Earlier today, Matt Wagner from Eagle Dynamics, took fans on a tour of the new Persian Gulf map in the DCS: F/A-18C Hornet module. The tour offered viewers a sightseeing look at some of the landmarks and details of the map as well as a way to get a look at some of the Hornet’s navigational systems. Here’s a brief recap!

Notes from the live stream

Here are some of my point form notes from the live stream

Strait of Hormuz / Persian Gulf
- ED changed the name from Strait of Hormuz to Persian Gulf for two reasons:
  - More people are familiar with the name Persian Gulf
  - ED hopes to expands the map further to the north and west including much more of the Persian Gulf
Wag’s Hardware for the live stream
- Core i7 6700
- 32GB RAM
- GTX 1080ti
- Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS
- Runs quite well on this map, no problem hitting 60fps
The Map and World
- Al Dhafra AB
  - Over 200 spots for this airbase, plenty of multiplayer positions
  - Lots of detail for the airbases
  - Stones and rocks around the sides
- Freighters and tankers can be auto generated
- New skins being created for Iranian units including the MiG-21, Mi-8, etc.
- Work being done on campaigns for the map
- Persian Gulf map launch date coming “quite soon”
- F-14 and F-4 will get new skins for the scenario after launch (doesn’t make sense to do skins for the
- Will be doing Iranian ground units and air units, important to have a good “order of battle”
- With different modules players can fly for Iran with the F-14A and F-5
- Creating a brand-new Nimitz class, the Stennis, which will be available to everyone
- Still working on night lighting, textures in some areas, performance tweaks
- Performance on this map is quite good, in part because there are no huge forests
- Object count over the larger cities matches or exceeds Las Vegas but the team has worked hard to ensure that performance stays good over these areas
- The next live stream will include a tour of the northern part of the map (Iran) in a week or two
- Team has worked hard on textures and optimization so that textures don’t get blurry at distance like on the Nevada map
- Textures are a mix of satellite and art generated textures ensuing that it looks good at low altitude and maintains high frame rate
- Very large mountain ranges in the northern part of the map in Iran and in Oman
The F/A-18C Hornet
- Start-up is a little different now than when the first tutorial was done
- Seven tutorials done, planning for a total of 20
- RWR is on in the video (no pings from any radar)
- Wing vapour is a work in progress and is being updated again (not visible in the live stream)
- Will be working on the air-to-ground radar once air-to-air and targeting pod systems are done
- New S3 tanker coming
- New physics for the hose and basket, should make air to air refueling more interesting and more realistic
- Up to 5 programs for EW including overrides for single chaff/flare releases
- No trim is required on auto/auto flaps – will seek to trim to 1G on its own
- Will be doing a moving map after radar is complete
- Fuel dump now implemented, important for carrier ops when max weight is an issue
- Team still finishing up STT before moving on to radar guided modes for guns, Sidewinders, Sparrow, and air to ground bomb HUD modes

Overall thoughts

The new Persian Gulf map has me fairly excited. Nevada has its charms and the Caucasus is now a classic area for intense air battles but Persian Gulf brings in some new options with some very large and scenic city spaces along with wide open terrain and plenty of mountains to fly terrain masking missions.

This map offers up a really good modern combat space to fly from with all of the bases needed to support large scale multiplayer and single player operations.

This is also a really good looking map. Matt mentioned several times how hard their team has been working to get the lighting and texturing to match up. Their art team has used satellite maps plus their own touches to really make it stand out and from what I saw today – it works and works well! I love how they have managed to blend the yellows and browns together with red hues in some of the different regions of the map giving each area a unique look.

This map plus available aircraft like the F/A-18C, AV-8B, F-14, F-4, F-5, A-10, and F-15 to mention just a few should offer up some really exciting scenarios both now and in the future as these modules release. The door is open to other high end jets as well as helicopters which might be incredibly fun to fly low through some of the city areas and mountains that have been created.

The F/A-18C also looks really good to me. I know there are still systems that are being worked on and it will be a while before those are ready but I see a lot of progress on this highly anticipated module.

Another live stream is apparently planned for a few weeks from now where Matt will take us on a tour of the northern part of the map. That should offer us up some different visuals as well.