DCS World Awesome List - WIP

Awesome list of DCS World resources for new combat simmers (work in progress)

Table of contents:

• Digital Combat Simulator
• Official Resources
• Events
• Learn
• Tools
  • General
  • Missions and campaigns
  • Communication
  • Cockpit extraction
  • Skinning

Digital Combat Simulator

DCS World is an add-on based, freemium combat flight simulator made by Eagle Dynamics and The Fighter Collection. The base map of Caucasus, the Su-25T and TF-51 planes are free forever. Additional maps, aircrafts and helicopters can be purchased separately.

Latest OB version: 2.7.10

Official Resources

• DCS Website
• Download link Stable, Open beta and dedicated server versions
• E-Shop Buy additional aircrafts, maps, campaigns ..
• Official forum Eagle Dynamics and the community forum, the most complete, DCS related, source of information and news
• General FAQ Technical questions
• User files User contributed files: Skins, mods, missions and more.

Events

DCS World is the perfect environment for competitive events, from air combat to air race, the community always finds unimaginable new ways to gather and compete. Some have gone as far as organizing a 4wd rally using Combined Arms module. Below are some major events, but you can find a lot more in the forum.

• DCSWorldEvents is the organizer of combat tournaments for DCS community :

  • SATAL (Squadron Air To Air League): This event's goal is to create a structured league that concludes in a single elimination tournament.
  • SATAL COLD WAR Edition: same as SATAL, but adds in more weapon restrictions that limit aircraft to Cold War style munitions.
  • AIR COMBAT: an event dedicated to the merge and BFM fighting.
  • Merge for The Cure: is an event dedicated to the merge and BFM with a special dedication to taking it to COVID19. Participants must donate to entities like Doctors Without Borders in order to participate.

• Virtual Airshows: Organize Wings Over Tbilisi virtual Air Show, an event that allows virtual aerobatic teams from all over the world to present their hard work for the enjoyment of a live audience. A virtual aerobatic team is either a representational (e.g. Virtual Red Arrows, Virtual Blue Angels) or fictional team that is comprised of a group of virtual pilots that create life-like aerobatic displays.

• VARS: The Virtual Air Racing Series is a community driven online racing league for DCS World. This event is now part of The Wings Over Tbilisi air show. Just install the pylons and start training with the free TF-51.

Learn

• DCS Manual: The latest version can be found in the install directory under \Docs folder, or Online.

• Modules Manuals: Each module comes usually with its own manual under \Mods\aircraft\MODULE_NAME\Doc. Also, ED started publishing its latest module manuals online.

• Chuck's Guides: The famous, easy, alternative user guides made by Chuck Owl for almost every high fidelity DCS module, and more.

• Hoggit World: This is the Wikipedia of DCS. Its purpose is to gather and organize all the information related to the sim, peripherals and mods into a central repository, in hopes to offer a valuable "one-stop shop" resource for everything DCS.

• DCShelin Guide: Its like the Michelin restaurants guide but for DCS modules, terrains and campaigns. With little text and some icons, this guide help you choose your next module.

• TAW Radar Simulator: When starting in combat simulators, its difficult to find the logic of the targets appearing and disappearing from the radar screen. With this tools, you can understand why this is happening and how to configure your radar depending on the situation.

Tools

General

• DCS Updater: As its name implies, this tool is responsible of keeping your installation fresh, but not only, it can also repair a corrupt installation and change the current installed version. This tool is included with DCS install and is launched every time you start DCS. If it get corrupted by itself, you can get it here. Documentation.

• DCS Updater/Launcher GUI: This unofficial power tool by SkateZilla, is a more user-friendly frontend for the included DCS Updater. It is intended for users doing more than regular updates. You can use it to manage multiple installations of different versions of DCS in the same machine, Launch VR ON/OFF, Manage configurations, Manage modules...

• OvGME: OvGME is mod manager, it main purpose is to provide an easy way to import and enable mods for games then restore original files when disabling mods. OvGME works by comparing the game file tree with the given mod file tree, then identifies what files to replace, create and save as backup.

• Tacview: This tool let you understand what really happened during your last flight. It is a universal flight data analysis tool which enables you to easily record, analyze and understand any flight to improve your skills much faster than with conventional debriefings. It is widely used by simmers and air forces.

• LotATC: This is a non free client + server software for DCS, that gives the user an ATC/GCI view of the battle. Basically, it's an AWACS software. It let you play the role of a tactical or air traffic controller and provide help to human pilots so that they better accomplish their missions, by radioing them a picture or guidance instructions. It is compatible with SRS and UniversRadio (see below).

Missions and campaigns

If you played all the missions and campaigns included with your modules, finished the paid ones and flew all the free ones, it must be time to start to make your own.

• BriefingRoom is an advanced yet easy to use fast mission generator that let you create missions by just selecting the terrain and some options, you can then save a mission file that you can play in single or multiplayer.

• DCS Liberation is an amazing dynamic campaign maker, which means that what you do in a mission will impact the next one, make sure you always get the latest version as this application is under heavy development.

• Combat Flite: This advanced tool complements the DCS mission editor, it offers the possibility to make missions with elaborate tooling. It let you export mission files, merge them, export briefing data packs, and generate kneeboards.

Communication

While on multiplayer users can communicate with each other trough text, audio chat is key in the heat of the action. And although DCS comes nowadays with voice chat, most people tend to use stand-alone VoIP software.

• DCS Simple Radio Standalone (SRS): This open source software aims to provide easy to use and realistic communication in DCS Multiplayer. The radio integrates into all existing and future aircraft available in DCS. Servers can configure SRS to be more or less realistic – enforcing realistic line of sight and distance limitations or allowing aircraft to always hear each other.

• Teamspeak: This application enables audio communication between users on a chat channel, much like a telephone conference call. The client software connects to a TeamSpeak server of the user's choice, from which the user may join chat channels. This software is free for up to 32 users per server.

• UniversRadio: This software interacts with both TeamSpeak and aircraft radios in DCS, allowing users to communicate through simulated radio channels and frequencies. UniversRadio’s algorithms simulate distance and altitude effects between emitter and receiver, relief masking, frequency used, range, modulation (AM/FM), encrypting and power of radio transmitter to accurately render radio communications.

• Discord: This platform specializes in text, image, video and audio communication between users in a chat channel. Contrary to SRS and Teamspeak, the server is hosted in the company's data-centers; you can access it either by installing the app, or in a navigator window.

Cockpit extraction

For most of us, one screen or a VR headset is all we need for total immersion. But for a happy few, having the RWR, UFC and MFDs on a secondary (quaternary?) screen/touch screens is the way to go.

• Helios is a virtual cockpit simulator for DCS. It let you create virtual cockpits, which allow you to increase your immersion. Profiles can be created or downloaded to allow you to simulate MFDS, switches, knobs, gauges and more complex instruments which can then be mapped into DCS to give a much improved experience. Many people use a touch screen monitor with their virtual cockpits but it is also possible to run the cockpit on a remote PC/Laptop. Have a look.

• Capt Zeen profiles Going to use Helios ? Perfect, Capt Zeen offers an impressive library of Helios profiles for the major modules with the corresponding DCS monitor config.

• Harrier AV-8B profile for Helios.

• Ikarus is a solution for virtual cockpits for DCS like Helios. With it you can be display many gauges of aircrafts and helicopters using DCS ExportScript.

• DCS Interface for StreamDeck is a plugin that allows you to create buttons and interfaces that update with DCS events. There are currently three settings for each Streamdeck button you create.

• DCSFlightpanels primary use is for using Saitek/Logitech panels and Stream Deck in DCS. Together with DCS-BIOS you can manage every control for the aircraft and use the Radio Panel to operate cockpit radio equipment and also show data from the aircraft in the Multipanel & Backlit Panel. You can use multiple panels of each type and configure them separately. It also supports SRS.

• aInstruments is a paid Android tablet or phone app that show aircraft instruments from DCS. It also shows kneepad pages and SAMs threat pages. It can automaticaly dial GPS coordinates from map on Hornet or Harrier UFC as waypoint or as JDAM, JSOW targets on Hornet. Server part runs on computer where DCS World is installed and client part runs on your Android device.

Skinning

Skinning as its name implies is the act of making or editing a texture for a 3D model of an object like an aircraft or a ship. The output is a bunch of DDS image files, plus a text description file (description.lua).

• Model Viewer 2: This tool is provided by ED and included with DCS in the bin directory. It let you open the 3D models of aircrafts (*.edm files), apply your skins and play the included animations (Ex: deploying landing gears) to test and see how your skin is behaving without opening DCS.

• The Gimp skins are made and edited with Photoshop, but if you don't have it and don't want to buy it, The Gimp is the best (only?) alternative you have. It's a free open source image manipulation software that can open and edit Photoshop PSD files.

• NVIDIA Texture Tools Exporter this complete toolbox let you open and save DDS files directly from Photoshop, or convert images to DDS via a standalone program if you use The Gimp. It also generates Normal Maps for your skins. This version is optimized to run faster on NVIDIA GPUs. If you have old Photoshop version, you can still use Texture Tools old Photoshop plugin.

• AMD Compressonator is a standalone toolbox form AMD that let you convert images to DDS via a standalone program. This version is optimized to run faster on AMD GPUs. You can download it here, look for CompressonatorGUI_x64______.exe.

• Intel Texture Works is another Photoshop plugin for exporting DDS files.

• DXTBmp after making your skin using The Gimp in a bitmap format, this tool will let you convert the resulting files into DDS files, more suitable for the DCS 3D engine.

• Aircraft Texture Templates:

  • ED & Partners templates: in this repository you'll find the texture templates for most of DCS aircrafts.

  • Razbam templates for the Mirage 2000, Harrier and the MIG-19.

  • Heatblur templates for the AJS-37 Viggen and the F-14 Tomcat.

  • Heclak template for the Community A-4E-C.