OH-6A by Tobsen and Eightball

[CommandT]

On 10/24/2025 at 12:23 AM, jubuttib said:

I mean sure, in the end it's possible to even combine completely different game engines to work in the same "battlefield" by using a separate layer of software to act as communications between them. This is how militaries might run MCS, VBS and Steel Beasts Pro simultaneously in the same mission, each "game" takes care of its own thing, and communicates the necessary bits to the others so that they can render what they need from them.

But then you're also basically making two separate games, which isn't cheap either. 

It's not impossible by any means, there are many ways you could go about it, but all of them need pretty big investments to get the kind of quality expected in each genre, and open-world or large point to point tracks can (depending on what exactly the surroundings are) be the most expensive kind of tracks to develop for a racing game (since it's not a loop, it tends to cover a larger area, need more terrain and asset work, etc. etc.).

Interesting. I guess like you say the main issue at the end is still cost. Though I would be curious what sort of budgets we are talking here... multiple millions $? I do still feel strongly that there's a proper sim that is totally missing on the market. DCS is fantastic with aircraft fidelity and flight phyisics but sucks in gameplay and obviously offers little to no non-military missions and flying. MSFS is somwhat better in gameplay (still far off what it could be) but sucks with aircraft fidelity / physics and just isn't that well-optimised and offers zero military stuff. Would be great to have a sim that could have excellent physics and great gameplay whether it was civilian or military all in one.

Hypothetically-speaking, how difficult and expensive would it be to create a small realistic map (lets say 50x50km) with say a city plus some countryside/ surrounding area, and have one or two helicopters such as the OH-6 as a starting point? Lets pretend that integrating a driving sim as part of the game is something to be done further down the line. The weather engine can also wait along with all the other assets as well. Let's just say a map plus a helicopter with great physics and that's it as a starting point. Using some sort of modern graphics engine (Unreal engine maybe)? 

[jubuttib]

Would likely be a lot cheaper these days, with UE5, to make the map, but I have heard of even just individual point to point tracks in the tens of km range being six figures. Of course depends on how much in the way of custom assets is required, what sort of fidelity overall, how many people you're paying for and how much, etc. etc.

50x50 km map would be a LOT. Think of it this way: ArmA 3's Altis is afaik 270 km^2, which is about 16.5x16.5 km or so. GTA V map is 80 km^2. Largest Assassin's Creed map is from Odyssey, at 256 km^2, including a lot of sea. NFS Unbound is ~50 km^2. Forza Horizon 5 is 108 km^2.

50x50 km is 2 500 km^2.

Only games like Test Drive Unlimited, The Crew and FUEL have come close to that kind of thing, and all with big caveats.

I feel like the only reasonable way to do it on an achievable budget would be relying almost purely on procedural generation.

[NineLine]

Seems we drifted a little off topic here, please stick to the OH-6A.