TARS: Tactical Aviation Radio System pour DCS & Teamspeak 3

TARS is a plugin which will allow you to integrate DCS: A-10 with Teamspeak 3.

The concept is simple: No channel switching in Teamspeak to ruin
immersion. Rather, multiplayer communication ought to be accomplished by
setting the radio in the plane to an agreed upon frequency and using
that. You have radios in the game, so why not be able to extend that
level of immersion to the multiplayer environment using Teamspeak? If
other Teamspeak users are on that radio channel and they're in the same
Teamspeak 3 channel as you, they will be able to communicate with you
over any of the radios in your aircraft. If you die and/or go to
spectator mode, you will automatically be placed into a parallel
“virtual channel” where you can communicate with your fellow spectators
without having to switch channels in Teamspeak.

We hope to release a beta for testing in early 2011. Since we are in a
very early phase of development now, the TARS team's current goal is to
gather input from the community at this stage, just in case there's a
gem of a feature that heavy-MP users need that we can try to implement
in the first phase of the project.



Planned features include:

• Automatic control of your radio
  communications based on what channel you're tuned to and whether or not
  your radios are on. If you are on a given channel that other players are
  on, you'll be able to communicate with them without having to worry if
  you're in the correct Teamspeak channel.
  
• Dead/Spectator enforcement. If you get killed in-game, you will be
  sent into a spectator mode where you'll be able to communicate with
  other players who are dead and/or spectating.
  
• Radio effective range enforcement. VFM FM radio, for instance, has a
  limited broadcast range when compared to its AM counterpart. This ought
  to reflect in gameplay.
  
• TARS is planned around a client based architecture, with no need to
  install extra software or otherwise modify the Teamspeak 3 server where
  you play.
  
• Planned future integration with Black Shark once A-10 integration is complete.
  
• If possible (and as a secondary objective), we'll be adding radio
  filter effects based on things like distance and radio type, for a more
  immersive gaming experience.
  

There are plenty of additional goodies that may become possible in
the future. However the above are the main gameplay-enhancing goals. The
purpose of this announcement is to engage the participation of the
community early in the development cycle so that we can be as responsive
as possible to your needs. When it comes time for beta testing, we plan
to fully engage the participation of the community.

Update: Here's a video from an early alpha build of TARS that demonstrates some of the above features:

TARS Alpha Demonstration for DCS A-10