Seafront Simulations or GAIST?
Which is most recommended and are they compatible? Thanks
Donāt they have a different target group and product?
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GAIST every time. And with the real traffic which shouldnāt be too far away now, its a whole new levelā¦ And its free.
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Well, to answer the second half of your original question:
They should not be āincompatibleā as such but you have to accept that there is no logic to stop ships from the base sim traffic, Seafront added traffic and GAIST added traffic from driving through each other, so it might look a bit funky from time to time but I imagine it would be relatively rare to see except in particularly busy ports or channels.
Also you have to accept that each element will impact the performance a little bit (or a lot depending on your system), so you may find it struggles to cope - again especially in busy areas.
And to answer the first half of your question, GAIST is really good and as said, itās free and developed with passion. I like the other region packs that Seafront Sims do focusing on populating small areas with mostly static but well varied boats and ships (I have a few of them) and I do use the AI traffic too but Iām going to switch to GAIST when the real-time thing gets released. If there are a lot of visual conflicts or performance problems running it all together then itās bye-bye to Seafront Sims stuff sadly.
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Thanks. I went ahead and emptied my community folder of all seafront not even considering the two small areas I had that looked really good. Now Iāve got GAIST ultra with 2 routes. Thanks again
You can only really compare GAIST and Seafrontās Global Shipping and be warned here youāll find a bit of an echo chamber for GAIST. Itās free and has been around a lot longer so of course has a larger base of vocal and at times militant supporters. Its also PC only whereas Global Shipping is on both platforms. Both are decent addons in their own way with their own upsides and downsides.
To be fair Iād say both developers are very passionate about what they do. You only have to see the scene setting in the regional sceneries Seafront do. Then consider theyāre are just a husband and wife dev team compared with GAIST who is a team of various contributors, but led by Henrik over several years.
In terms of the other Seafront addons that are the core of their enhancement mods thereās no comparison to be made.
In which case removing them would be a bit pointless.
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Yes this ^^ in the main. You canāt really compare outside GS and GAIST and even then its only if youre comparing on one platform.
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So would people consider GAIST + the other addons from Seafront to be best? Just skip Global Shipping? How does Seafrontās AI work in? Does GAIST replace the same models as well?
There were several goals for Global Shipping when we developed it for MSFS2020:
- To complement our regional scenery packs, which remain the core of our offering/hobby.
- To significantly boost the volume of commercial shipping traffic globally (with a trade-off on model variety vs sheer volume and performance). NOTE: There was no intention to replace GAIST. We felt the model variety GAIST offers mixed well with the increased volume Global Shipping offers.
- To provide this for Xbox as well as PC users.
With the exciting news that real-time, AIS-based traffic is finally going to be freely available to everyone (PC and Xbox) with MSFS2024 we are free to give even more of our time to enhancing regional areas. You will hopefully see from our latest releases that the rate of development has already increased 
Enhanced AI works differently to our other products as it replaces the models of the limited, default boat traffic in MSFS2020. However it does enhance the variety significantly by swapping the handful of default models with over 50 high-quality VFX enhanced, regionally balanced models.
We hope this helps,
Chris & Esther @ Seafront Simulations
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I have both but global shipping was my hero app when I was on Xbox. Many great hours spent landing on ships in Hawaii when the ocean was completely barren without it. Now I just have tons of traffic especially in the channel, Hawaii Gibraltar and Barth. Plus all the static models adding interest to ports. A lot my costal destination flights depend on weather I have GS coverage.
GAIST helps fill in the āen routeā parts. GAIST is traffic GS is an awesome scenery enhancement. Plus the miltech carriers and aerosoft north Atlantic objects, canāt really have too much.
Heck in Hawaii I can choose costal patrol, land on LHAs, cruise the ports in TCās 500 or land the Wildcat on lady Lex
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Thanks for the kind words @phutyoo
It does! I already have Global Shipping, but Iāve been wondering about GAIST. I know itās free and I could just try it, but I hate ship collisions which I already see rarely (Though not in a while, perhaps itās been fixed?) and donāt want to see them all over.
Do you not run into collisions?
And I read somewhere GAIST is really huge and some were recommending only loading part of that. I hate worrying about that as I often donāt make a decision on where to fly until the 7 min load is done haha
Any thoughts on those things?
Not really any issues, occasionally a couple ships overlap or are extremely close, but quite rare. Scenery developers also add their own ships in too, so hard to say whoās ships are doing what. Itās certainly better than aircraft traffic by a long shot. GS is more than just ships it builds out marinas and places things like leisure boats where youād expect them to be.