Hi @Kayembee370 - This may sound strange from a developer, but if it is variety that you value more than quantity Henrick’s mod may do it for you by itself. As for us, we will be adding more variants in over time but are unlikely to get to the many models (plus many repaints) in Henrick’s mod any time soon (and with it being freely available, it doesn’t really make sense for us to do so). They are quite different propositions and even though he’s not a fan of us, we are fans of his team’s work. His team is helping him add more models too which is great for everyone. Global Shipping is more about volume of traffic and of course we will be improving it over time in other ways too (lots of ideas we can’t share ). Don’t forget we have other compatible locally focused products too and that will only increase as time goes on - it’s our core business. In addition to the several thousand boats moored in the various ports, harbours and marinas, the upcoming UK South East package will add several new, UK local ships, ferries and other utility boats as well as a variety of extra leisure traffic around that part of the coastline. I hope that helps
I shall be keeping an eye on where you go with this.
If I can see that the main package will be giving me a massive increase in the quantity of ships over default plus the Heinrik Pack (presumably by an increase in the number of routes) then I may yet be enticed
I do appreciate your honest responses in these threads. I did ask about compatibility with Enhanced AI vessels and Henrik’s mod in his thread, and got a very lengthy, and somewhat irritable reply from him. You’re right in that he seems to have no love for you! To be frank, I don’t get the emnity towards payware developers. It’s obviously skilled work that you are doing, and takes plenty of man hours, and I find it a rather bizarre attitude to be offended that you wish to be paid for your full time job, just like any other worker. It kind of reminds me of early 20th century Olympic Games where us British found other nations ungentlemanly in that they practiced beforehand.
If people want to contribute to the community for free, (and to be fair Henrik’s contribution is immense) then it’s great they have the independent means to be able to do so. But not many people can work full time in a voluntary capacity and so I don’t get the umbridge that you do it for a career. I’ve never heard of a person volunteering in a soup kitchen to be annoyed that somebody is paid to work in a restaraunt and I see no difference here, aside from the work you do is a lot more skilled than serving meals.
Did you see my post above, about the disappearing ships? It’s very strange, it’s happened on both of my flights last night, around 3 hours total flying. It’s not ships in the distance as someone posted above, but rather when I get close to them. It’s always the blue/green ferry type boat, I’ve not had a yacht disappear.
Do you plan to add any ships to the Enchanced AI in the future, or are they only part of the global shipping pack?
It is indeed a shame but a sign of the times perhaps . Putting concerted effort into donationware/freeware copycats of Enhanced AI too, really hurts the livelihoods of those that depend on development for a living (including the community of professional modellers we support and that make an honest living from their talents). As you state, not everyone can afford to give up their time for free. That said, we are really inspired by the amazing response we’ve had to both addons despite the initial setbacks with SU5 and are very excited about the future!
If you want to contact us via contactus@seafrontsims.com about the disappearing ship we’ll be happy to look at it for you. We’ve included some changes to LODs in the coming update but I want to make sure that we have it working and your examples will help.
In terms of additional ships in Enhanced AI, we’re currently limited to the number that the underlying sim uses/references.
Thanks, I’m flying exclusively in VR these days so I’ll repeat a flight on my monitor to see if the disappearing ships happens there too or is just limited to VR. Asobo are releasoing another hotfix at the end of the month which might resolve the problem as well, if its another SU5 bug.
I get what you mean about default ships now, hopefully Asobo lift the limit. Does it not apply to global ships then, you’re able to add to those just not the default models?
Is it possible to make some of the global ships look like yachts, dingy, speedboats and kayaks and populate the ports and coasts, or would you have the problem of the sim then using those models to make transatlantic crossings!?
Yes correct re Global Shipping. We have more models and variants that are used in Global Shipping with more coming imminently in the next update (and more in future updates too!). The focus for Global Shipping is cargo, utility (e.g. supply vessels) and some trawlers that usually travel the longer journeys. You can see further up in this thread for pictures of the kind of routes we have in Global Shipping. Leisure boats are more of a feature for our coastal scenery packs (because we also fill the ports, harbours and marinas and offer localised models with those).
Edit/Correction: Examples of Global Shipping routes are on the Global Shipping thread. They show a subset of what’s actually there (because there are too many to show them all in one go).
I had four sailboats and a ferry between Den Helder and Texel in North Holland. That has to be your AI product at work. I don’t have anything else loaded right now.
So I’m doing a lot of research and (I hope) cutting through some of the ambiguity and what I’m starting to suspect is vitriol before I buy. I have asked Henrick about the number of actual boats and routes in his mod because I want to have an idea of the differences. I’ll probably end up running with both but as has been observed here by @Kjaye767, Henrick seems a bit ungentlemanly and for me that leaves a sour taste. Personally I like variety in what I’m seeing be it air or sea traffic, but I also like many more boats in the water (ex trawler crew in my younger years). While I respect the effort Henrick has put in I can’t stand people being disingenuous, especially to newcomers like Seafront who on the face of it seem decent people and are thinking big for all our benefit.
EDIT: @SeafrontSims - do you know how many default routes there are (I’m guessing you do)?
To be totally honest I do not know enough about the personalities involved here so I think it would be very unfair of me to comment on their interactions with each other. My lack of knowledge here precludes me very much from giving any sort of meaningful or fair judgement .
I will say however that I have a lot of respect for Henrik for devoting a lot of his spare time to providing a free package for a lot of us here. He seems to be doing a heck of a lot of work, shows a lot of enthusiasm and seems to have a lot of expertise in his area. Most people nowadays (and this is not meant to be a criticism) want monetary reward for the efforts they expend and I commend Henrik for not following that trend.
With regard to Seafront Simulations I appreciate their continued communication about their product and as I have said previously I might yet be enticed into a purchase at some stage. I need to be still convinced however that their product will populate the seas sufficiently to justify the cost they are charging
I have the two seafronts vessels packages and I had a mixed experience.
I currently fly mostly above seas and oceans, during my islands-only World Tour, so I expected to see a lot of differents ships.
I saw some of them on realistic routes but harbours, bays and lagoon are far from being populated as expected. As if only “en route” ships were modelized, and not those who are waiting at anchor (before Panama, Suez, around major harbours…).
Is it a MSFS limitation ? for example, on the French Riviera, you should see hundreds of sail boats on sunny days, ferries, …
Hi @Zofren thanks for the message… You should definitely be seeing plenty of traffic (moving and waiting at anchor) both sides of Panama if you have Global Shipping installed. There is a sim issue with sea level at the moment which means some ships passing through the canal end up underwater but several of us have mentioned this to Asobo and are hoping for a fix, but that doesn’t explain low numbers of ships in the area. Can I ask that you load into Panama and with Developer Mode on go to Options->Sim Objects->BOAT->Names and let me know how many there are in the area?
The amount of sailboat traffic will be a limitation in the sim as with Enhanced AI we are only updating the models themselves not the underlying number of boats.
In addition if your journey includes long stretches (as I suspect) you’ll be experiencing the sim bug that means boats don’t all load in, in front of you. Some will if you’re lucky but many won’t. We’re working with Asobo on this. As a workaround, changing the weather gives the sim engine a ‘kick’ and will load in most of the boats that are supposed to be there.
@FlyingFishin - If I recall correctly it’s a little over 1,000 default routes and maybe a few more boats than that. That’s in addition to the generated ‘wanderboats’.
I like that you’re thinking big. Indeed, anything’s possible with computers these days. However, despite being a developer focused on boats, you have to remember this is a flight simulator and the resources are always going to be tailored toward that, not boats I’m afraid. I think you’d need a fairly powerful machine to render them all too otherwise it would be a slideshow.
). Don’t forget we have other compatible locally focused products too and that will only increase as time goes on - it’s our core business. In addition to the several thousand boats moored in the various ports, harbours and marinas, the upcoming UK South East package will add several new, UK local ships, ferries and other utility boats as well as a variety of extra leisure traffic around that part of the coastline. I hope that helps 
. Putting concerted effort into donationware/freeware copycats of Enhanced AI too, really hurts the livelihoods of those that depend on development for a living (including the community of professional modellers we support and that make an honest living from their talents). As you state, not everyone can afford to give up their time for free. That said, we are really inspired by the amazing response we’ve had to both addons despite the initial setbacks with SU5 and are very excited about the future!
