Wave Physics v1.0

Hey everyone! In BeamNG the waves on the sea are just a picture. Boats float on a flat surface while the water around them moves. Wave Physics makes the waves you see actually push things that float, so boats, logs, barrels and balls go up on the crests and down into the troughs together with the water.

What it does

• Wave forces for everything that floats in the game: boat mods, stock logs and barrels, balls, tyres. Normal cars still sink like in the base game

• Its own water shader, so the waves you see and the physics are always in sync. A boat won’t sink into a wave or hang in the air over a trough

• Long swell all the way to the horizon, instead of waves that flatten out 15-50 m from the camera

• Calm water near the shore: waves get smaller where the water is shallow, so big waves don’t climb up the beach anymore

• Waves rock ships but don’t carry them away. The water only moves up and down, and so do the forces

Sea states

• Map default - whatever the map maker set, usually light waves

• Calm - small waves, about 0.2 m from crest to trough

• Swell - long rolling waves, about 2 m

• Rough - stormy sea, up to about 4 m

Your choice is saved for every map with a sea. When you switch, the old waves fade out and the new ones fade in over a few seconds, so nothing gets thrown around.

Settings

If you have Modslab Hub, Wave Physics gets its own tab (press G). There you can change the sea state, wave force, the water shader, calm water near the shore and how deep the water has to be for full waves, the physics mode, and turn the whole mod on or off. Without the hub the mod just runs with its saved settings.

Maps

Works on any map with a sea. I tested it on West Coast USA, Italy, Jungle Rock Island, Small Island and East Coast USA. Lakes, pools and rivers stay the same.

Good to know

• Light open boats (like a 54 kg kayak) are fine in Calm and Swell, but can flip over in Rough

• The game’s own water drag still thinks the water is standing still, so boats react to the biggest waves a bit late, and in Rough a big ship slowly drifts (about 0.4 m/s)

• Performance cost is about 0.1% of one CPU core for a small boat, 0.4% for a 44 m ferry and 2% for a raft of 14 logs

Install

Requires BeamNG.drive 0.39. Modslab Hub is optional, you only need it for the settings menu. Put wave_physics_1.0.0.0.zip in your mods folder without unpacking it.

The ferry in the pictures is the Belasco Heavy Industries DH-139 by jgb, it’s a separate mod from the repository.