AIS may be a nice feature but in real life it looks useless ..

I was told that only the big ships will actually transmit their
location, the little ones wont ... Depending wehre you boat there is no
point for that as you see the big ones anyways and the small ones
too...

Also large boats will usually have a radar already. So unless you have
a large boat or go by night a lot I see no point for AIS UNTIL its as
common as VHF.

It could be worse to rely on AIS and get nailed but non AIS boats..

Where I am from DSC seems to be a rare thing . let alone AIS

Matt