This Might Be The Most Realistic Ship Simulator Yet

That’s not my title for the article, but a YouTuber’s title. Yet again, we see another fancy ship simulator, when the user interface looks like it was made back in the 90s.

So, as we know, *many of us* who are simulator enthusiasts know that a game’s cover doesn’t always show what a game actually looks like. The video above is from another featured ship simulator game that IGN also covered, though they only posted a trailer on YouTube.

Now this game is called Professional Ship Simulator, based on another game called Nautic XP, which is also an early access title.
The video opens up with an introduction to the ship’s bridge, where everything looks “superadvanced”. Now, let me clarify one thing first: This game is developed in Unreal Engine. It means that this ship simulator isn’t built on a game engine made from scratch. And what I’ve seen with many simulator games built on pre-made engines is that they end up in the graveyard for hyped arcade games. Simulation, as titled, you may wonder why? I’m not going to answer that question, but I’m just referring to the business side of the indie game industry, which makes many great games, but also fails tremendously when it comes to the hardcore simulation stuff.

The Fantastic Ship Simulator Environment

The first thing that caught my eyes attention, wasnt just the user interface of this game, but the environment itself. I know, as a game modder, that huge game environments are a nightmare to make, even with a large ocean, which is supposedly the main gaming zone when it comes to nautical simulation. But the environment in this one looks like something way back in the past in terms of video game graphics. It just looks like a big mess of Unreal’s fantastic ocean graphics AND something that was made for a video game back in the 1990s. Now, this may just be the “base model” of an environment, since the game is in early access, but you know… the developers are going to release this on Steam, and probably not for free… right?

So, just textures alone seem to have been smashed onto a 3D mesh of a cruise ship, where the wooden deck tiles are out of proportion.
Some of these ships are typical model assets sold on various 3D model marketplaces. So this ship isn’t new to me, since I’ve also had my time with nautical sailing simulators, talking about Virtual Sailor, which was made years ago. I also bought some 3D ship models back then, just to learn things the hard way, and also did my first game mods for that one.

And yeah, the user interface actually reminds me of Virtual Sailor. But darn, that’s a long time ago…

I don’t care…

That’s something someone who is tremendously into simulation games would say, LIVE NOW from YouTube, right?

Now I don’t want to barbecue the developers of this game too much. Surely, the big ship doesn’t behave like a small boat when the YouTuber is referring to the crew. Where is the crew?

And somehow, we have balloons flying near the horizon, just to let us know there are no stormy conditions yet…

Mission Failed

Surprise, surprise! Crash into anything, or just touch a navigation mark… mission failed. Sounds realistic, right? Um..no.

The reason why I’m not occupying myself with writing game reviews at Steam is simply that realism fails for too many simulation games, which are about operating vehicles – almost any vehicle. These games often end up as toy simulators, games made for kids, and not real home simulators for grumpy guys like me. But sure, you could always spend some fortune on fancy simulation hardware and build the ship’s bridge in your living room… as some people do. Anyway…

Professional Ship Simulator, AKA Nautic XP, will hopefully be a landmark among simulation gamers someday, but it won’t happen fast.

By the way, here’s the game’s cover *splash screen*

Steam Store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3636930/Professional_Ship_Simulator/

And btw, the video is from Jeff Favignano https://www.youtube.com/@jfavignano