We have new updates on the status of the DCS: Supercarrier project including some new features coming with the 2.7 update as well as more planned for later this year. We also have plenty of new Marianas Islands updates this week with a focus on Guam. Let’s have a look!

Supercarrier

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A small update to DCS: Supercarrier is coming very soon with the launch of DCS World 2.7 that will provide the LSO station with the ability to control the ‘cut lights’ and ‘wave off lights’ on the carrier. It’s a small feature update but it’s one that adds more capabilities to the LSO station. It’s also a precursor to some bigger updates that are planned to be coming later this year.

Two bigger features are coming later this year and they are offering some more substantial changes for Supercarrier. The first is the Air Boss station which provides a highly detailed interior of the Supercarrier with some interesting features that will let you:

• control deck flood lights
• control the speed and direction of the carrier
• monitor the PLAT camera

This gives quite a bit of control over the carrier itself which is definitely an interesting development.

This next one may be even more consequential. A fully modeled briefing room onboard the carrier will have a bunch of features built into it. They include:

• interactive map
• PLAT (Pilots Landing Aide Television) camera
• Greenie and Kill boards

The kill board will be interactive and show the current kill status on a multiplayer server. So will the ‘Greenie’ board – something I had to look-up – which is a scoreboard for your carrier landings. Get a high mark and you get a green. A passing grade goes from yellow, to red to brown. Brown is still safe but not considered a good landing. ‘Avoid the brown’ says this FoxtrotAlpha article on the subject.

This area also apparently gives each pilot an interactive tablet that will let you control your aircraft’s configuration prior to take-off.

Immersive briefings means…

All of this is intended, obviously, to make for a more immersive experience while flying from DCS: Supercarrier. Start your briefing in the briefing room, transition to your jet, and get to flying all while having been within the Supercarrier experience. Nice!

But that means I have a question? This is all being built for DCS: Supercarrier. It’ll offer a very impressive package where you’ll have a much more immersive experience than we’ve seen from DCS – possibly ever. What about pilots who fly from the ground? Is a DCS: Airbase Ops coming next with its own animated crew, 3D briefing room, and so on? I’m curious to see where this leads and how Eagle Dynamics will weave it into their base product and then also how it will function alongside players who don’t have either Supercarrier or other hypothetical experiences.

Marianas Islands – Guam

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This week we also had a great look at some new screenshots of Guam showing off the radio antennas, solar power stations, golf courses, and Antonio B. Won Pat International airport which started out as a Japanese airbase, then a B-24 bomber base, before being turned over to the Navy and then finally becoming an international airport.

There is a small tease that this map is progressing well.

The map has been in internal testing for a while and we are finalising verification of airfield functionality, checking for topographic anomalies and correcting graphic inconsistencies and glitches. We feel that we are getting very close.

DCS World Weekend News Update

That does sound encouraging. Typically, map releases are a big deal for DCS World and the Marianas Islands map may be one of the biggest deals around as its a free map intended to be available to all. That should boost adoption and I’m very curious to see how it will be used with its island geography offering something new for the sim.

The latest developer diary goes into plenty of detail on all of these features so I highly recommend the read if you’d like to know more.