Over the last few years, Eagle Dynamics has treated us to a visually spectacular trailer highlighting the current state of the art of DCS World and typically with a tease for what is coming in the future. Earlier today, Eagle Dynamics posted a teaser on their Facebook page with the date 18.12.2020. Let’s have a look at the teaser and back at some of the past trailers and what they revealed.

The teaser

Getting the obvious out of the way, 18.12.2020 is very likely the date when Eagle Dynamics will release their new end of the year trailer. It’s just a single image but it does contain at least one interesting piece of information in it beyond the date and those are the clouds on the horizon. Easily dismissed as just some artwork, these are reminiscent of the clouds that we’ve seen from a few other recent teasers such as this one below that was posted around the same time that they did their big forum upgrade.

This is very likely a tease of their new cloud and weather system that has been stopped and started more than a few times in an attempt to replace the current system. Although the clouds themselves look ok in DCS World, there’s been little sophistication to them with limited ability to have multiple cloud layers or a wider variety of cloud types. They have also not been very friendly to VR users or to multiplayer as the clouds themselves are not synced and appear in different places for each user.

A trailer featuring the new weather and clouds system would certainly be an impressive way to herald a new year for the sim.

Trailers of the past

The DCS beyond trailers have come out for a couple of years now and been a visual feast presented by trailer maker maestro Glowing Amraam, showcasing the best of DCS World.

DCS World 2020 and beyond came out early in 2020 and it showed off several new pieces of content. The Channel Map featured prominently along with the DCS: P-47 and DCS: Mosquito. We also got our first looks at the new DCS: Marianas Islands map.

For 2018, the trailer was a celebration of everything DCS World had accomplished that year which had been quite a lot. The release of 2.5, the F-14, and F/A-18 and a whole line of refinement of the modules in the series. This trailer also teased, at the very end, the DCS: F-16C with a silhouette that had many of us cheering for more.

You may be wondering where 2019 went and the answer is that 2019 was skipped because the trailer came out in early 2020.

And in 2021?

What will this year bring? The word is that the 2020 trailer was intended to tease a new “mind blowing” module but the Eagle Dynamics team decided to pull back on that because it needed more time in development before reveal. Something has been in the works for a while now alongside all of the other types that have been proceeding in a more public fashion and with aircraft like the F/A-18C Hornet now well into the process of finishing up, it’s likely that there’s other efforts afoot that will be revealed sooner than later. We may see some of that in 2-days.

I have no doubt we’ll see more from the Marianas Islands map, more of the Mi-24P Hind, more of the Mosquito, and a smattering of all of the other types that the series is supporting this year.

Two days and we’ll see!