been diving for the past 12 odd years (Certified at  age 14) and am currently a NAUI Certified Dive Master (basically one 'rank' below instructor, and able to dive as a professional dive lead).  I have over 250 dives under my belt in places ranging from flooded quarries to WWII wrecks off the coast of North Carolina.  I bought this 'sim' today excited to see what product labling itself "Scuba Simulation" could bring to the table.

 

I was disappointed.

 

Things missing:

-Zero acknowledgement of Nitrogen loading in blood tissue. For deeper dives, say to anything past 85 feet or so, Air supply isn't usually your limiting factor.  Instead, it's the amount of time you can stay down before you body on-loads too much nitrogen to safely return to the surface without suffering the Bends.  If you stay down past this limit, you must practice decompression diving (generally not widly practiced in the recreational community for safety reasons).  All this title tracks is Air and depth.  This is akin to a flight sim not simulating wind.

 

-You have no dive buddy.  But that's ok, programming AI is hard work.

 

-The gear selection is a joke.  Air tanks are a prime example: Rather than give you options such as 80s, 100s, dual 80s etc, you 'get' to unlock different liveries for your tanks.  Pathetic.

 

-Zero mechanics in place for buoyancy.  The 'Neutral' buoyancy button  just re-centers the camera.  #####?

 

-Speaking of "#####?," The controls are...."unique."  It uses WASD, except for the 'A' and 'D' keys (so...WS?).  The mouse is used to turn and pivot the camera.  This isn't the worst offence in the title, but they could do better.

 

-Visual options essentially don't exist.  You get a series of pre-sets like Basic through to beautiful and that's it.  Zero allocation for advanced visual tweaking.

 

-The surface doesn't exist:  Try breaking the surface of the water and you're simply asked if you want to end the dive.

 

-No TrackIR support. Pretty much a requirement for any sim that takes itself seriously.  I'd have been willing to forgive this is it wasn't so lacking in other areas.

 

 

Here's the part where I'm supposed to say that if your just looking to kill some time looking at pretty virtual fish and ship wrecks without the complex 'dive snob' stuff, this is for you.  I can't.  The graphics are terrible.  If there were actual sim elements at play, I'd be more than forgiving of the lacking visuals, but there isn't any substance there either.  Generally these days a self-titled 'sim' can get by with either beauty or brains, but Infinite Scuba has neither.

 

 

I want my $10 back.

You would be better off with ARMA 3...At least you can shoot stuff as well...;-) Never been able to see the point off diving sims, I mean no-one can simulate my body (although I'd like to see them try!) At least with FSX you get a machine to mess about with.

You would be better off with ARMA 3...At least you can shoot stuff as well...;-) Never been able to see the point off diving sims, I mean no-one can simulate my body (although I'd like to see them try!) At least with FSX you get a machine to mess about with.

 

At the moment, Arma 3 lacks many of those features as well, but it has to simulate an entire combat experience.  I'm betting we'll see mods for arma  that fill in the gaps.  And yes, Shooting stuff underwater can be fun, although IRL I prefer to do so with a camera

 

As far as simulating ones body, a dive computer could have been integrated into the release that tracks Nitrogen.

 

Again, I understand that they decided to ditch some (a lot...) of realism to make a 'fun' title, but they really aren't delivering there either.

Hello and thanks for the feedback.

 

Creating a simulation is always a balancing act.  On one hand, you are simulating a real-world activity which usually requires real-world training, and people don't want to pay money to sit in a virtual classroom.  There are real downsides to being "too simmy".  A good example is the dead man's switch on a locomotive.  Some people want that, but the vast majority would think it's incredibly tedious.  We aren't trying to replace, or even replicate, the type of training a diver would undergo during real certification.  On the other hand, we recognize that the simulations audience can be your strongest advocates if you keep them satisfied.

 

As I said, it's a balancing act.  You may disagree with the decisions we made, but if our initial offering were a slavishly accurate recreation of dive training nobody would buy it.  That's not to say we couldn't or won't add more "dive training" and strict realism in the future.

 

I would like to point out that we do track nitrogen loading.    We actually include a full VPM gas absorption model.  These features aren't surfaced in V1 because we made the decision not to initially support repetetive diving.  Forcing the user to do a one-hour surface interval, or even a 3 minute safety stop, doesn't sound like good gameplay, and it's virtually impossible to get the bends on a single tank of gas starting with no nitrogen loading.  In the future we plan on adding more technical features like real wreck penetration, cave diving, tank swapping, deep (<200 ft) dives, saturation diving, different gas mixes, oxygen toxcicity, etc., including more of the information a real diver would learn along the way.

 

It's all a work-in-progress.

 

Once again, we appreciate the feedback and are working hard to make something compelling, for sim fans as well as a wider audience.

 

Thanks,

Russ Glaeser

Certified diver since 2002

Development Manager

Cascade Game Foundry

Why not add Realism Settings like in FSX? This way Infinite Scuba will both be a game and a simulator, and the user will be able to choose what it is.

 

And please plan your DLC carefully. Don't make Microsoft Flight repeat itself. Focus on adding more functionality instead of gear liveries. I think this will be appreciated more.

I'm wondering how this actually compares to eDiving which is, or attempts the simulation aspect.