Ship Simulator 2008
In my opinion the best attempt yet outside commercial maritime simulators.
Ship Simulator 2008 is primarily mission based with lots of different tasks to undertake. Also there is a mission editor and the community has made good use of this to provide lots of freely downloadable content.
Although its true there are only a few areas in Ship sim they are very well modelled and do not really feel too small. What happens now is that you can sail to the end of one area then across a generic "open sea" section and then a new port area is loaded.
I'm glad V-Step has taken a quality over quantity approach although it means a lot less ports they are much more real than the generic ports of say SH4 or Dangerous Waters.
the ports in Ship sim are:
The Solent (Lower Portsmouth, Southampton, Cowes, Ryde Pier)
Marseilles
San Francisco
New York
Hamburg
Rotterdam
Bear in mind that multiplayer has now been introduced and is good fun, particularly when you play a tug assisting large vessels.
In addition various propulsion systems are modelled including pods, hovercraft, waterjet etc
Ports Of Call Deluxe 2008
Last week saw the launch of a new game based on the classic title Ports of Call which some oldies (like me) remember from the Amiga. The new version is now fully in 3d it's a kind of shipping tycoon with a 3d simulator attached that pops up when your ships need to dock/undock or when you need to navigate through icebergs, avoid collisions etc. It's only in German at the moment but the developer has an English version ready to go once he has negotiated a publishing deal. Uniquely the game features a red/green stereo 3d mode (with 3d glasses), should be pretty cool. see more about this title
here
Virtual sailor v7
Virtual Sailor is also quite good and has a tremendous variety of community made stuff but the physics in general are poor as is the berthing/manouvering. And being community based the addons vary tremendously in quality.