A digital battlefield built around real aircraft
DCS World is a free-to-play sandbox simulation of military aircraft, ground and armor vehicles, and naval units. You start with two flyable aircraft: the Russian Sukhoi Su-25T "Frogfoot" ground attack jet and the North American TF-51D Mustang fighter from WWII. Two maps come with it — the eastern Black Sea region covering southwestern Russia and Georgia, and the Mariana Islands, a 1,500 x 1,000km area of land and ocean built for naval operations with Andersen AFB and the airfields on Rota, Tinian and Saipan. The Caucasus map holds 20 operational airbases along with civil and military infrastructure and thousands of kilometers of roads and railway.
The simulation runs on the Eagle Dynamics Graphics Engine with multi-layer volumetric clouds carrying wind, precipitation and air pressure, and it holds up from 0 to 80,000 feet. Cockpits are mouse-interactive with 6 degrees of freedom, and the flight models, weapons systems, sensors, targeting systems and sounds are built to be accurate. Hundreds of AI weapons systems, ground units, armored vehicles, air defense systems, ships and AI-controlled aircraft populate the battlefield. Full virtual reality support is included.
Playing with your group
Network play is a core part of DCS World, with thousands of online servers running PvP and PvE. Multi-Crew lets your group share a single aircraft over the network, with each person handling a different station. The sandbox covers multiple time periods — WWII, Korean War, Vietnam, Gulf War and others — so a group can set up scenarios across different eras. Current regions to battle include the Black Sea, Marianas, Nevada Test and Training Range, Persian Gulf, English Channel, Syria, and Normandy 1944.
The Mission Editor is one of the main tools for playing together. One person can build a mission quickly and hand it to the rest of the group, or you can write your own missions and campaigns from scratch. A Community Files section carries user-created modifications, skins and missions, so there is always more material to pull from.
Before you start
DCS World is a deep and realistic simulation, and it is designed to be tailored to any level of experience. Expect a learning curve on the aircraft systems — training exists for complex weapons systems like the F/A-18C Hornet, F-16C Viper and AH-64D, which points to how detailed the study-level aircraft get. The free download gives you the Su-25T, the TF-51D, the Caucasus map and the Mariana Islands map; other aircraft and regions such as the Persian Gulf, Syria, Normandy 1944 and the Nevada Test and Training Range sit outside that base package. Hundreds of missions and campaigns are available, with new ones added over time.