Anyone getting the notion that maybe the engine (Lumberyard) has reached it's peak of what CIG can throw at it? Derek did write in a blog back in October that Lumberyard had approached it's peak in what you can accomplish in terms of performance effeciency when looking at the Lorville demo.
I think you're right, but I also think it goes beyond that. CIG isn't even really "throwing things at" the engine per se; they're not even developing the game properly to begin with. It's acting as a model-viewer with the camera viewpoint hacked into the ship movements to roughly simulate what controlling a traditional game would feel like. Roughly. I'm not convinced the engine choice in particular was the make or break here.
When Derek wrote the blogs I think he was operating under the logic that: assuming CIG was making the game exactly as they described, using that engine, it was doomed to fail. And that's true. But a real game development company would be able to leverage tricks, illusions, and optimizations to make what CIG was describing, and have it feel right and be fun, even on that engine. A better engine would make that job easier, and of course some time has passed and technology marches on.
If CIG disappeared tomorrow and a real game development studio decided to make something similar to Star Citizen, they could find a way to make it work. There might be a loading screen when docking. There might be some scene transitions. There might be some tricks and illusions for ship boarding (like what Warframe has done) but in the end, if it's fun and immersive, people will play it. Chris Roberts has a pathological focus on whether or not something is "real" (as if anything in a game is real) and that bizarre idiosyncrasy sank this project before it even left port.
