@smity199m You can, but it's really hard to drive with keyboard, especially turning or using the canard, because it's not analog. If you have a game console, you could probably use the gamepad from that.

@racer It was not, I still haven't added support for different in-cockpit sounds. Now that I've been moving everything into bundles, I plan to change how the audio is setup which will make it harder to mod.

@jseven27 Click on the button on the top left of the screen that looks like a speedometer. Then to start the boat you have to press and hold the "I" key. You can remap the ignition to any button you want in the settings menu.

@picko There's currently a league race going on, thus the password. Normally, there is no password for the official servers.

Good question, I never really played with Unreal, I don't think it was free when I started all of this. I think Unity had a free version, but it was very limited. I actually started out using a game engine called Torque 3D, but struggled quite a bit with it.

I started messing with Unity in 2016 after playing Design It Drive It Speedboats made in Unity by Todd Wasson. I found that Unity's Asset Store made it really easy to get started. At the time the water assets for Unity were much better. I'm not sure if this is the case anymore, but at this point I don't think switching engines is an option.

I'm pretty sure that both Unreal and Unity use the NVIDIA PhysX engine for physics, so there isn't really a difference there. All the boat physics is custom code calculating forces that just feed into the physics engine.

@mickey Thanks for the reply Mickey I will try that. I don't think I will run Hydrosim much longer on my laptop as heat is an issue and it gobbles up the battery. Otherwise it's pretty impressive!

Thrustmaster T248 seems to work in the tester

@rileyroo1997 Join our discord (and message a mod admin on discord when you do so they can give you a role so you can see and post stuffer in the channels) and feel free to ask. The main guys that are really good at making boats Matt Johnson, Craig Montgomery, and Chris Porten, though there are others who know how as well. Discord is where most of the community is rather than the forums these days.

@craigmont
I disagree. First of all you can’t even compare Hydro Thunder with Hydrosim.
IMO it think it would appeal and introduce a fresh new racing sim to a lot of different race enthusiasts.
I grew up in the Tri-Cities and around the hydroplanes. It was something that everyone in that area and from all around the Northwest look forward too every year. And there is a variety of other courses through hydroplane history that could be utilized. Tri-Cities is just one location. And the potential hull DLC throughout history would be amazing. With that said and not to kill a dead horse, this genre of racing gets into people’s blood fast and becomes almost like a new pass time.
It’s NASCAR on water with a completely different racing dynamic that racing enthusiasts would embrace.
Maybe just a pipe dream, but I have a friend that works for a major game developer. He has stated that their development department is always looking for new game ideas.
Respect to the Hydrosim developers in what they have accomplished with this sim.
Upmost respect to this sport. No disrespect intended in this post, just passionate about hydroplane racing and racing in general. Cheers

Yes, I do plan on adding vintage boats. Currently working on GP boats though.

@braceru31 Scroll to the bottom of this page. You'll see a Discord window with a "Connect" link. Click it and you're in.

You can race in VR, but I wouldn't recommend it in a league unless you have a spotter. As for future VR stuff, the new GP boat model has a really well-made cockpit model thanks to Kallen Washburn, so that'll look really nice in VR once its finished.

With water effects, we used to have some splashes on the screen but they never worked in VR and I believe were tied to the old water system. Details like that are probably lower priority than other things, like GP boats and race courses for them.

If it pulls right then just run the boat in an clockwise direction, might help in your turns! LOL j/k, sorry i don't know much about game controllers but it sounds like an calibration setting of some sort like we use for joysticks.

Like OP I am also excited about this. Looks great, runs well, something totally different. Great job.