A little context (sorry!)...
I have always tried to combine my FSX/2004 "precedural" and "sightseeing" simming with a healthy dose of checking 6 and trying to shoot down "the hun".
Anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with combat flight simulation (not just MS CFS) will know that Oleg Maddox's IL2 Sturmovik series was innovative and unprecedented in its attention to historical and (probably!) aeronautical detail.
Again, those interested in these things will know that the combat flight sim "community" (particularly WWII flight sim aficionardos) have been waiting with baited breath (and slowly turning green with waiting so long) for the next sim from Oleg, Storm of War (Battle of Britain will be the first of - it is hoped - several iterations), which he hopes will be ready for October 2010 (more waiting...
)
Sorry about all the background...
Now, an informative interview has appeared on
www.simhq.com http://www.simhq.com/_air11/air_341a.html in which he outlines his ambitions for his sim's new engine (which he seems to feel will be adaptable to most areas of flight simulation).
The aspect of his interview which interested me was when he started talking about 3rd party developers.
Oleg states, and I quote!:
Speaking about things I want for myself, having seen the enormous third-party industry built around MSFS, we had always planned to bite into that pie. Or more accurately, to give these third-parties something more exciting to do. ...
As initially designed however, our goal wasn’t as much to steal some teams away from MSFS as to create our own satellite industry from scratch, giving an outlet to fans who want to develop and expand the Storm of War universe. So we’ll be giving proprietary tools to external developers which will allow them to insert new aircraft and other objects into the Storm of War engine...
(Obviously, you can look at the interview itself for more context.)
Oleg's colleague, Ilya Shevchecko adds:
There is tremendous talent out there, and some MSFS products developed by third party developers are easily as good as anything developed by professional flight sim teams. If we can bring some of them round to our side, it has to be great for everyone, for us, for them, and most importantly for the end-users.
Remember that the Storm of War engine is very flexible, and it’s built completely from scratch to next-generation standards. Without third-party support we could hardly begin to explore the possibilities, and they are truly endless. For third parties, there are no limits at all. You could cover the entire history of aviation from WWI to today, both military and civilian, props jets and everything else. Basically anything you could imagine.
There’s only so much one development team can do, and look at how far we’ve taken IL-2 over the years with everything having to go through Oleg. I can’t even imagine the things that we’ll get to see with a powerful next-generation engine that’s opened up to external talent.
Obviously, the question is: would FSDT ever consider looking at this and taking their talent and innovation in another direction? (SOW:BOB will include a CR42 and a G50!
) I have no idea about the comparative market sizes of MS FS and IL2/SOW (don't you love acronyms!), but as with MS FS, the users are fanatics who buy everything. More or less!
