Major Update Enhances DCS Airspace with New Targeting and UI Features
We are introducing a significant update for DCS Airspace, packed with new features designed to enhance collaborative situational awareness and streamline user control. This release marks a major step forward, introducing powerful new tactical capabilities and a more flexible user interface.
At the heart of this update is a comprehensive rework of the targeting and tactical information sharing systems. Users can now select and "target" enemy units, instantly generating a real-time connection line on the map. This tactical visualization automatically syncs across all connected users in your session, allowing for unprecedented coordination. The ability to add vital BRAA information to these targets is now a separate function, giving you precise control over your tactical overlay. Even if you haven't targeted a unit yourself, you'll see a clear visual representation of what your teammates are focused on, complete with specific icons and information that appears on hover.
Other two important new features are Groups of Responsibility and Tracks of Interest, both designed to streamline battlefield management and enhance tactical control.
Groups of Responsibility are designed for collaborative teamwork. These groups are instantly visible to all users in a session, allowing you to clearly communicate your tactical focus. The groups you create are displayed with a dedicated symbology, while the same groups created by other users appear with a distinct visual style, giving you a quick way to differentiate between your responsibilities and those of your teammates.
Tracks of Interest, on the other hand, are a personal tool for individual situational awareness. These tracks are visible only to you, allowing you to highlight specific units you want to maintain focus on without cluttering the displays of your teammates.
Both features have unique filter logic: when hidden by filters, both your Groups of Responsibility and your Tracks of Interest remain visible on the map with a dedicated dashed symbology, ensuring you never lose sight of your most critical targets.
To complement these new capabilities, the map display has been reorganized with a new layered filtering system, giving you more granular control over what you see. You can now filter air tracks by altitude and ground speed, while still maintaining visual awareness of filtered units that are linked via targeting functionalities. We've also added new extended options to customize map labels and layer opacity, with all your preferences now saved for future sessions. Several new keyboard shortcuts have been introduced, allowing for fast and efficient control of these new features, from managing filters to handling targeting symbology.
Finally, we've enhanced the realism of our Air Defense System (ADS) threat circles. Both friendly and enemy threat circles now have smarter display logic, accurately reflecting a group's operational status and dynamically changing in real time. This delivers a more authentic and immersive battlefield experience.
These improvements, along with several important bug fixes, make DCS Airspace more powerful and intuitive than ever before. We encourage you to dive in and explore the new ways you can manage the battlefield.
We have also implemented small but useful changes to our other tools. There are now new airfields in the Cold War Germany theatre, along with new local navigation points near Ramstein AB. The DCS AOC Tools' Project Dashboard has been enhanced with a new "Project Availability and Permissions" section, and the feature selection context menus have been improved in both DCS AOC Tools and DCS Mission Planner for a smoother user experience.
