@Grayowl

Erhm.....I've tried to send you a PM, but your inbox is full so I cannot.....guess this phenomenon is spreading across the forum :lol:

Nothing to worry about that is why we have you here Werewolf. To check and warn people when their inbox is full. :rotfl:.

Cheers

I have two theories on that:

A) There was no failure per se. Sims as a genre simply failed to grow in comparison to FPS and RTS games. As those games became more popular, they raised the bar in terms of capital required to produce a marketable, profitable game so sims by and large were pushed out of the market.

B) Alternatively, the sim genre shot it's collective foot off by increasing realism and decreasing accessibility to the games. Essentially, the only people who could expect to be proficient at the game were those who'd played the previous iteration or invested dozens of hours learning. Most people are not going to stick with a game that requires hours of study. And the era of electronic manuals didn't help either.

Intertwined in all this is the fact that many FPS and RTS games legitimately did better at what they set out to do. I think we can all think of a couple of supposedly world-beater sims that fell flat on their face in implementation *cough* WW2OL *cough*.

Seriously, I think that the fact that WW2OL is still around is more a testament to the popularity of WW2 movies after "Saving Private Ryan" than any of it's own entertainment merits.

Um, that's what makes a sim a sim.:dead:

The options open to us are 2 : embrace the freeware/opensource development that frees us from economic/demographic constraints (look at the success of Orbiter, a real simulator not a game), even ComSubSim looks very promising.
Or else prepare to pay hundreds of $ for a simulation on a per episode basis as will be the case for fighter ops/steel beasts pro etc...

I prefer the second. But it must be good.

Open source is not going to cut it. The people have RL responsibilities that they need to attend to.

So Sonalysts make us a less than $200.00 naval warfare sim which is GOOD. :)

I 2nd that, open source is the best... here's crossing fingers.

If SCS were to continue game work, I would just be happy with upgrades to the current sim in terms of fixed bugs (DSRV, torp behavior), and continuing to "smarten" the AI, sound engine (nonlinear speed versus sound), and increase emersion (more crew verbal feedback... up scope, depth reports, dive angle orders).

I beg to differ.
Have you even tried Orbiter before stating that open source/freeware community driven games go nowhere ? :roll:
Orbiter is a first class Simulation software. If it were sold in retail it would have minimum a 1000 pages manual detailing an introductory course into orbital dynamics for starters. :rotfl:

The important point is having a focused development schedule. And its achievable in open source/freeware much better than in proprietary development. Have you seen how many ****ing bugs are still in DW ? They will never ever be fixed. You find that a good situation ? Me, not in the least.

I have every reasons to hope that open source could deliver the ideal naval warfare sim that we all hope for. But rather to disappoint myself I prefer not to expect too much from open software products especially in gaming.

It's not that I don't hope that open source would cut it but I would rather prepare for the worst when it comes to open source games.

I mean take a look at LWAMI. The people who created it have left it as it is without further development. There are people who are now trying to improve it though but they too inevitably will leave too sometime in the future. In open source development there is NO guarantee that the developers would stick to improve its products. People just come and go without any real sense of responsibility. Because they are not paid and because their involvement had been voluntary. And LWAMI is not a whole new game but rather a mod for an existing game.

I can live with DW with LWAMI installed. But DW is buggy without LWAMI. Buggy but was still playable. And I agree that nowadays commercial software products, games genre especially, do not gurantee quality.

There is no guarantee with free software, right. But as you see with DW, there is no guarantee with commercial software either.

Sure, but free software lets you explore aspects which would not be considered in commercial software. Free software doesn't have to cater to the lowest common denominator, commercial games yes, because they have to sell.
Another things is you can improve free/open source software, you can't improve commercial games.
The naval sim engine is not realistic enough, tough luck. You can't do a thing.
The radar simulation is inexistant, tough luck you can't improve it.
Masts are not detected on radar, tough luck you can't improve it.
and so on....

If you start an open source software there is one guarantee, that the source code will always be available to be improved upon. And even if the project keeps a closed source kernel, there is always the possibility of making available and sdk/api (that's the route taken in orbiter and things have worked pretty well indeed).
Will there ever be a finished polished ComSubSim ? Who knows, but one thing is sure, right now even in its alpha stage ComSubSim models the handling of subs much much better than Dangerous Waters. Right now, the few models in ComSubSim are of much better quality than what you find in Dangerous Waters.

Well for such 'open' project 'finished' has no meaning. It can only become 'discontinued'. And if it gets open source, it can't even get discontinued.

Yes you could say that.
An open source project is never formally finished, but there comes a times when it is usable. And at that point it is considered "finished".
Of course people can still improve it afterwards but the main objective is getting the game "usable". :p

Go back and play some sims of the mid-90s and earlier. Even with their "realism" I could pick them up and play within an afternoon. I'd be proficient within two or three days. Contrast to now. The bar for sims was raised, but not for the better as far as the bottom line was concerned.

F4 was made in the mid 90s. 688I too. People don't pick that up in a couple days. And in comparison to F4, just as an example, I wouldn't consider something like Jane's USN Fighters to be a flight sim---it was just a somewhat realistic game. I don't think we're talking about the same sort of products.