When you are building a living tactical environment in Prepar3D, surface combatants are only part of the equation. To truly support amphibious operations, logistics chains, and heavy-lift helicopter tasking, you need floating real estate that acts as an operational staging ground. That is where our latest project comes in: bringing the ESB3 (Expeditionary Sea Base) into the Haze Gray Studios fleet ecosystem.
The Role of the ESB in the Sim
The USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB-3) class serves as a massive, highly flexible platform for aviation and surface integration. In our simulation pipeline, the ESB3 isn’t just a static eye-candy model sitting offshore—it is designed to function as an active, floating base for:
- Heavy-Lift Staging: Operating CH-53E Super Stallions off the flight deck for sustained logistics runs.
- Tiltrotor Operations: Providing a stable sea-going deck for MV-22B Osprey insertions and resupply.
- Task Force Coordination: Serving as a primary anchor point for regional naval scenarios alongside our updated DDG-1000 Zumwalt and port infrastructures.
Development Pipeline: Textures, Geometry, and Polish
Building and refining the ESB3 requires a careful balance of optimization and visual fidelity. Working alongside AI tools for geometry reviews and texture enhancements allows us to freshen up the model’s overall look—ensuring crisp flight deck markings, realistic lighting, and clean integration into the P3D world without dragging down framerates.
We will need to add night textures, nav lights and look at improving the textures to make certain areas the ship more realistic and ‘used’ at sea.
What’s Next
As the ESB3 moves closer to release, we will be testing its flight deck interactions with some new tech that we current have in development and of course, our upcoming scenario packs. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue expanding the naval and aviation assets that power our living simulation environments.
