Sailaway

[Thagarr]

Thanks to @Flannery for pointing this one out to me! If your anything like me, you have always wanted to just buy a boat and head off for the distant horizon. I live in the middle of a cornfield though and can't afford to just quite my job, buy a boat to sail around the world. Now you won't have to take those drastic measures either, you can do it from the comfort of your own computer with Sailaway! More sailing is always better, and this one looks to be quite impressive!

For over a year now, Richard Knol, an Indie developer from the Netherlands has been working on an incredibly detailed sailing simulator. Sure there are a lot of sailing simulators out there, but most usually only focus on one part of the world, or focus on racing or regattas. This one is a bit different, and is truly a Global Sailing Simulator. Not only does this “game” simulate sailing with realistic boat physics, it also simulates the entire planets nautical environment with realistic ocean waves and cloud formation. This simulation uses real NOAA weather and ocean data, as well as landmass and heightmap data from NASA.

On top of all that, this is a realtime simulation. Which means that if it takes you month to sail the Atlantic in real life, it will take just as long in this simulation. That being said however, you won't have to be at the helm, or keyboard in this case, to control every action. After you set your course and set out on your journey, you can then sign out of the server, and the simulation will continue while you are away dealing with real life headaches.

Meanwhile, the game will continue while the player is not logged in. Your boat sails virtually on the server and sends you updates via email. You can log in when you want, make changes to the sail trim, set a reef, change waypoints and then let the boat continue by itself again. It can also teach you a bit about sailing, although real life sailing is way more complicated and boats are affected by other things that are not simulated here. I haven't yet had the free time to try it out myself, but there is a version available for testing, currently version .03. The latest version features an improved Sailing algorithm that computes more accurate values for speed, heel, drift and weatherhelm among other things.

This ambitious simulation won't be available just on the Windows PC's however. There will also be versions for Android, iOS and Mac. The game is set to be released officially on November 3rd, 2016. You can find out much more about the game from Sailaway.world, the games official web page and home of Richard's Dev Blog. You can also follow the games development on Twitter and Facebook.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Now this is interesting and reminds me of how I used to play POTC years ago, where I would set course and then settle in with a good book and only occasionally check the ship.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Reminds me of good old Virtual Sailor.

 

[Abdul-Bashur]

Hi! One question, do you guys believe that it would be possible to use this software to create something similar like POTC? I mean like a RPG with anchoring and exploring but of the whole world...it seems a "titanic" task...but could it be possible?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That completely depends on how that game/simulator is set up and what is possible with it.
Also assuming that the developer is interested in supporting it.

If it works in any way similarly to the Virtual Sailor that I am familiar with, then the answer is definitely "no".

 

[Flannery]

I think it is pretty much as @Pieter Boelen says.

It first of all depends on whether it is possible to switch out the model itself and tweak it for the right effacts of the laws of physics, and then if the game in itself is made in such a way that you would be able to add characters, land objects and so on. Which I highly doubt would be possible and still keep a fair amount of fps.

Last but most important - the developer would have to be willing to allow the player to do all this by keeping the source files open enough to be tampered with in such a way. And that is a big question in itself.

For me personally it would suffice more than enough just to swap out the model with a full rigged ship

 

[Flannery]

However, I am pretty sure the final version will consist of ships to choose from. Might even be that if enough people ask for it, the developers would possibly consider putting in tall ships as well.

Even if it would be something you would have to purchase in-game that would be interesting for me at least.