Hi All,

 

This has crossed my mind before, but with the upcoming release of the Apex addon for Arma 3, and the island of Tanoa, I don't think there is a superior world engine out there currently.

 

It runs beautifully on my PC, the only downside I see is that the flight models suck, but as a graphical engine for reproducing a realistic world to explore, it's unsurpassed.

 

That's just a 100 square KM island game.  FSX/P3D/X-Plane cover the world.  FTX/Orbx has some decent scenery for small areas such as this.  But I agree it does look realistic...

Where Arma and other "game" engines (e.g. the GTA V engine) fall down is when you ask them to deal with distances and altitudes that are required for normal flight as they normally achieve their convincingness at ground level by simply shoving everything close together (e.g. "cities" of just a mile or so across and straight up into extremely high mountains) or by implementing a thick haze that doesn't matter too much at ground level or when flying nap of the earth (as in Devon's video) but becomes an issue if you climb to what would be a relatively normal GA cruise altitude (say, highest terrain + a few thousand), resulting in a "pea soup" flying experience and generally at reduced scale speeds.

 

For example, look about 5 minutes in to the below:

 

 

For comparison purposes, similar sort of flight done in DCS, look at 40 seconds to about 2 minutes in and observe the difference in handling of distance and scale.

 

 

It's not necessarily that the engine *couldn't* do it, properly configured, but that there is nothing to explicitly show that those limitations could be overcome, even if content generation over the coverage area wasn't a factor.

 

If you're talking blue sky engine selection, Outerra is probably the most promising as it has proven ability to deal with the scale involved.

Oh my goodness! What a stunning virtual cockpit...