The new Distribution System works very differently compared to the old ORS. For one, there can be return trips consisting of two itineraries. But there are other differences as well: The DS doesn’t compute absolute product ratings, but each virtual passenger uses their own criteria to judge each offered connection. And eventually, the price of an itinerary won’t be merely the total of each individual leg’s price, but it will come from a Fare, the details of which might be relevant to players.
To do all this justice, the DS is getting a new search UI.
In this post, I want to document the current state of development, near-term plans, known issues and anything else one should be aware of when playing with this preview.
Note: Since the new search interface requires the new Gen-3 UI framework, it is only enabled in Paine. Other game worlds already running the Distribution System will remain limited to the legacy ORS interface until the release of the Gen-3 UI.
State of development
As of 2026-10-26
- The new interface is based on the Gen-3 UI framework, so it’s a client-based frontend talking to an API on the backend.
- It is “mobile-ready”, so in principle, it should work on smaller devices.
- Basic search features:
- Search by origin and destination (obviously)
- button to reverse the route
- base options for one-way/return trips, minimum capacity (0 to 9) and service class
- Result ordering by
- Neutral Display Order (default)
- Departure Time (based on first segment for return trips)
- Arrival Time (based on first segment for return trips)
- Travel Time
- Price
- Option to reverse the sort order
- Extended search options:
- Earliest Departure and Latest Arrival (based on first segment for return trips)
- Maximum stops
- Whether to use ground networks or not
- Ability to clear the full search or reset individual criteria to their default
- Result display
- Proper display for return trips (showing two itineraries)
- Use of new square logos and brand colors in results
- Only a single price per itinerary is shown
- Fare Basis Code shown in results
- Visual emphasis is put on itineraries with all legs operated by the same carrier, showing the logo of the “plating carrier”. For other itineraries, it falls back to a neutral “Multiple carriers” view.
As of 2026-10-28
- New filter criteria:
- Plating carriers: only trips with itineraries plated by the selected carriers get shown
- Require matching inbound carrier: Limits results to trips that have the same plating carrier on both the outbound and the inbound itinerary. Hidden when searching for one-way trip.
Upcoming enhancements/changes
New filter criterion: Plating carrier- New filter criterion: Alliance (exact functionality TBD)
- Speculative: Routing Codes inspired by Matrix (allowing complex queries by carriers, connection points etc.)
- Display of service attributes for flights (catering, seats, leg room etc.)
- Display of fare details when clicking/hovering the Fare Basis Code
Known Issues/Limitations
- Visual design is in progress, both in terms of mobile compatibility as well as styling in general.
- Colors in alternative themes have not been optimised yet (dark being the default, light and classic being the alternatives).
- Large results and/or switching between pages of large result sets might be slow/sluggish.
- Localisation of the new UI is incomplete except for the English version.
Things to look out for
- The DS always generates physical connections first, sorting them by Neutral Display Order. Only then are availabilities generated from inventories and fares. Since this amount of physical connections has a technical limit, some very unlikely connections might not show up in results, even though there are tens of thousands of availabilities (particularly with return trips, where there are many potential inbound-outbound combinations of the same itineraries).