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Originally Posted by Dr.Sid
Well .. theoretically there is nothing impossible on making sim with both graphics and database, especially if it is mod-friendly.
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The thing is, in reality, game developers can only spend so much time building 3D models, and if every platform in the game has to have a 3D model for it, then the extent of the database is limited by the number of 3D models. I honestly think the drive for graphics sometimes really limits what's possible in gaming. Naval simulations are a particularly striking example of that. Go on the web and try to find nice shape files for ships. They're hard to come by and typically quite expensive. It takes a lot of effort to make really nice 3D graphics.
In truth, naval sims don't need a lot of 3d graphics. Most of the warfare is conducted over the horizon. This isn't to say that there isn't room for UAVs, electro optics, infrared sensors, synthetic aperture radars and even mark 1 mod 0 eyeballs, but I don't think one loses a lot by not having amazing graphics in the case of naval sims. In a submarine I spend a small fraction of my time looking through the periscope. In the FFG, I mostly look at the radar and ESM screens. It's nice to have, but it's sort of a fancy extra. Let's face it, naval warfare is an awful lot of sailing around looking at nothing. Graphics in a naval sim, to me, are something I can take or leave.
If the naval sim DOES have 3D graphics in it, they better be really great. If they're really great, then they add a lot to the feel of the sim (it's nice to be able to look out of the bridge wing or watch a torpedo hit a target), but only if the content is there. If the content isn't there, then the feel will be wrong no matter what the graphics are like. If the choice has to be made, I'd rather them concentrate on making a terrific sensor and weapons models or making the AI behave smartly over graphics, and if they do feel like they've done everything possible to make the AI, radar, and sonar as great as they can possibly be THEN they should worry about graphics and then they better be ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.
I guess that's what makes naval sims kind of hard to make...