I am a bit of a flying boat or floatplane enthusiast from the old big ones to little singles on floats. I believe however this is a disconnect between wave motion and wind and how it is displayed in the sim. I had water detail set at Ultra and real weather (wind cloud etc) now being provided by AS on the basis this supposedly gave the best 'water' look (in wind rolling waves foam crests etc) and that it does until you go fly something like a flying boat or floats.

At Ultra water settings the waves are way to large for the local wind, lets say and in this case the surface wind was a low 6 knots. With water detail set at ultra this produce quite large rolling waves that one would expect if the wind was blowing at 20-30 knots. This made water control of the aircraft on floats (and a big flying boat) very difficult with a lot of bouncing and erratic airspeed readings and effectively doubled the take off run (not reduced it as it should).

Investigating further I could find no references to how the NVIDIA wave engine works (well not yet). So I tried reducing the water quality to high, same location and meteorological situation, instantly the waves were smaller still not as small or smooth as I would expect from a light breeze of 5 knots. The aircraft was no longer bouncing around like cork and much more stable. So it seems that water quality by default is also controlling wave size and motion. So for now I am using only HIGH for water details but will have to investigate further with different wind conditions. That is does a thunderstorm change the waves and wind on water and produce crests etc. 

Any thoughts or any expertise on this facet of the sim would be appreciated.  

I revisited Vince McCoy's water effects addon-enhancement. Discovered that he had redone this for P3DV4. His wake effects for flying boats and float planes are first class. Buried in his how to PDF was a note that if your using water effects in P3D and have the settings at ULTRA then you should add in an expression into the contacts section of the aircraft config:

always_use_avg_surface=1

The advice given is that with ultra water set, you will suffer a bouncy rough ride and adding this to config file reduces this effect. It appears Vince's effects files are a little more advanced or complicated so they take contacts with the surface as they occur and produce the effects as he said " ..this is only needed if water is set to ultra, skipping this may give you an interesting ride in rough seas." He is correct. I tried this and it appears to dampen the water down considerably if your using a flying boat or amphibian and did cure the uncontrollable bounce. 

Interestingly the water surface was now a lot more subdued in basically what are calm or fine conditions unlike before when there was a rolling swell even in inland lakes systems which was it seemed the default dynamic of the NVIDIA wave engine as used in P3D. 

Seems there is again more to explore in this sim!

 

 

Like you, I 'm also a flying boat and float plane enthusiast. I find that always_use_avg_surface=1 is not always necessary, but only for specific planes. Planes that most often benefit from it seem to be originally developed for FSX, but are P3D compatible.

I think LM has made some adjustments to the water physics over time. It doesn't seem quite as bouncy as it used to be. It would be really nice if there was a config file for the wave engine.

I boat. A steady 6kt wind properly aligned with the tide, blowing over a large body of water can indeed cause some pretty decent sized waves.

Maybe LM got all that right?

 

Don correct it is the port over FSX into V5.2 that have been the worst and the fix does sort them out. 

NVIDIA did the physics of wave motion - looking at their various videos on the subject from their developers it does seem that there are lot more variables that can be adjusted but not by users. It is a bit like True Sky the technology is licensed to LM.

To be fair - for a flight sim it is of lesser importance but I have also discovered that the old wave motion config which is still in the sim is no longer used by LM it is an FSX artifact they say. 

I just found a 2m swell on an inland lake with nil wind was a bit weird - looked good from a distance but not when you put an amphibian on it bounced around all over like a cork!

Edited July 8, 20214 yr by coastaldriver

also wish they didn't make lakes and rivers look so weird from cruise.