| A couple of weeks ago, Stephan Jones <sjones@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca> made
an offer in rec.boats to mail an article he wrote on sailing
simulators. I sent him mail, and here is his article...
From: US2RMC::"sjones@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca" "Stephen Jones" 14-NOV-1994 17:34:47.41
To: cim::loren
CC:
Subj: Re: sailing simulator article
Dear Loren,
here it is...
Back in the early years of sailing simulators, the SailTech
Simulator set the standard. Unfortunately, it has not been
updated since the late 1980s, and is of dubious value now.
Still, I spent many hours sailing on it back then, and it was
good for learning the fundamental concepts of racing. For
instance, I learned what a ladder rung is, and how they are
affected by windshifts, and how this changes the relative
positions of the boats on the course. I learned what to do in a
persistent shift, and how to sail in an oscillating breeze. The
simulator represents sail shape very well (what would you expect
from a simulator that was co-developed by North Sails?). All
sail controls are present, and the results of your tweaking are
instantly reflected in the draft stripes and life-like telltales.
The lessons driven home here include fundamental ones, such as
using your backstay as the primary power control for the whole
sailplan, and more subtle ones, such as getting the lead position
on the headsail right. You get a trimmer's-eye-view of the main,
but a not-so realistic perspective on the genoa, one which more
resembles the photos you would give to your sailmaker when taking
your sail in for a recut (I think this once again reflects the
influence of North). There is no spinnaker simulation, so
downwind legs become very boring exercises in keeping a tickler
on the main flying. It is on those legs that I usually turn on
the automatic sail trimming option. One problem with the sail
trimming on this simulator is that it is not done in "real time"
-the racing goes on hold while you tweak your sails. When the
racing is underway, you get a bird's-eye view of silhouettes of
the fleet. You can zoom in and out, and as you zoom out, time
passes by more quickly. Accurate modelling of boat handling
characteristics is nonexistent. Steering is done by changing
course in increments of one or ten degrees. Tacking is done with
a single keystroke, happens instantaneously, and costs nothing in
terms of boat speed, all of which is far from realistic. There
is no prestart manoeuvring to speak of, though this is not
surprising for software that was written a decade ago. One
further hitch to this simulator is that the competitors seem to
get caught in a crisis of indecision at all mark roundings, not
knowing whether to go upwind or down, on port tack or starboard,
and subsequently get hung up there for several minutes of
simulated time. Your boat, which is a keelboat in the thirty
foot range, has a full performance instrument package. By
watching the numbers, you master concepts such as VMG and target
boatspeed. With more attention to the numbers, and you quickly
develop the tactical skills to give you the edge over your
competition. Finding the median port and starboard tack headings
is easy of you have a True Wind Direction readout in your
instruments, but turn that function off using the Control Panel,
and the job becomes more challenging. In fact, the information
provided by all the instruments can only be had in real life with
tens of thousands of dollars of electronics and onboard laptops.
For instance, you can call up a strip chart that graphically
represents the recent wind history, both in terms of direction
and strength. You can even look into the future with psychic
accuracy--no amount of money can buy you that! But this ability
to look into the future is usually unnecessary, because in many
situations the behaviour of the wind is far too predictable. At
times, the wind oscillates with sinusoidal regularity. This is
at best an idealisation of perfect conditions in real life. What
makes the simulator even more artificial is the fact that the
wind passes through its median direction at exact ten minute
intervals, and the port and starboard tack headings at that
median fall precisely on the cardinal points of the compass.
Quite obviously, this is altogether unrealistic, and it makes
things far too easy. But the fatal flaw of the SailTech
Simulator is that there are only fifteen different weather
scenarios. You very quickly begin to recognise them, and thus
know beforehand which side of the course is favoured, when the
shifts happen, or when the line squall hits. This places a limit
on the lifespan of the program as an enjoyable simulator to play.
While setting the early standard for sailing simulators, the
SailTech Simulator has been surpassed by other software on the
market. With its stress on teaching the fundamental concepts of
racing, but otherwise poor representations of real life
situations, I can see its only use today as a demonstration tool
in racing seminars. One would not want to buy it for any other
purpose, and so given what should be a very low demand for it, I
would expect its price (around $70) to be a lot lower.
Sailing Master is by far the simplest simulator to use. You
can jump in and start sailing right away. It is so self
explanatory, that simply looking at the screen should be enough
to tell you how to manoeuvre the boat. There is no need to
consult the manual first to learn the controls. All the controls
can be executed by pointing and clicking with a mouse to buttons
on the screen. I did find, though, that steering this way was a
little hard to master, but this may be because I am not that
adept and fast enough with a mouse. Sailing Master is very good
as a basic trainer, and so I think it is best suited to novice
sailors. It relates well the interplay of trim, angle of heel,
telltales, and steering. It is also a racing simulator, though
at not nearly the same level of complexity as SailTech. Unlike
SailTech, which is a crash course on performance racing, Sailing
Master is a gentle and fun introduction to racing, without any of
the intimidation. It is more like friendly club racing than
grand-prix racing. The racing is held on either windward-leeward
or Olympic courses. One interesting feature is that you can
specify the length and number of legs of the course. The fleet
can be up to four boats, and the boats resemble Lasers. There is
some attempt at simulating prestart manoeuvring, but it is no
improvement on having no manoeuvring at all. At the beginning of
the simulation, there are only seconds to go to the start; all
the starts are virtually identical, with two boats on starboard
at the line at the gun (your boat being either the windward or
leeward boat), and two boats on port crossing behind and thus
late for the start. Going upwind, the wind logic is quite good,
with realistic oscillations, puffs, and lulls. You have a window
that provides a top view of the full course, with the position of
the puffs and lulls indicated. The shade of the water around
your boat in the main window gets darker to signify puffs, and
lighter to signify lulls. A bubbling wake behind your boat gives
a quick indication of your boat speed. One complaint I have with
this program is that the screen does not scroll with the boat's
progress, but rather jumps from one screen to the next. So, as
the boat sails off of one edge of the screen, it re-emerges on a
new screen, sailing in the same direction, but from the opposite
edge. For illustration, suppose your boat sails off of the
screen, at the top right, sailing diagonally up and to the right.
It will reappear at the bottom left, and continue sailing in the
same direction. Whatever other boats that were on the first
screen disappear, and the new screen contains whatever objects
are in the new area of water into which you are sailing. The
problem with this is that it can leave you with very little
reaction time to avoid obstacles, such as a starboard tack boat.
The computer can place also obstacles such as rowboats or
windsurfers at random about the race course. To foul a starboard
tack boat means doing a 720, and hitting a rowboat full of
fishermen means a costly capsize. Capsizes are rather humorous,
with a desperate sailor swimming around the boat and scrambling
back on to right it. The computer generated rowboats and
fishermen obstacles are mildly humorous as well, though in the
end, I found them annoying. Thankfully, that option can be
switched off. On crossing the finish line, you receive a rather
friendly "Boat Over" hail from the Race Committee. In all, I
think the emphasis of Sailing Master is on friendly competition,
though if you foul another boat you receive an admonishing hail
to "Do Your Circles!" It is a good introduction to sailing and
light racing, but it does not progress much beyond that. At a
cost of around $80, I think one should expect more.
Schnack's Tack (TAC) is a single purpose, no frills program,
dedicated to simulating match racing. It does this one thing,
and does it well. It is a two-person game, which guarantees that
each race will be different. This game gives you the thrill of
head-to-head competition. It is easy to outsmart a computer
opponent, as it ploddingly and unswervingly follows a preset
algorithm. Such a victory rings hollow. But the feeling of
beating an unpredictable and cunning competitor, who reacts to
each change in your strategy and adjusts accordingly? Now that's
real sailing. With this simulator, you are ready to take on all
comers; world class match-racers and America's Cup helmsmen are
all potential competitors. The graphics in TAC are the most
impoverished of the simulators reviewed. It takes a great deal
of imagination to see the images on the screen as sailboats. On
the plus side, though, the minimalist graphics afford TAC the
fastest "frame speed". That is to say, the images flow smoothly
into one another, making the graphics appear movie-like. In most
other simulators, the images change in a jerky fashion. This
depends, of course, on the speed of your computer, with late
generation 486 machines having less of a problem with this. But
TAC is acceptable even on a 286. TAC gives fairly realistic
handling characteristics to the boats. This is especially
important for a match-racing situation, where prestart
manoeuvring plays such an important role. Whereas the ambience
of Sailing Master was relaxed and friendly, things can get pretty
heated while playing TAC. This is really a three-person game,
the third filling the role of on-the-water judge. The program
has its own "instant justice" rulings built in, but they are not
sophisticated enough to pick up on some of the finer points of
the yacht racing rules, and match racing stretches those rules to
the limit. You will very quickly begin to pick up on some of the
strategies particular to match racing, such as the prestart
circling to gain the controlling position on your competition's
stern. While these skills might not be directly applicable to
the kind of racing you do, at least you will be able to
appreciate some of the subtleties that are going on when you
watch the next America's Cup on ESPN. With a price in the $45
range, this is a simulator that gives you a lot of bang for your
buck, if match racing is your thing.
The Dolphin Sailing Simulator is a cruising simulator, which
(at least according to its marketers) emphasises teaching safety.
I find this billing puzzling, however, because I did not see too
much of this emphasis in evidence. Dolphin tries the hardest to
capture the spirit of that buzz phrase of the nineties--virtual
reality. When you put the helm over, you see your "hands" turn
the wheel; when you let out the genoa sheet, you see your "hands"
at the winch. This is nice, perhaps a little cute. At times,
though, this gets carried away, and becomes a little annoying.
When you turn on the autohelm, an icon appears on the screen to
tell you it is in operation. This is exactly what I would
expect, and should be sufficient. But you also are shown your
"hand", with index finger extended, flicking on the switch. This
I don't need to see. Now, you might say that this is harmless,
and I should just ignore it. But the instrument panel upon which
the autohelm switch is located is on the starboard side of the
cockpit, and so by turning on the autohelm, the view
automatically swivels to look out to starboard. Several
keystrokes are required to look at whatever it was you were
looking at before you turned on the autohelm. So, you can see
how the zeal for virtual reality can be somewhat obtrusive. What
I did like about this simulator is its honest attempt at
providing you with a virtual world to sail around in that is a
representation of a real world place. The game disk comes with
Chesapeake Bay, and other well known cruising grounds are
available on further disks you can buy. San Francisco Bay, Long
Island Sound, and the San Juan and Gulf Islands are three notable
examples of additional sailing areas open to you. The makers of
Dolphin went to a lot of trouble (read: thousands of person
hours) digitizing maps, and then laboriously adding individual
details and landmarks to stick up from an otherwise two
dimensional plane. I applaud their efforts, though I think that
for the investment of time they put in they could have come up
with some better results. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is certainly
impressive, but the treatment of ordinary landmasses leaves a lot
to be desired. The shores of the bay are lined with phalanxes of
enormous green pyramids. I would much rather see something that
more resembles the lay of the land when seen from the water than
artificial geometric shapes. Perhaps if they digitized not just
a chart of the waters, but a topological map of the shore as
well, something more realistic could have been achieved. But I'm
no computer whiz, so I have no idea of the feasibility of this.
Secondly, when Dolphin undertook this project, they had to take a
hard look at what kind of return on their investment the market
could support. Perhaps their market surveys suggested that,
given what consumers would be happy with, the extra effort to
improve the scenery would not be worth it. But I think it is
time for us consumers to up the ante and demand more. Other
simulators have pushed the standards for graphics much higher,
and Dolphin will have to keep up to stay competitive. The
overall graphics appearance in Dolphin is very dated: it has the
look of mid-1980s Atari games. The boats have a cumbersome, box
like appearance, and the view provided of the sails is below par.
The only feature to the graphics that I got a kick out of was the
radar screen, and the way it comes into view when you are at the
navigator's station. One curious quirk of the program is that I
was unable to spot any of the navigation aids on the water, apart
from the lighthouses, even though the buoys are clearly indicated
on the charts. Dolphin is organized around the function keys on
your IBM-compatible. Each function key takes you to a different
area of the boat--the foredeck, the nav station, the cockpit, and
so on. There are a large number of commands to learn, but they
seem to be laid out in an organised fashion. Dolphin frames the
actual sailing aspect of the simulation with pages of
introductions and conclusions. Most of these seemed extraneous
to me. It took too long to get through the opening frames and
begin sailing. When you use the simulator for the first time,
you are presented with screens that tried my patience and nearly
insulted my intelligence. During a cruise, important messages
are relayed to you in voice bubbles. Most of these are helpful,
but some can be inane. At the end of a cruise you are scored on
your performance. However, there is no detailed explanation of
how your score is arrived at. You are not told what you did
right or what you did wrong. So there is no way of knowing how
to improve for next time. The different scenarios I encountered
in the various cruises did not challenge me enough. I did not
learn new skills, nor did I find the graphics to be impressive
enough to hold my interest. I think you money is better spent on
a program that you can learn from.
Posey Yacht Design produces a whole line of sailing
simulators, covering a wide variety of sailing. I have looked at
three of their six programs: the Coastal Cruising, Tactics and
Strategy, and Advanced Racing simulators. Coastal Cruising
places you in a computer-generated world of islands, estuaries,
and inlets. You can choose between northern or southern waters,
either in a coastal or island situation. A Bahamian setting adds
the additional feature of coral reefs. The simulation includes
all of the features a well-equipped cruising boat ought to have:
GPS with waypoints, radar, depth-sounder, hand-bearing compass,
dividers, two anchors, and a good sail inventory. Now, none of
the things listed here are absent in the Dolphin simulator. And
yet the educational value of the Posey simulator is far higher.
The difference lies in the way the Posey simulator throws
challenges at you. At higher levels of difficulty, you can
suddenly lose some or all of the electronics, or perhaps the use
of the engine. This can lead to some anxious moments--say, when
negotiating a tricky entrance to an anchorage with a strong tide
flowing, and you lose the use of your engine. Or perhaps you are
in thick fog, and you lose your radar. By contrast, setting
higher difficulty levels in the Dolphin simulator seems to make
no appreciable difference to the actual sailing, but instead
affects only what kind of commands are available to you, and what
kind of on-screen help is available. The difficulty there is a
just a function of how well you are familiar with the particular
program, not your sailing skill. What makes Posey's Coastal
Cruising a good simulator is that it can be as relaxing--as
cruising is supposed to be--or as stressful as you want. The
educational value of practising what to do in emergency
situations cannot be overemphasized. Having multiple gear
failures is hardly true to life (or at least, one would hope!) so
the knowledge and skills learned through Coastal Cruising are not
exactly directly applicable to the real world. What does get
passed on is the confidence that you can handle any emergency
with aplomb. Practising on a computer gets you to ignore
superficial details, and focus on the priorities. The bolts of
lightning on the horizon? Cause for concern alright, but the
important thing right now is that I am in 27 knots of wind,
heeling beyond 26 degrees because I have too much canvas up, and
as a result, I am having difficulty steering to a course that
would take me to a sheltered harbour. There is a certain cool
detachment that goes with computer simulations, so your decisions
can aspire to pure rational thinking, unaffected by panic or
adrenalin. Coastal Cruising comes with a very good, extremely
well written manual. Reading the pages that discuss anchoring
made me realise that the manual is more than just a manual for a
computer program. It goes beyond telling you which buttons to
push to make the simulator work. It is full of sound cruising
advice, drawn from Dennis and Charlotte Posey's extensive
cruising experience. I thought that the manual, which read more
like a cruising how-to, blurred the distinction between virtual
reality and the real world.
The Advanced Racing Simulator by Posey is a very
challenging, but rewarding simulator. I have not been bored with
this simulator in over a year and a half of intense racing. Part
of what has kept me interested is the fact that the weather
scenarios are more realistic, and do not repeat often. The
graphics are passible, but in this simulator the focus is on
racing, not looking good. (Incidentally, the graphics are
essentially the same as found in Coastal Cruising.) The images
of the sailboats are generated out of geometric figures such as
ellipses and triangles. Surprisingly, this method achieves
acceptable results for sail shape. The perspective on the race
course you get is that of a floating eye-ball, at masthead level,
on your boat's weather quarter. This is a compromise between the
bird's-eye-view and a trimmer's-eye or helm's-eye-view. A top
down view of the race course is obviously unrealistic, and gives
too much information away concerning the relative position of
boats in the race. A perspective from onboard the boat is more
true to life, but is difficult to do on a screen with a limited
field of view, and it can be bewildering for the user. One
drawback of such the perspective adopted by Advanced Racing is
that there is no detailed view of the headsail. This forced the
authors of the simulator to reduce jib trim to a minor component
of the game. There is a good view of the spinnaker (and a nice
sequence of it when it collapses), but the player does not get to
trim it at all. Advanced Racing has significant advancements
over other simulators in its niche. Its simulation of prestart
manoeuvring is the best there is. It captures the feeling of
large one-design starts, where the fleet approaches the line with
sails luffing, accelerates with just a few seconds to go, and
then points up with speed at the gun. It is tricky to get a good
start with clear air, and the rather irritating fact that the
other competitors seem to accelerate faster than you makes this
even more difficult. All of the major sail controls for main
trim and rig adjustment are represented. In the Windows and
MacIntosh versions, they are adjusted using pull-down menus. In
the DOS version, they are three-way toggles controlled through
the keyboard. I found that ones reaction time to a gust is
significantly faster in the DOS version. The Windows version has
a nice opening screen to the simulator. The DOS introduction is
by comparison rather cold. One good feature of the Windows
version is that you can speed up or slow down the clock: fastest
for long runs, slower for important mark roundings. My biggest
gripe with Advanced Racing is something that I have already
alluded to: there are large discrepancies between the performance
of the boat you control, and your computer controlled
competition. The other boats in the fleet lose less speed in a
tack, and accelerate out of the tack faster. Quite often, you
find yourself leebowed by a boat that a would be unsuccessful in
the bid if attempted in real life. Tacking your boat, by
comparison, is extremely costly. You lose well over half of your
boatspeed, and it takes a long time to gain it back, no matter
how much you power up your sailplan. At the higher difficulty
levels, the other boats have a significant speed advantage over
you. Now, I am used to situations where I am over a half a knot
slower upwind than a competitor--it's called IMS sailing, and I
am compensated for it. It is no fun racing in what is supposedly
one-design racing when, no matter how well tweaked your boat is,
your competition steadily rolls over you. I find that I have to
set the difficulty at around 11 (out of 15) to get racing that is
fairly equitable, and yet with aggressive enough starts, and the
like, to be challenging. I would rather see at the higher
difficulty levels the competition getting smarter, not simply
faster, possibly through greater foreknowledge of the wind
conditions. After all, isn't this what the truly great sailors
have more of, rather than raw straight-line speed? One other
complaint I have with this simulator is that it provides you with
your tactical information already predigested, and given to you
in terms of degrees headed or lifted from the median wind
direction. I would rather be given the raw data (the boat's
heading) and get the practice crunching the numbers myself.
Overall, Advanced Racing is a great teaching tool. By playing
it, it taught me the importance of balance, reacting to gusts,
and fighting for clear air. It is a difficult simulator to
master, but its rewards are great.
Tactics and Strategy by Posey is a simulator that moves you
away from pulling the strings and tweaking the sails, and places
you in the afterguard, where you have to make all the decisions
about how to get around the course, based on factors such as wind
and current. Tactics and Strategy gives you good one-design
racing. You can have a fleet of up to 15. Even with this large
of a fleet, the computer does not slow down noticeably. The
graphics flow with near movie-like speed. The graphics are for
the most part a bird's-eye view of the race course, with zoom.
You can choose between a variety of different popular one
designs, and even specify some of the design characteristics of
the small keelboat and offshore keelboat. There is a very
simplified set of sailing controls. For the most part, the
computer does the trimming for you. The racing takes place in
one of a number of computer generated settings, each one intended
to mimic the conditions of typical racing venues, from a small
inland lake, to a tidal sound. Apart from the standard triangle
and windward-leeward courses, there is a long distance race and a
round-the-island race based loosely on the Round Block Island
Race. There is a match racing option, in which Player One uses
the mouse and Player Two uses the keyboard. I have very few
complaints to make about this simulator. There is very little by
way of realism with respect to the handling characteristics of
the boats. You can manoeuvre a little too easily. For instance,
you can instantly snap off a 100 degree turn at no cost to your
boatspeed, which gives you a huge edge during the prestarts. On
the whole, this is an excellent way tool for learning how to get
your head out of the boat and concentrate on the big picture.
Stentec is a recent arrival to the North American market,
having originated in Holland. It is for IBM-compatible machines
only. It should also be stressed that this is *not* a racing
simulator. Actually, you can race against the clock around a
course, but the point is that you have the whole world to
yourself; no other boats other than yours appear. The graphics
in Stentec are far superior those of other simulators. The boats
are represented in 3-D, and you can "fly" your point of view to
any position around the boat, like a helicopter. Because of the
complexity of the graphics, a faster computer with more memory is
almost required. There are some problems with the graphics, such
as the spinnaker showing through the main when it in fact should
be hidden. I have been told that the makers of Stentec are
working on the problems. There is a selection of boats to sail,
including Dragon, FD, Laser, Tornado cat, and a 33ft. keelboat.
The modelling of the handling characteristics and sailing
dynamics of the boats is also superlative. Pitchpoling the
Tornado, which I managed to do once, was breathtaking. The
keelboat has that sickening rolling when running in heavy air
downwind, and the jibe-broach that usually follows it is
frighteningly accurate. Stentec incorporates wave dynamics into
its simulation. While other simulators have waves too, Stentec's
is tops. It is so realistic, it is almost enough to give one
motion sickness just looking at it. Unlike the wave action of
other simulators, Stentec integrates it with the whole
simulation. Even the apparent wind changes as you roll over the
swells. As in Dolphin, the sailing takes place in
representations of actual waters. The areas available have a
decidedly European bias, but this is not surprising, given where
the software comes from. The most interesting feature is that
you can customize your own areas. For instance, if you wanted to
create the Bay of Quinte, you can plot and save the shoreline
with up to 5 m. accuracy. The world of Stentec is only two
dimensional, but you can see all the relevant details of the
shoreline from the helicopter viewpoint (although this does not
work so well from a vantage point close to the water). There are
quite a number of commands to learn, though I consider the
simulator as a whole to be good enough for it to be worth your
while to commit some to memory. All the sail controls are
performed with combinations of either the Alt, Shift, or Ctrl key
and a function key, much in the same way that WordPerfect is
organised. All other auxiliary commands are performed with
lowercase or uppercase letters. There is a nice laminated card
provided as a reference to help you out if you forget. Steering
on the keyboard is done with two keys, but I thought that it gave
a poor response. The boat can also be controlled with the mouse,
through a daunting series of combinations of rolling the mouse
up, down or sideways, while holding down one of the three buttons
(it has to be a three-button mouse). I don't think I would have
the kinaesthetic memory nor dexterity to perform those
complicated combinations of mouse movements together with button
pushes. Finally, the game can be ordered with a special control
unit, which has a tiller and a slide for the sheet. This
requires a game port on your computer (you can also use a
joystick in your game port for the tiller). Unfortunately, I did
not test the simulator with the control unit. In the Stentec
simulator, you have god-like control over the wind. You can
increase or decrease the wind strength in increments of a
Beaufort at the touch of a button. Whereas the Posey Coastal
Cruising simulator engendered a "Hey, I can do this" attitude,
Stentec quickly brings you back to a healthy respect for the sea
and its power. Dial things up to a Force 12 gale with 7 m.
waves, and things get frightening. You are totally at the mercy
of the elements. It is truly awesome. There are some problems I
noticed with Stentec. With certain of the boats, you can coast
head-to-wind and still sustain 4 knots of boatspeed--hardly
realistic! When sailing closehauled, the boats display an
unsettling leeward helm problem, which no amount of mast rake can
seem to dispel. The manual that comes with the program has some
quirky turns of phrase, but I think this is the result of a
mediocre translation from Dutch to English. I am told by the
Canadian distributors of the game that they are working on this.
Overall, the Stentec simulator is very impressive, and I highly
endorse it. I find it mesmerizing: I can look at it all day,
zooming my point of view around boat and watching the image of
the boat change. It keeps my interest, despite the fact that it
is not a racing simulator, which is something that the Dolphin
simulator failed to do. As for value for your money, the price
including the control unit can't be beat, considering what you
are getting.
Summary:
Scores: 5 excellent
4 good
3 fair
2 poor
1 ugh
/ Posey \
SailTech S.Master TAC Dolphin C.C. A.R. T.S. Stent
Graphics 3 2 1 3 4 4 3 5
Ease of use 3.5 5 3 2.5 3 3 4 2
Realism 1 2 3.5 2 4 4 2 5
Educational 4 3 3 1 4 4 4 3
value
Bang 1 2 5 2 4.5 4.5 4 5
for buck
Believ- 1 1 1 3 4 4 1 5
ability
Attention 2 2 5 1 4 5 4 5
Span
Key:
Graphics -- visual sumptuousness, appeal to eye
ease of use -- how complicated are the commands? how many?
realism -- how well does this program model boat handling &
dynamics?
educational value -- do I learn a lot from using this program?
bang for buck -- monetary value. Is it worth the price?
believability - how well does this program maintain the illusion
of sailing?
attention span - how long was it before I got bored of this?
How to get these programs
Stentec Sailing Simulator
contact:
Amtex Software
P.O. Box 572
Belleville, Ontario
K8N 5B2
phone (613) 967-7900
price: with control unit - $124.95 (Can)
without control unit - $79.95 (Can)
requirements: IBM compatible (minimum 8 Mhz, 386 or better
recommended), Dos 3.3 or higher, 550 kb RAM, 2 Mb disk, EGA or
VGA, game port for control unit
or contact:
Criteria Instruments
erm...don't have the address--look in Sailing World
Portland, Oregon
Dolphin Sailing Simulator III
contact:
Dolphin Marine Systems, Inc.
P.O. Box 188
Downington, PN 19335
(610) 269-6800
(610) 873-7422 (fax)
1-800-
price: $74.95 (US) $7.50 s&h
requirements: IBM only, 256-colour VGA, 640 kb RAM, 1.4 Mb disk
Coastal Cruising, Advanced Racing Simulator, Tactics and Strategy
contact:
Posey Yacht Design
101 Parmalee Road
Haddam CT 06438
(203) 345-2685
price: $54.95 (US) + 4.00 s&h (Visa, Mastercard)
requirements: Windows - 3.0 or higher
DOS - 2.1 or higher, 256 kb RAM, CGA, EGA, VGA, or
Hercules (monochrome) hard disk optional
Mac - colour Mac and System 6.0.7 or higher, or
monocrome Mac & System 7 or higher
Sailing Master
contact:
Starboard Software
Box 1462
Royal Oak, MI 48068
(810) 545-9928
(810) 545-9049 (fax)
1-800-237-8400 ext. 540
price: $59.99 (US) + $5.00 s&h (Visa, MasterCard, Amex)
requirements: PC- 286 or faster, Windows 3.1, 2 Mb RAM, 1 Mb disk
Mac- System 6.O.x or 7.x, 1 Mb RAM, 1 Mb disk
SailTech and Schnack's Tack are available through the North Sails
catalogue ($69.99 and $43.95 (Can) respectively), as are all of
the programs listed above. Contact your local North Sails loft,
or call 1-800-939-7245.
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% Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 12:27:40 -0700 (MST)
% From: Stephen Jones <sjones@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca>
% Subject: Re: sailing simulator article
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