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Haha well its an interesting tale!

I bought a model of one of the Stena Line ships that run on the route to the Hoek, but since I hadn't sailed on it, felt I had to, so booked a weekend trip over. I didn;t think about the ships from ShipSim, until I got there, and then al came back!

After so many hours sailing some of those ships, I somehow never considered going to Rotterdam to see them for real. This was added to my bucketlist.

Thanks for the pictures Ferry Man, it must have been an amazing trip! Did you go specifically to visit the port, or did you just happen to be nearby?

After many... many years... Finally made it to Rotterdam and saw some old friends!

I need to get SS08 again! Was that the one with the flowchart for installation?

I haven't gone anywhere I'm still playing Virtual Sailor and Ship Simulator occasionally, especially utilizing my ShipDriver.

I miss you all.

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 ?