I haven't been to IITSEC for a couple of years, but for about 6 years I had to work it every year and never once saw anything that could beat VBS in sheer scope. You would always see something that could do one aspect much better, but never anything that could do half as much, even half as good, let alone have even 1/4 of the content.

Everyone wants/wanted to come up with the VBS "killer" because there is a LOT of $$$ to be made, but from talking to people who still work out in Research Park here in Orlando doing heavy sim work, anything to replace VBS2 basically has to be VBS2, only better, but different. Good luck with that. Just generating the same amount of content would run into the six figures. I used to work for managers who would just come to us every couple of years to write up a requirements doc on what it would actually take to make a replacement. They could never actually believe us when we told them the amount of models needed, the terrain, etc. Just think about what VBS2 can do, what is has and what it would take to duplicate EVERYTHING in a new engine.

I've been away from contracting a few years, but right now VBS2 from what other devs and trainers tell me is pretty entrenched. Just replacing it and writing new training programs would be huge. Also there are TONS of VBS2 related contracts out there spending millions that you never hear about as well. FOr example, I know a guy who is helping to just convert years of old openflight content to VBS2 format. I doubt any of it will ever get used honestly. If I had a penny from eveyone's paycheck who earned it doing something tied to VBS2 I would be pretty well off.

Anyone can complain about certain aspects of the engine but to replace it would take ungodly amounts of time and money. Look at how much money they thew at the Crytek engine contracts to try and get that going. Looked awesome, but from what I was told, was a HUGE failure. I thought if any engine would work other that all the openflight/metavr sims, it would be the Crytek contract.

If they are serious about replacing it, they need to just award it and start from the ground up rather than expecting to find a replacement all done and ready to go with the same features and content plus whatever new requirements they are throwing in. It's just not going to happen.