Yup, but not nearly enough to completely fund a AAA title these days either. According to the wiki on the Star Citizen site the total cost is estimated at $12-14 million. The crowdfunding is being used as a proof of interest to be able to attract the remaining amount from larger investors.

 

Proof of interest? I'd say over $6m and half the estimated costs is a lot more than proof of interest. Let's not downplay the importance of the crowd funding aspect here.

 

Given that Flight had 50 team members and took 2 years to develop, that means it must have cost in the order of roughly $12-14 million. So even one of the most phenomenally successful crowdfunding efforts ever only brought in half the amount of money that would be needed for a new flight sim.

 

I would be very cautious about estimating the cost of developing Flight based on the costs of developing Star Citizen. I'd also be most interested in knowing how much of an AAA title's budget goes on advertising and marketing. I don't think a hardcore flight sim would need TV adverts, multi-page spreads across various gaming and non-gaming magazines, billboards in towns and across public transport.

 

We've already seen some of the smaller indie crowd sourced games turn into a big success - FTL for example. If Star Citizen can make a success of itself then I see no real reason why a crowd sourced flight sim can't work.

 

They no doubt make their money doing custom work for military clients. Selling a civilian version is just a side business for them. It's a lot like the Steel Beasts tank sim, which esim just happens to sell to the rest of us but spends most of their time on custom work.

 

Hook

 

I think they're trying to grow a new market. Simulation-based training (SBT) is a trendy new teaching tool in lots of different fields - but whilst there's money to do it, I find people don't really know how or why exactly to implement it.

 

So they're marketing a 3D environment simulator for multiple purposes, including flight sim. No idea what the 'serious' (non-home user) educational takeup rate has been like, though.

Flight was, to be honest, not very impressive for the money spent. I'm guessing the current Aerofly FS cost a lot less than $14m, and looks better whilst being similar on scope. No idea what x-plane development costs.

 

Would also be interesting to know how much LM invests in P3D. I doubt they make money on it, but based on the slow incremental changes it seems like a pretty small project.

 

It seems clear that Microsoft was working them on a shoestring budget and despite the best wishes of the team, it showed in the end. It would not be the first time upper management announced a goal and then wandered off leaving the workers to accomplish it by magic.

 

There are several indications nonetheless that the internals of the sim had major room for growth, should anyone have decided to take advantage of it. LuisFelizTirado has been very good in pointing out hidden subtleties in flights design that show what might have been.

 

Even as much as I like Aerofly, I would say that there is more internal groundwork completed for the type of sim this community is accustomed to in Flight. Unfortunately its wasted groundwork.

I fully immersed myself in Flight hoping that the hidden complexities would be allowed further development. But the

management of that project - just awful! The engine was also, to be honest, pretty dated in appearance. All in the past now, though - Flight aint going to be 2017's wonder sim.

 

Aerofly looks to have a decent engine. Their product launch was woeful but they're picking up speed now. For us, it would have been nice to release at least one aircraft with deeper systems - but they show good evidence they're thinking down that track.

 

X-plane is also growing on me as a concept (I own addons, but not the sim yet!). I like the idea of a stable (non beta) 64 bit release, which should be reality very soon.

My vote is for FlightGear... Why? Because...

 

1. It's Open Source... for us programmers, that's a dream come true and for costumers, it means... FREE!

2. It's multi platform, so no Mac, Linux and PC user is left out

3. OSG for graphics is ever evolving, in 2017 it might be better that DirectX or OpenGL, who knows...

4. It has an extensive SDK, one can develop using JSBSim, etc....

I fully immersed myself in Flight hoping that the hidden complexities would be allowed further development. But the

management of that project - just awful! The engine was also, to be honest, pretty dated in appearance. All in the past now, though - Flight aint going to be 2017's wonder sim.

 

Aerofly looks to have a decent engine. Their product launch was woeful but they're picking up speed now. For us, it would have been nice to release at least one aircraft with deeper systems - but they show good evidence they're thinking down that track.

 

X-plane is also growing on me as a concept (I own addons, but not the sim yet!). I like the idea of a stable (non beta) 64 bit release, which should be reality very soon.

 

When I look around, it always seems to come down to resources. For civilian sims especially, lack of resources seems to starve development at anything but a glacial pace compared to other genres. I sometime wonder if FSX spoiled us. Now we expect the whole world with all airports and recognizable landmarks, but I am beginning to wonder it that's realistic anymore. Much as we might hate to hear it, I can't imagine a future sim that would give us the type of worldwide coverage FSX does.

 

(Except xplane, which might well be the last of the breed)

 

I am making a guess that if the premiere sim in 5 years is not Xplane or somehow still FSX (of some flavor) it won't be a worldwide sim.

Proof of interest? I'd say over $6m and half the estimated costs is a lot more than proof of interest. Let's not downplay the importance of the crowd funding aspect here.

 

I would be very cautious about estimating the cost of developing Flight based on the costs of developing Star Citizen. I'd also be most interested in knowing how much of an AAA title's budget goes on advertising and marketing. I don't think a hardcore flight sim would need TV adverts, multi-page spreads across various gaming and non-gaming magazines, billboards in towns and across public transport.

 

We've already seen some of the smaller indie crowd sourced games turn into a big success - FTL for example. If Star Citizen can make a success of itself then I see no real reason why a crowd sourced flight sim can't work.

 

Yes the crowd-funding is important, I'm certainly not denying that. However don't forget the $6 million is way in excess of what the Star Citizen team were expecting. Their original plan was to raise something like $2 million through crowd-funding and the rest through traditional funding channels, with the crowd-funding as a proof of interest. It turns out the enthusiasm for the crowd-funding was (much) greater than anticipated, but it's still only enough to fund half the project, leading me to the conclusion that crowd-funding can be an important source of capital, but it's not sufficient to be the sole source.

 

As for estimating the cost of Flight: the Star Citizen page listed the average cost of a team-member, based on published average salary figures for the industry, and a percentage for benefits and overhead. I simply took that number and multiplied by the approximate size of the Flight team and the number of years of development. Unless you think the Flight team was paid way more, or way less, than average I don't see why that wouldn't give a good ballpark figure.

 

When I look around, it always seems to come down to resources. For civilian sims especially, lack of resources seems to starve development at anything but a glacial pace compared to other genres. I sometime wonder if FSX spoiled us. Now we expect the whole world with all airports and recognizable landmarks, but I am beginning to wonder it that's realistic anymore. Much as we might hate to hear it, I can't imagine a future sim that would give us the type of worldwide coverage FSX does.

 

(Except xplane, which might well be the last of the breed)

 

I am making a guess that if the premiere sim in 5 years is not Xplane or somehow still FSX (of some flavor) it won't be a worldwide sim.

 

On the other hand global data sources are becoming more plentiful and cheaper. An engine capable of integrating those data sources in a clever way would make a world-wide sim feasible I should think. You can get 90m resolution terrain elevation data (30m in the US) for the entire globe from NASA for free for example. There's always going to be a trade-off between detail and coverage though, I'll agree with you on that.

 

Aerosoft haven't officially canceled their FS plans though. Last statement I read was that the project was shelved, wouldn't be released before 2015 and talking about it now wouldn't be in good taste as they were acting as publisher for X-Plane 10 (which was just being released). Doesn't sound that hopeful, but you never know.

All true, but I have something (that is little more than a gut hunch) that makes me suspect that if any game goes for the full world anytime soon, it will either be an offshoot of an older game that already has the capability, or something using an Outerra style engine, though not necessarily Outerra itself.