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 ?
