"Previously to get anywhere near this level of detail for a particular locale you would have to purchase a 3rd party scenery pack and then suffer abominable frame rates.

With the ability to automatically generate buildings, trees, static and flying aircraft and the associated radio traffic this package must have sent shock waves through companies whose business was based on enhancing the Microsoft sims. Still, the open architecture is there and the Pro version even includes an object / aircraft construction kit.

I'd imagine some business plans are hastily being rewritten and in the end we are all better off.

The sim has the ability to support computers and graphic cards that aren't even built yet - but they will be!

Yet it still runs on an average PC and looks good. Who could have imagined 10 years ago that this level of detail and complexity could be modelled on a PC? Only in my dreams!

MiGMan, 2002"

• AI ship traffic
• realistic models
• fishing boats to cruise ships, from tugs to tankers, container ships, and bulk carriers, from patrol boats to submarines, destroyers and aircraft carriers
• More than 1300 models are placed on routes all over the world according to what is realistic for each region.
• More than a hundred ferry routes are covered with their specific ferries
• naval exercises with Navy ships from most regions
• Watch a full scale NATO landing excercise on the West Coast of the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark or the Brazilian or Chinese navies doing the same in their respective areas.
• Watch the departure of a Tall Ship race from Saint Malo, Kiel or Sandefjord
• or a round the world sail race departing from Gothenburg
• Go looking for Maersk Alabama in the exact spot she was attacked by pirates of the coast of Somalia as later depicted in the movie Captain Phillips with Tom Hanks
• More than 24.000 ship movements ensure that the sea is no longer empty.
• Add to that killer whales, humpback whales, and right whales....