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Controlling Time In Great Lakes Simulator

In Great Lakes Simulator there are two ways to control time:

First, you can speed up or slow down the simulation by holding down Ctrl+Alt and pressing PageUp or PageDown. Each press of the PageUp or PageDown key (while holding down Ctrl+Alt) will speed up or slow down time by a factor of 2.

Ctrl+Alt+Home will restore time to normal speed. It’s useful to open the Head’s Up Display by pressing F5 before you make changes to the speed of time so that you can watch the clock as time passes.

When time is accelerated to a great extent, your ship will move at a rapid pace and the simulation may produce erratic results in the ship's operation or the AI traffic pattern. Also, when time is accelerated to a great extent, your machine may lose the abiliity to draw the gameworld. Slowing the time acceleration factor down or restoring it to normal should cause everything to return to normal.

The second way to control time is simply by changing the time of day without altering the speed of the simulation or the simulation itself. At any time you may press and hold the = or - keys to change the time of day and the position of the sun, moon, and stars in the sky. Use F5 to show the HUD and use the time of day clock to change the simulator to whatever time you like.

You can go really fast if you want - I just did 385 miles in the Cuyahoga in like 6 seconds! Once, I did the whole 1,500 mile journey in 30 minutes. Have you ever gone 3,000 miles an hour in an ore ship? With this trick you can put yourself exactly where you want to be in Great Lakes Simulator in a matter of seconds.

And with the F2 'Save Game' feature (no onscreen confirmations!) you can save any scenario and return to it anytime you like, and as a bonus each press of the F2 key also captures a fullscreen screenshot of the action and stores it in the 'C:\Users\YOUR-USERNAME-HERE\AppData\Roaming\Great Lakes' folder so press F2 often.

More tips and tricks are coming soon. Happy sailing everybody!