I'm using the boats more and more. It is a completely different "view" of Misty from down on the water. When we are up high, we know where the turns are, down low, you have to really pay attention to the GPS to know if you are turning into the Thorne Arm or the Behm Canal. Also the "rocks" are another challenge I didn't realize ... we only worry about them in landing zones. But when sailing, they are all over the place ... many not marked. Suddenly there they are right in front of you, probably just like they are in the real world. So if you've got your "crash on" ... you WILL! They are hard to see and dangerous.
But going along a shoreline is amazing. This just again demonstrates how good this ORBX technology is. There are houses along the shoreline you'll never notice from a plane ... roads going along the edge with cars. And the little boats we see from the air are "something else" down on the water. You really have to "look out" for them ... we've got more visual company on the water than we do in the air.
To try it, download a boat, there are some freebies if you like. Start at Misty's Place at the dock and go to Murphy's Pullout. This gives you some open areas ... with dangerous [Walden] rocks ... and gives you a whole new view of the Narrows, passing by the cruise ships, etc. My favorite boat so far is the DeltaSim Daisy Yacht. Not the fastest of their fleet, but fast isn't the point and is affordable. (We don't fly F-16s at Misty's for the same reason). We are not there for the speed, but the view. Slow is better.
So after a long day of flying, step into your boat and take a nice and relaxing cruise. I like to fly to someplace like Hugh Smith Lake, then get in the boat and explore the lake (I use the little DeltaSim Mailbu for that). If you are a fisherman, you will do a little drooling when you explore some of the beautiful coves in these lakes (Mesa Lake is amazing).
The only problem I can find is that the autopilot on the boat will not work. I cannot understand why. You can go into the config and set Autopilot="1" and you can even put a nav/gps switch onto the panel. Still, it will not respond to a "flight plan." That's too bad because we could easily make some little routes with PLAN-G. There's got to be a solution for that, but I've scoured the internet for it, and it simply is not addressed. The developer at DeltaSim says this is on his radar screen. If anybody can figure it out, let us know ... this is something a lot of folks would like from reading the forums. It would be fun to host that fix from RTTM.
Anyway ... give it a try. It's a completely different "view" of what we've got ... a shame not to use it.
Doug