Simwave B.V., the Dutch simulator centre operator, has signed a contract with Genting Hong Kong to train and assess crews from the firm’s cruise ships at the Simwave simulator centre in Barendrecht in the Netherlands for at least five years, the Dutch company said.
A Simwave centre will also be built in Singapore in 2018.
Star Cruises, one of the subsidiaries of Genting Hong Kong, was the first cruise operator in the world with its own simulator centre. Senior Vice President Marine Operations & New Building, Gustaf Grönberg said in a statement: “The collaboration with Simwave means we are now able to use our state-of-the-art centre ‘branded’ in our own house style, without the disadvantages of ownership.”
As part of the collaboration, one of the Simwave 360-degree-projection ‘full mission’ simulators in Barendrecht will be based on the bridge of Dream Cruises’‘Genting Dream’, a 335metre cruise liner which debuted last November and can accommodate 5000 passengers.
The bridge simulator has a vertical projection system which is globally unique. Alongside ‘all-round’ projection (on vertical cylindrical screens), eight projectors also project what’s happening on the water or the quayside, on both sides of the vessel. “This makes it possible to simulate so-called ‘docking operations’ (berthing and unberthing quickly and safely) more realistically from the bridge wings,” explains Joost van Ree, co-founder of Simwave.
Delivery of the Simwave maritime training centre is scheduled for this November. The collaboration with Genting Hong Kong begins from July 2017.