The latest DCS World news is circulating around Orbx’s DCS: Kola map with the future updates of the map laid out in a kind of mini roadmap as well as plenty of news from Baltic Dragon and Reflected Simulation’s dual Arctic Thunder campaigns for DCS: F-16C Viper and DCS: F/A-18C Hornet. Let’s have a look at the latest DCS World news.

More Kola improvements

Yesterday I reported on a video that Orbx released talking about recent updates to the DCS: Kola map. Looking at recent updates is great but we flight simmers love a good roadmap towards future improvements as well and the latest DCS World Weekend News update has some of that too. Here’s what they had to say:

The next release will see the inclusion of Andoya (ENAN) airfield in Norway and Alakurtti (RU-0059) airfield in Russia with some additional infrastructure in the surrounding areas. Orbx has also reviewed a series of bugs and errors aiming for small performance improvements. 

Future releases will see the addition of more airfields and surrounding infrastructure including: Evenes (ENEV), Bardufoss (ENDU), Kittilä Airport (EFKT), Enontekiö Airport (EFET), Pudasjärvi Airfield (EFPU), and Sodankylä Airfield (EFSO). Beyond these, Cold War-era installations, military airfields, and other key points of interest are also planned. 

Plenty of content additions with the new airports and installations being added to the map. Although DCS: Kola was a little sparsely populated when first launched, it appears that the map is receiving some relatively aggressive updates and is moving in a good direction post launch.

Arctic Thunder campaigns update

We’ve got a bunch of content coming out from both Reflected Simulations and Baltic Dragon. These two are among the top names when it comes to DCS World Scripted Campaign content and seeing the two of them pair up to provide single player experiences across the DCS: Kola map is really outstanding.

Some of the recent updated information includes a campaign guide, released by Reflected Simulations, covering a wide range of topics that are going to be essential for playing the campaign. Operating the radios, wingman control, aerial refuelling, and more. Reflected does spend a bit of time talking about how it is a challenging campaign intended to get the maximum out of the DCS: F-16C (for his campaign, and no doubt the F/A-18 for Baltic’s campaign).

There’s also an early review out by content creator Apollo who goes over the campaign in some detail as well.

Baltic Dragon has also been talking about the campaign offering up a chronology of events between the Hornet and Viper versions of the campaign. If you want to fly chronologically, jumping between the two jets, you can but you’re not obligated to as the two will both be telling their story.

In case you were wondering in which order it is best play the Arctic Thunder campaigns: if you get both (which we strongly encourage) and alternate between my Hornet and Reflected Simulations Viper, by following this table you’ll fly the missions chronologically. The ones with asterisk happen simultaneously.

Baltic Dragon

Here’s the chronology:

Baltic Dragon has, in recent days, also released a teaser called “Arctic Thunder: Brown Shoe.”

The campaigns have reportedly just been submitted to Eagle Dynamics for testing so I imagine that we’ll be seeing these sooner than later. It may be several weeks or a couple of months depending on how long the process takes though I expect it to be on the nearer term.