If we're talking about today's technologies then I have to agree that making a combined sim isn't something that we should expect some company to take on. But as we're talking about future fantasies here I definately think it's a possibility worth concidering.
How I see that being realized is that there would be a basic environment engine with decent graphics, physics and a lot of flexibility to mod and plug-in different features. Take outerra (.com) for example: pump that on steroids and develop it for 10 years with sim's as your target and we could have somethign pretty usable in our hands.
Then different developers would 'plug-in' their products developed for that engine and voila there is the starting point for something pretty cool.
An ofcourse on scales like that we're talking about procedural creation.. both with the landscape and buildings etc. It's crazy to even think about manual mapping except to create the create the foundation based on which the procedural generation builds on.
The scope of the battle would have to dynamically scale based on the number of players online to keep the world 'alive'.
I'm puzzled by the comment of an fps player player in a ditch oiling up his mg and getting nailed by typhoon after which he'd never come back.. That's exactly what happens in titles like BF2 hundred times in a round. You're wiped out by a bomb, artillery or whatever and don't have a clue what happened and it's one of the most popular games out there. It's pretty far from a sim ofcourse but proves the point that it doesn't make the gaming experience bad in any way. War wasn't fair and no one warned the guys who were shelled to bits and pieces.
|