When you press "Settings" the video dialog will appear, this screen has several tabs as well which select the settings you can adjust for the program, these include video, sound, joystick and graphics.

Press the "Video" tab to see the video settings, this will show the following screen:

In this screen you can select whether you want to use the program in full screen mode or window mode, and set the size and refresh rate of the full screen mode.

The benefit of using the full screen mode is that it allows the program to run faster ( for example when using 640 x 480 screen mode ) and use less computations for pixel shaders, while having all the screen used.

The benefit of using a windowed mode is that it allows the program to be minimized and run minimized, and also allows resizing of the program's window to suit your needs.

The top of this dialog shows available screen modes, to select one of them, you need to clear the option "Render inside window" and press "Accept".

The "Use 24 bit depth buffer" allows you to render the view with less artifacts near the horizon, these artifacts are sometimes created when the distance of objects from camera is almost identical and the video card cannot tell which is closer, this results in flickering of some polygons near the horizon.

The "Exit and reset settings" will delete the vs.ini file from inside the program directory and start the program with default settings, this will show you the configuration screen the next time you start the program, after selecting this option you need to press "Accept" to exit the program.

Press the "Sound" tab to see the sound settings, this will show the following screen:

This screen allows you to set the volume for the wind, waves, engine and other sounds.

It also allows you to enable music and speech, and select the voice of the speaker to use.

The speech in Virtual Sailor requires you to install the MSTTS ( Microsoft Text To Speech ) driver, you can download the driver form several sites on the internet including the download section of VS main site.

To play speech inside the program, select "Play speech when required" and select the voice of the speaker you wish to set from the list of speakers above, you can install additional speakers by downloading them from the internet.

To play music when required by the program enable the "Play music when required", this will play an opening music on the main screen of the program and also play music whenever a "Music" object is defined inside the scenery you use.

For example of music playing objects see the Nice, Venice, Marmaris scenery and more, these appear as buoys with musical notes drawn on them.

Press the "Joystick" tab to see the joystick settings, this will show the following screen:

This screen allows you to select axes and sensitivities of joysticks you have attached and assign their inputs for the program.

Virtual Sailor allows up to 6 joysticks connected simultaneously, for each joystick you see one line on the list that appear on the upper part of the dialog.

To select which axes you want to assign from one of these joysticks, select it from the list above, then assign the actions you wish to set.

For each joystick on the list the assigned actions are different, selecting engine for example for joystick number 1 will unselect this option for the other joysticks on the list.

When the program starts for the first time it will select the default axes of your joystick according to the setting it detects, if you wish to set this default selection again press "Defaults".

Virtual Sailor also supports POV hats, and also Track-IR with vector expansion, when Track-IR is detected you will see an option called "Track-IR appear near the POV hat option box.

For each axis you wish to assign enable the check box near it's name, then select the type of action you wish to assign to it, in addition, you can adjust its sensitivity or reverse it's action.

To assign buttons from each of these joysticks, press "Buttons", the following dialog will appear:

This dialog is much simpler, to assign an action for any button from any joystick you have connected, select the type of action from the list below, and press the button on the joystick, if the button is identified it will appear on the list beside the action you selected and the joystick from which it was read.

When the program starts for the first time it will select the default buttons of your joystick according to the setting it detects, if you wish to set this default selection again press "Defaults".

To clear all button assignments press "Clear", to return to the axes assignment press "Axes".

Press the "Graphics" tab to see the graphic settings, these include three subcategories: water , boat and others.

A good understanding of what these settings do is essential for using the program to it's maximum potential, please read this section carefully.

Press the "Water" tab to show the water settings, this will show the following screen:

On the upper left corner you will find the sea surface settings, these select how to render the sea and which options in your graphic card to use for it.

Rendering a realistic looking water can be a very demanding task on your computer and graphic card, for some water conditions it is more suitable to render the water as a dark non reflective surface with a lot of foam, and for others it is required to render perfectly calm waters with reflection and refraction and with very small ripples.

Virtual Sailor can render the water using vertex and pixel shaders for maximum realism, and also without them for simpler and faster rendering, you can select between these options from this options dialog .

These are the most important sea modes:

In addition to setting the sea mode, you can adjust the color of the sea.

Use the three sliders to adjust the color by red, green and blue, or use the sea brightness to adjust the tone of the color quickly.

The sea in Virtual Sailor is made of many polygons and vertices, the more there are, the larger the area of the sea will be rendered with waves, but also the slower the program will run.

You can control this number of these vertices by using the "Sea mesh nodes" slider, it is not recommended to set this value to maximum, as the program only renders the waves closer to you, and the more distant ones are less visible usually,

When using shaders, the polygon count for the sea is less important than without shaders, because the pixel shaders operate on the texture of the sea rather than on the vertices, thus you can have very few polygons and still see the ripples on the water.

The "wave swelling " slider controls two functions at once, it adjusts the choppiness of the waves, making them sharper and less smooth, and also it adjusts the strength of the ripples shown in shaders mode, to have a perfect reflection you need to adjust this value to minimum, to have a rough sea with huge waves you also need to increase this value.

The underwater settings, are found in the middle of the water dialog, you can select the type and complexity of the sea bottom you wish to see, and also the properties of the water.

Simple - This is the fastest rendering mode, it shows just the bottom of the sea without any underwater illumination, called caustics, which is typical to underwater view.

Caustic - This is a fast view which shows some illumination effect but is not accurate enough. ( single pass rendering )

Caustic lighting - This is the most realistic view and slowest of all, it shows you lighting effects from underwater refraction of sunlight, this view effects all objects rendered underwater, and shows a realistic view.

The difference between these views can be seen in this picture:

In addition to the caustics, you can set the texture of the sea bottom, select "Use Sand" to see a sand texture appear instead of the default texture of the ground at that position.

Select "See sun rays" to see the rays of light ( also called "god rays" )that refract from the sun light penetrating the water.

The use of sun rays and caustic lighting is related, the caustic lighting is actually formed by these sun rays, so it is best to active both of these options at once.

To set this view mode quickly, you can also press "Best quality".

Virtual Sailor supports underwater scenery, when such scenery exists, the objects underwater will be shown with caustics as well.

Marine life can be added to make the view more alive, rocks, plants and particles ( or little bubbles ) can be shown by the program even if not defined in the scenery itself.

The program creates by default particles, rocks and plants using standard textures read from the scenery, and allows you to adjust their size and density, the five sliders on the right side of this dialog control these settings.

Virtual Sailor also accounts for underwater currents, which you can set from the weather dialog, and also for local underwater turbulence created by the waves, this turbulence decays as you go deeper and also becomes smaller with smaller wave size.

You can control the strength of this effect by adjusting the "Underwater turbulence" slider, you can also adjust the visibility distance underwater by the "Underwater visibility" slider.

Press the "Boat" tab to show the boat settings, this will show the following screen:

This dialog allows you to select both visual and functional settings for the boats simulated in VS.

Realistic boat speed - select this option to enable realistic boat drag, this drag limits the speed of displacement hulls to "hull speed", and requires additional power to pass and go into plane.

Realistic pilot view - select this to make your view point fixed to the horizon, unselect this if you want the view to be fixed to the hull of the boat.

Not using the realistic pilot view can cause nausea or motion sickness, as the horizon will pitch and roll with the motion of the boat, it is recommended to use this option whenever possible.

Realistic boat scale - all boats created for Virtual Sailor for the last three years have been created in feet, however some older boats were created in meters, to allow these older boats to show properly turn off this option temporarily.

Sink when collided - when boats collide between themselves or with static objects they do not always sink, enable this option if you want severe collisions to sink the colliding boats.

Capsize when tilted - when a boat heels beyond its maximum allowable heel angle, a boat can capsize, to disable this limit uncheck this option.

Check object collision - checking collisions between boats and scenery objects is a heavy computation, it may slow down your frame rate, and may cause you to collide with some objects that you wish to pass through, like docks or canals.

If the scenery is well made, docks can be animated ( using the F11 key ) and thus passed through, but if you wish to pass though anyway you can disable this option.

Collision course horn - when this option is enabled, the boat checks if it is on a collision course with another boat, if a possible collision is detected the horn is sounded on the boat that detects collision. 

Avoid land collision - when the auto pilot is enabled, the boat will check if a ground collision is imminent and if so try to avoid it.

Avoid sailing into wind - when the auto pilot is enabled, and the boat is a sailboat, the boat will check if it is heading into wind and fall down to either side to avoid going into irons.

Round waypoints - when the auto pilot is enabled, the boat navigates to the closest waypoint but does not pass directly through it, rounding it from either side when necessary.

Loop waypoints - when the auto pilot is enabled, boats sail from the first waypoint to the last, if this option is checked it will start the track again upon reaching the last waypoint.

Autopilot by default - auto pilot is normally released each time you take control over a boat ( for example by pressing TAB ) and enabled when you go off a boat, when you do not wish auto pilot to disengage each time you pass to a new boat use this option.

Hide water in cabin - when this option is enabled, the water and spray will not be seen when you are inside the boat, when it is not enabled the water can intersect the inner decks of the boat and you will see them inside.

Show tool tips - when this option is enabled, you see the tooltips appear when you press on a control, instrument or when activating auto pilot for example, this helps you see what action has been done and what can be done by dragging the mouse on some control or instrument.

Show boat names - when this option is turned on you see the names of the boats, the players that control them and the names of waypoints you navigate to, of course this is not realistic as in real life you do not see it this way, so you can turn it off.

Show reflections - Virtual Sailor shows reflections on boats smaller than 50 ft in length, unless this option is off.

Show particles - Bow wave elements and propeller cavitation bubbles are rendered with multiple particles, if you wish to disable these particles turn off this option.

Use boat LOD - each boat can have two levels of detail, by default the boat is loaded with full detail ( boat.x ), but at a distance elative to the size of the boat, the lower level of detail is loaded ( boat_1.x ), when this lower level of detail is not found, it is generated by the program automatically, and you will see a very simple silhouette of the boat rendered at a distance.

Using lower level of detail can speed up the rendering a lot, however you may not like to see the simpler boat shape appear in the distance, in this case turn off this option.

Yaw, Pitch and Roll dampening - these sliders control how dampened the boat is, and its tendency to bounce and sway on the water, the higher the dampening values the less the boat tends to pitch, roll and yaw.

Smaller boats are normally more dampened than larger ones, as larger boats have more inertia relative to surface area, so you can easily adjust these values for each boat you wish to change.

Inertial heel stability - when a boat turns inertial forces make it heel contrary to the direction of turn, however for a planning boat ( boat that goes on plane ) usually the heel is into the turn because of hydrodynamic forces that act on the hull in the turn, to adjust the angle of heel in turns, use this slider.

Sail heel stability - when a sailboat sails under wind, the wind causes it to heel, this heel depends on its center of gravity, on the forces acting on its sail and on the ballast it has along its keel, to set the exact degree of heel for any sailboat you like, use this slider while sailing under wind.

When you are pleased with the handling of the boat you change, press "Save boat config".

Press the "Others" tab to show the land and program settings, this will show the following screen:

The land surface: Virtual Sailor shows the land with a specific resolution or distance between each elevation point, this resolution is specified in the scenery configuration file, and is called "land size".

Each rectangular area between neighboring elevation points is called a tile, each of these tiles can have its own texture based upon its elevation or texture index given inside the scenery files.

You can select how the texture will be mapped upon these tiles using the land surface list box, the densest being one land texture per tile, the sparsest being one land texture per four tiles.

You can also set the way textures are blended between adjacent tiles, and select to blend them or not using the "Smooth textures" checkbox, a typical land using these different options looks like this:

Using tile scenery in VS results in a rectangular land area with constant distance between each elevation point, this is very suitable for a fast and efficient scenery but does not give the best visibility if land size is small, for these cases you can use "Terrain mesh" option for showing the land with increasing resolution near the observer and with visibility up to the horizon. ( In VS the horizon is the maximal atmospheric visibility of 25600 meters)

The difference between using terrain mesh and not using it for a dense scenery can be seen in this picture:

Using terrain mesh can change the position of objects which appear well positioned otherwise, it is recommended to use this option for scenery which was created for this option.

When playing online it is recommended that all players have this option turned off, or positioning will not be the same for all players.

The scenery in Virtual Sailor is much larger than one that can fit in memory completely, therefore the program maintains in memory only an area is normally greater than the maximum visibility ( 25 km ), but may be smaller if the land size is small.

This area is called the "Active land area", it is adjustable from the "Active land area slider", the larger it is the greater the visibility can be but also the longer the program takes to load and refresh objects in the scenery.

Normally all objects inside the "Active land area" are visible unless hidden by fog, but in some cases the can slow down rendering speed if they are too numerous or too complex, for this you have the "Object visibility" slider to adjust maximum visible range for these objects.

On the top middle part you find the three gust sliders, these control how strong the gust are, from which direction they come from and what is the rate of change in that direction.

The combined wind acting on your boat will be the sum of the constant wind you set in the weather dialog and the gusts you define here.

You can turn off the weather forecast mechanism by unselecting the option "Use weather forecast", this will allow you to sail with constant weather conditions throughout the cruise.

The program can be run in the foreground and in the background.

You can run the program minimized and let it host a net play session or simulate an ongoing race.

To allow the program to run when minimized enable this option, it will then continue to run when you minimize it and will not take much resources as the graphics will not be rendered.

To change the percentage of CPU usage set the slider to the value you want, this will effect normal and minimized mode, allowing you to run other programs in the same time.

On the right side you see the generic graphic settings of the program, these include:

Mip mapping - this mode allows you to reduce the size and resolution of textures seen far away, making them look more fuzzy, turn it off if you wish to see a very sharp view of all objects in sight.

Secular lighting - this setting allows you to see the reflections of sunlight falling upon objects, if you do not wish objects to look shiny turn this off.

Exponential fog - in real life the fog or haze function in exponential way, if you wish to have a more realistic fog and haze enable this option.

See objects in fog - to conserve frame rate, objects are not rendered beyond their visual range, however this doesn't provide a very subtle effect of a big ship emerging from fog, to allow these effects enable this option.

Sync reflections - to conserve frame rates the reflections and refraction are updated only several times a second and not each frame, this causes a visible delay when you rotate the view with reflections or refractions on, to make the view fully synchronized at the cost of lower frame rate enable this option.

Atmospheric glow - as the sunlight passes through the atmosphere, especially when moist or foggy, the air itself glows a little making it brighter, this makes very beautiful sunsets, to allow this effect enable this option.

Clip reflected land - in order to make perfect reflections the view needs to be rendered into a cubical environment map, consisting of six directions of view, this will make frame rates very low.

In order to avoid that, Virtual Sailor only renders one of these faces and maps it into a spherical environment map, this results in reasonable reflection when field of view is small, but can sometimes cause artifacts, this artifact is visible as a thin arc near the horizon of the reflected image.

To avoid this artifact disable the clipping of reflected land.

Clip captive dialogs - In addition to its normal map dialogs, Virtual Sailor allows also dialog maps on the panels of boats, this type of instrument is called "captive dialog", to see it properly your video card needs to support four clipping planes, if it does not you will not see maps properly, in that case turn this option off.

Press the "Help" tab to see the help options, these include four items: keys , about, manual and website.

Press the "Keys" tab to show you a list of keys used by the program, this list is also available inside the program pressing K.

Press the "About" tab to show you short information about this program including your serial number.

Press the "Manual" tab to show you this help.

Press the "Website" to see the main website of Virtual Sailor at www.hangsim.com/vs

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