[Chock]

SH1 still works on my computer (I was a real sucker for it, got all the mission patrol disks too). Nevertheless, looking at it today does offer some interesting comparisons.

The graphics are obviously not as cool, but the 2D sub stations are in most cases slightly easier to use, and wow factor and eye candy aside, many people have expressed a preference for this approach to oft-used stations.

In terms of functionallity, there is little difference between the systems simulated in earlier sub sims such as Silent Service, Aces of the Deep and the original Silent Hunter. For example: Silent Hunter 1 offers the following.. Control Room, Persicope, TBT, Bridge, Charts, TDC, Gauges, Damage Control, Radar and Deck Gun stations. Also Accelerated Time, Full Range of Engine speeds, Emergency Blow, Crash Dive, Persicope Depth, Radar Depth and Surface commands.

How complex the simulation of these things is, is another matter, although everything from adjustable torp speeds to offset gyro angles is certainly present in the original Silent Hunter.

Having said that, the eye-candy aspect for many is a big deal, and while it's not such a biggie for me, it is very cool. (in short, yes I like it, but its lack would not have been a deal-breaker for me). But you would have to be blind to not notice how far the submarine simulation has come in terms of looks with the release of SH4 though.

It's nice to be able to 'walk' about in your submarine a bit, but I think what people would really like is: 2D stations for use, AND to be able to walk around the entire interior of a submarine in a manner similar to a first person shooter, This is clearly possible to do, since you can do it in one of the missions in the Game 'Hidden and Dangerous 2', where you have to capture an enigma encoder from a U-Boat. It's obvious to me that many would also welcome this from the responses posted to the 'open hatch mod' for SH3, which has been welcomed and praised almost universally by SH3 skippers, and is indeed an impressive mod.

Shift F2 in SH4 is okay for the curious, but it is hardly an emulation of walking about, so in that sense, things haven't moved on from SH1 as much as they could have done. To do something like having a boat you could move around inside would obviously require quite a bit more modelling than what SH4 has as standard, but it is far from impossible, and a similar thing has in fact been implemented in the MMORPG 'Vanguard' where players can have their own ship, sail it about and walk around on it. Interestingly, one of the problems with this initially, was people falling off their ships at sea, but in a game where first-person perspective is the prime mode, this is understandable, and it has been solved (by the way, for all of you complaining about SH4 bugs, if you want to see a game with bugs, check out Vanguard).

Personally, I would like a sub sim where you could walk up to the thing at the dock, go up a gangplank and get in it seamlessly and then sail off in career mode. Whether any simulation developer will ever do this is anyone's guess.

The 'putting you there' approach to sims has been dabbled with on occasion, notably in Combat Flight Simulator 3 (which many condemned, but I personally quite liked). In that you started your mission sat on the airfield near your aeroplane. It stopped short of letting you walk around the thing, but added elements where your character's ability was able to be developed over time with 'points' you could assign to things like G-Tolerance, ability to spot enemy aircraft etc. B-17 2: The Mighty Eighth (another flight sim well loved and well modded by many) also did this kind of thing and it added a personal touch to what, in simulations, can be sometimes a little clinical. IL-2 (yet another flight sim) went the opposite way, and it suffers greatly for that in my opinion, in that it's a great sim, but it has perhaps the most soul-less interface of any game ever.

Many lament the passing of the paper manual as a nice thing to have (me included) and this is certainly one area where older sims win hands-down, however, forums such as subsim and the ability to easily search the net for information have made the paper manual less of an absolute necessity these days. Nevertheless, with the current solution for many games of putting the manual on PDF, I think it's fair to say that's always something of a disapppointment for most people when they open up their latest game or sim. To be fair though, the manual for the original Silent Hunter only runs to about 20 more pages than the current SH4 manual (both of which are printed), and the original SH manual is not vastly detailed. In fact it compares miserably with the Silent Service 2 manual, which pre-dates it by about four years and runs to 128 pages. So even at that stage we could see a trend starting.

I think your rose-tinted spectacles may be less rose-tinted than you suspect with regard to the original SH, but things have moved on all the same.