The uniform coating of a complex shaped substrate, such as a gas turbine airfoil, by collisionless physical vapor deposition processes requires rotation/translation of the substrate or sources and is inconceivable for regions on the substrate that are never in the line-of-sight of the vapor source. Recently developed directed vapor deposition processes use electron beam evaporation and inert gas jets to entrain, transport, and deposit metal oxide vapor in an environment where many vapor atom collisions occur prior to deposition. Direct simulation Monte Carlo simulations and experimental depositions of a rare earth modified thermal barrier coating are used to investigate fundamental aspects of the deposition process, including coating thickness and column orientation, over the surface of a nonrotated model airfoil substrate with substantial non-line-of-sight regions. The coating thickness uniformity was found to depend on the deposition chamber pressure and the pressure ratio between the low-pressure deposition chamber and high-pressure reservoir upstream of the gas jet forming nozzle. Under slow flow conditions, significant coating of the non-line-of-sight regions was possible. The growth column orientation is found to also vary over the substrate surface due to changes in the local incidence angle distribution of depositing vapor atoms. The variation in growth column orientation is not predictable by the Tangent rule widely used for predicting columnar growth orientation in physical vapor deposition processes. V