Hi Hitman!
Nah, I've come too far to give up on this project! I have so much love for this idea and vision, so I would finish it even if it would just be me playing it in the end.
It has crossed my mind to contact him, I am really impressed by his models and I try to learn from him.
I wish he would make a tutorial on modelling ships!!
The reason I am not contacting him is that I am not sure if and how my project will go commercial. So I can't offer any deal regarding license or payment at the moment.
My plan is to release my "ship importer tool", which will let anyone import ship models to the sim.
Build a model in .3ds, load it into the tool and setup where the different FX (funnel smoke, wake) should spawn, scale the ship to the game, setup collision box, add your turrets and write in the values needed (topspeed, armor values, cargo type, ammo, caliber, fuel and so on).
Then the tool will convert the model to my file format, create the config file and the ship will be spawnable in the campaign or mission editor.
