Stern drives are here! — Design it, Drive it : Speedboats News

A new meaty, snapping, snarling V8 sound accompanies today's release of the long awaited stern drives available for the vee hulls. Stern drive engine options include a wide variety of power levels ranging from 130 to a whopping 1,750 horsepower which is proving enough to run more than 240 mph in the shootouts!

How to run the new stern drives: A pair of checkboxes now appears in the top of the engine panel in the design screen for switching between outboards and stern drives. You can load your previously saved vee hulls and switch them between stern drive and outboard quickly this way for some back to back comparisons or designing a stern drive using one of your outboard hulls as a starting point. Be careful though (or prepare for a good laugh at first), stern drive setups can be a lot heavier and more powerful than outboards, so a hull designed originally around an outboard won't work well with a high powered stern drive. There's nothing stopping you from trying though!

Other details:
FMod has been removed from DIDI Boats and the audio system has been rewritten using Unity 5.5's built in audio classes. A custom mixer has been written that worked pretty much the same way that FMod's integration worked previously, so the outboard engine will sound about the same as before. However, there are a couple of cool new changes:

1) This update brings proper 3D, directional sound. This isn't particularly noticeable unless you're using a Vive or Oculus Rift virtual reality headset where it's very noticeable as you turn your head. When driving, the engines are behind you and now sound like it.

2) The water spray sound volume is now controlled by a combination of boat speed and wetted area. This works for all boats (tunnels and vees). As your boat lifts out of the water with trim and speed, the spray effect sound may get quieter if it's airing out. If you drop the throttle to lose lift and set the boat back down or it porpoises/bounces and so forth, you'll hear it "whoosh.. whoosh.." You can trim boats a little bit by ear now by paying attention to the water spray sound. When you can barely hear it, your boat is barely touching the water! The effect is on the quiet side and deliberately subtle, while still being enough to bring a new audio dimension to the experience, making it feel a little more authentic. It makes it feel a little more like you're really there, especially in VR.

Have fun! Thanks for playing!

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