Hankasalmi orienteering high school students used the simulator actively alongside technical training — sometimes up to seven sessions per week. They highlighted the variety of terrain types, the benefits of designing courses for each other, and how simulated races can add pressure handling and competition-like focus. The simulator was seen as a complement, not a replacement, for real forest training.

At the Sports-Oriented High School of Hankasalmi, students have been actively using Suunnistussimulaattori as a supplement to their technical training throughout the past autumn and winter. Jooseppi Kalliokoski, a first-year student at the school, explains that the simulator has become a regular part of their routine.

“We simulate several times a week — we’ve even had weeks with up to seven sessions,” Kalliokoski says. According to him, the simulator is an excellent training tool for orienteers during the winter and for ski-orienteers in the summer.

The students appreciate how easily the simulator allows them to experience a wide variety of terrain types. For ski-orienteering training, it is also far easier to draw track networks with a mouse on a computer than to physically prepare trails in the forest.

By designing terrains and courses for one another, students also gain experience from a course setter’s perspective. They must carefully consider control placement to create exercises that focus on route choice or precise control work. At the same time, they naturally spend more hours studying orienteering maps.

“In the simulator, you can decide whether to train long route choices or short, intensive legs,” says Kalliokoski. The simulator enables highly complex track networks and very demanding training sessions. He emphasizes, however, that the simulator does not replace real forest training — but it supports it exceptionally well.

Kalliokoski highlights fellow student Ville Parkkinen, known from Virtual Evening Events, for his significant contribution to map and course design.

The students also note that simulator training allows them to incorporate pressure management and competition scenarios. They frequently organize sessions as competitions, taking turns running the same course. Afterward, they analyze optimal routes in the simulator and compare their performances with each other.

As a summer orienteer, Kalliokoski values how the simulator keeps the “orienteering thinking process” active during winter — planning, anticipation, and observation skills remain sharp. According to him, winter simulator training makes the transition back to forest orienteering in spring much easier: instead of relearning fundamentals, athletes can continue directly from where they left off in the autumn.