Virtual Skipper 4 - Regatta Sailing Simulation
 

Hi, i wondered that a naval simulation site like subsim has no review of Virtual Skipper 4 (VSK4), the most realistic regatta sailing simulation available.

I played VSK3 that came out 3 or 4 years ago, so some of the guys who played VSK1 still calls me a newbie. I began real boat regatta sailing 4 years ago, and as the winter comes i bought VSK3 to sail virtual. In the winter season i also read books for regatta sailing and tactics, but i must admit i didnt understand all until i played the game, and improved my competitivness in real sailing a lot. The second effect of the game was, i found passion for a discipline of sailing which i didnt knew in real, the match racing, a one on one race. Because rules and tactics are much different from the more common fleet race, it needed much experience to get competitive. But as it is much faster to get the required experience in the game then in real, i had started match racing in real after one year VSK match race training, and had a quite successful start last year (at the moment ISAF matchrace Worldranking 220 and VSK-match-ranking 15).


The game
Virtual Skipper 4 was created by Nadeo, a french software company, and came out november 2005.

At first look it is pretty same as VSK3, the same boatclasses (Melges 24, Offshore Yacht, Trimaran and Americas Cupper), same racing modes (matchrace, fleetrace, teamrace) with slightly better graphics.

But in detail it was a big improvement. The rules of sailing has been improved. The multiplayer (MP) restriction of 8 boats each race was removed. Spectators are allowed in MP. Improved map- and replay-editor. Automatic downloads of skins and maps. And it is possible to create new boat-types, althought there is no editor, and i dont know how to create, but the available boats for download are partly better then games original.

You may realised, that i mostly mentioned multiplayer features, which is because this game only makes sense as a multiplayer game, though the artificial-intellegence of the computer steered boats are not much of a challenge and gets boring after 2 hours.

How to play VSK4?
Unless you have no 5 ft yacht-steering-wheel at home, the keyboard control is also convinient. You can helm the rudder, sheeting the sails, or changing them (jib, genua, code 0, spinnaker). The best perspective to play is the bird-view, because in cockpit-view it is too slow to change the view-direction.

Simulation
The simulation of real sailing is quite good. Boats behave very realistic. But most difficult is the simulation of wind and water. There are oscillating wind-shifts, guts and lulls, tide currents, waves moving and effecting boatspeed. Instruments onboard which real americas cupper dream of (absulute accurate and perfectly formated).

Conclusion
VSK4 is more a regatta simulation then a sailing-boat simulation (there are games where you can alter each part of the boat). The racing is only thrilling when you have some knowledge of race sailing (knowing rules and tactics, what is tacking or gybing). You need human opponents, which is no problem if you have internet connection. Most players are sitted in central europe, so best time to find many people is around 2000-2400 hours UTC+1 (more then 150 players online), but there are some north and south americans, australians and NZL too. There are many website-communities for the game, with downloads, forums, chat or organizing championships. You find many experienced real race sailors playing. I wonder when it will be a ISAF (international sailing federation) recognised boatclass, though they already recognised remote controlled boatclasses.

some websites
www.virtualskipper-game.com game's homepage
www.vsk-match.com matchrace community of VSK
www.virtual-winds.com french community (with english translation)
www.vivarace.de german community
www.asv-matchrace.de my racing team
www.isaf.org international sailing federation



greets

snoopy

http://www.virtualskipper-game.com/d...eenshots08.jpg

www.virtualskipper-game.com

Virtual Sailor and Virtual Skipper have been talked about many times here, as people who love them have come and gone.

As for reviews, you might notice that they are mostly of combat sims. There also is no review of Ship Command (at least that I could find).

I find it interesting that you have never talked about anything of relevance here before, and your very first post is to criticize.

It was not ment to be a criticism, but the motivation for me to write this short review, to call attention to this remarkable game.

Worth to mention: at least the German version of the game comes with Starforce.

I don't know about problems with starforce. I bought the downloadable version from www.virtualskipper-game.com because it was 3 month earlier available then the stores version and it works well.

All this Star Force is is a web check. I can live with that sort of check. There are numerous web check programs out there so it really is nothing.

Having been sailing irl my whole life, I am playing Virtual Skipper online since the number 1... I created in 2002 with a swiss friend a website for the french speaking community, and it has slowly evolved in a big thing called Virtual Winds. I am not involved in organizing competitions anymore but am still taking part in many, mainly match race which is my favourite. The good thing of the opus 4 is the possibility to import 3D models made by the community, so we have now a lot of boats...
It is of course a fantastic game and a fantastic community with thousands of players ranked on the official ladder.