If they get something done it will hopefully be a good thing. And some people who were very arrogant, rude, dismissive and otherwise, can watch as people move past cynicism and actually just go ahead and do something to advance the hobby. I'll applaud that. Just make the selection process fair, in such a way that nobody can have doubts.
I'm hoping to see just as thorough a look at Unity, and maybe even Proland, and it would probably be nice if a few full versions of Outerra were offered for evaluation as well.
It's not a full version they wanted, but a SDK. Which simply isn't there at the level that third party game devs could use, which is why at the moment any project can only work with our participation. Not because we won't anyone play with it. If a competent and serious developer showed up, we could talk about ways of business and development cooperation, but we simply can't afford to lose time vainly.
Sorry if I spoil it for you - to me these guys look to be just another bunch of dreamers that do not have any game development experience behind them, yet they are going to take on one of the most complex of things. The newly appointed "golden boy", as bomber wrote, has a long experience in
using 3D offline rendering software, you may have noticed that he only recently stopped mentioning Terragen in every post. I'm still reading their posts from time to time and sadly smiling at some constructs that are being warmly received, while they tend to suppress and ignore every sign of a real experience like bomber's ("we want your experience, just don't talk about things we do not want to hear").
Originally I though that the SIM-Posium was going to be a gathering of those sim enthusiasts who actively want to support development of a new generation simulator, a sub-group of the flight sim base. What it wanted to achieve (and how) was unclear to me, but I thought ok, we'll see. However, over time it's appearing that they simply want to launch their own Kickstarter based on an idea of a next-gen sim, then use the money to
hire and control real developers that will implement the ideas for them. Reminds me of countless number of guys who are regularly approaching us, no prior stuff done, no useful capabilities, but they want to direct and control creation of their dream MMO game, and see themselves in position of CEO and ideas provider. Can you imagine how that would work?
Luke's comment over at Avsim was spot on:
Think about that for a minute. I'm not a brain surgeon, nor have a played on on TV. But one of my daughters has had brain surgery (and well, I've had surgery) and it's complicated, imprecise and expensive. Not to mention dangerous. I'll set up the "Nex-Gen Brain Surgery" internet forum, and ask lots of neurosurgeons and hospitals and health ministry officials to participate. What do you expect their reaction to be? Substitute any other discipline and the reaction will be the same.
So you get a company with no track record, with clueless management handing out money of not their own. What could possibly go wrong?
