Ship Simulator to build nautical knowledge?

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[Lpype]

Hello,

I assume that quite some people here also have experience with other simulation programs like Flight Simulator. As you know, if you use Flight Sim in a right way, it's a very useful tool to learn a lot about aviation, especially regarding procedures, communication, navigation, instruments, ... . It will give you a head start if you embark on real life flight training later on.

Is this also the case for Ship Simulator? I.e. can you gain a lot of realistic and correct nautical knowledge by using Ship Simulator? Or to put the question in another way, is Ship Simulator more a sim (realistic simulation) than a game (fantasy items)? Will it help you when joining real life nautical school?

For example: IALA buoyage system, COLREG application, dangerous goods procedures, nautical instruments, harbour procedures, piloting procedures, IMO SMCP, ... are they depicted in a realistic way in Ship Simulator? Could you give other examples of knowledge that can be gained from using Ship Simulator?

Thank you, kind regards,
Ludovic

[Ballast]

Microsoft Flight Simulator and Ship Simulator cannot be compared, how long is Microsoft already developing FS? This is just the 2nd version of SS that Vstep created. Microsoft's budget and developing team is also much bigger than Vstep.

All the things you mention, can't be found in SS08. Except a few lateral buoys from IALA. There arent much navigation instruments to be used in the game, there is some kind of ECDIS but without plotting and voyage planning function. There is also no radar, and then im even not talking about ARPA. I really hope Vstep will improve the game in that way, and im pretty confident that they will pull it off. It just takes time.

[TerryRussell]

The history is that VSTEP produce safety and training simulators. Ship Simulator is a spin-off from those products.

You can learn a lot by using it. Some of the largest fleet-owners in the world use t for training purposes. But right now, the serious users are queing up for Ship Simulator Professional, V2. If you genuinely want to use it as a training aid, that's the one for you.

I met some of the Navigational Training clients the other week at the launch of SS Pro. They rate it very highly.

[Ballast]

Ah yes, SS Pro. Didnt think of that one, i was assuming the topicstarter was talking about SS08.

[Second Mate]

Ship sim pro is an option if you have plenty of money.

Ship sim 2008 to be honest is more of a game than a simulator for the reasons Ballast gives, but could be the place to start. Hopefully, ss 2010 should be an improvement, i will definately be getting it.

[IRI5HJ4CK]

I met some of the Navigational Training clients the other week at the launch of SS Pro. They rate it very highly.

Thats very good news Terry indeed, thats what we are looking for!

I find that Ship Simulator does help me actually, as regards to buoys etc. shallows and all that business. Helps in the real world!

Jack.

[Aad The Pirate]

Ahoy Lpype,
Wecome to the Forum.
Before anybody else tells You, please read this: http://www.shipsim.com/ShipSimForum/index.php/topic,11578.msg136934.html#msg136934
And please, register Your copy of the game. I assume You have bought one, didn't you? Or somebody gave it to You as a present.
Regards
Aad the Pirate.

[Loudspeaker]

The AI-behaviour needs to be improved a lot, if the game is to become more realistic. I really try to navigate according to the international rules, but it is a bit frustrating being the only ship in the game doing so. Although I am not a programmer I guess it would be quite simple to improve the conduct of the AI. Basically it is all about turning away from anything coming at your starboard side and continue on course if it comes on your port side. It would only be a matter of 1 or 0, to put it simple. If you are a towing wessel or otherwise unable to manouvre, the AI should always consider you being a "1" and turn away. Of course to make it realistic, the AI should conduct a random behaviour from time to time, so you never can be certain wether it will turn or not. You will then need to learn some basic evasive manouvres if troubles are in your way. Unlike rules of society, the laws of international seafare are actually some of the most logic laws ever made, making it quite simple to compress them into a matter of "0" or "1".

But... I am sure we will see these and more features in the coming versions of SS. 

[TerryRussell]

The Anti Collision Regulations are a lot more complex than that.

You've stated a simplified version of one small element. The decision as to who is "stand on" and who is "give way" is not always understood by trained and highly experienced people, never mind a series of lines of code.

On the sea (or in a harbour) any vessel be both 1 and 0 by your logic, depending on which of the other ships in the vicinity is affected by it. Very complex programming systems and directional recognition systems are involved.

e.g.

• A Ferry is crossing from one side of the harbour to another (make it easy, let's say on a bearing of 231 degrees at 14 kts. It is in a channel of depth 3 metres and has a draft of 2.5 metres)
• A sailing vessel is heading across its path. It is currently on a bearing of thirty degrees off his bow, heading 308 degrees at 3-5 kts (variable)
• Vermaas is on the main channel of the main fairway, heading 98 degrees at 11 kts
• Latitude is also on the main fairway, in the main channel, heading 278 degrees at 10 kts
• A motor cruiser is in the small vessel channel, crossing over the path of the sailing vessel and ferry, heading 262 degrees at 25 kts

Who is stand on compared to who? This is obviously just a simple five-vessel question. Many scenarios get a lot more complex.

Trust me, if it was that simple, it would be there already. The developers don't leave out because it's too easy to do... 

[Loudspeaker]

Thankyou, Terry Russel, for your difficult scenario. But if I was to judge which manouvres are necessary for each ship, I would need to know distances as well as headings and bearings - and if any obstacles like bouys etc. were in their way. (Please don't spend time to build an accurate scenario, because I am absolutely sure you can build one, which I will not able to solve.) But I absolutely agree with you in the fact that in many cases the rules are very complex - espescially in port environments. But complexity is not necessesarebly illogic. What I am looking for is an reaction from the AI instead of just full speed ahead whatever happens, and a basic programming of port or starboard approach (1 or 0) is still better than nothing.That was my point - a point that may have been lost in my difficulties of communicating in your language. There is a chance, of cause, that this programming would end up ruining the game completely, making all the AI's collide eachother with you as a shocked spectator, but I doubt it. I can't help it, but I still have the feeling that the developers didn't spend much time in improving the conducts of the AI.

I hope you don't mind me telling a little story that comes to my mind, but I think it illustrates the problem, as you draw it up. A friend of mine was a mate on a small coaster, and one day in the English Channel he asked for my advice. I was a deckhand onboard, but I have many years of experience at sea, which he had not. He asked me what to do in a heavily trafficked area. He couldn't alter the course because of the other ships around him, but he desperately needed to do so in order to reach our destination. And the scenario was really very complex (I will spare you from the details). I couldn't help him, and he decided to wake the captain from his sleep.

- You see, captain, I can't really make a turn according to the rules, he said.

- Turn the ship if you need to, the captain said.  - You will see the other ships correspond, and soon everything will be as you have seen it in your books. And by the way... The ship behind us is only waiting for you to turn! Can't you see that? Goodnight my boy! And then he went back to bed. 

I am sure we agree that you can't transform the wit of an experienced captain into a matter of 0 or 1. 

[TerryRussell]

Exactly my point.

Trust me, if it was that simple, it would be there already. The developers don't leave out because it's too easy to do...

PS, I hadn't meant that as a complex or difficult example. In real life it is simple to work OK. For a computer, the programming would be immense. Simply recognising the vectors of each vessel requires a huge amount of programming. By the time the considerations of depth and obstacles and harbour requirements have been added in, your PC would take a long time to work it out. It probably has to wait for PCs to get 50 times fatser.

[kuusuru]

Exactly my point.

PS, I hadn't meant that as a complex or difficult example. In real life it is simple to work OK. For a computer, the programming would be immense. Simply recognising the vectors of each vessel requires a huge amount of programming. By the time the considerations of depth and obstacles and harbour requirements have been added in, your PC would take a long time to work it out. It probably has to wait for PCs to get 50 times fatser.

Do you really think so?  I wonder.  Nearly 20 years ago I was programming simulations involving hundreds of objects; true that the state machine for each object was much simpler than that required for even rudimentary marine navigation, but on the other hand they only had a 386 with 4 MB RAM to run on in (more or less) real time  .  If by vectors you mean the vessel's velocity and direction, these are already known to the machine, and the mathematics of a marine simulator should be simpler than a terrestrial or aeronautical one, because all the action essentially occurs in a two dimensional plane.  Things like "calculate the distance to each other object" and "turn away from any vessel which is less than 1000m away and is on a course which will bring it within 100m of me" are straightforward trigonometric problems which shouldn't consume too many CPU cycles for the number of vessels present in most missions.  If you model the map as a graph of points, then use the vessel's draught to discard points which are too shallow, then I think you should have pretty cheaply solved the depth problem?

You have me at a disadvantage, because I've not seen SS Pro, and maybe the AI is better there; but I do think that the AI is what it is in SS 08 simply because it's not been as high a development priority as other things, rather than because the algorithm complexity is too great for a modern PC.

But it's not such a big deal.  I've seen the AI do some really dumb things, like wedge a motor yacht between my tug and the Agile under tow (and continue to turn hard into the Agile, grinding away like a madman).  However, people do really dumb things all the time, so I just write it off as a drunk skipper or something like that 

[JHB]

Can you add some examples of vector mathematics here Terry since it obviously seems that you know alot about the inside of the game?

Remember that I'm a idiot when it comes to mathematics, so take your time

[TerryRussell]

Hi chaps.

At the simplest level, ignore the vector maths and all the rest. Step back and take the overview.

We already know that sometimes the game will be a struggle even for top end machines. Putting two Titanics and a couple of Latitudes with a moderate amount of AI into a complex environment such as Hamburg, Rotterdam or the Solent can make the FPS slow to a set of juddering images while the PC and the graphics card struggle to process the data.

The CMMs will tell you that a frequent cause of problems is when would-be mission creators have too many AI and static vessels, overloading the tester's PC.

Adding more layers of computation will just lower the threshold at which this occurs. So that's unlikely to happen, I think.

Now, there are a number of things that can be done to help, such as using more of the video card's spare processing ability. But even so, there is a balance to be struck. If, as a result, there is 10% more processing power available, should the developers use that to make the AIs more realistic, to add realistic buoys, to extend the harbours, or to add other features, or what?

No matter what they decide, someone will say "Why didn't the developers just do....". Its a no-win situation, really.

PS JHB, if you're serious about wanting to know more about vector mathematics, I'll see if I can find some on-line references for you. Let me know. Unless you're teasing!

It isn't that difficult to understand, I think. Basically, you need to know the force and the direction in which it is being applied. Voila! However, the maths can get more complex once you have more than one vector or more than one body in a system.

[kuusuru]

Can you add some examples of vector mathematics here Terry since it obviously seems that you know alot about the inside of the game?

Remember that I'm a idiot when it comes to mathematics, so take your time

Well, I'm an idiot when it comes to Norwegian, so the next time I'm passing through Norway I'll lend you my copy of Lengyel's "Mathematics for 3D Game Programming and Computer Graphics" and you can teach me Norsk 

[Loudspeaker]

It is always funny to notice the difference of experience and hardcore theory. Give me a boat and I will guide you safely in or out of any port in the world, having complete confidence in my experience and my superiority complex. It really just is a matter of keeping the buoys on the right side of your ship and to figure out the intensions of the other captains around you. I am not much of a scientist, but I know how to moor a ship with my own hands. All the vectors, mathematics and astro physics in the universe could never moor a ship alongside. But I can! And so can you, if you want.

My foremost reason to complain about the stupid behaviour of the AI in SS is that I have seen much better AI performance in other simulators. How can a low budget frigate and a handful of destroyers give me and my submarine a hard time in a depht bomb attack, if it isn't capable of calculating bearing and distance in a 3-dimensional environment? Without slowing my computer? How can a car avoid my attempts to hit it, if it only knew how to follow a straight course? Did you ever play Pacman, one of the simplest games ever made?

Better AI performance in ShipSim, thanks!

[JHB]

I just struggle to understand why other games may have a AI system that is more complex?
How can it be that the Koreans in the Crysis game is acting so smart? How can it be that several dozens of zombies attacks you in the game Left 4 Dead? They are all AI's too...

How can it be that you can have several AI aircrafts lading on a airport in FSX, and even have a huge density of them?

[TerryRussell]

You have to take the "big picture" view.

Yes, you could have smarter AI, but as the game is running most PCs at the extreme edge of their capabilities, what would you want to loose? Would you like less detailed ships? Or would you prefer smaller harbours (chop a few kilometres off them)? What's your preferred trade-off?

It's all a question of priorities. There is a finite limit. PCs aren't getting much faster these days, and Windows seems to want more and more of their processing power, just to start up.

Now, there are things in motion to pack more into the simulator, but there are so many aspects that people would like to be increased that they won't/can't all be accommodated, I think.

And comparing Ship Simulator with a few dozen zombies that operate on a low-polygon background is like comparing apples with frogs. Or ships with zombies.