As expected, Eagle Dynamics packed in a whole bunch of new and exciting stuff into their DCS World 2023 and beyond trailer. Revealed? The CH-46 Chinook helicopter and the F6F Hellcat. Let’s break the trailer down and look at it step by step.
Everything in the DCS World 2023 and Beyond Trailer
This year we got to see quite a few new things packed into the DCS World 2023 and Beyond trailer. There were plenty of old favourites mixed in there too with the F/A-18, F-16C and A-10 all getting pretty good shots of each in action but most of the rest was all about the new. So let’s have a look!
Everything that we saw in the traier
The first shot did something interesting too stating that this trailer was created with nVidia DLSS and multi-threading. The implication of course is that DCS World is making strides to improve performance with new core technology updates. Nick Grey also made mention of core updates in his message. The comments that we’ve all made in recent months and years has indeed been heard.
The next shot was of the sun and the DCS: AH-64D. Nothing new at this point but a reminder that its a top level helicopter that they have developed over the last few years.
Next we see the S-3 Viking. This is an asset that was long overdue for an upgrade as DCS: F/A-18C and DCS: F-14 pilots can attest to while docking with the S3 tanker.
Then a shot of the DCS: C-130 being developed as a flyable.
Leopard 2 makes and appearance a couple of times in this trailer.
Then we get this beautiful shot of the new AI B-52 asset flying together with some F-15s. Its harder to tell in this shot but in a follow-up sequence we can see that at least some are F-15Es currently in development from RAZBAM.
Placed on the cover, this is our first shot of the F-4 Phantom from Heatblur. There were many more to come.
Another AI asset, the B-1B lancer, made an appearance too!
Another shot of the F-4 Phantom. It’s just a silhouette so at this point I was wondering if they were saving up a more complete reveal after the trailer…
But then we got this shot… I was wrong. F-4 Phantom in all its glory! And we’d see a lot more before the trailer was complete.
There’s more B-52. Looking stunning!
The F-15E makes its first definitive appearance in this trailer.
Followed quickly by its second. Looking fantastic!
And then back to the F-4 because we definitely want to see more Phantom.
We setup a kind of alternating sequence back and forth between new types of content. This F-15E is loaded down with a significant payload on the pylon. A weapon type I’m not quite familiar with… Update: A reader has correctly identified the weapon as an AGM-130. It is a rocket-boosted version of the GBU-15 bomb.
DCS: Sinai may have been shown in a few previous shots in the background but in this one its front and center with a very Michael Bay-esq panning shot into the sun.
Here we see an F-15E with a full iron bomb loadout. Likely this is DCS: Sinai in the background.
The next shot I have to like. We see the new flyable C-130 for DCS again with the RCAF scheme.
And another DCS: C-130 shot, to underscore that this is a flyable module, with a shot of an F-16C from the ramp of the C-130. Nice!
Then we switch gears and the next shot gives us a pair of Corsairs flying over a camp with soldiers on the ground. This may have been shot on the modern DCS: Marianas map but it may also have been done with the DCS: Marianas WWII map – the straw roof building suggests that it is.
More DCS: F4U Corsair with an unknown map in the background. Again, this could be Marianas.
Another F-4 Phantom shot. Keep it coming!
A great image of the S-3 breaking away as it flies past the carrier.
Another Carrier shot with F-14s and an S-3 in the foreground with the B-52 AI asset recreating this famous scene.
Next we go to DCS WWII again with Ugra Media’s updated Normandy map that stretches to London in the north and Paris in the south. Here’s London…
…and Paris.
A lot has been said in the last couple of hours about this shot. The F4U is in the foreground but everyone wants to know about potential assets that include Japanese aircraft. I suspect these are Ju88s as stand-ins for G4M Betty or Ki-21 Sally bombers.
More Phantom!
Modern tanks (are those Merkavas?) rolling in the foreground.
This is the second or third recent DCS video featuring the A-4 Skyhawk mod. Although we’ve heard statements to the contrary, it has caused many to wonder if this will transition to a module status at some point. Or perhaps some other arrangement…
This is a great shot and its the second shot of Polychop’s Kiowa Warrior helicopter. I didn’t capture the first one but this is a better overall image of the cockpit of this scout helicopter. We’ve not heard much from Polychop for a couple of years but maybe were now on the homestretch and the Kiowa Warrior will be emerging into release in 2023.
A blink and you’ll miss it shot of Octopus G’s La-7.
Polychop’s Kiowa Warrior exterior model now. Looking sharp!
F4U Corsairs and probably DCS Marianas again.
Phantom! I’m not sick of it yet.
Aerges Mirage F1 gets a shot here and its one of a few in the trailer. This one stands out because its the F1EE with the refuelling probe and INS nav capabilities due out sometime this year.
Octopus G’s La-7 gets a clearer shot here.
A-4 Skyhawk mod once again.
Phantom! I can do this all day!
Nearing the end of the trailer and we get another great shot of the Aerges Mirage F1EE.
The trailer ends its traditional presentation. But it’s not over because then we see something new. A helicopter cyclic, a relatively modern looking cockpit with a mix of knobs, buttons, and glass. Then a shot up that starts to tie the interior with the exterior together.
Finally the shape becomes revealed and its very clearly a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. This was a surprise reveal of what looks to be a module that is already very well advanced in its art design.
And that’s not all because the video flickers again and a few grainy images of another classic aircraft appear. This time its the F6F Hellcat!
Analysis
We saw a lot today in the DCS World 2023 and Beyond trailer. The trailer itself maintains the high standards we’ve expected from years past. Stunning sequences with well known modules are mixed in with upcoming content.
If this trailer is an indication, 2023 will feature some long awaited modules. Heatblur’s F-4, RAZBAM’s F-15E Polychop’s Kiowa Warrior, Magnitude 3’s F4U Corsair, Ugra Media’s DCS: Normandy expansion, OnReTech’s DCS: Sinai, DCS: Marianas WWII, Octopus G’s La-7, and Aerges Mirage F1EE all seem somewhat to fully plausable for release.
The Chinook and F6F are probably part of the beyond 2023 timeframe although the Chinook already looks quite advanced with its 3D exterior and cockpit modeling already in place. The F6F may be not quite as far along in development but its inclusion is not a complete surprise. Nick Grey, Eagle Dynamics co-founder, did say that he really wanted to do one years ago in an interview.
I can’t finish my analysis without going back to the beginning of the trailer and talking about both nVidia DLSS and multi-core.
That message was deliberately inserted right at the beginning and it reveals an understanding that DCS World really needs to sort out its performance issues. Its a long standing problem and one not limited to DCS but it has invoked the ire of many this year as updates seem to have degraded performance with VR users in particular facing challenges update to update.
Additional multi-core support, if it does come this year, will likely be part of a major update to the sim and perhaps a point release that takes us to DCS World 2.9 or maybe even 3.0. nVidia DLSS should help significantly too especially for people who are constrained by GPU power rather than memory or CPU. It’s good to see this addressed during the presentation.
DCS needs to really work on its core and its core features in the coming years to solve long standing issues and so a nod to that is a very good thing. Of course the now vast array of exciting new content is great too and this trailer delivered on that. 2022 may have been a really challenging year but 2023 for DCS World shows quite a bright horizon ahead.
Stormbirds 
I recall canadaone mentioning how the Ki-84 would be very cool.
While I know we did not see one in the trailers, based on Greg’s Airplanes and Auto’s recent Ki-84 series of videos, I wonder if we may well have enough information on hand now that someone could do a DCS quality Ki-84, with the different engine varients.
A Ki-84 and a Zero would be fantastic complements to the F4U and Hellcat.
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Both an A6M and Ki-84 have been teased in recent days by Magnitude-3. I haven’t yet posted about the Ki-84… but I should 🙂
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I think I’d heard the A6M was very likely, especially with all the available data on it, but I hadn’t heard about the Ki-84.
Very very cool.
I do sort of get the impression that a big tribe of Ki-84 info was recently found. Especially with someone sending Greg the missing data after his first videos.
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I appreciate the call out but I don’t think it was me who mentioned the Ki-84. My knowledge of Japanese planes is pretty thin. Maybe it was my affections for the Ka-50 that you’re thinking off.
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That F-15 bomb it’s a GBU-15 electro-optical guided bomb.
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Lots of tasty in there. Very hot and heavy for the Chinook and the C-130. The Normandy 2 map is also looks great.
Oh but that Ch-47 looks like it would be a blast to fly.
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Awesome breakdown
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Thanks JP!
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Aw man, I thought for a second that the Buff and B-1 were coming as standalone modules.
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To date, neither have been announced. Rumours have been swirling for a couple of years now about a B-1B. I wouldn’t write it off but I would also suggest that any such module could be several years away.
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Love a B-1. Though I think it would traverse any map currently available pretty quickly…LOL.
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Whilst not a DCEsser the Phantom is and always HAS been one of THE best-looking planes ever. To planes what the Dodge Charger was to muscle cars!! Beeeeautiful…
Happy New Year chaps and chapesses XXX
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I don’t believe the A-4 that we seen was the mod, I took some close side by side looks with the models of the mod and the one in the trailer (particularly around the nose, the close up on the drop tank) looks a bit different, please do correct me if I’m wrong though.
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ED confirmed in the Facebook comments that the inclusion was a nod to the great work by the community. So I don’t think there’s anything more to glean there.
I’d love it if it got some sort of official inclusion.
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Very encouraging stuff. I would be dissapointed if DLSS was the only upscale technology implemented, given the ease of integration and great performance uplift FSR2.0 gives.
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So much to love in the video, and quite a bit is much nearer release than in previous year-end videos.
Personally, though I normally love the heavy musical scores of most GA vids, I really appreciated the lighter, more “hopeful” tone of this vid (I must be getting OLD…).
Other than the new Concorde for X-Plane, I can’t think of a single other module in another sim that I’d rather fly than ANY of the ones in THIS video.
Gonna be a GREAT year for DCS! 🙂
p.s.: anyone else wonder if Flying Iron is involved in DCS Hellcat…?
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Wonder what underlying changes we will see… Chinook and c-130s hint at some kind of logistics play, but to work that into the sim online … you would need a more versatile atc system. Those craft are too much effort to not have a gameplay aspect about them, but there really has not been anything said about the supposed radio/atc improvements.
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Great thoughts Mike! Yes, I have wondered the same and I’ve got a piece that I’ve just started on discussing that. We don’t know but hopefully logistics will become part of the core systems for the sim.
Having a third party do the C-130 and now having ED with the CH-47 seems like a strategic move.
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I do hope they do the integration of DLSS3 (which includes frame generation) while they are at it! That should even help those “poor” high end GPUs that are CPU limited today. If they do it “right”, that is, makes the integration using the Streamline API, that should make it much easier to integrate support for AMDs and Intels versions as well in the future.
Some further (perhaps a bit technical) thoughts:
DCS has used an old/inefficient method of multisampled antialiasing combined with deferred rendering, by identifying “edge” pixels and shading those per sample (not per pixel) separately from “normal” pixels by using a multipass algorithm. “Everyone” else really uses temporal antialiasing (TAA) these days, which generates/uses motion vectors to do back projection based on previous frames. (this algorithm does have some quality issues as well though)
DLSS (2+)/FSR2 really requires those motion vectors to get the best of it, and essentially replaces the temporal antialiasing with a combined antialiasing/upsampling algorithm based on the same data as the TAA algorithm.
So the question on my mind is that if they have now switched the entire rendering engine to do TAA instead of that deferred shading + multisampling algorithm, based on the need to generate the motion vectors. That might actually help quite a bit with the GPU performance by doing TAA instead of that multisampling, even without any DLSS. (One can still add supersampling on top if needed!)
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Thanks for the thoughts on this! Certainly at a level of technological insight that goes well above mine.
The multi-core/rendergraph/Vulkan stuff has all been mentioned over the last few years and nearly all of it has included some sort of overt or subtle nod to the need to rewrite the engine. I assume along the way that they have implemented these other technologies too.
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Hi All, what about Mig-29 in Polish colours in 2:44? Hint of properly modelled 29 at last?
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Uncertain! We’ve been seeing the MiG-29 show up trailers for many years. A MiG-29 9.12 was talked about by Eagle Dynamics a while back (see my article here: https://stormbirds.blog/2021/01/09/the-twin-fates-of-dcs-ka-50-blackshark-3-and-mig-29/) but we don’t know if the current geopolitical situation has changed that possibility.
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Merkava Mk. III I think. Maybe Mk. II but turret looks more modern as do the scopes. The Mk. IV ditched the rear turret basket.
Where is my F-8 *childish grumble*?
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When first saw the helo at the end I was excited we were getting a AH-1 Super Cobra, then somewhat disappointed when I saw it was a chinook. I mean more modules is great and all but this is Digital COMBAT Simulator.
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It’s a military helicopter so I think it’s fair game! 🙂
I think we’re seeing combat flight simulators experiment with adding more types of experiences to their sims. IL-2’s addition of the C-47 has added a fun layer to the sim that has potential gameplay implications for the folks flying your more “traditional” combat aircraft. I think it’s a net benefit to the overall sim to add those layers.
Think about a combined operation where you have F-16s flying CAP. A-10Cs knocking down high priority targets, AH-64s providing close escort, and CH-47s bringing in artillery and troops to setup a fire mission. All aspects of the sortie would be flown by humans. I think that’s really interesting!
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I agree with this. For a well-rounded, realistic combat simulator ideally all manner of aircraft and platforms should be modelled. Transport, Recon, ASW, Re-fuelers, and other platforms all play a critical role and are worth including in the simulation. The upcoming EDDCE should only reinforce this and will likely open up much wider roles for non-combat aircraft in the sim.
IMO, I’m quite happy seeing military aircraft in my civil flight simulators and likewise civil or “non-combat” aircraft in my combat flight simulators.
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BN and multiple RAF Chinooks got filled with holes, BN’s pilot took a round to the face, in Afghanistan, so it has Combat experiences. They were used in Vietnam, so it’s not to be sniffed at, it’s the fastest helicopter flying at the moment and it’s very maneuverable, ticks the box for me. And I admit I’ve been in them
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Fingers crossed for DCS WW2 Pacific over the next few years – – I know a lot of people in the community would be very happy to see that as it is the major missing theatre of modern WW2 flight simulation. Though seeing the Normandy 2.0 map makes me think about how great it would be to see DCS WW2 Battle of France (my little wish here) and Britain 1940 with EDDCE.
No matter what theatre or era is being covered I see great things for DCS as a whole going forward.
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Wasn’t there previous blurb that the F-4U would come with a carrier, there go my nine lives again!!! Carrier landings in WW2 planes is not my best skill
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Wish they would finish the AH-64 Apache. Been almost a year and still no word on how the FCR is coming along. You’ll never fly with the TADS again when the FCR becomes available.
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Can we get an interview with the developers of the F4U?
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I might be able to. I’ll ask a few questions.
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Thanks mate. Curious to know about the depth of carrier ops and with the F6F where all this is heading. Somewhere good I think.
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I’m guessing its pretty good. DCS: Supercarrier is still the most incredible carrier ops I’ve ever experienced. Will this offer similar? I’d assume but I don’t know if it will have the animated crew or not.
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Mixed thoughts. First , completely agree about the need for multicore. This is top of my list .
I’m very excited about the F-15 and F4 (and new Mirage variant)- best modules to come along yet !
I’m disappointed no F-15A/C announcement from ED. They did the 18 and 16 and it only makes sense to complete and finally update this jet classic. It’s the whole reason I purchased DCS/Lomac. Was even hoping for a glimpse of the Mig29.
Instead they are right back to helicopters, transports and ww2 aircraft.
Just not really my cup of tea I guess.
But again thank goodness for all the 3rd party devs providing jet fighter options.
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Thanks for the comments! Lots to be excited about.
Right now we’ve not heard of any F-15C full fidelity in the works. I too would like to see one but the word I’ve received when I inquired is that ED doesn’t feel like a single role fighter like the F-15C would sell as well as multi-role types. I’m not sure if that’s true (A-10C is an example) but this was a long time ago now and plans could change. It sounds like the MiG-29 might be in limbo due to the current geopolitical situation but again we don’t have anything hard and fast to go by right now.
More as it develops!
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