January 2008

There’s a new trailer for Ship Simulator 2008 available from Gamers Hell. They report that “Lighthouse Interactive has released a new trailer from Ship Simulator 2008, showcasing the latest installement in the ship sim series which is now available in North America. The game features a new multiplayer mode (LAN and online), a highly customizable mission editor, 16 new ships and three new environments (San Francisco, Marseille and Southampton/ Cowes/ Solent). A playable demo of the game can be found here.”

You can download the video from here.

SimRacingTonight focuses on, as you might imagine from the title, racing simulators. They have just released their first video podcast of 2008 - entitled Inside Sim Racing - which includes coverage of:

• Arca Sim Racing
• rFactor Grand Am Mod
• iRacing Pricing
• LFS Y Patch
• 24 Hours at Daytona

If you’re into racing sims, it’s well worth checking out. The videos are pretty slick - a notch above the average video podcast. They have both hi- an lo-res versions of this and earlier video podcasts on their web site.

The coverage of iRacing.com is interesting. At $13 per month (that’s the lowest price, based on a 1 year membership), it’ll have to be a hell of a sim to bring in customers.

Here’s another one that’s been around for a while, but it looks pretty good. Stockerz sells itself as “a free educational stock market simulation game”.

It currently has 430 members. One neat thing that stands out is how to raise virtual money to spend on your stocks. Basically, the more you participate in the forums attached to the game, the more “cash” you get. Here’s a list to give you an idea how it works:

• Referral’s you get: $25
• If you get rep points: $5
• If you give rep points: $5
• Make a new thread: $5
• Make a post: $2
• Make a poll: $5
• Vote on a poll: $1
• Make a calender event: $10
• Add a picture to your profile: $10
• Fill in your entire profile: $5

I can see sound educational benefits in this type of application, as well as it being a lot of fun.

simFlight Network has posted news about a newly released French simulation magazine and associated web site, which is due to open this coming weekend.

The magazine will be dedicated to all simulation types and will include a CD with videos, patches etc.

Following on from my earlier post about an Open Source version of Sim City (Micropolis), the Graphic Graffiti blog has now posted detailed instructions on how to get it working on Mac OSX. It looks reasonably straight forward (famous last words?!).

I shall give this a try over the weekend on my MacBook Pro and report back.