But having to be able to walk around and talk with the crew adds an extra layer of realism, and besides, able to fly the starship yourself is kinda cool. 

star trek legacy, it s*cked a*s, at least on the pc.

but generally, it is true that simulators dont attract enough crowd (i.e.) money.

star trek legacy wasnt even a simulator at all, it was an arcade third person shooter in space in my opinion.

don´t get me wrong, you can earn a lot of money with simulators, it´s just that it is mostly not enough to interest the big publishers (ea, ubi, etc.) and the risk is much much higher than releasing a starcraft 2 or something like that.

the only sims that get real attention (atm) from outside the simfans are x³ and silent hunter and that´s because both build on a large fanbase that was build back in the days, when sims still were popular (read: when only geeks owned computers )

x³ is - of course not directly, but in some ways - the grand grand newphew of elite and silent hunter is just silent hunter, number x.

the last really popular simulator that i can remember was freelancer - which was released when? 2003? something around that - and freelancer wasnt even that "simulationnish", it was easier to play with mouse+keyboard than with a joystick (though i prefer that)

i know, this has already been answered...but nintendogs?? mechwarrior? tie-fighter? NINTENDOGS??

first of all, when was the last mechwarrior released? when was tie-fighter released?! 1994 when i remeber correctly? seriously, that is hardly a good example, to show how tremendously well space-sims have prospered...(oh yeah, same goes to wing commander). the mechwarrior series had a lot of really nice games, but there hasnt been released one since part 4 - and again that´s a game that already had a large fanbase from back in the days.

car driving games are the only real sims (in term of simulator like sitting in a cockpit of something) i can think of that are really popular  and even those became extremely arcadish for the most part (nsf, burnout, etc..)

so datonkallandor is quite right when he says that the sim-market is a niche...

Yeah that was Star Trek Legacy. The game that showed once and for all that Bethesda is one of the laziest developers ever. They didn't even bother with making a new engine for Legacy - they took the Armada 2 engine. Of all Star Trek game engines they could have chosen, they chose the RTS one to make a 3rd person spaceship shooter. Hell, there were folders and files from Armada 2 left over in the Legacy install - no one bothered to even remove them. Can't think of anything more lazy than that.

well, in bethesdas "defence", they were just the publishers and left the programming to someone else

What about the flight simulator series? It seems to have a excess of addons and I remember seing a magazine dedicated to it, so I would say that the simulator business is quite large.

I'd say flight sims have an much larger following than car simulations. The only real car sim I can think of is GTR. The flight sims that come to mind are Microsoft Flight Simulator series/MS combat flight simulator series/the sturmovik series/falcon 4.0 series/strike fighters series/first eagles.

There are magazines that are for flight simulations.   A lot of this has to do with pilots practising on their computers with the many dedicated specific aircraft simulators on the market.

Hey once we got some proper Star Destroyers up we might get a resurgence of the Starship Sim genre.  

@chip5541

Hey Chip good to see you mate.

Jutland is much better than Pacific Storm Allies for my liking.

Pacific Storm:

• Pacific Storm Allies allows you more detail in the campaign world to build bases, ships etc.
• Pacific Storm Allies seems very arcade like.
• Pacific Storm Allies allows you to enter the cockpit iirc and Jutland does not
• PSA has covers a much larger area than Jutland and is more abstacted because of this
• PSA I would not classify in the simulation league. Jutland most certainly is
• PSA seems to have a distinct lack of historical flavour, it just does not seem like you are in control of a real fleet.

Jutland:

• Jutland has a campaign map that is 2D, but nice to look at and very atmospheric.
• Jutland is focussed on Naval Battles where PSA seems tries to do too much. 
• Jutland is about maneover on the campaign map, a cat and mouse game if you like. PSA just seemed like you ran into your enemy and fought with little intelligence or surprise.
• Jutland zoomed in battles are amazingly detailed, weight of shells, wind, sea height, the direction of the smoke affecting aim, guns spinning and raising, time of day, torpedoes can be seen, fire, directed or local fire control etc
• Jutland has a detailed overview of how each ship is doing, this is amazing. It shows how much the ship is listing, which guns are taken out, how mkuch flooding thier is. Information about the armour and gun types. All sorts of things 
• Jutlands Graphics are nicer then PSA's imho
• In Jutland u only get re-encforcements around the time they historically came out. Although its not exact u know if you are the Germans u have the technical edge but not the industrial one.
• In Jutland every ship has a name and every ship matters, well maybe apart from British Destroyers
• Jutland can choose your sailing formation and when to set sail
• Jutland u can lay minefields, send scouts and zepplins out, send submarine screens out.
• Jutland can literally handle massive naval enagagements. U can re-create Jutland in real time. Thats right, over 100 ships on the screen at once!
• You can pause to issue commands in Jutland - not sure if this is possible in PSA
• In Jutland there are many many formation and turning commands just as the navies of the day were trained to carry out. Ships are organised is squadrons but can be moved individually if needed. For instance I may want a battlecruiser squadron to move, they are sailing on a current heading. I order them to turn immediately and indipendently of each other to the left onto a new heading, once they have done this I order them to get back into line formation. You can do all kinds of thing like this. PSA has nothing similar iirc.
• In Jutland just because you see an enemy ship of the same type and same gun type does not mean you are equal. There are still many other things simulated. Such as the training of the crews, firing solution methods, age of the guns and reliability of the particular turret systems or ship mount.
• In Jutland you really want to get to know what ships could beat what historically. The great thing about ww1 was that aircraft carriers only appeared for the first time in the last year of the war, meaning battleships are still the kings. Also ww1 had many experimental and innovative techs, such as seaplane carriers or battleships with torpedoe tubes in the bow. Their were many generations of ships in a given battle, ships kept doubling in size and tech rapidly improved in and before ww1. So as I said above not all ships of the same size and type are equal.

I guess u know what PSA is like so here are some shots of Jutland from my fraps:

Hell all I want is either Tie Fighter, X Wing or X Wing Vs Tie back but make it great like it use to be... seriously Lucasarts come on you make it good there will be plenty of money to rake in.

Also someone needs to make Mechwarrior 5 not the console version crap but like the old ones now those where fun. I heard some rumors of MW 5 under development but it was a long time ago and they said get this Lucasarts and mircosoft...???!!! but nothing new of late so ya...

Hey Starfleet command now that brings back good memories... the 2nd one I think. The are rumor of a 5th but ya... nothing new so only can hope again.

Also to keep rant I do play Eve Online its fun.

But what did happen to all the simultor games... they just kicked the bucket.... Stardock and Ironclad come on makes more new good games ie simulators!

I miss Tie Fighter too. I have high hopes for Naumachia in that regard. It looks to have much the same sort of gameplay. Just check out the alpha footage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL8usuG0avM&feature=related

That brings back memories.

No worries, after Elemental and Demigod, they will have plenty of revenue to start up new ventures Who knows, maybe they will try their hand at sims.

Anyone know a safe place to get the starshatter demo? The full game has a rather hefty price tag so I figured I would give it a spin first. The main page download links to fileplanet which has an outdated file and two other sites I don't recognize.

Sorry don't really know. When u do get hold of the demo I believe it is very old. I think it may even be the original starshatter - ........... gathering storm is an addon u see

What is the link to the Jutland homepage? The game really has me interested. I haven't seen a good naval sim in quite a while.

As far as I know there is no Gathering Storm demo - the only demo out currently is original relatively unpatched Starshatter.