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The best graphics for me are in this part. I'm playing right now on Windows 11.

AF 16x, MSAA 8x via dgVoodoo2:

I'd love to play one more time. For old time sake. I'm older now, and have seen so many things in my life. But the one thing I remember in my youth was this game, SS08 and feeling limitless. Like the open ocean was truly ours to sail and be free. At least, for me anyway. If you or anyone gets a server working, I'll be there. But for now, they'll remain happy memories!

Sad, considering how great this place was at its peak!

Out of curiosity, I had a lookat Freedom90, after so many years, i.e. Build 1.5.5, September 2013. Before that, she couldn't get out of the water, like her propellers wer mocked by underwater thrusters. VStep corrected it, but it wasn't tested for the simple reason that I wasn't aware of this change and never went back to the hovercraft.
There is also the issue of a missing handling handbook, like it also was the case for the tugs and most ships in fact, cruisers, etc.

The leftmost pair of handles controls the blowers, lifting and and the two pipes near the cabin. To make things difficult, the visual pipes of the blower rotate 2 times faster than the controls, meaning that their direction is wrong. There is no possibility other than suppressing the visuals. For an unknown reason, the repeater at the pilot's seat is bizzarily an RPM meter, giving a general feeling of the direction, and also wrong. What is correct is the green/red bar meter under the blower steering button, that gives the exact direction of the thrust of the blower. In the attached file, I have increased the size of the button and the thrust itself.
This button is the specific helm of the hovercraft, her main steering, the rudder fins behind the propellers  are rather tricky and don't help manoeuvring really. High speeds are of course a different matter.

The directional stability is improved -somewhat- but there is not much to do to reduce the drift, it is after all a hovercraft. The skirt friction is certainly too high on the ground, and I have yet to find where and how to reduce it. In 2008, the ground was just water textured as concrete, earth,... water as heavy syrup, while the water and sea models of Shipsim Extremes are way better, even if the sea is not at all subject to wind.

Finally, the skirts are not inflatable, they are rigid, and I can't find how to make them enter the concrete, visually, of course.
And I am asking myself why would I change anything ?

Manouvring on land can only be done using the main props and rudder - the bow thruster doesn't work :/

Also the thrust has to be quite substantial to get her to turn/move

I then find this puts her into a uncontrollable spin, which varies as to whether or not it stops...

Also on land she doesn't lower to the ground when the lift fans are powered down

However - we are getting there, so thanks VSTEP

Looks like it never got past than that.  I was surprised with how Freedom 90 behaves on ramps & as Ferryman described, it's its normal behaviour that wasn't improved since.  I may add the hovercraft even shakes & bumps as if wanting to bounce off the ramp. 
In SS08 Freedom 90 was much more polished in many aspects.  Here it's like get used to it & try to avoid undesired behaviour.

With everyone having disappeared from here or just moved on with their lives (even Ferryman) & new registrations having been disabled, now numerous guests here are like aliens exploring the remaining artefacts of a once flourishing civilisation that lived here long ago...


The remaining me, Gab, Stormforce, with occasional MokMok & Redfox/eviss still surviving on Multiplayer at evenings-nights, thanks to Willis maintaining life-supporting conditions.

Hello CapnCrane,

It's great that there is now a new inland shipping expert to help tweaking Mare Australe dynamics, specially after so many years and discussions about this topic, started by someone who could assert knowing about such ships.
The issue of the specifications will be solved now. So, what data can you give me about such a ship. She was difficult to manage, because the design itself doesn't match her published measurements, as she is in fact a 88m Lpp inlandship, 11.45 m wide but only 1.90 m fully loaded, more a Grot Rijnschip than a Verlengd one.
From there the ambiguities about power and hence manoeuvring data, and a 15 mt thruster on a relatively light ship. She is not a 110 m M10 AVV class, but at most an undersized M8.
Anyway, as far as I know, the published dynamics is still the original one, concocted from the data that I collected long ago, so thaty the choice is yours : this is not the community development board.

Regards,
Luc

I tried the updated dynamics file that "perfected" the ship - absolutely not-realistic.  In the 1st pic with the full thrust applied to side the ship spins clockwise at like 265 degs per min!  Setting the thrust to 0 & applying the full ahead with hard to port to stop the spin - ship continues to spin clockwise, pic 2.
On pic 3 applying a full ahead with hard to port to a fully static ship makes it spin again at over 200 degs per min.  It's as if there's no water resistance on ship.
(Disregard the depths shown on map as 0, the ship was sailing normally from that place after I was done with testing the thruster)

Also, what's that 2100rpm for a thruster?  Is it its electromotor's rpm or the propeller's rpm?

I believe this inland feeder realistically would be equipped with a 4-channel thruster or a steering-grid thruster, like in pic 4.  So I find the initial dynamics file of Mare Australe to be more realistic.

Does Shipsim Extremes als contain cheats and easter eggs?

Not sure if this was mentioned before, here's an Easter egg in Winner's front hold.

Well, as I got used to SSE & since we sail there on Willis server just fine, I guess there's no need for SS08 multiplayer now.