Vehicle Simulator – The Aero-Nautical one

Based on the wonderful Sailing Simulator and on Micro flight Simulator this is an all grounds Simulator with excellent dynamics. 

Vehicles, vehicles ...and surroundings:
The weather conditions can be adjusted at a maximum of detail, e.g. wind speed, wind direction, wave height, wave length, water level, ground level, turbulences and so on. Even the water colour can be set or something like adding rain and thunder. Unlike other Sims the cockpit features straight click-at-it action which means you can steer the navigation wheel or control the sails. Some powerfull devices like GPS, Radar, Depth scanner or for planes a HUD can be monitored. All visualized by proper gadgets and overlay cockpit panels. Theres also a wind stroke view aimed to help sailors or pilots with navigation depending on the weather.

No matter what you like to drive, fly or dive there are lots of Mods available as free downloads, be it luxury yachts, gigaliner ships, sailing boats, planes, gliders, hang gliders, helicopters, cars, trucks, a flying saucer and guess what – even more whatevers. By the way: It's the perfect submarine game plattform. Ever wanted to make your very own car? It has it's own vehicle design editor allowing you to create fancy "whatevers". Or you may just try one vehicle after another. In case you like to be a Captain, a Pilot or just a Driver, you have the tricky choice of variety. A combat simulator and AI scripts round the whole thing up.

The GFX and engine are state of the art (compared to other Simulators). Some would say the overall look is deprecated but once you see the real time shadow casting effects ingame you will forget about any bad screenshot + everything can be modded speaking of trees or bees, buildings and sceneries. There are animals around you, the base installation even includes a cat, same goes for dolphins (this blogs insider jocke number one) ;) And just in case, if theres a need for a real living asset you can start a Multiplayer session, do a boat race, fly modern jets togheter, yep, you name it! Practise makes a pro – it's educational!

More info here:
http://hangsim.com/vsf/index.php

Add-on gallery here:
http://library.qualitysimulations.com/library.php

This game has a price but it's worth every dimme and it's not expensive at all. I say: Strong community, quality Add-ons, accurate simulation. Let 'em all know!

A list of my favorite Add-ons to come soon. I only played the demo yet but soon I will be able to present my first Mod for this game. It will be a Sci-fi supersonic sub. I'm gonna talk about reality Vs. fantasy on another post. Vehicle Simulator allows both things.

Aquanox 2 – A forgotten piece of art

This is worth another entry in the Hall of Fame of great Simulator like games even it was more a Sub-Opera: Aquanox 2 Revelation and The Angel's Tears. A epic liniar story line driven gameplay, personal submarines, Steampunk, the deep sea scenario of a nuked future and hunting forgotten treasures. What else does a Nerd want to play? 

It was a Deepsea Simulator, no doubt! Casual mode could be turned off delivering adjustable and incredibly tricky handling. But lifes a #§%! and the game studio behind it imploded because of lack of interesting and because most people were playing mainstream stuff. It might also be because the selling chain wasn't organized well so non-european people didn't even heard of it.

Neopolis, I can't forget that city near Europe deep down below miles of water. It's like Georgia on my mind. And then there was the latin america deep sea, I met Angelina there, we survived and felt in love but unfornutaly, those others, it's without any words. That asian girl was funny, and that afro dude called Stoney, he is the best. I owned the Drake Industries Carpenter XXL Sub and drove the Salty Dog, what a ugly piece of sub (comparable to today's submarines). Later I managed to dive with an organic stealth batman's sub like ship, uuuhh wow. In the end I found something which created a longterm vision of a "Whatever Hall" without spoiling too much. I'm gonna feature the "Whatever Hall" in some future post related to something I call the "Backup". Meeting lots of Cyberpunk characters I had fun talking to them because beside the mission part there was time to "2D walk across your ship" and since the characters moved from here to there, you had to find 'em. Besides that you could do the basic things, upgrading your subs with some offensive and defensive hardpoints. Besides blowing stuff up with several types of weapons you could raise your cargo space, add turrent command software, power generators, armor plating, Buzzer flares, noise reduction, speed boosters, a fixer and so on. The level design was for it's time beyond imagination with lots of vegetation, deep sea vulcanos, thrilling ambients, ancient cities and epic places to park at. The game engine was made by massive development. The all over look and feel including the design was epic and well done like a movie. This game is still in stores but I don't know if the credits ever reach it's creators.

What is the message of this post?

Please let me make something clear. Nowadays theres no Submarine Sim with state of the art GFX and Engine available, none at all my friends! Besides Silent Hunter and only a few other examples Aquanox 2 or it's prequel "Schleichfahrt" were the ones taking care of unterwater fun. And remember, Silent Hunter is also a sunken project and no doubt, other games on topic didn't even appear well so Submarine games were and still are a niche.

SimTech2K must have played on all grounds:
After beeing a Sci-fi fan looking up at spaceships, playing dozens of space related games I once realized... "hey, deepsea is like space, too, I wanna hopp into a sub". But just like they say in spanish: ¿y duespues? "and then?". What happens now!? I ask this for real now that Star Citizen is leading the race into the new space age! Some time ago while researching the topic deepsea Sims I found an ambitious CryEngine3 project on the CryDev Forums. However I couldn't manage to re-find this project. Why is that? Was it bad re-research skills or did this project also sunk already? I also heard of a community project trying to recreate Aquanox but with slow like no progress. I really want to play a Submarine game with the look of Steampunk but as you might know, I'll get serious on shapes and engineering details + I want good visuals and a powerfull game engine. Now give me that dude, I'll appreciate, all my support!

Count me in for a Kickstarter or Indigogo crowdfunding action – feel free to contact me on this topic, I might have lots of things to add!