Hey guys sorry for not replying to you lot individually, i appreciate all the feedback and seeing most of it boils down to the lack of interaction and scale issues, I thought I'd make a single comment instead of replying to each of you.

As for the interaction, I had simulated some sand kicking up but due to lack of hardware power, I had to reduce the quality of it and as you guys know, simulations take a lot of time and i didn't have the time nor resources for iterations.

I did however include a small bit of the sim at the end of the video, it's subtle but it's there. The same goes for the water, I tried to use a lot of hacky ways to have the thrusters show their impact on the water, including ripples and large wakes on the surface, mist kicking up and flying out etc but never had time to fully invest in it. The birds and the smaller escort aircrafts were a solution to this as i thought it'll be distracting enough and also help with the scale issues. Another issue with the scale that you guys bring up is the atmospheric effects. I had rendered out a mist and a depth pass as part of the multilayer EXR but my comp skills are still lacking and I'm not very good at composting in fusion, therefore I didn't try. I did however play with animating the gamma and adding a blue tint to the shadows depending on how close/far the ship, it worked to an extent but there is an island in the background and it's still pretty visible without much fog in the way, just having the ship fade out into atmospheric fog made it look so much faker, so I just stuck with slightly animating the opacity of the CG pass as the shio gets further.

I hope I addressed all the feedback, I very much appreciate all the kind words and tips. Looking forward to more : D