When you run Virtual Sailor for the first time you will see one or more of these input screens:
This screen is required for the program to identify your registration, if you have purchased your program online please enter the first and last name you used for purchasing and the email you received the program to and press Ask for key.
If your registration is found your program will start automatically after pressing this button.
If you installed an update the key will be sent to your email instead.
After receiving the key, run the program again and enter the key into the textbox below, then press "Activate my key" button.
If you do not have a key pressing the "Activate my key and run the program" will run the program in demo mode until you enter the key for it.
This screen is required to tell the program which graphic card to use, and in which mode to use it.
Typically, you have just one video card, in that case press "Start" to start the program and accept these options.
If you do not see "Hardware Device" appear inside the rendering device, this means that you do not have a suitable video card for running the program.
Using "Mixed Processing" is recommended for most video cards, as most do not support all pixel and vertex shaders in hardware alone, selecting other options there will cause the sea to display artifacts in some modes, but may have other benefit.
Selecting "Software Processing" will allow you to run multiple instances of the program on the same machine, but will not allow you to use all types of shaders.
These screens will not appear again while the program runs normally, if you install your program on another machine it may require a new registration key, and the registration screen will appear, if the program has terminated or crashed unexpectedly, the configuration screen will appear again the next time you run the program.
The first time the program is run a configuration file is created and saved, this file is called vs.ini and is located inside the program's directory.
At any time you wish the program to start with default settings, you can delete the vs.ini file and start the program again.
Upon start the program will show the opening screen, this screen can be used to select the cruise you want to use, define a new one or adjust any of the program's settings.
When you press "Select cruise" the following screen will appear, this screen is also accessible from inside the main menu of the program.
On the left side of the screen you select the scenery from which you want the cruise file to begin, on the right you see a list of available cruises for this scenery.
After you select cruise from the right side, you see the boat and scenery pictures appear above, and the description appear below.
If you have a scenery with no cruises, you can use it by creating a new cruise with this scenery selected, then after you enter this cruise you can select the "Save Cruise" from the main menu of the program.
You can create a new cruise based upon an existing cruise using the boat or position defined in it, to do so select an exiting cruise, and then press "Create Cruise", this will start with the settings defined in the cruise you selected initially.
When you are ready to start the selected cruise press "Sail now".