The Way I See It

[Julhelm]

Originally Posted by Hinrich Schwab

It's nice to know you still won't miss an opportunity to let everyone know how much you truly hate the community here. Your argument that no one will step up to make a sim is invalid. The group here at http://www.u-boot-hahd.com/index.html are both working on a megamod for SHIII and are laying the groundwork for a new sim, as well.

Oh really?

I've seen that board and IMO it's going to be another vapourware project the likes of other "ultimate sims" like Fighter Ops or Danger from the Deep. Modding SH3 which already is a really good, solid sim isn't even comparable to creating one from scratch with all of the systems modelling and tech programming that requires. UBI tried with SH5 and even they couldn't get it right with a 50-something man team. So the idea of enthusiasts building the ultimate U-boat sim that blows SH3-4-5 out of the water simply isn't credible. Where's the funding? Fighter Ops aimed to be the ultimate flightsim and used one of the first crowdsourced funding models and they've been vaporware for almost a decade. Jet Thunder showcased awesome proprietary tech and artwork, even have a publisher but has failed to materialize, going the vaporware route. Danger from the Deep looked awesome = vaporware again.

What would have been credible would have been SH1-type sim with 2D interface and simpler 3D ships. But designed-by-committee ultimate full-3D all-systems-modelled u-boat sim? It's not a realistic goal. Hawk has it right when he says you'd have to have a bunch of very dedicated people working hard for over a decade and even then it's too big of a scope and since it's community-input driven, it's going to suffer from a bad case of feature creep. Remember S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? Originally set to release in late 2002? Then the devs fell into the trap of trying to implement every feature the community asked for to the point where THQ had to step in and drastically cut the scope down to something that was manageable.

Look again at the indie subsim forums here. It is littered with "never-went-anywhere" projects. And all of them will have failed on setting out with too big a scope and too lofty goals. Or they were one-man visions without the will to compromise and work with others, and died when spare time ran out.

@Hawk66:

The engines I mentioned can be used for sims if one is willing to give up modelling the whole earth:

Combat-Helo is pretty far along and uses the Leadwerks engine which is optimized for FPS's. Naval War uses Unity. For both of these, the compromise is map size. But the question is, do we really need to navigate the globe in realtime in 3D? Or can we live with transiting on a 2D map ala Silent Service and procedurally generate a 32x32km 3D area when combat occurs? Or have a set of smaller but more detailed maps? Modelling a globe sounds nice but it's going to end up like MSFS where you get the entire globe but in pretty lacking detail with a few key areas modelled to look authentic. Interestingly there is a flightsim that uses Google Earth as its terrain renderer.