sudobee

I didn't think this would work, then I tried it. Thank you!

I see my thread 'Winds in open world' got merged into thread. I think I dismissed this thread in my searches because the OP is mainly focused on wind strength, its only once you drill down that you find some mentions of direction and trade winds. I understand admin's point on having static wind strength for game play purposes and agree that dead calms are no fun but nothing is said about direction and the impact this has on traveling across the map. With open world being almost a year further along in development since that post, could we possibly have some developer insight on what we are likely to see for wind in open world?

I often use http://postimage.org/ to host my images externally as requires no accounts or logins. Then i use the [img ] tags link it into the thread like this. [img=www.imageurl.com/cookies.jpg]

Awesome, so are we getting this visual update next patch? Pretty incredible what people can do now, wont be too much longer until we can see this sort of stuff rendered in real time in our favorite games.

I haven't seen any discussions on this so I'm starting this topic for discussion. Obviously the direction of wind has a huge effect on where we can travel and how fast we can get there in the open world game. Traveling back and forth across an island system for commerce or war could become quite tedious if the winds aren't well thought out. I think this might be an area where some compromise between reality and game play must be made. With full realism, heading to an upwind location would be an arduous undertaking requiring slow sailing and lots of tacking or long detours to better winds. I have a few ideas for a wind that might work well and hopefully find the balance between game play and realism. While battling against the wind weather is an important part of sail and something I want to experience I fear it may come at the cost of boring game play and drive players away from the game. Prevailing winds The idea here is to adopt what have in the real world across the globe to a smaller system across and island chain like the Caribbean or whatever other map we get in open world. The down scaling of the real world weather system adds realism and depth to navigation. This sort of system would allow travel in all directions but we would need to decide whether to tack into the wind or detour around into better winds. I quickly drew in some wind lines on this island map so you can see what I mean. Seasonal winds Basically changing wind direction over time to facilitate travel in all directions. This is probably the furthest from reality but makes travel predictable and dependable. Simply changing the wind direction by 90 degrees every hour or two. This would make planning journeys and trading routes Dynamic winds A system where wind direction and speed vary over time completely randomly. This could be a map wide variation or be localized so that winds on one side of the map are different to the other. This could be fun or tedious depending on how you look at it as it would add the need to constantly change tack and make planning your voyage difficult. This could be extended to include gusty wind. A combination of the above Using prevailing winds as the main base for wind direction across the map, allowing for a good real world parallel and some dependability on wind direction for planning travel. Add to this a seasonal shift over time where the prevailing winds shift over time in a pattern, so that where a prevailing wind may be northerly then it would shift from northeasterly to northwesterly back and forwards over a 'X' hour cycle. Add further depth again by adding some randomness to the strength of the winds. Tying all this together with the weather system so the strength and variability of the wind is matched with calm or stormy seas would make for a very immersive experience.

I also have problems with the game minimizing by clicking onto my 2nd monitor during fullscreen mode.