ACMI compiler AKA don't wait to get to the debriefing
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Hopefully the talent displayed here with this utility will go on to improve other areas maybe as a Dev. Thanks again Loitho.
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I am glad to hear this, I look forward to it with impatience.
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Nice! Added bonus if it is in a seperate thread so you can view the 2D immediately and maybe frag a scramble if needed.
Because that is one of the major PITAs when doing a persistent campaign, you might just come back from a mission but have to do a scramble immediately. Even waiting two minutes until you can frag your flight and scramble is a lot of time!
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Sounds like Christmas is coming early
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Nice! Added bonus if it is in a seperate thread so you can view the 2D immediately and maybe frag a scramble if needed.
Because that is one of the major PITAs when doing a persistent campaign, you might just come back from a mission but have to do a scramble immediately. Even waiting two minutes until you can frag your flight and scramble is a lot of time!
or show it realtime on another monitor or network pcā¦.then we can have epic awacs lol
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or show it realtime on another monitor or network pcā¦.then we can have epic awacs lol
That sounds nice. But does it have all the needed info?
A major issue was the AI positions.Ī£ĻĪ¬Ī»ĪøĪ·ĪŗĪµ Ī±ĻĻ ĻĪæ MI 5 Ī¼ĪæĻ ĻĻĪ·ĻĪ¹Ī¼ĪæĻĪæĪ¹ĻĪ½ĻĪ±Ļ Tapatalk
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**Sorry gents!
Believe it or not, ACMI import speed has been a big PITA for us devs as well, so we actually took care of it already for 4.34ā¦ and in fact, we backported it to 4.33, together with some other critical fixed that popped up over the last year, and we will release an 4.33 U4 within the next week(!) that will have those improvements.
(ā¦and not to rain on your parade, but importing a 500mb flt will not even take 2min anymore)
I appreciate the effort taken here, but this is basically an unfortunate ācrossing the streamsā situation.**
ĀÆ_(ć)_/ĀÆ
In the end, this project was still very interesting to me, and I did it all by myself, so eh Iām not even mad ĀÆ_(ć)_/ĀÆ
However, I will add that my program should be compatible with any Falcon version, starting from FreeFalcon, so you can use it for BMS 4.32 if you still use that
Nice effort, very similar to Zipgunās release a few weeks ago.
Ah, the moving part was already done. I didnāt see his mod sadly. Mine add the multithreadded compilation time though
Nice! Added bonus if it is in a seperate thread so you can view the 2D immediately and maybe frag a scramble if needed.
Thatās actually the case, the program doesnāt compile anything for as long as you donāt ask him to do it. Itās just going to prevent Falcon BMS from compiling the files.
It wasnāt maybe clear in the post but you will directly go from 3D to 2D Without any compilation.
The compilation is after you have finished everything you needed to do on falcon, you can start compiling.
So there is 0 waiting time between the End of the mission in 3D and the 2D debriefing, you can actually fly again and record a second flight, the compiler will compile both files -
I donĀ“t know when those .flt files are createdā¦. hopefully everytime the file reaches the specific filesizeā¦ [EDIT]: I confirm it. I used 1Mb (minimun allowed) and it create anew file every minute (in my caseā¦ it may vary with other campaigns)
Thenā¦ maybe, it will be possible to create a near real time 3D extractor, based on those files, for many purposes: A new AWACS or C2 post could be the easiest to imagineā¦ (I have many others in my weird brain). Still, a picture rate of 60 seconds seems not fast enough at allā¦ We may ask the developers to allow lower ACMI sizesā¦
Anywayā¦ I see this idea as the worst approach to a 3rd party AWACS/JSTARS softwareā¦ (but a very simple one)ā¦
In any case: THANKS A LOT one more time, and KEEP IT UP!!!
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The .flt file is created as soon as you press the āRecord buttonā Itās getting filled for as long as you stay recording (you can see it by letting the game run in the background and pressing F5 when looking at your ACMI folder)
I personally prefer to set the .flt size to 1GB, that way I only have a single file to import in Tacview
Thank you again for your kind words !
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At this point I was more interesting in the bms dev approach. If they could have it compile the ACMI in the background while you are already able to modify stuff in 2D, then it would be all that we can ask for. Some of your cores will be almost idle anyway, so compiling an ACMI while playing the game should be possible.
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Ok this is a very good info for the ACMI port to AWACS programā¦ Monsterā¦ are you watching here???
So when it saves with your new app what exactly does it do?
Also if I understand it well this means u can run an app to read the file simultaneously or Falcon takes exclusive access to the file while it writes it constantly?
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Loitho, this is a great achievement in any cases, and probably the beginning of a great adventure keep it up ā¦ Everything start like this in the Falcon4 world.
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Also if I understand it well this means u can run an app to read the file simultaneously or Falcon takes exclusive access to the file while it writes it constantly?
Falcon gets and exclusive WRITE access to the File. So you can actually read the .flt file. But from my understanding of the way the .vhs file is setup, it would have been quite annoying to do something that read the file āon the flyā and convert it in the background.
Iām really interested to see how they will do it in 4.33 U4The only way for me to be able to prevent Falcon from compiling the file is to ask for an FULL Exclusive access to the File every 250 milliseconds (Thatās the way recommended by Microsoft. You cannot have a simple blocking function to get exclusive access so I did a loop)
Once the file is locked by my program:
- [ If Falcon BMS tries to read it it wonāt work (because FULL exclusive access) and it wonāt try to compile it. (This only happen when you leave the 3D world with the ACMI recorder still recording) ]
- While the file is locked, Iām renaming the file into a [timestamp].flt.tmp and unlock it (that way, Falcon wonāt compile it as itās only searching for ā*.fltā files)
- Repeat the loop every time a .flt file is created in the folder Or while the ākā key hasnāt been pressed
- Compile every .flt.tmp file in the ACMI folder into a .vhs
- Enjoy the vhs !
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I would use the flightData.h (i.e shared memory). to get the ACMI light bit. if itās on ACMI is recording. you would not need to check any other keys/files while the bit is not set.
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I didnāt do that for 3 reasons :
1. I didnāt know this existed
2. I might be too slow to āstealā the ACMI from Falcon BMS in the following situation :
If youāve been recording for some time and you get killed you cannot stop the ACMI recording. So, when exiting, Falcon will stop recording and start compiling immediately and this method might be too slow to get a lock on the file to prevent Falcon from reading it.
3. Also, portability: because I started my way up from FreeFalcon code, it might not have existed a this time.
With this, because Iām monitoring the Folder and then the filename, itās very easy to change if Falcon changes.
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In the end, this project was still very interesting to me, and I did it all by myself, so eh Iām not even mad ĀÆ_(ć)_/ĀÆ
However, I will add that my program should be compatible with any Falcon version, starting from FreeFalcon, so you can use it for BMS 4.32 if you still use that.
Ah, the moving part was already done. I didnāt see his mod sadly. Mine add the multithreadded compilation time though
Nice initiative and good clear explanation in your first post for non-coders. I hope you will put what you have learnt to good use in other projects in future.
I find it quite impressive that Zipgun, Dunc and now yourself have all come up with different solutions to the same problem. The future is bright
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Thanks for your initiative and also for the little bit of āproject historyā you included.
I hope youāre not too frustrated from being ninjaāed by the devs themselves and Iām looking forward to your future BMS contributions very much!
Uwe
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I find it quite impressive that Zipgun, Dunc and now yourself have all come up with different solutions to the same problem.
Ah, thatās what happen when people get annoyed for too long
I hope youāre not too frustrated from being ninjaāed by the devs themselves and Iām looking forward to your future BMS contributions very much!
As I said in the Discord, it wasnāt about the destination, it was about the travel The project was very interesting (from getting a working compiler from an Old Falcon version to a fully functional and optimized program)
Iām just happy to see so many people reaction, I wasnāt hoping for that much. And Iām thankful for all your nice comments.
Also, I can now say that Itās because of me that the Dev disclosed the Falcon BMS U4 release date (isnāt it ?)
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Ah, thatās what happen when people get annoyed for too long
As I said in the Discord, it wasnāt about the destination, it was about the travel The project was very interesting (from getting a working compiler from an Old Falcon version to a fully functional and optimized program)
Iām just happy to see so many people reaction, I wasnāt hoping for that much. And Iām thankful for all your nice comments.
Also, I can now say that Itās because of me that the Dev disclosed the Falcon BMS U4 release date (isnāt it ?)
YES IT IS!
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Also, I can now say that Itās because of me that the Dev disclosed the Falcon BMS U4 release date (isnāt it ?)
Youāve earned your place in BMS history, so much is for certain
All the best, Uwe