Find your wingman again: introducing DCS Wingman
Every night we watch the same story play out across about 300 DCS servers. Two pilots meet on a server, fly together for two hours, save each other twice, and log off. The next evening they are both online again, on different servers, looking for each other in a list of names they half remember. DCS World has no friend list, no way to see which server a friend is on, and no in-game path to a server's Discord. Pilots have asked Eagle Dynamics for this since 2013.
In October, Plasma and Rez spent a Red Shack episode on exactly this problem. They called it the multiplayer desert: plenty of servers, plenty of pilots, and no way to find the people you want to fly with. They asked for someone to build the missing piece. We host more DCS servers than anyone, so we decided it should be us.
Today we are announcing DCS Wingman. It is free, it is open source under the MIT license, and it is rolling out across the Fox3 hosted fleet now.
What it does
On any server that runs DCS Wingman, you get one line in chat when you connect. From there, everything happens in the chat box you already use:
-friend Mavericksends a friend request to the pilot named Maverick.-friendslists your wingmen and tells you which server each one is on right now.-unfriend Maverickremoves a wingman.-wingman offhides you from everyone and deletes your location.-wingman onbrings you back.-wingmanprints the help.
There is one rule, and it is the rule that makes the whole thing work: you can only friend a pilot who is on the same server as you at that moment, and they have to friend you back. That is how wingmen are made in real life, and it keeps the system free of spam. A stranger on another server cannot add you. Only someone you actually flew with can.
Pilots install nothing. The server does the work.
What it does for server owners
Server owners add one Lua file to Scripts\Hooks and a small config file. That is the whole install. The server then appears in the public directory at wingman.fox3cloud.com with its mission, player count, Discord invite and SRS address, so a pilot looking for a place to fly tonight can find you, your community and your radio frequency in one place.
Every server hosted by Fox3 will run DCS Wingman by default. Customers who prefer to stay out can turn it off with one line in the config, and support will do it on request.
Privacy, stated plainly
Your DCS identity is stored only as a keyed hash. The raw ID never touches the database. The public directory shows player counts, never names. -wingman off hides you and deletes your location immediately. Friendships are mutual and private. The whole service is a few hundred lines of Python you can read on GitHub, and every change to it goes through an independent code review before it ships.
Why we built it this way
We could have built a Fox3 feature and kept it for our customers. We built a community project instead. DCS Wingman is independent, sponsored by Fox3 Managed Solutions, and open to every server in DCS whether we host it or not. The social layer only works if it covers the whole game. A friend list that stops at one hosting company is a contact list.
DCS Wingman is not an Eagle Dynamics product and is not affiliated with Eagle Dynamics. DCS World is a trademark of Eagle Dynamics SA. If ED ever ships a native friend list, we will point everyone at it and retire ours with a smile.
What comes next
The chat commands are the first tier. Next comes a client mod with an in-game friends window and a Join button, so you see where your wingmen are flying and get there in one click. After that: Discord notifications when a friend comes online, and squadron pages in the directory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3UmxaO_ThE
How to help
Pilots: ask your favorite server to add DCS Wingman. The install guide is on GitHub and takes a few minutes.
Server owners: grab the hook and the config example at github.com/Fox3Luck/DCS-Wingman, register your server, and tell your pilots the commands.
Everyone: join the Fox3 Discord to follow the launch, report what is missing, and tell us who you found again.
Thank you to Plasma and Rez and the Red Shack for naming the problem out loud. This one is for every pilot who ever typed "anyone seen Maverick?" into a server chat.
Find your wingman again.
Ready to fly?
Get a fully managed DCS World or IL-2 server. Most customers are flying within an hour.
