VSTEP New Innovation Makes Maritime Simulation Accessible to Everyone

VSTEP announces the release of their new maritime simulator NAUTIS Home in the last quarter of 2022. With NAUTIS Home, VSTEP aims to enable both maritime professionals and enthusiasts to experience realistic ship simulation from home, onboard or anywhere else.

Until now, professional maritime simulation was mostly accessible with large simulators at training locations or through companies and schools. “At VSTEP, it is our primary goal to enable learning by simulation,” says Fabian van den Berg, Chief Executive Officer of VSTEP. On-premises maritime simulators are crucial in facilitating the right maritime education.

In the past 20 years, VSTEP has dedicated itself to working towards a safer world. They do this by developing innovative simulation solutions making maritime training available in an efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable way. With their broad range of NAUTIS simulation-based training systems, VSTEP can deliver simulation solutions fitting with the training needs of maritime training centers, schools, and fleet owners.

“However, we noticed a strong demand from a much larger group interested in professional simulation software to which on-premises simulators are not accessible,” says Van den Berg. This group consists for example of maritime students longing for more simulation training hours, maritime hobbyists and even simulation enthusiasts, who currently do not have a suitable option to experience ship simulation.

Combined with other factors such as travel time to on-premises simulators, travel costs and COVID-19 restrictions, a demand arose in the market for a scalable and non-location bound simulation solution. “By bringing this new product to the market, we can increase the number of training hours significantly,” says Van den Berg. He notes that this is one of the most disruptive products the maritime education market has seen in the last 15 years.

VSTEP’s vision is to ensure that simulation-based learning becomes a vital part of maritime education and training by making ship simulation accessible to everyone in the maritime industry. To achieve this, VSTEP expands their current NAUTIS portfolio with the new stand-alone ship simulator solution NAUTIS Home, designed and built by industry professionals.

“We believe in an innovation where professional simulation software, learning and fun are combined in a scalable solution,” comments Van den Berg. “NAUTIS Home evolved from our professional NAUTIS solutions for schools and businesses.” This means NAUTIS Home will offer a similar level of immersion of 3D environments, realistic hydrodynamics, and quality graphics as their business solutions.

NAUTIS Home brings realistic ship simulation to everyone. With nothing more than a PC with a 3D graphics card, one can take the wheel and start exploring. NAUTIS Home will contain standardized content for individual sailing, training and assessment focused on basic navigation and maneuvering. Users will be able to navigate realistic environments, such as Rotterdam, Hong Kong and New York, and sail with a variety of vessel types.

“NAUTIS Home offers an accessible, affordable simulation training solution to practice skills for (ex)- maritime professionals,” says Tije Vos, VSTEP's Commercial Director, “but also provides a low threshold introduction to ship simulation for soon to be maritime students or to enthuse young people to work in the maritime sector.” Vos continues, “Even though NAUTIS Home is focused on individual training, it also gives opportunities for schools, fleet owners and maritime training centers to scale their current training.”

On-premises simulators are bound to the availability of instructors and time. NAUTIS Home allows for extra training moments, location-based or remotely, complementary with on-premises training on large simulator set-ups to foster the learning process. “Our current clients share this vision, and explore the possibilities to enhance their current solutions,” says Vos.

VSTEP announces that NAUTIS Home will release in Early Access in the last quarter of this year. The Early Access version of the software will be the basis on which they will continue to develop and improve. “An Early Access release gives us the opportunity to build a community from the start and collect feedback and input from the users. This way, we can adjust the development course and tailor the software towards the market needs for the long term,” says Van den Berg.

The goal is to create an enthusiastic community with dedicated users. “For that reason, providing a community platform and rolling out the option for multiplayer in phases next year have a prominent place on our roadmap,” adds Van den Berg. The aim is to have a feature complete NAUTIS Home ready by the end of 2023. Bringing this innovation to the market is a great step in making maritime simulation training more accessible to a larger audience.