What am I supposed to be doing?
If you've never been diving before, the sim might not be behaving as you'd expect. The basic principles of diving, and how they relate to Diver-Sim, are outlined below.
A brief overview of diving
When taking a course in diving, the first thing you learn is the control of buoyancy. As a diver descends, the pressure around him increases dramatically, and tends to squeeze the small pockets of air trapped in the insulating suit. This reduces their volume, and correspondingly buoyancy drops. In order to ensure that the diver is neutrally buoyant, a stabiliser (or "stab") jacket is worn. This is a special jacket that may be inflated with air as necessary from the main cylinder, increasing its volume and correcting the lack of buoyancy. Conversely, as the diver ascends and buoyancy increases, air can be 'dumped' from this suit to ensure the ascent is correctly managed.
Without this management of buoyancy, the diver would drop ever faster toward the sea bed, or shoot ever faster toward the surface - neither a pretty sight. Simply finning upward or downward may not be sufficient force to correct for bad buoyancy control. You might like to try this in Diver-Sim by dumping all the air from the stab jacket by holding down the minus key until the %age full indicator is empty. In the initial stages, pressing the up arrow to fin upward may control the descent, but it soon becomes apparent that this becomes ineffective as the diver descends.
You should also note that due to the greater pressure, the deeper you dive, the more air you'll use per breath.
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Use the cursor keys to control the diver, and the +/- keys to inflate and deflate the STAB jacket. Concentrate on getting the buoyancy correct first!