We’ve been waiting on seeing some finished features on DCS: Supercarrier for quite some time now and its been a slow process. The latest update will bring in aircraft directors, the so-called ‘yellow shirts,’ to the decks of our supercarriers in DCS and we’ve got a new video from Matt Wagner that walks us through the process of starting up, taxiing out, and taking off from the carrier with the new directors guiding us through the process.

New features on display

I’ll have to admit that I’m more impressed with this new feature than I was before watching this video. Matt Wagner takes us through the start-up process and shows off how the Plane Directors do their job and interface with the pilot. It’s very immersive and it means that carrier operations are more choreographed than before.

There are new features on display in this video too. A new virtual icon, optionally turned on or off, appears over the director that you’re supposed to be looking at. This is a good concession to gameplay so that you know what you’re doing when.

The system brings you in towards the catapults and then vectors you to the appropriate catapult. I particularly enjoyed Matt’s comment about following the direction even when it seems like the director is going to send you off the side of the carrier – spoiler alert, they don’t.

Matt also shows us what happens after landing with the crew clearing the deck of landed aircraft. Interestingly, the positioning of the Hornet he landed then flips in the other direction and is ready to go for another mission. A necessary concession to gameplay at the moment. Hopefully one of the tugs can be modeled to perform the action in the future.

Eagle Dynamics reports that they had to spend a lot of time to get this feature right, thus the lengthy delay. They also report that the system is robust enough to handle multiplayer. How this will handle that chaos will be interesting to see. I’m also hoping that this system is tuned well enough to handle other carrier aircraft. Right now that’s the F-14 but the A-6, A-7 and maybe even the F-8 will be here too..

Finally, the video also makes use of the new fog feature. It looks particularly impressive as the afterburners for departing F/A-18s fade into the fog. Looks good!