CAE is the leader of full flight simulators. They own the biggest share of the market to provide full flight simulators to airlines. They build multi-million dollar reproductions of cockpits on moving platforms with dome screens. What if they decided to use their expertise and already existing software to create a flight sim for the public. I mean, that is what they do, their business is flight simulators and they do it well. That would be great news if they realised there is a gap and chose to fill it... What's your thought on this? Would you welcome the news? What would it take for you to be happy about a new company getting in the consumer flight sim market?

 

 

Marc P.

CYUL

Hi Marc i'm from CYUL also and i think you have a good idea. I have some news for you, years ago CAE was contracted by Bioware/EA to work on the Artifficial Intelligence of enemy soldiers and enemy aircraft in the PC/XBOX/PS3 video game "Mass Effect". My 1st cousin was the Group Leader Software Supervisor on the project.

 

I had a chance to work at CAE years ago but chose to work at CYUL instead, maybe one day they will be contracted again to work on a little home entertainment project.

 

here is a lnk of my cousin who i'm really proud of:

 

http://www.presagis..../nick_giannias/

And there's allways CAE Simfinity... You can buy it and get a Bus Pro! Runs in a laptop!

their business is flight simulators

 

Correction - their business is commercial flight simulators which sell at up to $15M. I suggest they's have no knowledge of or interest in the consumer market selling at about $50.

And I suspect they are commissioned by their customers to meet a spec, instead of having to upset the fewest vitriolic Internet inhabitants possible in producing a consumer product. Who'd want to go there?

I'd certainly applaud any new company developing a new civilian flight sim. A consumer desktop flightsim is going to need a lot of stuff that the CAE full flight sims don't have though: visuals (aircraft exteriors, VCs, scenery), real world weather integration, network capability, tech support for consumers with a million and one different computer set-ups, etc.

Just because CAE makes good level D sims doesn't automatically mean they could make a good desktop flightsim. Another question is whether they would be interested. They'd need a team of about 30-50 people working on it for 2-3 years at least (going by Flight and FSX), that's 30-50 people that aren't working on your core business.

Apparently ORBX has estimated the cost of a new flight sim at $30 million. There's no reason to assume that number would be significantly less for CAE. Also don't forget that to earn the same amount of money as you would for a new simulator (about $5 million I think, possibly more) you would need to sell 100,000 copies of the desktop flightsim (at $50,- and assuming your retail and distribution system doesn't take a cut).

Apparently ORBX has estimated the cost of a new flight sim at $30 million.

 

Excellent. I'd love to see where they posted that figure/discussion as it's something I've always been highly curious about. Do you have a link to that discussion?

Guys this has nothing to do with Flight. Moving this one on.

Excellent. I'd love to see where they posted that figure/discussion as it's something I've always been highly curious about. Do you have a link to that discussion?

Fraid not, I've seen the figure tossed around the fora here, but don't know the original source.

Correction - their business is commercial flight simulators which sell at up to $15M.

 

A guy I know who works there (and gave me spin in the 737ng said it's usually more in the $20-25M range. Either way, as somebody who has been to the Dallas location, I don't get the feeling that CAE would venture out of the professional sector.

Excellent. I'd love to see where they posted that figure/discussion as it's something I've always been highly curious about. Do you have a link to that discussion?

 

Sadly, it was on a thread about Flight on the Orbx forum which has since been deleted (unless someone has more luck than me finding it), so there isn't a link available. The only source thus far has been my dodgy memory, which is a worry when I see how often it's been repeated!

 

Mike

Orbx posted in the ealy Flight foreus here that it estimated that there were no more than 40,000 hardcore enthusiaSts worldwide. that's an interesting, different perspective.

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That post should still be there if anyone wants to search.