Pilothouse Ship Simulator
Our state-of-the-art Pilothouse Simulator is a unique resource for our community and beyond. While it’s primarily used for our Navigation & Maritime Skills classes and pilot training, it’s also a resource for the state and federal government to use in an emergency. For example, it can step in and handle Seattle Vessel Traffic control if there is an issue with Seattle VTS.
Many different groups have used it over the past years, including:
- US Coast Guard
- Puget Sound Pilots
- Crawford Nautical Academy and Compass Courses
- Black Ball Ferry
- Recreational boaters can take classes in the simulator, practicing collision avoidance and safe boating in virtual fog and darkness.
Container ship captains must navigate in darkness, fog, bad weather, storms, and other inclement weather as they cross oceans to deliver goods. The simulator is designed to create different environmental conditions to train and test merchant mariners. It has 16 different ships to drive and many more to use as target ships. The scenery is only detailed around commercial ports, but the water, aids to navigation, depths, currents, and tides are accurate everywhere in the simulated environment. Unlike a video game, this simulation is happening live on the server computers, so it’s doing the math in real time.