The work on 3D trees has been resurrected, or better they are being reworked using the knowledge we gathered in the mean time. Screens of tree skeletons would not be likely taken warmly, necessarily compared to the old 3D trees, so we'll show something when we get past the mark
Kickstarter - well, that's still an open question. Presuming we are speaking about a KS for a simulator stuff: over the time we have been approached by several companies inquiring about the use of OT for a flight simulator, and a couple of them also for a railway simulator. Most of these companies had their own plans to make a simulator, and looked at OT for the engine. While it's true that OT is still in development and lacks a lot of features for this and that, developing a simulator is a huge amount of work in itself as well, and actually both things
should be developed in parallel, providing feedback to each other and shaping up the tech both ways.
However, while there are still some of these contacts open, most of them eventually trip not on the OT tech state, but because of funding issues, lack of expertise once they start to see the extents of the work, and not the least lack of confidence (usually because of the former two). Interestingly most of these companies have little SW development experience, but they are somehow connected to the business - making HW or content for existing simulators. With the demise of MS they are facing a bit of decline but also a bit of chance, and they are basically the first ones probing the grounds, but not yet strong and sure enough to actually do something.
On the other hand there are small developers who are willing to go into an experiment, aware of the amount of work and the quality required, doing it for the love of sim stuff. However, without funding from an investor, this would rely on crowd funding. A successful campaign basically requires either a proven name, a promise of future success, or a good prototype. Winning the support of (flight) simulator fans will be especially hard, and the prototype will have to go into depths.
So that's where we are now - planning and discussing what would be needed for the prototype and for the campaign. Looks there will have to be a prototype of the prototype to get some devs support us as well
As for a non-simulator game project, that's similar, except the thing to show would be the gameplay. Once we are there, there are other options to get the support, for example Steam early access.
Both projects share a lot of common engine functionality, together with our other activities, so we are still moving on without having to face tough decisions, but I guess that time comes later this year.
