We’ve known for a while now that Eagle Dynamics was going to be doing a higher fidelity carrier for DCS World and that it would have features that we hadn’t seen before. They had even talked about interior modeling and animated crew members but there’s something about seeing the screenshots and having a more definitive feature list that brings it all home. It’s all thanks to this week’s DCS World Weekend News update.

Five supercarriers, tons of features

New to the list of features was the announcement that the DCS: Supercarrier module will include five carriers of the Roosevelt sub-class of the Nimitz-class carrier. Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), George Washington (CVN73), John C. Stennis (CVN-74), and the Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) are all on the list each with their own unique textures and wear patterns on the deck.

And here’s the feature list:

• Up to 18 spawning locations on the carrier deck.
• Flood lights in addition to standard lighting.
• Long Range Laser Lineup System.
• Barricade net.
• Deck equipment like the crane, fire truck, and mules.
• Detailed Landing Signal Officer (LSO) station with functional panels to control cut lights, wave off lights, manual ball control, and PLAT camera. This can be crewed while in VR.
• “Burble” effect behind the carrier.
• Air Boss station that can also be occupied in VR and allow control of the flood lights, barricade, and view the PLAT camera.
• Immersive, 3D, Ready Room with functions to view briefings, load aircraft, view PLAT camera, vie the “Greenie Board”, view kill board that is tied to online statistics. All of this with a VR option.
• Combined Arms support for steering the carrier and using weapons.

As the latest DCS World Weekend News indicates, these are totally ground up features that DCS World has never had before and includes a total rebuild of the USS Nimitz-class carrier. The John C. Stennis model that we have now is different and distinct.

Some but not all of the deck crew will be animated.

To make the carrier deck feel alive, deck crew is a must. We are doing this through a combination of static-placed deck crew with animations that mission creators can place and fully pathed and animated deck crew that support launch operations from all four catapults. We are pushing this feature past anything that has been done before.

This is probably a good thing given the resources that will likely be needed to make this carrier simulation work.

Other features such as radio comms for CASE I, II and III landing scenarios are all going to be in place as are support for every aircraft that could fly from or land on the deck of the carrier. This will hopefully offer some future proofing in the event that something like the DCS: A-6 Intruder becomes a thing. The F-14 gets a nod in the update as well.

Now is it worth it?

There was lots of discussion when Eagle Dynamic,s and Matt Wagner specifically, started talking about DCS: Supercarrier around the value proposition. The concern I think was being made to pay for something that we sort of already have. There was also concern around multiplayer compatibility (which appears to have been solved) and radio ATC comms.

Though there are still some uncertainty around all of this, we now have a very comprehensive feature list and a much more complete picture of what Eagle Dynamics will ultimately deliver.

Does that change your mind about DCS: Supercarrier? Are all of these features including the interior areas and support for VR making this something you might be interested in? Let me know in the comments.