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[gibbon]

Hi, im a developer, more so currently a deloper of a flight sim, and whilst searching around i once again stumbled accross Outerra, i remember doing about a year ago, and was some-what dissapointed to see not alot had changed (although it probably has) but i downloaded the demo once again and was just as impressed as last time.

But, on the site or the forum i cant quite get my head around what Outerra is or will be? I was hoping for an engine to be able to port my flight sim to and then the possiblility of selling it. I understand this is not possible as there is no API or anything. But will there be? I keep seeing buy the tech demo for full access to the "game".

Is Outerra's intention to develop a closed game where you can add vehicles? Or will it become an engine that you can build upon? And is there any sort of release dat for either of them? (even years if thats the case)

Hope you clarify.
Thanks
Andy

[cameni]

Hi Andy,
Outerra is primarily an engine, developed to be usable for simulators and large scale games. Because of the procedural approach combined with real data, lots of stuff has to be implemented and optimized for it specifically. The progress may feel slow because of that, and because we are just a small company with limited resources for now.

Anteworld is a technology demo based on the Outerra engine, a demo game that's giving people an early access to the developed tech. People who like OT and want to support our development can upgrade from the demo and get the alpha access. Anteworld is at the moment little more than a sandbox environment, but it will grow into a normal game in the future, and it will probably also lay down the basis of a combined simulation/game platform.

It serves as a test game through which the necessary engine functionality is developed and tested, before the engine itself can be made available generally. Currently the engine is being licensed only for some special simulation projects that can handle its alpha state and are compatible with our development path.

Release dates for engine or the game aren't determined yet, as it depends on too many factors and many apps can be developed or started to be developed before the engine is deemed officially released too.

[gibbon]

Thanks for the reply. So will eventually this be an engine that a developer will be able to use to developer games or simulators to release themselves?

Andy

[cameni]

Yes. Not quite.


Depends on what precisely is meant by "releasing themselves". The engine alone is one thing, but the world data are going to be served from the cloud, because of the amount of them needed for the whole world, progressive download & updates etc. There will be multiple base world sets off which you can derive your game world, depending on the style of your game. It's likely there will even be 3rd party providers of (partial) world data, for example when someone uses OT tools to import and maintain their world data and offer it to simulator makers.

Basically, the engine is being built around that concept, but it should not limit you in any way, other than having to gracefully handle the mechanisms of the underlying platform code that takes care of terrain and world data download and updating. At least that's how we are planning it initially, reusing and basing it on the same code that Anteworld is going to use.