eSail v1.7 now has French and Russian language support provided by the eSail community. Adding localisation has been a big task and at the same time we have upgraded the underlying Unity engine which will bring future benefits. There are also a number of other minor improvements and changes:
New binoculars to help with navigation
Mainsail boom now moves more realistically when mainsheet is slack
Improved the look of sail cloth so it responds better to lighting
Weather forecasts now also have text in a new comms panel, helping when wind and wave sounds might make it difficult to hear
Telltales are brighter
Marine life scaled down
Thank you to the amazing community translators who have made this release possible.
Flag Vectors by Vecteezy.
New ‘Man Overboard’ DLC Launched
eSail has today launched a new ‘Man Overboard’ (MOB) add-on for eSail Sailing Simulator. The add-on – or downloadable content (DLC) – has been developed with the help of marine safety expert Keith Colwell, author of the RYA Sea Survival Handbook. It includes tutorials, challenges and random triggering of MOB during normal sailing. The drill includes heaving-to, deploying equipment and recovery of the MOB under power and sail.
‘Man Overboard’ features 2 tutorials, 2 challenges and a random MOB mode while ‘Live Sailing’ so you can test your readiness when the unexpected happens.
Man Overboard was created in close collaboration with Keith Colwell. Keith has worked for many years as a reporter and editor for sailing journals. He has also worked for the RNLI for 15 years and during that time trained and managed RNLI Sea Safety and Community Safety volunteers to give advice to yachtsmen, boat users and the general public on how to stay safe when on or by the water. He became a RYA sea survival, powerboat and marine vhf radio instructor/assessor in 2004, while working for the RNLI, and currently works as a freelance instructor.
eSail v1.6.1 Optional Beta (now closed)
This new beta brings a number of small enhancements and bug fixes:
Enhancements
Added new 'Heaving-to' tutorial
Leeway added to drift boat sideways with and without sails
Added 'Input Focus' keyboard control to move between panels (default =), so you can press this key to move between mooring and anchoring panels for instance. The panel with focus will receive the Options Keys (1,2,3,4). So the special anchoring keys are no longer needed (although still work at the moment)
Added 'Pause' keyboard control
Made lighthouse lights able to cut through mist and light fog so they can now be seen from over 10 miles in reasonable conditions
Added a 'splash' to the camera as you go underwater
Bug fixes
Fixed: Anchor not colliding with concrete jettys
Fixed: Anchoring Challenge (Mosquito Bay) erroneous 100 point penalty at start
Fixed: Chart cursor coordinates were displaying with check box off
Fixed: Issue of pins being added to alerts when there is no point pinning them
All feedback is welcome. Please add any comments to the eSail Beta forum!
eSail Update 1.5.39
eSail Update 1.5.39 has 2 new features and fixes a few small issues.
1) There is now a hand compass. See the yellow button near the main compass on the dashboard.
2) You can now pin alerts. These are the little pop up windows. We will be using these more as things get more advanced, so this will make it easier to refer back to the pop up information. At the moment the pins only last during a tutorial or challenge.
3) Fixes a missing 'close up' window on the course plotter in the charting module, making it hard to see the numbers on the protractor.
4) Stops points being deducted on challenges when fenders hit the jetty.
5) Further work has been done to avoid screen dragging while dragging on the throttle.
Thank you to all eSailors and beta testers for your feedback!
Update 1.5.31 - Anchoring
This version has been released to fix or improve anchoring issues in eSail.
These issues should now have been fixed:
1) The anchor was tending to slide along the sea bed (except when the chain was hidden).
2) When the chain was hidden it tended to break on retraction. This should be improved but that doesn't mean its impossible to break the simulation!
3) Live Sailing saving of anchor / chain sometimes caused the anchor/chain to vanish.
4) If you motored with the anchor compartment open, the anchor could fly off. Now the top chain links and anchor are locked when not being extended/retracted. (We have also added some notes to the anchoring tutorial about being careful about speed and steering to avoid breaking the simulation - as in real life you would want to avoid breaking the windless!)
5) Weird anchor behaviour - floating/ not digging in etc.
6) Anchor sliding down hill - see above. It should now lock to a slope when not being pulled or when chain is extending. It will still slide when being pulled.
7) When swapping between users (from inside eSail) sometimes Live Sailing got confused and saved the wrong location.
8) Some physics changes have been to improve chain stability.
Thank you for all our testers and beta testers for your feedback.
Optional Beta 1.5.28 - Anchoring
This new Beta version has been released to fix or improve anchoring issues in eSail. You can also help improve performance by testing different settings. See below on how to help and how to swap to the beta.
These issues should now have been fixed:
1) The anchor was tending to slide along the sea bed (except when hidden).
2) When the chain was hidden it tended to break on retraction. This should be improved but that doesn't mean its impossible to break the simulation!
3) Live Sailing saving of anchor / chain sometimes caused the anchor/chain to vanish.
4) If you motored with the anchor compartment open, the anchor could fly off. Now the top chain links and anchor are locked when not being extended/retracted. (We have also added some notes to the anchoring tutorial about being careful about speed and steering to avoid breaking the simulation - as in real life you would want to avoid breaking the windless!)
5) Weird anchor behaviour - floating/ not digging in etc.
6) Anchor sliding down hill - see above. It should now lock to a slope when not being pulled or when chain is extending. It will still slide when being pulled.
7) When swapping between users (from inside eSail) sometimes the Live Sailing got confused and saved the wrong location.
Help testing anchoring settings
You can now gain access to 2 development control panels. By submitting any observations on the best settings you can really help us improve the performance. Please submit to the Betas forum.
Main (Ctrl+Alt+M) . Fixed time step is how often physics calculations are done. Smaller numbers are better but have more processing cost.
Anchoring (Ctrl+Alt+A). You can change the chain link solver. The default is 7 but larger numbers may help, giving greater accuracy but at higher CPU cost.
Collider len is how long each chain link collider is. The chain link is 1 unit long so I doubt if going longer than that would help but you never know!
NOTE: You will notice that changing 'detailed water effects' and the quality settings changes FPS a lot. If you are down near 30fps then you could be running out of CPU to do the physics calculations.
All feedback would be very useful. Please let me know whether you are hiding the chain and any other details you can if you submit some settings.
To install the Beta version:
1. Right click on eSail in your Steam client.
2. On the drop down menu click 'Properties'
3. Click on the BETAS tab.
4. Select the beta from the drop down list.
Service Update - Anchoring
We are experiencing some problems with anchoring at the moment, which can affect the anchoring tutorial and all anchoring situations.
This issue affects anchoring when using the full chain. In this mode the anchor is not holding properly on the sea floor. As a short term fix, go to Settings and hide the anchor chain. This will make sure that the anchor works properly, but you will not be able to see the chain underwater.
This should be sorted out in an update due by 7th Sept.
Update 1.5.19
This small update fixes the grey appearance of the Northern Islands. Contrary to how it might appear, this was not a layer of volcano ash, it was a bug!
It should also fix the problem of anchored boats sometimes appearing in the wrong places.
Log out of your Steam client then back in to force the update.
Thank you to everyone for your ongoing input with issues and suggestions.
NEW Version 1.5 with added sailing areas (and a volcano!)
We are excited to announce a new version of eSail with some great new features. NOTE: This new version requires DirectX 11.
New Sailing Areas. Now Master Explorers have access to newly charted islands to the North of Shearwater. The islands include 'Navarone' which is dominated by a huge active volcano - Mt. Mallory. To become a Master Explorer you need to collect all 13 level 1 POIs (Points of Interest).
NEW POIs. There are 9 new 'Points of Interest' for you to find including the beautiful double Golden Angel Falls and a Seismic Monitoring Station.
New Chart B2 - Shearwater to Navarone. This is a new small scale chart from the Shearwater Coast Guard covering the whole North Shearwater area. We may also add larger scale charts depending on user feedback. You can find the chart in a new drawer under the chart table (available to Master Explorers only).
There are also numerous small fixes and changes which will be documented on the eSail website support page. One worth noting is that we have changed the default zoom direction (mouse scroll). You can change this in Settings.
Once you start using the new version you will be able to see your POI ranking here: https://steamcommunity.com/stats/794860/leaderboards/3639942
If you have any problems running the new version please contact us via https://www.esailyachtsimulator.com/support/ or the Technical Support forum.
Thank you to all our testers and beta testers for your extremely valuable feedback!
Development Update
eSail has now been updated to Version 1.4.2. This update has a minor fix to prevent reefing lines becoming jammed.
Meanwhile work on opening up new sailing areas to the North of Shearwater Island is progressing well and we should start testing next week. Internal testing and Beta testing will take several weeks and of course Beta testers will be the first to get the new POIs!
