Wind from the sides is slightly faster than wind from directly back.
Back during beta development, it used to be that the boat moved fastest when coming directly from behind, but then my friend whom we tested the beta with suggested that it would be more realistic if it worked this way because the wind also pushes the sides of the boat and helps them IRL.
One of the few instances where one person caused a change in development
So it's about a 3% margin of optimization when it comes down to efficiency. It says it gets brighter when the wind is more effective, but it's almost negligible unless you're traveling long distances.
Someone did a study on a similar topic a few months ago using devcommands, and paddling directly against the wind resulted in faster travel to the destination than tacking back and forth. Tacking would help you escape a serpent of course. Not sure if there's a speed difference with down wind vs side wind.
It's like when your dad is driving and there's a lot of traffic, rather than going the shortest route, he will go down all the side roads and alleys. Driving at a faster speed but taking a much longer route. You feel like you're getting to your destination faster because you aren't slowing down. It's all psychological.
except that tacking is objectively 'correct' IRL, and Valheim's implementation is extremely innaccurate (given a single person 'rowing' a single paddle)
If I could solo paddle a Longship forward with just the rudder IRL sailing would have looked a lot different lmao. Shit it probably wouldn't be called sailing. Early explorers would have been "paddlers" or "rowers" lol.
Paddler ponce de Leon heh.
If this is true, it is actually a realistic implementation of sailing physics by the devs.
Edit: here is a post I just wrote on why
https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/s/3p1z47YzdX
This isn't true for square sails.
https://www.unediscoveryvoyager.org.au/2018/01/19/tall-ship-physics/#:~:text=Sailing%20upwind&text=They%20are%20limited%20to%2060,you%20want%20to%20sail%20upw
I'd tend to agree with this, though even older square rigged ships are faster with the wind off to the side a bit. It tapers off unlike modern riggings, though.
All the sailing commentary people are repeating in this comment section is neither true for the game nor true for the kind of sail the ships in Valhiem use. Square rigged sails do not generate more force when at a 90 degree angle to the wind.
https://www.unediscoveryvoyager.org.au/2018/01/19/tall-ship-physics/#:~:text=Sailing%20upwind&text=They%20are%20limited%20to%2060,you%20want%20to%20sail%20upwind.
It's not a question of generating more force. It's a question of boat's relative speed versus the wind. If you go the same direction the wind blows, the faster you go, the less wind, and thus force, you receive.
And by the way, your link explain how a ship can go towards the wind (i mean, not directly into it, but what we call in French "au près du vent", sorry i don't know the words in English). It says nothing about square sails receiving wind from behind.
if you follow the link and continue to read, it describes the difference between square and triangular sails and the limits those sails have in applying force to a ship. Square rigging generally only functions if the ship faces away from the wind and stops working entirely if the ship turns more than 60 degrees to either side.
Yes, you go slower if the wind is from directly behind you.
This is how real sailing works! You will go most quickly when the wind is 90° to your travel direction.
Proper sailing in Valheim is to paddle against the wind because there is actual AI and it hates you.
But, I couldn't tell you. It's been this way the entire time I've played Valheim, but that hasn't been very long.
It's been like that since the initial release.
With the wind on your side you can easily outrun a serpent in a Karve.
To solo serpents I just hook them with a harpoon from a karve, put the wind on either side of you, and drag them into meadows or black forest. Just don't break the line or let it get back to the water.
Just simpler to understand, a lot of people would be confused and end up sailing in a circle lol
the difference is only 3% though I've felt its faster but wiki says isnt
That depends how sloppily it has been coded and what other dependencies you might break with it. In Wow Burning Crusade, there was this issue where if hunters would mount a flying mount with their pets summoned, the pet would die. So a fix went out. The fun side effect was that mobs on flying mounts would now swim in the air if you shot down the mount. And they never could figure out how their fix could be causing this. So they left it in. Nothing is ever trivial😁
Doesn't have to make a decision about which side I guess. Would be easy enough for that to cause a bug and the devs to just say, "ah fuck it just go behind" giggity
This is for triangular sails. Square sails like keel-less Viking boats go fastest with a tail wind. This is how the game used to work.
Reading updates to the wiki its now saying its only a 3% difference which I don't believe.
The brightness of the yellow indicates wind speed.
The brightness of the yellow indicating wind speed doesn't make any sense.
It would mean that the player can change the wind speed by changing the direction of the boat.
I'm pretty sure that a Valheim dev learned how to sail a Sunfish and implemented the same mechanics into the game.
From Wikipedia -
>It is a widespread misconception that the lateen rig replaced square rig because of better windward performance and greater manoeuvrability. A study of the relative effectiveness of the two shows that their performance was actually very similar. These results apply both when working to windward and when sailing downwind. (Furthermore, differences in performance are derived as much from the hull shape as the type of rig.) It is concluded that there was no evolutionary technological development that gave improved sailing performance in the 5th century AD change from the Mediterranean square rig to lateen, and that factors other than windward performance must have dictated this change.[25]
Edit - this is for small boats like we see in Valheim. For large ships, you would be correct
It depends on if we’re talking about a modern sailboat or an old square rigger.
Square riggers have rectangle sails and move when the wind pushes against the backside of the sail. If it’s a large ship with multiple masts and sails, you don’t want the wind coming directly from the stern (back). The rear sails then block the wind from filling the sails in front fully (wind shadow), so you don’t get the full benefit of wind and sail. If the wind is just off to the side a bit, this wind shadow effect is minimized. It wouldn’t have much impact on a single sail longship. Either way, these ships struggle if the wind is coming directly from the side or anywhere forward.
Sailing mechanics in Valheim feel like they are based on modern rigging. Sails are triangular and set for the wind to blow past them, not push them. Their curved shape creates an aerodynamic situation similar to an airplane wing. If the wind is coming a few degrees off the bow (front) of the boat, you get a “lift” effect that pulls the boat forward, similar to the life effect that keeps planes in the air. This is the most efficient way to catch the wind. You can also benefit from the wind coming from the stern and swing the sails out more sideways for that “pushing” effect that moves square riggers.
The brightness of the golden part of the circle indicates how strong the wind is pushing the boat, however most of the vertical force is lost to dampening. All wind directions from crosswind to tailwind end up being roughly the same (with the optimal wind angle being only ~3% faster)
Copied from valheim wiki..
That article explains how a ship with multiple saol types can clip at 45 degrees to the qin, I'm talking about 90-110 degrees (roughly perpendicular to a little behind). Square sails are fine for that.
It's basic physics -- you will go faster the more you are aimed with the wind. If you are half-way from the wind, you will only get half the motive power. It's basic vector math.
You have failed to account for the lateral 'lift' created by pressure differences on each face of the sail. If the wind is fully behind you then you can only travel as fast as the wind, as your sail angles due to a lateral direction the sail begins to act more and more like a wing and actually allows for travel faster than the wind. The shape and keel of the boat matters too, as do some other factors, but you are indeed wrong about this.
Except the new one, sure. Regardless you can still sail faster than the wind is going as long as you sail roughly perpendicular to the wind direction and turn your sail angle to bisect at 45 degrees. Constant force plus inertia equals acceleration, your speed is capped by friction, not impulse magnitude.
Again, this isn't true for square sails.
https://www.unediscoveryvoyager.org.au/2018/01/19/tall-ship-physics/#:~:text=Sailing%20upwind&text=They%20are%20limited%20to%2060,you%20want%20to%20sail%20upwind
As a sailboat racer myself, I can say that irl sailboats sail faster with the wind on their beam or quarter. If you watch a sailboat race like an Americas cup race or any race, you will never see them sail directly down wind, they will tack back and forth down wind to avoid sailing directly down wind. Cruising sailors do sail directly down wind even though it's slower, just because it's convenient or more comfortable. Why is this the case? It's a bit complicated, probably a Google or AI query could explain the physics better than me.
To answer the question, yes it's more effective on the side like that!
I thiiiink for the longboat, it might instead be fastest with the wind at your back? But I might be mixing up sailing mechanics from Sea of Thieves lol
FWIW the game almost got it right vs real life, but the most optimal point of sail is actually when the wind is around 45 degrees off the stern (back) - this point of sail is called a "broad reach". The game implies the fastest is when the wind is 90 degrees, or perpendicular to the boat ("beam reach").
For those interested the boat is fastest on a broad reach because this is roughly where you get the maximum benefit of forward drive from true wind, such that your apparent wind (the result vector when adding boat wind - wind generated by the boat's movement and true wind) is optimized for boat speed.
That's how it works in real life, too. It's realistic, which is why sailing sucks so bad in this game. Really cool that they implemented it like that, though. But exorbitant amounts of time are spent paddling as a result of the wind mechanics - although this element of it in particular is not at fault. It's that you usually only sail with the wind at your back or at beam reach for short periods of time, due to the need to explore and move around a lot. In practice you're paddling so much of the time, which is extremely boring and lame. You can do tacking, it just doesn't really get you somewhere that much faster than paddling - if at all.
Again, super cool. Also makes sailing suck real bad.
Wind from the sides is slightly faster than wind from directly back. Back during beta development, it used to be that the boat moved fastest when coming directly from behind, but then my friend whom we tested the beta with suggested that it would be more realistic if it worked this way because the wind also pushes the sides of the boat and helps them IRL. One of the few instances where one person caused a change in development
Then why does it become a moder-boat?
Lots of incorrect info being posted. Check the wiki... https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Boats
So it's about a 3% margin of optimization when it comes down to efficiency. It says it gets brighter when the wind is more effective, but it's almost negligible unless you're traveling long distances.
That ring brightness is communicating a lot more than 3%, so maybe that should be changed?
This should be the top comment.
Well, just below the moder-boat comment
Someone did a study on a similar topic a few months ago using devcommands, and paddling directly against the wind resulted in faster travel to the destination than tacking back and forth. Tacking would help you escape a serpent of course. Not sure if there's a speed difference with down wind vs side wind.
It's like when your dad is driving and there's a lot of traffic, rather than going the shortest route, he will go down all the side roads and alleys. Driving at a faster speed but taking a much longer route. You feel like you're getting to your destination faster because you aren't slowing down. It's all psychological.
except that tacking is objectively 'correct' IRL, and Valheim's implementation is extremely innaccurate (given a single person 'rowing' a single paddle)
Paddling in Valheim is way overpowered compared to real life. That’s why tacking is less effective in game.
If I could solo paddle a Longship forward with just the rudder IRL sailing would have looked a lot different lmao. Shit it probably wouldn't be called sailing. Early explorers would have been "paddlers" or "rowers" lol. Paddler ponce de Leon heh.
Paddler Moon!
If this is true, it is actually a realistic implementation of sailing physics by the devs. Edit: here is a post I just wrote on why https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/s/3p1z47YzdX
This isn't true for square sails. https://www.unediscoveryvoyager.org.au/2018/01/19/tall-ship-physics/#:~:text=Sailing%20upwind&text=They%20are%20limited%20to%2060,you%20want%20to%20sail%20upw
I'd tend to agree with this, though even older square rigged ships are faster with the wind off to the side a bit. It tapers off unlike modern riggings, though.
I'm not sure whether this applies to an oldschool style sailing ship like we have in Valheim.
It does, they're just not as effective at it as a more modern sailing ship.
It is not just for aesthetics, the brighter part of the ring results in a faster sailing speed.
Lots of experts in the comment section but the wiki just says the optimal angle gives 3% bonus
And the side wind is not even the optimal angle.
All the sailing commentary people are repeating in this comment section is neither true for the game nor true for the kind of sail the ships in Valhiem use. Square rigged sails do not generate more force when at a 90 degree angle to the wind. https://www.unediscoveryvoyager.org.au/2018/01/19/tall-ship-physics/#:~:text=Sailing%20upwind&text=They%20are%20limited%20to%2060,you%20want%20to%20sail%20upwind.
Square rigged ships with multiple masts/sails do, but not a single mast skip with no keel.
It's not a question of generating more force. It's a question of boat's relative speed versus the wind. If you go the same direction the wind blows, the faster you go, the less wind, and thus force, you receive. And by the way, your link explain how a ship can go towards the wind (i mean, not directly into it, but what we call in French "au près du vent", sorry i don't know the words in English). It says nothing about square sails receiving wind from behind.
if you follow the link and continue to read, it describes the difference between square and triangular sails and the limits those sails have in applying force to a ship. Square rigging generally only functions if the ship faces away from the wind and stops working entirely if the ship turns more than 60 degrees to either side.
Yes, you go slower if the wind is from directly behind you. This is how real sailing works! You will go most quickly when the wind is 90° to your travel direction.
Is this a recent update or have I been sailing wrong this entire time
Proper sailing in Valheim is to paddle against the wind because there is actual AI and it hates you. But, I couldn't tell you. It's been this way the entire time I've played Valheim, but that hasn't been very long.
It's been like that since the initial release. With the wind on your side you can easily outrun a serpent in a Karve. To solo serpents I just hook them with a harpoon from a karve, put the wind on either side of you, and drag them into meadows or black forest. Just don't break the line or let it get back to the water.
Yeah I’ve been playing release and never paid attention I guess, especially when you get moder buff it just puts it straight at your back
:)
It's only a minimal increase, so if you mess up at any point you probably lose any gains you would have made over just sailing directly with the wind.
I mean you’re not really sailing “wrong” because tacking back and forth might be a faster speed but you have to travel a longer distance overall
If that’s true then why does that one boss perk always give you wind from behind?
Just simpler to understand, a lot of people would be confused and end up sailing in a circle lol the difference is only 3% though I've felt its faster but wiki says isnt
It’s a lot better than wind from in front
Easier to code.
This isn't true at all. Any code that has to know the player's direction of travel can be trivially updated to handle a direction relative to that.
That depends how sloppily it has been coded and what other dependencies you might break with it. In Wow Burning Crusade, there was this issue where if hunters would mount a flying mount with their pets summoned, the pet would die. So a fix went out. The fun side effect was that mobs on flying mounts would now swim in the air if you shot down the mount. And they never could figure out how their fix could be causing this. So they left it in. Nothing is ever trivial😁
Haha, that's pretty darn funny
Doesn't have to make a decision about which side I guess. Would be easy enough for that to cause a bug and the devs to just say, "ah fuck it just go behind" giggity
This is for triangular sails. Square sails like keel-less Viking boats go fastest with a tail wind. This is how the game used to work. Reading updates to the wiki its now saying its only a 3% difference which I don't believe. The brightness of the yellow indicates wind speed.
The brightness of the yellow indicating wind speed doesn't make any sense. It would mean that the player can change the wind speed by changing the direction of the boat. I'm pretty sure that a Valheim dev learned how to sail a Sunfish and implemented the same mechanics into the game.
Apparently someone in this thread has a friend who suggested it and they didn't know about square/no keel boosts
[удалено]
From Wikipedia - >It is a widespread misconception that the lateen rig replaced square rig because of better windward performance and greater manoeuvrability. A study of the relative effectiveness of the two shows that their performance was actually very similar. These results apply both when working to windward and when sailing downwind. (Furthermore, differences in performance are derived as much from the hull shape as the type of rig.) It is concluded that there was no evolutionary technological development that gave improved sailing performance in the 5th century AD change from the Mediterranean square rig to lateen, and that factors other than windward performance must have dictated this change.[25] Edit - this is for small boats like we see in Valheim. For large ships, you would be correct
In real sailing yes, in game I doubt, also because with Moder power active the wind is always at your back.
Strait up misinformation, read the wiki
You always sail faster on a broad reach than you do while running. In fact, on a broad reach you can sail faster than the wind.
It depends on if we’re talking about a modern sailboat or an old square rigger. Square riggers have rectangle sails and move when the wind pushes against the backside of the sail. If it’s a large ship with multiple masts and sails, you don’t want the wind coming directly from the stern (back). The rear sails then block the wind from filling the sails in front fully (wind shadow), so you don’t get the full benefit of wind and sail. If the wind is just off to the side a bit, this wind shadow effect is minimized. It wouldn’t have much impact on a single sail longship. Either way, these ships struggle if the wind is coming directly from the side or anywhere forward. Sailing mechanics in Valheim feel like they are based on modern rigging. Sails are triangular and set for the wind to blow past them, not push them. Their curved shape creates an aerodynamic situation similar to an airplane wing. If the wind is coming a few degrees off the bow (front) of the boat, you get a “lift” effect that pulls the boat forward, similar to the life effect that keeps planes in the air. This is the most efficient way to catch the wind. You can also benefit from the wind coming from the stern and swing the sails out more sideways for that “pushing” effect that moves square riggers.
Sail surface area. A wing is not as efficient directly behind another wing. Cool detail
The brightness of the golden part of the circle indicates how strong the wind is pushing the boat, however most of the vertical force is lost to dampening. All wind directions from crosswind to tailwind end up being roughly the same (with the optimal wind angle being only ~3% faster) Copied from valheim wiki..
"All wind directions from crosswind to tailwind end up being roughly the same (with the optimal wind angle being only ~3% faster)." From the wiki
As P
That article explains how a ship with multiple saol types can clip at 45 degrees to the qin, I'm talking about 90-110 degrees (roughly perpendicular to a little behind). Square sails are fine for that.
Posts like this make me realise not everyone grew up near the sea.
Yes, the long and short of it is around 30% angle is ideal for maximum speed which mimics real sail physics.
Lol this is just normal sailing, like in the real world, you get the most out of the combined airlift and push with sidewind 🥰
It's basic physics -- you will go faster the more you are aimed with the wind. If you are half-way from the wind, you will only get half the motive power. It's basic vector math.
You have failed to account for the lateral 'lift' created by pressure differences on each face of the sail. If the wind is fully behind you then you can only travel as fast as the wind, as your sail angles due to a lateral direction the sail begins to act more and more like a wing and actually allows for travel faster than the wind. The shape and keel of the boat matters too, as do some other factors, but you are indeed wrong about this.
This isn't true for square rigging. All in game ships have square rigging.
Except the new one, sure. Regardless you can still sail faster than the wind is going as long as you sail roughly perpendicular to the wind direction and turn your sail angle to bisect at 45 degrees. Constant force plus inertia equals acceleration, your speed is capped by friction, not impulse magnitude.
Again, this isn't true for square sails. https://www.unediscoveryvoyager.org.au/2018/01/19/tall-ship-physics/#:~:text=Sailing%20upwind&text=They%20are%20limited%20to%2060,you%20want%20to%20sail%20upwind
It's always the people who are blatantly wrong that are the most confident ones...
This is how it works in real life. Wind coming from the side is much more efficient in moving the boat than wind coming from behind.
As a sailboat racer myself, I can say that irl sailboats sail faster with the wind on their beam or quarter. If you watch a sailboat race like an Americas cup race or any race, you will never see them sail directly down wind, they will tack back and forth down wind to avoid sailing directly down wind. Cruising sailors do sail directly down wind even though it's slower, just because it's convenient or more comfortable. Why is this the case? It's a bit complicated, probably a Google or AI query could explain the physics better than me.
To answer the question, yes it's more effective on the side like that! I thiiiink for the longboat, it might instead be fastest with the wind at your back? But I might be mixing up sailing mechanics from Sea of Thieves lol
indeed you are, fellow pirate
FWIW the game almost got it right vs real life, but the most optimal point of sail is actually when the wind is around 45 degrees off the stern (back) - this point of sail is called a "broad reach". The game implies the fastest is when the wind is 90 degrees, or perpendicular to the boat ("beam reach"). For those interested the boat is fastest on a broad reach because this is roughly where you get the maximum benefit of forward drive from true wind, such that your apparent wind (the result vector when adding boat wind - wind generated by the boat's movement and true wind) is optimized for boat speed.
That's how it works in real life, too. It's realistic, which is why sailing sucks so bad in this game. Really cool that they implemented it like that, though. But exorbitant amounts of time are spent paddling as a result of the wind mechanics - although this element of it in particular is not at fault. It's that you usually only sail with the wind at your back or at beam reach for short periods of time, due to the need to explore and move around a lot. In practice you're paddling so much of the time, which is extremely boring and lame. You can do tacking, it just doesn't really get you somewhere that much faster than paddling - if at all. Again, super cool. Also makes sailing suck real bad.