The latest news from Eagle Dynamics today is that DCS: Sinai, the new map spanning the Sinai peninsula, located between Egypt and Israel, has released and is now available for purchase and download. Download, that is, if you can get through as the DCS World servers are very busy at the moment. Let’s have a look!

Fly the skies of Egypt, Sinai, Israel and beyond

With 700×700 km of highly detailed terrain, DCS: Sinai is a large map spanning parts of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, the West Bank and Israel with the Sinai peninsula as the centerpiece. A modern day map, the terrain can also be used to simulate prior combat scenarios in the area.

The map has been created by newcomer to the scene, OnReTech, and my previews part one and part two show some of the vast areas that the map covers. It’s a big area which lets jets like the new F-15E stretch its legs and I’m very curious to see what scenarios mission and campaign makers will come up with this one.

A release trailer is out with the usual DCS cinematic flair.

Here are some of the key features as published on the store page.

• 20 Egyptian airfields that include Cairo International Airport and 9 Israeli airfields that includes Ben Gurion International Airport. Airfields are accurately modeled and include lighting, approach lights, PAPI, TACAN, and VOR systems.
• City lighting using modern technology of the EDGE game engine.
• Major cities like Cairo, Ismail, Alexandria, Suez, Port Said, and Tel Aviv.
• About 100 unique objects like airfield facilities and monuments including the famous Giza pyramids. All objects and assets are divided into territories for greater recognition.
• The coastline of the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Suez, and the Gulf of Aqaba are included in great detail.
• Implementation of new procedural generation technology of land textures and normal map textures for mountains. This provides a new level of detail to DCS maps.
• Use of new technologies to create improved height maps that result in an accurate surface mesh.
• Unique tree models.

The feature information also mentions that the map requires 55.2 gigabytes of space. So make sure you’ve got a bit of room. Standard pricing for the map is $49.99 USD with an introductory $39.99 USD price in place at launch. You can buy it from the Eagle Dynamics website here or on Steam.

It should also be noted that the DCS website right now is heavily loaded by people checking out the news and downloading the latest update and both the site an the DCS authentication system have been somewhat unresponsive over the last couple of hours. That’ll likely improve over the next several hours as traffic drops off.