For a while I thought that combat flight sims were also dead, only barely holding on to the glory of Falcon 4. But DCS have raised the bar beyond anything thought possible with both Blackshark and A-10. Microsoft is also rebooting the flight simulator. It would be really stupid to sink the flight sims now that we're so close to Helmet Mounted Displays.

Unfortunately for naval sims, we've never had a Falcon 4. And it's a damn shame. At the moment, there is absolutely no naval simulator anywhere on the market that can allow real navigation practice (Virtual Sailor came close though). And you'd be fools if you thought that wouldn't be enough to sell a game. Not only are there tens of thousands of deck cadets in naval universities around the world that would welcome such a game, but even during day to day practice aboard real ships, dead reckoning navigation is impossible in the era of GPS and celestial navigation is only used to check up on instruments. While GPS has eased the work of officers, anyone of them would gladly pay a few bucks to practice their skills from time to time.

As Silent Hunter is the only naval sim to feature the entire globe, it was a hugely missed opportunity to implement such a feature. And you'd smack your heads on walls if you knew just how easy it actually was to implement. Everything is derived from well established formulas. Tides, currents, wind factor, magnetic variation, even magnetic deviation are all either published annually or based on formulas. Plus, course correction would make torpedo targeting 10 times harder.

The devs have suggested that they did think about it, even using real maps instead of a single zoomable one. But they backed off because they "didn't want to scare newbies". :damn: Unlike a flight sim, in a naval sim you have an entire crew that can fulfill every role, including navigation and targeting. In the end, as a commander, all you need to do in a well made naval sim is tell them were to go and who to shoot. How deep you want to involve yourself into the game and its details would be completely up to you.

And as simulators go, the best naval simulator would be a sub simulator based on WW2. No other era and no other class of ship would test you this much. Ballasting a sub would be harder than a Heavy Lift ship. Trimming for spent torpedoes would be harder than discharging a tanker. You can bet that I'd welcome a new sub sim. But only and only if it's done properly, only if it resembles the DCS A-10 in depth. I HIGHLY doubt that Ubisoft would get involved in such a project and it's a damn shame. They have 80% of the game done. They only need a few hundred mathematical formulas and a few buttons more.

I'd buy that in a shot. Even a non-combat sim. It was such a shame to find out the skies in SH5 although they looked superficially correct, when combined with a flat earth and cylindrical map any calculations/observations using celestial objects became meaningless.

PC simulations are not dying though I think. It's just the complexity available using the newer technology means that the programs need much more time in development - but companies are getting around this - you mentioned DCS:A10c - Its fantastic I know but - they released beta copies as a form of pre-order - thus pocketting cash enabling them to complete the development (more or less) and it is still being worked on (after release) and is still not quite complete however its been pretty darn close for a long while now. I think with simulations developers are going to need to copy this model, especially when fickle publishers like UBI are quite prone to pulling the plug the moment it starts being any trouble. More developers if and when they are able ought to step up to publishing their own products I think, the products (and consumers) are safer this way.

I would also love a fully immersible Naval sim along the lines of which you described. I think it would be fun to play and as you suggested, a very marketable item.

I contacted tech support ubisoft with this question:
What they told me the following:
Why such a stubborn silence? Again, no "Yes" or "No"! The situation with SH5 and hangs in the air. It's just disheartening.

The good news is, that this is not true.
SH5 + Stellarium + NewUI-mod (real navigation) + nautical almanac 1939-1945 or electronic almanac program + python script + pseudo-sextant can do this with an accuracy of 12km (depends on your precisely reading of your sextant-shot though).

The bad news is, that you didn't figured it out yet even though of your 2009Award + 1400 posts + your geographical vicinity to the SH5-UBI-development-team Romania ;)
I can asure you to find things out if you really want it was not so difficult. All the things were posted in the SH3 & SH4 & SH5 forums.

that wasnt at all helpfull or needed :nope:

Hi, Obelix! As far as I understood from reading the other sim-forums and reviews the production of deeply reworked (realistic) simulators is not profitable nowadays because the sim-fans auditory is not as big as of the other PC-gamethreads. Moreover, the rapidly growing demand for the Xbox, PS3, etc. enforce the game-editors to put their attention on producing soft for this platforms first of all. Meanwile the creation of a really good sim. needs time ('Cliffs of Dover' - more then 7 years for ex.) and hardwork, and only the couple os real sim-fans should be appretianed for it. That is why O.Maddox quit (as far as I Know) with his "IL2"-project further development:cry:
SH5 in stock is mostly the "shooter", running stable after patch 1.2, so this is enough for the UBI to gain profit. And nobody from UBI will answer U clearly re . their plans in "private conversation" untill official information will appear in media.

Yes, but the point is in game is impossible to do these things. Exporting positional data to a 3rd party astronomy program then making measurements in that, then taking the data back into SH5 and plotting on your map is not something I want to get involved in. Want to look at sky take measurements without leaving game. Also because of the flat map, distances are screwy - the distance between lines of longitude should shrink as you get closer to the poles but they don't. The pole itself is a line the length of the equator rather than a point. essentially the further you move from the equator the more stretched out distances (land and sea incuded) are. The realnav in TDWs UI mods simply pretends the observations and calculations are made for you which works quite well. Still would love to see a proper simulation of real navigation.

We have to work with what the devs gave us. It's definitely better than nothing at all.

Yeah I know. Its actually the best it can be within the limitations of the engine, and functionally is nearly perfect. It kept me entertained for many an hour. :up: