From inside the wheelhouse you can zoom in using the mouse wheel to bring up the binocular view; a nice feature to identify distant ships and landmarks and essential to determining closure and whether there is any relative motion between you and other ships (no relative motion usually means you are going to hit each other).
Navigation is somewhat rudimentary for a program that claims the title “Ship Simulator”. You are provided a pop-up nautical map of the area you are sailing in and you can zoom the map in and out using a slider on the right side. The map will help you keep to the center of the channels, avoid shallows, and generally find your way to each of your waypoints (which are also marked on the map). Your vessel is shown at the center of the map with a blue line indicating your heading. Unfortunately, one of the key pieces of equipment that most ships use to keep track of other shipping traffic, the radar, is missing from Ship Simulator 2006. Instead of a radar display, ships are plotted on your chart as moving blue symbols while berthed ships are black. While this work-around is adequate, a true functioning radar, requiring close attention and deciphering, would add a lot of atmosphere to the simulator. Ironically, a graphic of a radar image is part of the bridge scenery, unfortunately it doesn’t actually work.
