Why not Unity or Unreal Engine?

[Magic Zach]

I distantly recall that the DCS engine is a homemade engine. Why hasn't a more public engine been utilized? Fairly simple question.

[wedge_one]

Short answer is, because it's easier and cheaper, and to use another engine it would require a lot of work anyway to implement and optimize DCS's features.

 

DCS is being developed for a long time, way before Unity or UE4. They could have gone with UE3/UDK but back in the day the engine wasn't free, it was pretty expensive in fact. Also not sure if the engine would've supported the terrain scale of DCS - probably yes, but it would require a lot of work to make the custom physics engine and whatnot. Also, developing their own engine became easier than it was 5 to 10 years ago. Other companies like Ubisoft decided to build their own engine for their games instead of paying royalties to Epic to use UE. It's one of the reasons why Epic changed the UE business model to something similar to Unity's.

 

Unity, even today, require a lot of work to improve and optimize its performance. Their graphics quality it's starting to be on par with UE4 with less work out-of-the box with their new Scriptable Pipeline Render engine. But their terrain module it's still behind UE's and it's being improved for upcoming versions.

 

Maybe if DCS was starting it's development today, UE4 would be a viable option to speed things up.

 

A great example that an already built engine isn't always the best solution is Star Citizen. When it started development in 2011/12, they decided to go with Cryengine instead of UE because they thought the first was more capable of supporting the game graphics and scale - and also beacuse Crytek lent a hand to build the tech demo. But look the amount of work they had done to customize the engine to support the game's system.

[Varis]

The engine would need to be suitable for flight simulation. I'd think the only engines out there are used to build competing products.

 

Also there might be long term business risks like the engine being discontinued or the license terms may change once you start making money...

[rrohde]

I think these first person game type engines are not suitable for flight sims due to their limited draw distance/ scalability needed.

 

@wedge_one: SC has since changed engines to Amazon Lumberyard from what I understand (correct me if I'm wrong). So no more UE or Crytek.

[Etirion]

I think these first person game type engines are not suitable for flight sims due to their limited draw distance/ scalability needed.

 

@wedge_one: SC has since changed engines to Amazon Lumberyard from what I understand (correct me if I'm wrong). So no more UE or Crytek.

 

Lumberyard is also based on cryengine and star citizen has reworked A LOT of the engine to where its almost its own.

 

BTT:

A lot of people tend to see cool and good looking demos of engines, especially UE4 and Unity since they're free but each engine comes with its restrictions and if you dont want to make what the engine was specifically made to do you're gonna have to rework a bunch of it anyways. At the same time having your own Engine gives you exact control over what features you have and where your focus is, no stuff that you dont need and all the things you do need while having the experts on the engine already in house if you need to add more things.

[Svend_Dellepude]

It's been stated by Wags, that none of the existing could deliver the quality down low, and at 80000 feet that ED wanted. thats why they build their own from the ground up.

[Goa]

Imho is all related to "money" , using a 3d party engine would cost ED a fortune.

[MikeMikeJuliet]

it is not just money. As has been said already, ED required an engine that scales properly. Remember that DCS is very unlike any other game that would typically use Cryengine, Unreal engine or Unity... Those engines are good for what they are, but they are *not* tailored for flight simulators. They are tailored for most other genres (because they are more common).

 

So all in all a custom engine is in the long run the best thing for DCS since it does not waste resources for things that DCS doesn't have. Same with many other things... why build a custom racecar if you can just buy a regular sportscar from the store? Because the custom car is specifically made for its purpose; the specific type of racing it will do.

 

 

A bit off the side, a buddy of mine who does active software developement on Unity said that the base code only supports something like 10x10 km play area. Anything beyond that must be custom fitted and coded to work at all... I bet the other engines have similar restrictions as well. There is always a workaround, but it is never as good as a built-in feature.

 

 

Regards,

MikeMikeJuliet

[SkateZilla]

The Answer is that it's been Answered every-time someone posts asking why a specific engine isnt being used: GameWorks, PhysX, Unreal, Unity, Etc etc.

 

Search Function.

 

//Closed