Well, after some time away I’ve started working on a few details on my mod for Arma2, Underwater Diving. I revised the diving computer and added and removed some features. It now times your dives, displays ambient water pressure, displays depth and records your maximum depth reached, indicates a dive ceiling where you need to wait to decompress (if needed), and it has oxygen toxicity bar graphs and nitrogen loading bar graphs. If you surface, the dive timer stops and restarts when to resume diving. Cylinder pressure is measured and Dive Time Remaining is displayed (which changes according to depth). The partial pressure of O2 and N2 are displayed and if you use a real world NOAA dive chart, it should be tell you how long you can dive at certain depths.  Also, if your partial pressure of oxygen (ppO2) or partial pressure of nitrogen (ppN2) rises to a dangerous level (O2) or a level that could lead to nitrogen narcosis quickly, the number changes to red.

So what does all of that mean? Well, you can use this addon as complicated or as easy as you want. If you want to learn how to scuba dive for real, this mod could help you get the basic concepts down. I’ve also included things like “unlimited air” and “arcade mode” which allow you to experience the sensation of these variables but without dying by doing something ill-advised like diving really deep and surfacing too quickly for your nitrogen level to decrease in your tissues or diving down to 300 meters on pure O2.

I’ve also created a D.E.A.D. which is a Diver Emergency Ascent Device.  This is something I discovered in my research on scuba diving and different safety devices available to the commercial and military diving community. You basically pull a cord and the life vest you are wearing inflates bringing you to the surface quickly. Of course, if you have reached a compression depth where you need to wait at 5 meters before surfacing, using the D.E.A.D. will cause you to get decompression sickness (DCS) also known as the bends. I still need to work on the speed of the ascent of this device, but that should be relatively easy to figure out.  Currently, you can rise from about 35 meters to zero meters in about 3-5 seconds, which is like a rocket.

Here’s the latest video I created showing off some of these new features.  If you’d like to follow the development of this addon, you can follow the forum posts on Armaholic or the BI Forums.