Hello guys!
I know the answer is: more we can afford. But I still have some questions. We would really like to use real licensed vehicles in our game, we have a whole range of highly-detailed models at our disposition, and we would like to add a damage model too. Obviously, this all makes it not only very complicated, but probably extremely expensive too.
But recently, I've stumbled across this article. I found some interesting things in there, which I will quote here:
With a few keystrokes, a Focus could hit 500 mph in a game and corner on a dime — but that’s not what Ford wants.
We want to make sure the user has the same experience in games as when they drive the vehicle in real life. The worst thing we could do is soup the car up in the game so when they drive it in real life, they don’t find the car up to snuff.
We don’t want to see the cars flipping over for unknown reasons. Catching fire — certain, we call then thermal events — we don’t want happening if there’s no reason. If you’re driving poorly in a game, and you do end up rolling the car as a result of driver error, that can be explained.
Hitting animals and pedestrians is also on Ford’s list of restrictions
I quoted this, because our project kind of fulfils all of these "requirements". We are still at the very first stage of our "game", basically we are discussing things and getting informed about various stuff, to see if it's even possible to accomplish this whole thing. We have talked to the guys of BeamNG, and that is the physics engine we would like to use.
We believe that it is the most realistic it can get at this point, as far as damage and maybe driving physics go.
If we have a Ford Focus in our game, it certainly wouldn't hit 500 mph, we also don't flip cars for no reason, the cars don't catch fire either, and you can not run over pedestrians. There's no animals.
The thing is, we are not a big studio. In fact, we're a very small one. I was wondering, is it possible that for us, the licenses for these vehicles would be cheaper than for a big studio? Is there a way of getting them cheaper? I know for a fact that some studios, like Polyphony Digital, don't pay anything for the licenses at all, but obviously we aren't making Gran Turismo here, and our game is unknown and has no reputation therefore, which means there's no interest at the moment for the brands to have their vehicles in our game, unless it becomes a huge hit one day, which, however, is not really our main goal.
What could be some tricks on how we could approach this whole situation? We're really trying to do a very realistic game, like I mentioned earlier, we are planning on using the BeamNG physics, and we also have a 100% accurate, 1:1 3D map of a whole district of the city we will be using. (this 3D map was originally made for architects, to measure sound and sunlight, and such things I believe)
My idea was to finish this part of the city, to wait for the BeamNG physics to be ready, so we can use them, and basically make a small demo to showcase what it would look like. We have a whole range of highly-detailed vehicles at our disposition, that are being designed by an excellent 3D studio, like I said earlier. This should really give an idea of what the whole thing will look like. I'm convinced it will look and play really good, and I was hoping that if we get this ready, it could have a big influence,on how the brands will react on this whole thing, on the price that we will eventually have to pay to get the licenses, and if we're actually allowed to use them at all. But we still remain a small group of people, which (therefore) kind of hints the manufacturers that we can't pay them hundreds of thousands of Euros, or maybe even millions, for licenses. (I really have absolutely no idea how much such a license costs)
All help is greatly appreciated! 
