Spare a thought for simmers who prefer their rudders and propellers immersed, their rails and bridges spray-flecked. Compared to a Parker Knoll plane or train operator, the armchair ship/boat skipper has few choices and relatively high outgoings.
Both of Simulatia’s most promising weapon-free maritime works-in-progress require subscriptions. If you want to play Early Access NAUTIS Home you’ll need to shell out six Euros a month, and the developer of new kid on the blocks, Navismaster, imposes a similar hire charge.
At the start of November, will I renew the NH subscription I took out a couple of days ago? I should be able to answer that question unequivocally by this time next week, but right now, the answer is “Probably not”.
While I’m enjoying the novelty, pace, and realism of NAUTIS Home’s inland waterway dimension (I’ve yet to attempt a sea voyage) and was pleased to discover that this Ship Simulator descendent comes with a sizeable selection of vessels, venues, and instructional scenarios, I can’t say I’m overly impressed by VSTEP’s approach to optimisation, bridge modelling, or feature prioritisation.
Almost two years into Early Access, and the sim lacks some pretty basic amenities and capabilities. For example, I’ve searched high and low for a graphics settings menu without success.
If NH ran beautifully and looked fantastic, this bizarre omission might be forgivable. Because it’s actually the first game Ada has struggled to run smoothly and speedily, griping seems justified. Scenes like the one above and this one…
…aren’t exactly stunning yet they work Ada’s GPU flat out, and are often rendered at between twenty and thirty frames per second with occasional stutters to boot!
Permanently dark screens and unclickable controls that don’t move to reflect actual control inputs, do the spartan 3D bridges few favours. Want to explore your vessel on foot, or admire it using a free camera? Prepare for disappointment. Want to to peer through clear view screens sluiced by mountainous seas? Prepare for disappointment. NH doesn’t do spray.
How much longer will mariners have to wait before they can tie up at wharves and quays? A roadmap guaranteed to depress tug lovers, suggests hawser action is still some way off.
Even if I don’t renew in November, I will have NAUTIS Home to thank for my latest ludological pipedream. On the sim’s Rhine scenery, adhering to the ‘rules of the road’, while coping with the current, and avoiding shallows and other river users, can be seriously diverting. Done well, a watery version of Truck Simulator set on NW Europe’s inland waterway network, would, I suspect, garner quite a following amongst fans of slow simming.
Tim, have you already tried Ships at Sea?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1266540/Ships_At_Sea/
It’s still early access and Steam reviews are mixed, so I am not sure if I should give it a try or not. I would like to hear your opinion about it.
It’s installing as I type this. Expect a 3×3-style ‘review’ next week.
If I had a large number of millions of dollars that I wanted to turn into a smaller number of millions of dollars, high on my list of stratagems to do so would be sailing the Great Loop on something much like NH’s Vigo.
Inland waterways in a simulator sound like a much more cost-effective alternative, although not one I’m likely to indulge in with Armoured Brigade II so close.
Living near the Rhine I used to watch the large barges pass by, thinking it must be a glorious life. Ever changing landscapes, never a rush to get anywhere, just you and the river.
That top screenshot has convinced me I was so so wrong. Imagine staring at that all day, every day, a never changing view that you have to watch because of other river traffic and needing to steer around the river bends.
It’d horrific!
NAUTIS Home implies that Rhine bargers heading upstream often switch to the ‘wrong side’ of the river to take advantage of the weaker current on the inside of bends (blue signs are displayed when undertaking these manoeuvres: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_sign). This seems like a recipe for chaos, but I guess it must be true!
That’s a game mode that’d draw some sales. Rhine River Bend Barge Racing, hitting the apex on those bends, shaving a few tenths off your time and fuel consumption, dodging oncoming river traffic.
Umm. It may be bedtime.
There is an old german game, called River Simulator 2012. I think that in German it was simply call Schiff Simulator 2012. It is exactly that, sailing along Rhine, fulfiling contracts like in ETS. It is very old, and kinda decent, like most of those german simulators of old published by Astragon.
And yeah, It is as fun as you imagine:) Sadly it is no longer on sale, but it does work on modern systems, so if you hoist the skull flag, you could probably find it somewhere.
Thanks for the tip. I’ve just given the demo a quick test-drive and it’s surprisingly strong.
https://tallyhocorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/riversim01.jpg
https://tallyhocorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/riversim02.jpg
Unlike NH, the bridges feature working instrumentation and clickable controls, and although the graphics look a tad dated, there seems to be plenty of scenic detail.