ORIGINAL: spokman
I agree that the halflife 2 engine could probably power a beautiful RC sim. But getting the physics down would be super hard. I wish Ikarus or Knife Edge would get a real graphics engine and build the definitive awesome sim. Not sure why they poke along with the engines they have.
There is a very simple explanation for this and has been going on since the days of pong. The issue is not whether the sim companies won't do it. The issue is the balance between what computers are currently on the market with the respective specifications and also which video cards are out there with the respective price range and capabilities. These developers have to produce simulators not only for the top gaming computers, but also for the Celerons with Intel Chipset video cards.
I've been in gaming for many years. I've been in RC for only 2 years. My conclusion is that the mass of RC people are not gaming people. I know this because after a few hundred AFP tech support calls, I bet I taught over half of them that the right mouse button actually does do something.
Right now the top sims are designed and tested for a medium speed computers with a better then medium graphic cards. However I can assure you that they could easily improve on both the physics and graphics issues easily.
Now if you take the most powerful graphic engine and add the most powerful physics engine you wind up only being able to sell these to people with the most powerful computers out there. Since I know AFP the best I can tell you that AFP was released well before it's time. It had a super physics engine and great graphics engine. But believe it or not it's been on the market for 2 years and has only recently started to take off in sales ... the reason ... more newer mid level computers can now handle the engines.
Now this is also the reason that AFP is not online capable as well. The physics engine is too complex to run over IP. It goes much further then X, Y and Z position like most of the games out there. These planes have moving parts and make much more complex moves in any given moment then does games like HL.
Bottom line guys, these developers have to be able to sell these sims. They can't come out with the better sim until the computer users have the state of the art computers. The perfect sim is on it's way....however if you want to speed this up tell your neighbor to buy a better computer.
D