Flight Sim Engine Licensing
It’s seem like just about every big first person shooter these days uses a big name 3D engine (Quake, Unreal, or LithTech), but what about flight simulators?  Why do we never hear about developers licensing a specific flight sim engine for their next game?  It’s an issue we ought to consider.

Last week I was playing FreeSpace 2, the incredible flight sim from Volition that was hugely under appreciated by gamers.  Even today the graphics are impressive and I got to thinking, “You know, this game engine would have been perfect to license to other developers.”   While we sometimes see internal teams at a developer sharing flight-sim technology, I’ve never heard of a flight-sim engine that a developer can buy for a few hundred thousand dollars.  I wonder why that is?

After all, we’ve seen a huge jump in the number of first person shooters over the years, but the number of flight sim games seems to be relatively limited.  I’m sure part of that has to do with the lack of a good engine developers can license in order to build a flying game.   I remain convinced that someone could still license an engine like FreeSpace 2’s and make a really impressive flight-sim.  It’s food for thought.