
Post by
zezo | 2017-08-07 | 17:58:17
There are few possible sources of differences between the game engine, game interface and the router:
Maybe someone could clarify some of those points, but from my point of view:
1) It's not clear at what point in time the wind is shown in the interface - last iteration or next iteration.
Wind for other boats probably comes from the last iteration. Now it looks like the wind for your own boat also is shown for the past - that would reduce the complaints about other boats having better wind, but in reality would be wrong for planning your next heading.
Also, it's not clear what wind the game uses when moving the boat - is it the exact iteration time (like :01 or :09 minutes) or the 10-minute rounded period.
All of this gives 3 possible points in time for the game engine and at least 4 points for the interface.
2) The interface (probably) uses some mix of the old and new future forecasts during the first hour or two of the update cycle. The router uses only the fresh GFS.
All of the above does not matter much in stable winds, but in shifting (both in time and space ) conditions, or radically different new GFS output the differences may become significant.
If I knew how exactly the game engine is supposed to work I could fix the router to use the same data, but I'm not entirely sure even if the engine and game UI use the same data.
In theory all this could be reverse engineered by observing and comparing the boat behavior, but that task is complicated by the encryption used by the game protocol.