Sailboat simulation in WebGL (2D Wireframe) (opens in new tab)

Getting the boat to go in the direction I wanted was much more difficult than I thought it would be. I like the subtle wind animation. Seemed to have an issue with chrome, "Error creating WebGL context", though it worked in firefox.

It would be a lot more interesting if apparent wind [1] was calculated and the vectors were superimposed on the sailboat so users can see what is happening.

Sails are curved so they act like foils with wind moving faster of the outer surface than the inner surface creating forward thrust. The faster the boat moves through the water more thrust created which is countered by drag of the boat through water. There is nothing like the feeling of acceleration when a windsurf board starts planing.

[1] http://www.sailbetter.com/apparent-wind/

Another Chrome exclusive ;) Looks very nice and usefull in Chrome though.

Controls aren't doing anything for me :-(

That's a nice subtle animation. I also had difficulty steering the boat. It might be an idea to map Q-W to the sail and O-P to the rudder. When you start the sail is on the left and the rudder is on the right.

Black screen for me (apart from text). Firefox 45.

Cool stuff! Admittedly it took my a moment to figure out the particles signified wind gusts, but once I figured that out the rest was straight-forward.