Eagle Dynamics

Founded in 1991 by Nick Grey and Igor Tishin, the company teamed up with publisher Strategic Simulations (SSI) to produce its first game, a combat flight simulator. Released in November 1995, Su-27 Flanker offered players the opportunity to engage in combat aboard the eponymous aircraft over the Crimean peninsula.[6]

Flanker 2.0 was released in 1999. Developers have incorporated better graphics, training missions, multiplayer, and the naval variant of the Su-27, the Sukhoi Su-33, into this release. The theater of operations remained limited to Crimea. Although graphically very accomplished, the game had a significant number of bugs.[7]

In 2019, one of the company's developers, Oleg Tishchenko, was extradited from Georgia to the United States on charges of illegally acquiring documentation for an F-16 fighter and smuggling its technical manuals to Moscow.[8] In June 2019, Tishchenko returned home. He was sentenced by the Utah District Court to a term of 12 months and 1 day. But since the term of his conviction had already been served during the investigation period, after the trial, Oleg was released for immediate deportation from the United States.[9]

Eagle Dynamics has developed a number of combat flight simulators with each iteration becoming a more and more detailed iteration. DCS: Black Shark was the first simulator to feature a fully functional cockpit with a near total simulation of all onboard systems including sensors, controls and interfaces. It was paired with a "game" version of the simulator which was less complex and more in line with Eagle Dynamic's previous products. Ka-50: Black shark also launched under a new title, Digital Combat Simulator, to indicate this increased level of fidelity. After this Eagle Dynamics has primarily developed high fidelity aircraft under the DCS label. In 2012 DCS upgraded to DCS: World which allowed players to use all of their owned DCS aircraft simulators plus Flaming Cliffs 3 in a single program as modules and allowed connecting to others online using any number of modules at the same time. DCS: World also marked the start of Eagle Dynamics publishing flight simulators developed by third parties such as Belsimtek's UH-1H Huey. DCS is also developed in tandem with The Battle Simulator (TBS) which is a simulator sold typically to government clients for use in pilot training programs and has developed trainers for the A-10C Suite 5.1 and AC-130 gunner controls and sensor systems which was also used in training drone pilots.

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