Great thinking. If i were kick starting this idea i would start and do something open source and start at trying to recreate SC4 as close as possible, with the ability to import existing bats and such. Then after a lot of is worked out start on adding additional features and such as splines. This sort of principle has been done before successfully with a much a older game - Transport Tycoon Deluxe www.openttd.com no real reason it can't work here either. Just take a bit longer with a newer game and such but could be done. I've never been a big fan of the Auran Jet engine to be honest, I've worked with it before didn't enjoy but I'm no longer a game designer/programmer either so it might be much much improved. I do hope those gets past the let's toss ideas around part and gets into some real development after being extremely disappointed with SCS. One key point i should say is, graphics don't make good game play, good game play makes good game play. Look at OpenTTD and TTD by itself both of these games still have a huge following to this day, i am still an avid player of OpenTTD despite the very dated graphics.
