We recently updated our demo application which made us think more deeply about some of the aesthetics of the Triton Ocean SDK. Our latest release, Triton 4.39, includes a round of visual improvements to help your simulated water look more realistic.

The main improvement relates to the spray effect on ocean waves in rough seas. Under high winds, you used to be able to clearly see individual spray particles flying about, which really ruined the immersion. Our fix for this is simple: we make the spray particles larger as the wind speed increases. Higher winds would spread out the spray more anyhow, and this leads to better looking effects where the particles continue to overlap even as the winds increase.
You can see this in our latest demo video starting at the 27 second mark, as the demo starts to step through different sea states:

In addition to improved spray, we tweaked a few more things as well. The spray and foam effects have been made more subtle, so they blend into the scene more naturally. And we also toned down the “choppiness” of the waves a little bit, in order to prevent anomalies caused by waves curling over themselves in high wind conditions.
Often it’s little things like this that really make a big difference in polish and immersion. We’re excited to share them with you and see them in your maritime training systems! Evaluation versions of Triton are freely available, and licensed users with up-to-date support plans can get their updates at their usual place.