News
26th Dec 2011
Bridge Command 4.4 has been released, with continued improvement in radar simulation, including an enhanced radar model and realistic scan rate.
22nd May 2011
Bridge Command 4.3 has been released.
- There are significant enhancements to the radar, including gain and clutter contol
- A graphical scenario editor, so scenarios can easily be set up as required
- Scenario objectives can be set and judged during the exercise
20th June 2010
Bridge Command 4.2 has been released.
This contains a number of significant new features, including:
- ARPA simulation, including manual and automatic tracking of radar contacts to give information such as predicted closest point of approach (CPA) and time to CPA.
- Improved radar simulation.
- A fully charted estuary training area, including land features, lit buoys, tides and tidal information. This area is intended to be useful for pilotage, rule of the road and buoy recognition training.
- Improving the dynamics model, including the 'prop walk' turning effect of single and twin propellor vessels.
14 March 2010
Current work being carried out on includes:
- Adding ARPA tracking of contacts on the radar to give information such as predicted closest point of approach (CPA) and time to CPA
- Improving the realism of the radar, with sea clutter and noise
- Developing the available world models to create better environments for pilotage and navigation training.
17 January 2010
Bridge Command 4.1 has been released.
This contains a number of significant new features, including:
- A realistic radar simulation, including parallel indexes.
- An improved controller for interactive exercises, including the re-positioning of vessels to make simulation set-up easy.
- Simulation recording and replay in 3D.
- Running Bridge Command on multiple screens to get a panoramic field of view.
23 November 2009
Development continues steadily, with some of the key points being:
- A realistic radar simulation method has been developed to replace the current simple radar image.
- The networking code to connect Bridge Command and the Map Controller has been re-written to improve speed and smoothness.
- Development is underway to allow multiple computers to run the same scenario, displaying different viewpoints around the ship, in order to provide an unlimited view around the ship. Each computer will display one viewpoint, with one master computer controlling the scenario.
For a preview of some of these features, see the bottom of the features page. It is likely a Bridge Command release containing these new features will be available in the first quarter of 2010.
17 June 2009
A bug affecting the communication between Bridge Command and the Map Controller program, when used together, has been fixed.
14 June 2009
Bridge Command 4.0 has been released as open source software, under the GPL. This release contains major enhancements in almost all areas over previous releases. These include the ability to control the behaviour of other ships in a scenario from another computer, general usability enhancements, improvements in the graphics, and a full set of documentation.
8 May 2009
Bridge Command development continues, and Bridge Command now provides the software for the Albatross Bridge Simulator at CAPACITACION CICERON LTDA, which has been inspected by the Chilean Navy, and found to accomplish the STCW standards to provide training in the following IMO model courses: 1.07 and 1.08 and it was elevated to the following category: FULL MISSION SIMULATOR. Congratulations to Sergio Fuentes Fernandez for achieving this status for a bridge simulator powered by Bridge Command.
11 February 2009
Development of Bridge Command has now restarted actively. Some of the new features to be released soon include a control programme to run scenarios interactively - The scenario running on one computer and the controlling programme on another, which can set the speeds and directions of the other ships in the scenario.
Also added are fog for more realistic visibility at sea, the ability to use an external set of throttles and a wheel to control your own ship, as well as many other enhancements.
Look out for the release in the next few weeks. A preview is shown in the screenshot at the top of these pages.