DKS ATC: Reading the Scope

The scope is the whole middle of the screen: every track the feed carries, drawn on a map, with its data block, vector and history. This page explains everything it draws and how to change it. For what each panel does, see the Overview.

Symbols

Every track's affiliation is shown by its shape as well as its color, so the scope reads correctly for color-blind controllers. Aircraft use an open frame that points along the track; ships, ground units and statics use a closed frame that never rotates.

The dot means "not confirmed": assumed rather than declared. A contact the other side flies is a bogey until you declare it hostile; DKS ATC never says hostile on its own (see Declarations).

• Altitude order. Higher aircraft are drawn on top of lower ones.
• Coasting. A track the feed has stopped reporting keeps moving on its last course in gray for up to 20 seconds, then fades. A coasting track is not a live position.
• Selected and hovered. The selected track has a ring; hovering a track, a group in a panel or a call in the Call deck highlights it on the scope.
• Airfields are drawn as the planner map's airport icon, smaller and in grays: a dark disc with the main runway as a bar through it at its real heading. The field's name carries its owner's color; a hovered or pinned field gets a ring in that color. Carriers and other airfield ships are a diamond; helipads and FARPs an H. Closer in, runways are drawn to scale with their end numbers.

Names

Every surface (data block, Flights, Objects, strips, alerts, the carrier board) calls an aircraft by the same name:

1. A human pilot, when the feed says so, by their player name exactly as it is sent, for example "WHK | Alien Dad". A pilot name that is only a callsign ("Viper 1-1") counts as no name. A controller can rename a flight or a pilot from Flights; the new name is used everywhere.
2. Otherwise the radio callsign in compact form, such as VIPER11.
3. Otherwise the pilot text exactly as the feed sends it, never squashed or shortened into a code.
4. Otherwise the DCS group's name when it is shaped like a callsign.
5. Otherwise the track number, such as TN4012.

The Flights panel shows each flight as its callsign with the players flying it beside it, for example BROADSIDE 1 · Miyagi. A long callsign is shortened first; the player's name is kept whole. The pencil on a row renames the flight or its pilots.

Human or AI. Only the DKS exporter and DCS Olympus report who is human. On a plain Tacview feed DKS ATC does not guess from names: flights are left unmarked, the "AI" tag appears only when the feed says AI, and the Humans only filter in Flights appears only when the feed reports it.

Feed status

The scope's border and the badge at the top left of the top bar tell you how fresh the picture is:

Recordings and drills read PLAYBACK in the top bar.

Delayed servers. Some servers delay their Tacview stream (Tacview's anti-cheat delay) and encrypt it until the delay has passed. DKS ATC holds every position until it can read it, so for the first delay (often 10 minutes) the scope stays empty and says Waiting for the first picture and how long the delay is. Every position you then see is that old. A server that announces a delay of 0 is not delayed, and its picture shows at once.

A connected scope with no aircraft at all shows the same card with Connected. No aircraft on the feed yet.

Data blocks

Each aircraft has a short data block beside it, joined by a leader line.

• Collapsed and expanded. Blocks are one or two short lines. Hover or select a track to expand its block into the full read-out. The ✕ on an open block closes it (it deselects the track).
• Placement. Blocks spread out around their tracks so they never overlap, symbols or each other. Drag a block to place it yourself; it keeps that place relative to the track's direction of flight, and Ctrl+Z puts it back.
• Hiding. Shift+X hides the hovered track's block; a hidden block shows a + when you open it, which shows it again. Layers → Data blocks you changed lists hidden and moved blocks and resets them.
• Missing data. A word the feed cannot supply drops out, so a block never shows an empty field.
• One block per group or per aircraft. In GCI, wingmen inside a 6 × 6 NM box around their lead share the lead's block, colored for the whole formation; in ATC every aircraft has its own. Change it under Layers → Data blocks → One per, or for either mode in Settings → Data blocks. Two of your own flights flying close together stay two groups with a block each.
• On the ground. Aircraft parked or taxiing, vehicles and static objects have no block until you hover or select them, so an airfield doesn't bury the airborne picture. Tick Layers → Data blocks on the ground to show them. Ships keep their blocks.

What blocks show is set in Settings → Data blocks: five layouts (Standard, Callsign and altitude, Detailed, Approach and tower, Ground), each with a sample block. Customize… edits the text of each block, per kind of track (friendly, hostile, other aircraft, surface, weapon) and for collapsed and expanded blocks, with a live preview. A block is plain text with words in braces that DKS ATC fills in:

Your edits show as Custom. Picking a layout again replaces them; Undo (or Ctrl+Z) brings them back.

Vectors, history and missiles

• Velocity vectors (Shift+V) end where the track will be in 1, 2, 3 or 5 minutes, with a tick per minute, or scale with ground speed. Set the length under Layers → Velocity vectors.
• History dots (Shift+H) trail behind each track; set how many and how far apart under Layers → History dots. With Radar sweep on, there is one dot per sweep, where the aircraft stood for it, and a dot never moves once drawn.
• Missiles draw as darts with a short trail and a dashed line back to the shooter and, on a DKS/2 feed, a dotted line to their target.
• Off-scope groups. Hostile and bogey groups beyond the edge of the scope show as chevrons on the edge, nearest first.

The Map menu

The Map icon in the scope controls holds everything about the map under the tracks. Every change applies at once and is remembered in this browser.

• Style. DCS map (dark) is the default: a dark chart drawn for the scope from the game's own terrain, roads, borders, towns and water, with black water and light roads and names, so tracks stand out. DCS map is DKS's aeronautical chart of the same data in color. Scope is muted satellite imagery; Plain a clean street map without labels; Imagery full-color imagery; Off no map at all. The DCS styles need a squadron and work on every DCS theater; elsewhere the Scope style shows, and the menu says why.
• Brightness dims or brightens whichever style shows.
• Bloom adds a glow to aircraft, vectors, history and missiles. The map, rings, airfields and labels stay sharp.
• Bullseye. Turn it on or off, name it (the name is used in every bullseye call, for example "ROCK 090/40"), and set its rings: spacing, count, spokes and which north the spokes follow. Center on it moves the scope there. A bullseye a controller moved can be put back with Use the mission's.
• Range rings (Shift+R) are centered on the selected track, else a pinned airfield, else the scope center; set spacing and count.
• Threat rings (Shift+T) circle enemy SAM sites. A solid ring is the site's live engagement range from the feed (DKS/2, Olympus); a dashed one is estimated from its type. Hover a ring for its type and range. No ring does not mean safe: early-warning radars and MANPADS draw none. Friendly SAM coverage adds your own side's rings.
• Radar coverage (off by default) draws, for each of your side's radars that is on, where it would see an aircraft at the Altitude you pick (MSL) and, optionally, of a given Target size (radar cross-section; a fighter is about 4 m², a bomber 100 m²): DCS's range for the radar, the radio horizon and the terrain in the way. A fighter's radar draws as a wedge ahead of it. It is the edge of continuous cover: an aircraft beaming the radar is still lost in its clutter filter, and the blind cone above a search radar is not drawn.
• Airfields and their extended centerlines (10 NM, a tick every mile). Zoomed in on a field, Taxiways draw as thin centerlines, and in ATC mode Pavement fills the focused airfield's runways and taxiways and Parking stands marks its stands and helipads (see the ground view).

Mission drawings follow their DCS layer: common and neutral drawings for everyone, a coalition's layer for that coalition, the author layer for squadron admins only.

Layers and filters

Layers turns on what the scope draws, each layer with its options under it:

• Tracks: velocity vectors, history dots, data blocks, ground units, weapons and off-scope hostiles.

• Map: NAV GRID.

• Airspace: the bound DKS design's airspace (ROZ, CAP, kill boxes, FEBA, corridors and orbits), the mission's drawings and F10 marks, planned routes, your own drawings, and your imported maps (see below). Then the minimum altitudes, worked out from the DCS terrain and its tall obstacles:

  • MVA: the minimum vectoring altitude chart. Each sector shows its value in hundreds of feet (in meters with metric units): 1,000 ft above the highest terrain or obstacle within 3 NM of it, 2,000 ft in mountainous terrain. Like a real chart, it has a few large sectors (at least 60 NM² each) rather than one value per square: small areas take the value of a higher neighbor, never a lower one, so parts of a sector are higher than the rule needs. Shade by value darkens the higher sectors.
  • Grid MORA: a value for every 30′ square: 1,000 ft above the highest terrain or obstacle in it, 2,000 ft where that is above 5,000 ft.
  • MSA: a 25 NM circle around the focused airfield with its minimum sector altitude: 1,000 ft above everything inside. Quadrants splits it into four sectors on magnetic bearings.

  These come from game data, not real charts. They include a margin for the terrain data's error. Some theaters have no minimum altitudes yet; the row says so.

• Airfields and approach: the carrier's final bearing.

Layers are remembered per mode: GCI and ATC can show different things.

Filters decides which tracks are drawn. The first line says how many are shown, dimmed and hidden right now.

• Preset. Everything, Air picture, Threats, Low level, High and Ground (parked aircraft shown, ground vehicles at every range) are built in; Save as preset keeps your own (up to 12).
• Classification. Untick a declaration to dim (or hide) those tracks.
• Kinds. Untick aircraft, helicopters, ground units, ships, weapons or statics to hide them.
• Bands. An altitude and a speed band; tracks outside are dimmed (or hidden).
• Out of filter. Whether filtered tracks are dimmed or hidden.
• Hide parked aircraft (on the ground and under 15 kt).
• Ground units show only at or inside a scope range you choose, so a SAM belt does not clutter a wide picture.

The selected and followed tracks are never hidden. Reset returns to the defaults.

Imported maps

Bring your own reference maps onto the scope: sector maps, approach fans, a squadron's or an event's airspace. In Layers, the Imported maps row has an import button and a manage button, and lists each map with its color, a switch to show it and a labels switch. You can also open both from Ctrl+K ("Import video maps", "Manage imported maps").

Import takes one or more files, dropped or picked:

• GeoJSON, including one feature per line and ATC video maps in the vNAS/CRC style (line styles, thickness and text labels are kept);
• KML or KMZ (each top-level folder becomes its own map);
• a DCS mission (.miz): each drawing layer and the trigger zones;
• LotATC drawings (the JSON LotATC saves);
• OpenAir airspace text (polygons, circles and arcs);
• CSV points: ID,lat,lon rows, decimal or degrees-minutes-seconds;
• a .zip holding any of these (up to 500 files and 200 MB once unpacked).

Before importing you see one row per map found: untick what you do not want, rename it, and for line work whose lines end where they start, tick Close lines into polygons so they become areas. A warning says when most of a map lies outside the scope's theater; it is still kept with this theater's maps. Importing a file with the same name again replaces the maps it made before (keeping their color and switches).

Maps are kept in this browser, per theater: a Nevada map is there whenever you open a Nevada scope. Manage lets you rename, recolor (or go back to the file's own colors), fill areas or draw them as outlines, hide labels, export a map as GeoJSON, and delete it (Ctrl+Z brings it back).

Share with my side (in Manage, while a shared session is joined) shows the map to every controller on your side. A very detailed map is simplified to fit; Manage then says how many points the shared copy kept, and your own copy stays as it was. Maps other controllers share are listed under yours: hide them, hide their labels, export them, or keep a copy as one of your maps. A side shares up to 24 maps at a time: a map shared past that says Not shared in Manage, and goes out by itself once a teammate stops sharing one. A map you share from another browser shows as "shared by you", with a button to stop sharing it.

Imported maps are for reference: they draw under everything else and no alert reads them.

Moving around and measuring

A bar hangs from the top of the scope:

• Layers: the layers you flip most, one click each (data blocks, data blocks on the ground, velocity vectors, history dots, ground units, threat rings, range rings, airspaces, design airspace). They are the same switches as the Layers and Map menus and the Shift keys.

• Following names the track the scope keeps centered; click it (or press Esc) to stop.

• The selected track (its name is the caption): Follow, Center, Measure from here, Hook BRAA from here, and Hide data block.

• Working names the working flight; click it to stop working it (so does W on one of its aircraft). On another friendly, Work this flight switches to it, and Bogey dope gives a BRAA from it; on anything else, Hook BRAA from the working flight.

Hover a button for its key. The same actions are on the track's right-click menu.

Each measured leg reads its distance, its bearing and its magnetic bearing, the same text as the planner map. On a DCS theater the unmarked bearing is the DCS grid bearing, and the distance is the grid distance, so a leg reads the same range as BRAA between the same two points. Elsewhere both are true (great-circle). The cursor readout shows the leg you are drawing and the total (Σ); click the distance to switch NM and km. NM or km is one setting across DKS: the planner, the debrief and DKS ATC follow it together.

The RNG chip at the bottom left is the scope's range across its short side, next to a scale bar.

Focus views

A focus view is a second, smaller scope floating over the main one, so you can keep one aircraft, an airfield or a spot in view while the main scope looks elsewhere:

• On a track: Open focus view on its right-click menu, the box-with-arrow button on the bar at the top of the scope when it is selected, or Ctrl+K "Open a focus view on the selected track". The view follows the track. If you pan away, the eye button in its bottom-right corner follows it again; if the track leaves the picture, the corner says lost.
• On an airfield: Open focus view on the airfield's right-click menu.
• On a spot: Open focus view here on the map's right-click menu.

Drag a focus view by its title bar and resize it from its bottom-right corner. Its box-with-arrow button pops it out into its own browser window (to put it on a second monitor, for instance), keeping where it was looking; × closes it. Up to four focus views stay open at once; a fifth closes the oldest.

A focus view has its own map: the thin bar across its top opens its own Map, Layers and Filters settings, and its icons show or hide data blocks, vectors, history dots, ground units and rings, without changing the main scope. It starts with the main scope's settings and remembers its own.

A focus view opens close in (15 NM around a track or a spot, 6 NM around an airfield) and has the same layers, filters, data blocks and right-click menus as the main scope. Selecting a track in it selects it everywhere; following, panning and zooming are its own. It reopens where you left it, and an airfield or spot view at the same view.

The picture you are seeing

The picture badge in the top bar says what the scope is showing; click it (or press Alt+S) to switch the sensor picture on or off.

Unless the feed reports what each side detects (a DKS/2 server with detections, or Olympus), DKS ATC models it from DCS's own radar data. An enemy aircraft, helicopter or missile is on your scope while at least one of your side's radars can see it:

1. Switched on. A radar the feed reports off sees nothing.
2. Where it looks. The aircraft is inside the radar's scan: not too high above it (a search radar has a blind cone straight up) and, for a fighter's radar, inside its cone ahead of the nose.
3. Range. The aircraft is inside the radar's detection range from DCS: further for an aircraft flying at the radar than for one flying away, and for some radars shorter when looking down at it.
4. Size. Smaller aircraft are seen a little closer: the range is scaled by the aircraft's DCS radar cross-section, by at most 20 % (a stealth jet is still seen at 80 % of the range).
5. Not beaming. An aircraft flying across the radar's line of sight, slower toward or away from it than the radar's DCS limit (about 100 kt for the 1L13 and 55G6), is lost in the clutter filter. So is a hovering helicopter.
6. Line of sight. The path from the radar to the aircraft clears the terrain, on the curved earth radar engineers use (4/3 of the real radius, for the way radar bends in the atmosphere). Low aircraft behind hills, or past the horizon, are hidden.

The radars are your side's ground search and early-warning radars, ships and AWACS (on unless the feed says off), and fighters while the feed says their radar is on. A contact stays for 8 seconds after it leaves cover, then coasts and fades like any lost track. Enemy ground units and ships stay on the scope as known positions. Jamming is shown, not simulated.

What the model knows depends on the feed, and the Feed panel says which applies:

• Stock Tacview cannot say whether a radar is on, whether anyone is jamming, or what DCS's own sensors detect. Every search radar, ship and AWACS is taken as on, fighters' radars are left out, and datalink, RWR and visual contacts never show.
• The DKS exporter reports radars on and off and jammers, so a radar switched off stops seeing and a fighter with its radar on adds to the picture.
• DKS/2 with detections, or Olympus, reports what DCS itself detects, by radar, datalink, RWR, IRST or eye: no model needed.

Properties → Systems shows a contact's radar (emitting or off), its jammers, and, for the other side's contacts, how your side holds it (Radar, Datalink, RWR…). The {held} and {ecm} data-block words show the same on the scope.

Radar sweep

Settings → Radar sweep (off by default) makes the scope move the way a real one does: every aircraft holds still and jumps once per sweep, leaving a history dot behind, and the dots never move. With the sensor picture on, each radar paints at its DCS scan period (1 second for most search radars, 10 for AWACS, 12 for ship radars; fighter radars every 3 to 10 seconds), the scope sweeps at half your slowest radar's period, and each contact jumps to where a radar last painted it; one no radar painted in a sweep steps on its last course. Without the sensor picture the scope sweeps at half the history-dot interval.

It hides undetected contacts from the scope, the PICTURE, the alerts and every panel; it is a training view, not a lock (your browser still receives everything). For a picture the other side cannot see past, launch with Coalition from a squadron server.