That's probably why I didn't say that. ;) I said that what they're working on is first and foremost a game engine.

I was referring to this part of your statement...

Engine sales or licensing are big, big money. I don't see how that couldn't be important. Of course it's not the main objective, but then neither was licensing the engine the main objective in the development of the Quake or Unreal engines, and look how widely they were licensed, and how well id and Epic profited financially. Licensing is far less common outside the FPS genre, of course.

It will be interesting to see how much of that goes on...but I might point out that the FPS games and the "flight combat sims" have a very different audience, and a very different demographic. Oleg could license his game engine to other flight combat maker, but it could have the undesirable effect of reducing the overall "SoW" sales. Oleg's engine would need a lot of development (I assume) to make it into a competitive FPS, so I can only assume that a developer looking to make a WW2 based shooter might start with a different engine.

p.s. I didn't mean to gloss over your closing statement..."Licensing is far less common outside the FPS genre, of course."

Does anyone know the final planeset ? For instance, there will be the G.50 and CR.42 ?

With all these questions about seagulls, seamen crawling back and forth, bycicle rides etc., I have lost sight of the main subject of this flight sim ....

Bye,
Ins

I think Oleg originally planned 9 planes, later 11...

If I'm not mistaken we will have these either in the box, or in the first patch:

G-50, BR-20

Bf-109 E1, E-3. Bf-110. Ju-87 B-2. Ju-88 A-1. He-111.

Spitfire MkI, Hurricane MkI, Bristol Bolingbroke.

Su-26

Probables:

Gloster Gladiator, Tigermoth.

AI, including probable AI: Dornier 17, Beaufighter, Wellington, Walrus, Ju-52, BP Defiant, Fiat CR 42, Bristol Blenheim, Bf-108, Autogyro, Fw-200 Condor, Avro Anson, 2 German seaplanes which I can't name, Short Sunderland.

+1

Thankfully there are some new sheriffs coming soon to clean up the 'banana mess'

He 115 and He 59

Very well said! Totally agreed.

Skarphol

I would assume that the guys will keep a very sharp eye on what the developers who use their engine will be using it for. Seems to me that Oleg himself has no interest at this time in heading the development of anything other than projects based upon WWII aviation (I might be COMPLETELY wrong, of course :) ) In terms of me personally, there's no way I'm NOT going to buy any of the WWII SoW projects, but I'll definitely buy Project Galba, and if a third-party developer creates a sim based upon late 50s/early 60s jets like the F-105 and the F-4, I would definitely buy that as well in a heartbeat.
I imagine that the same could be said of anyone regarding some particular area of aviation outside WWII. I would assume that the engine would be licensed to other people like Ilya who want to create projects outside the WWII-timeframe, or even outside the aviation genre. The fact is, though, the main team's sales are likely to be hard to compete with, because the majority of combat sim players want their own little hit of the WWII aviation drug, it's not a niche interest within the combat sim market.

Hmmm, I was thinking more about the possibilities of this game engine for producing a ground vehicle based combat game. That seems to be something the engine could be adapted for. Oleg has mentioned that the engine supports skeletal animation, so the presence of convincingly-animated infantry should be possible in any game based on this engine, if not necessarily playing from their perspective.