Sailing impressing of New Volvo 70 boats - video

Looking in Zilt I found this YouTube video that shows how beautiful these new Volvo 70 design boats look like during a sailing trial. 


This is a video of  Telefónica

YES VolvoOceanRaceGame BetaII is ON

Just I received an invitation for VolvoOceanRaceGame BETA II  .

This 2nd beta will START:
Wednesday 1st June 2011 at 13:00 CET = 11:00 UTC

Starting location: Sanya

Finish location: Abu Dhabi

From the message I understand that a new registration is required also for those Sailors that participated in the Beta I.

Both these Cities will be Ports for the Official VolvoOceanRace(VOR). This Beta II, however, will sail in reverse direction. 

For those that did not receive an invitation and those that still want to try this VORG Beta II, you can approach the Race committee and ask for acceptance and receipt of the required key at this link VORG Beta II registration

Volvo Ocean Race Game Beta II Race is Coming

I read an announcement that soon, maybe next week, a Second Race in the Beta player will be organised by VolvoOceanRaceGame.

I have no further details.

BUT.............

I played the Beta already in the 1st Race and thought the player was already without major bugs, and the visual representation was good. The player is easy to play with, but the tools are (still?) very limited compared to the present day Sailing Simulators.

A lot of Good suggestions and other comments have been posted on the Volvo Forum 

I hope and some indications by the Volve game developers were published that a further development of this player will bring some more improvements.

I can not wait till the Start of the VORG Beta II. 

If you like to play, then it is easy:

# if you played the 1st race, then you will be invited automatically again.

##For those that like to try the new Beta VORG player, to test it , to help finding the bugs and to come with some improvements, this is your chance!

This link will give you the chance for a registration VORG Beta registration

Hope to see many in the VORG Beta II Race. 

Questionnaire

This seems to be OUR chance to improve the VolvoOceanRaceGame player. 


A questionnaire has been made and via the VORG player you can participate.
See the link for  a screenshot.Question

Please give your opinion which could help you and all of us to improve the Beta into a proper Sailing simulator.

Finished the BETA Race

A VolvoOceanRaceGame (VORG) beta race was organised for Beta players. These beta players could request for a free optainable key needed to play. 

The Race Started in Alicante 4th May 2011 13:00 UTC and the route was towards Galway for the Finish. 

The fastest boat so far "eddie" has sailed this route in  10d 12hrs 40min, for sure not a time for a Volvo Open 70 boat. But for this race a common polar for a 36ft boat was used.

I finished in 80th place on my boat Paradise  in a sailing time of 12d 17hrs 40min; and hope that not other boats that started later will sail faster.

This route was not treated as a race, but as a kind of "fastest" time for the route, a Challenge as we call this in LiveSkipper. The comment from VORG race committee informs that during the VOR this will be handled as a real race with a fixed Starting time.

Some of my experiences with this new (beta) player:

- The player is easy to understand and the control on the boat is easy: selection heading from a large navigational circle around the boat and selection of the sail, assisted by the indications on screen of the complete Polar, the boat speed, the heading and the TWA. 

- The wind information is clear. It is shows on the location indicated with your mouse, as windspeed in kts and wind direction in the right top corner of the game screen.

-The settings of the boat and wind at the boat location are shown in 4 stations at the bottom of the screen, for boat speed and heading, wind speed and - direction, the sail that is hoisted and it gives your ranking in the fleet and the Distance to the Finish. 

- Some reduction in boat speed will result from too often changes in heading and or sail. First the Crew efficiency drops down from 120% as a relaxed fully rested crew. Once the crew gets tired, below 100% also the boatspeed will drop off, indicated as % on the sail efficencie. 

- the WP(waypoint) scheduler is working fine, with 5 WP available. However, in setting the waypoints there is no assistance in a direction indication, distance to the boats or time indication. This makes it very difficult to set the WP scheduler for optimal results, now it looks more a rought guess as to set the WP's. 

- a distanced to sail in 12 and 23 hrs is available for the given heading and sail on the boats. However this takes into account only actual the wind-conditions a the boat location; a shift in wind will /might change this complete.
- Wind situations are refreshed twice a day at 6 - 18 hrs GMT. Wind forecast can be shown on the screen for each 12 hrs till 48, afterwhich it shows only full days till a forecast on 7 days.

- wind arrows show the windsituation on the screen. The wind-conditions are fixed within a certain grid square, and change suddenly in the next grid square. This is far from realistic, but can be used properly for the virtual game. It would be preferred to have a interpolation of wind-conditions between grids points like the modern virtual games like LiveSkipper or SailOnLine have. 

- ALL in ALL, this is a Virtual player that can be used very good for a virtual sailing race, especially as there is a promise that in future an auto-sail will be available for the WP scheduler settings.

test with new VORG player _beta

Though I was a day too late in registering, I am sailing with the new VORG player/simulator or how you want to name it

a screenshot .


The player shows a silhouette of your boat a little larger than your competition boats. Your boat shows as a 2-dimensional boat icon and you are able to  select your preferred color; I choose blue.
A menu in the top shows Play, Ranking, Races etc. And also the time reference of the weatherdata that are active. Now the wind is refreshed every 12 hrs; I hope it will be changed during the actual race to a shorter interval, e.g. 3 hrs. 
It also allows you to view wind forecasts in 12 hrs, 24 hrs etc. and a counter to tell the time till next game update. 


Clicking on Navigation will show you a circle around your boat, indication the Polar for the choosen sail, the heading, the TWA and boats speed. 
Clicking the wind arrow on the rim of the circle , will show the 12 and 24hrs distance based on the present wind situation and pulling the arrow it will give a distance indication. 


In the bottom , you will find the information on your boat and actual weather situation, the coordinates and ranking of your boat. 

VolvoOceanRaceGame 2011

I came to know that this year the Volvo Ocean Race will start at 29th October 2011. 

For this edition also a Simulator Game will be organised alongside the race of the real boats. 

The Simulator is upgraded and a Beta test is being offered now.
If you are interested you might try to get a start code here Beta_volvooceanracegame