![]() ![]() The Auckland sailing area, the maritime equivalent of a Microsoft Flight Simulator scenery add-on, was developed using data supplied by the Hydrographic Office, as well as direct observation and photography. But last month the school took delivery of a highly detailed model of Auckland Harbour and its approaches, developed in association with Transas and the Port of Auckland Authority. Although the simulator has greatly helped the school's navigation training and anti-collision radar exercises, until recently students had to be content with training in about 60 overseas sailing areas. Each ship appears on the other's radar screens, and displays and simulated collisions are possible. Consoles in nearby rooms enable up to two other simulated ships to be operated at the same time. The simulator models a variety of vessels, from small, rigid, inflatable boats as used in search and rescue operations to oil tankers. They run a variety of software packages supplied by St Petersburg-based marine electronics company Transas. The present system consists of 14 PCs linked by a central Windows NT server. The school installed the simulator two years ago and continues to upgrade it. "They all came out feeling quite queasy, and these were experienced masters," he says. Lecturer Kees Buckens says the realism of the simulator was proved recently when he took a party of sea captains for a simulated voyage in the English Channel in rough weather. Thanks to seven back projection screens, which display a 180-degree 3-D animated view reflecting the motion of the "ship", the illusion of movement is immediate and convincing. Trust this was helpful.By MICHAEL FOREMAN To enter the main simulator room at the New Zealand Maritime School in Auckland is to walk on to the bridge of a ship under way. If anyone else out there in the marine world has any input, experince or knowledge of some type of tall ship simulator let’s say at WORLD’S END or some far off island, let us know!!! So, some day there may be a “Disney type” of Tall Ship ride that replicates the tall ship experince, but I don’t ever see a marketable need for a serious tall ship simulator that would train mariners and/or qualify them for sailing on board a tall ship in sail handling etc. However not for simulation training where they would pull “imaginary lines” etc to make a tall ship simulator react to a mariners input at the controls, this in my opinion is best left for the real world training on board an actual vessel. We have tall ship sailors that come to our school all the time for BRM, ARPA training etc. The cost of modeling a sailing vessel for running in a simulator would cost in the 10’s of thousands of dollars, and few companies have that kind of money in invest in such development with the lack of a low financial return. TRANSAS does have a “target ship” that looks like a tall ship, but it is just “eye candy” in simulations. I say this from the perspective of actually sailing the vessels and the related functions VS the navigation of a tall ship. There simply would not be a market for their use that would justify a company like TRANSAS or others to make the capital investment in the software and related hardware development necessary to produce a tall ship simulator for the market place. Having been involved in the tall ship industry for sometime (over 20 years), and in the past 3 years running and building simulation exercises for training marines, I don’t ever expect to see a tall ship simulator. I know of the online game you speak of and it is very good, however it is nothing like current full mission bridge ship simulation you experince at an academy, union school or private maritime training school when it comes to the realism of shipboard operations, ship interaction, hydrodynamics, roll play etc etc. Some folks had come to us at POBII and we got into discussions about making a tall ship Simulation that folks could experince much like a ride. There was talk about 12 years ago or so, to build a “3D tall ship ride” in Baltimore’s inner Harbor when the ESPNZone was built. Here is what I know of TS simulators or lets say the lack of them. ![]()
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