I think you could get a license for the IL2 Basic Code easy enough if UBI sees a market for a WW1 Sim. PF is licensed as well, but as I understand it it would have to go trough UBI.

However, I think the good Captn. meant more along the lines of "modable engine for free" and such a thing isn't going to happen.

I agree entirely. Any use of the IL2 engine is going toi have to be through a solid commercial venture. It certainly wouldn't be a community free mod thing. That would invovle releasing tools and data into teh public domain which Oleg just won't be doing! No reason why he should....there are a lot of development years invested in this, and he deserves a financial reward for it.

With all the talk of community support, has anyone considered this as a serious possibility?

I guess the hook would be UBI. They are selling Pacific Fighters as their own product. I have a gut feeling they have the rights to the source code and would not license if they do not see enough demand for a sim to be puplished by themself...

Community-Supported Licensing I doupt.

My impression of the PF situation is that Maddox owns the code (after all, they wouldn't be making the Real Time Strategy game for Codemasters based on the same 3d engine if it wasn't their code to license). I think that it is being licensed to Ubi/Luthier for use in Pacific Fighters.

Hhmm, you have a point here.

Well, what would we need to start trying?

The IL-2 Engine has a lot of features that are suitable for a WW1 sim...focus is on small engagements, low altitude, customizable planes and good multiplayer including pilot/gunner configurations offline and online.

Campaign and Interface needs a tuning-up.

But it would be a worthy base...

This has been a theme that I have been working on for a while.

I think some companies are missing the boat. I think one of the keys to success is to license the game engine. Not to everyone but to someone that can create a new simulation without going through the trouble of creating a whole new engine. I think the IL2 engine and the LOMAC engine would both be very doable for a new simulation as well as some of the new stuff coming out.

Targetware is doing this, creating a base engine and then having it used as a background for other sims and the thing is looking good. If it can be done with an online engine, if it can be done for the Unreal engine, and you know darned well it will be done for Doom3 then why not for some of the more advanced game engines out there?