lol. Honestly, I'm right at home in high-poly land.. MS Flight Sim X can handle 100k+ easily, and I've built stuff in the 50k-75k range for earlier flight sims.
Flight sims though, on the whole, are a bad representation of how detailed a model you can deal with, unless you're talking about fast-action large scale dogfight sims. Sims that focus on a single plane for the majority of the simulation aren't going to break a sweat with a 100k model, just because compared to all that ground scenery, the plane itself is a drop in the bucket.
Stuff like BC runs high detail stuff fine, as long as you're content to leave the camera in fly-by mode, and watch the game like a screensaver. But get into serious combat, and all those polygons will seriously bog down the game when they get damaged.
My preliminary target for a usable BC model is around 20k. I'm holding off on the uber detail model at the moment, and working over the 2.0 model into a sort of 2.5.
I've rebuilt a ton of the original structure, and resized a good number of things to match the CGI model, and it's just about spot on now. I'll post some renders up tomorrow.
The majority of the model is done, I just need to tweak or rebuild the nacelles to be accurate to the renders. All told, the main mesh is around 11k, which includes the saucer, hull, and pylons. The nacelles should be a few thousand each, and then I'll tack on the little detailed bits like the phasers and the yacht (which is already done btw, I built it long ago).
