Its a puzzle.
We have the sailing simulator were each boat appears to be individually configured for performance for each particular boat, and I fully understand the appeal of the racing fraternity. With only one boat off-line sailable apparently the emphasis is on the racing.
Next the motorboat simulator and once again one boat, unless on line again the racing aspect has been emphasised, although of course boats can be used for learning to sail and navigation.
Well my interests are different and I should imagine there must be 1000s of people iterested in a true ship and boat simulator. We know that we are able to create any type of boat(depending on the various skills of the creators).Any type of object can be created from any size and type. The full alpha function when available will make trees, city backdrops, rigging, etc possible and at present can be used for the see-through wndows and portholes, and made my hovercraft "hover" by placing it on an invisible box in buoy format.
We have excellent wave movement with boat "interaction" with the water.All the fundamentals are in place. I imagine lightouse beams, etc will shortly be introduced to make for more realism but how do we get our own made boats to move.
I dont't know how the programming is done to make the Stentec boats interact. Peraps it is by a configuration table to enter all the settings as it the train simulutors, etc. I aso make drivable boats to run on water in a train simulator.The max speed, etc is set in te config table and I set my canal narrowbaots to run at a maximum of 8 mph.
What I am trying to say is that a true boat simulator would be of great intererest to myself and I imagine many thousands of other. The basis is there in the Stentec sail/motorboat simulators but not quite there yet?
Any type of boat needs to be sailable and drivable and certainly more than just one solitary mariner alone on the seas. Again I kow it all depends on the programming and how many boats could be made moving, but I assume it can be done?
Maybe one day "soon"? But hopefully not sometime never.
Barry