Hello! I am new to this forum. I have been looking for a resource like this and I'm very excited to have found this forum! I have a lot of ideas I would like to evaluate and pursue. Let me start with this one!

I have an idea for a simulation software product that is not a simulation game, per se. The product would more be a tool to let people create simulations for events that are dangerous, expensive and basically impossible for regular people to do on any impressive scale in real life. I envision this as something fun, something for people to create and share with others. But there’s also the potential of a true business application here, albeit only for vary specialized business. I have spent several hours researching on the net for anything like my idea and I haven’t found anything remotely close yet.

Does anybody have any first-hand knowledge on the business of creating and marketing a software simulation product? Are there any resources out there to help me understand the process and what’s involved with software development?

I am a professional and knowledgeable on the mechanics of small businesses in general. I’ve just never attempted developing a software product before.

Thank you for taking the time to read and for any help you can provide!

Simulations are complicated. Take a look at Solidworks or Autodesk Inventor. Solidworks is $11,000 per licence up to $20,000 for all the goodies.

Sim software is not easy to do, well really it is extremely difficult, but there are 'engines' available around which you place your images and shell (the interface - the look and feel of the sim).

You'd need a programming team with a lot of skills as this is not a minor undertaking. To put it into perspective, if building a word processor (like Word for example) takes a team/skill/financial level of a 3 then a sim is a 25. Expect to spend around $1 to $3 million.

There are a lot of sims around that do things like electronics with microprocessors (around $5000 per licence). Hydraulic and mechanical sims too like the above Solidworks and rare sims that do electrical, mechanical and hydraulic combined.

Boeing employ sims for many things and I believe that some of them cost over $200,000 per licence. Auto manufacturers use them too.

I use sims in my other work (I'm an electronics engineer) and it's enough to learn how to drive one. I have programmed before in assembler and 'C' and I would never consider taking on the task of creating a sim.

Some games are types of sims but are highly limited compared to an industrial use sim like Solidworks. Most games simply look up lists to discover where an object is or needs to be. List processing is not a simulation.

Doing sims requires an extensive knowledge of calculus and I suspect even the planning for a sim would take a programming team 6 months. That's even before they wrote a single line of code.

Software like Solidworks has sold thousands of licences and requires a huge team for maintenance. Without the huge numbers of licences sold Solidworks would be $100,000 per licence.