Greetings Citizens,

We are very excited to premiere the finished Anvil Aerospace Hornet commercial today, as well as the Hornet brochure. For those that caught a sneak peak of the Hornet commercial at the Citizencon event: you haven’t seen anything yet! The civilian version of the UEE’s venerable F7A Hornet, the F7C Hornet is a dedicated dogfighter capable of tangling with mercenaries, pirates, Vanduul and more.

We’re pushing the limits with Star Citizen, and this commercial is our best example yet. It’s rendered 100% in-engine in real time at 4k resolution. We scale everything for the super high resolutions that will be the basis of tomorrow’s gaming experience; our assets are designed with high polycounts instead of having details baked into their textures. That’s a big part of why NVIDIA and AMD have been demoing Star Citizen at 4k! The next generation of CPUs and GPUs will make this kind of experience possible in gameplay, and we are building Star Citizen to be ready. With the Hornet commercial, we wanted to give our backers an early look. If you have a 4k-compatible monitor, select “Original” from the video settings on YouTube (or download the 4k file directly here. ) If you don’t, 1080p is highly recommended.

Three additional versions of civilian Hornet are being launched today:

The Hornet Ghost is a stealth-oriented craft designed to have a low radar signature; when you’re flying a Ghost, your opponents won’t know what hit them!

The Hornet Tracker is the Ghost’s other half: a dedicated ECM spacecraft with advanced sensors for complete situational awareness on the battlefield.

Last, but not least, the Super Hornet is a bigger, beefier model that features more advanced weapons, a turret and a second seat for a radar operator.

These models are intended to show backers what they will be able to do with ship upgrades and modifications in the finished world, building base hulls out for more specific roles.

You can learn more about each in the brochure linked below, produced by Anvil Aerspace’s advertising division!

In honor of the Hornet launch, we are making all of the civilian variants available for backers through the RSI store. The Ghost and the Tracker are permanent additions to the store, while the Super Hornet will be available through Monday, October 28th. All civilian Hornet packages and add-on ships will be accessible in your hangar starting tonight!

If you already have a Hornet as part of a game package and would like to exchange the hull to a Ghost, Tracker or Super Hornet you can do so with one of the upgrade packages listed below. Your new Hornet will not appear in your Hangar immediately, but upgrade package recognition is planned for a future patch.

Remember: we are offering these pledge ships to help fund Star Citizen’s development. All of these ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game. The goal is to make additional ships available that give players a different experience rather than a particular advantage when the persistent universe launches.

As a Package:

Colonel PackageGhost PackageTracker PackageSuper Hornet Package

As an Addon:

Standard Hornet AddonGhost AddonTracker AddonSuper Hornet Addon

As an Upgrade:

Ghost UpgradeTracker UpgradeSuper Hornet Upgrade

The Hangar patch is now available! Hornet variants should appear correctly in your Hangar at this time.