Falcon BMS - Interactive Maps
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@ohommes said:
I hope you don’t keep it the same for every mission forever and ever…
“Come and play Falcon, Danny. Forever and ever and ever…”
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@suhkoi69 said in Falcon BMS - Interactive Maps:
@ohommes the calculation of the bingo must take into account the return path and also take into account the diversion to potential alternate field. here in my example, I didn’t select an alternate airbase but I should have …
In fact, the most important thing is to know if you are able to go to the Target point with the ability to return to your airbase.more, a straight flight path from the farthest point may be impossible for many reasons due to threat, relief i.e. , this is why you need to following the selected return route briefed, which de facto, underestimates the bingo…especially true, when you must fly at very low altitude
Another interesting point to add would be to have the playtime in the hostile zone.
the calculation is easy ( total amount of fuel in the airplaine - amount of fuel to go to the target - joker ) with joker = bingo + 1000lbsabout the bingo, the old T.O. BMS1F-16CM-1 done by Reddog, was very good, you can find how to calculate it.
PS: by the way, I find that the new doc T.O. BMS1F-16CM-1 is much less exhaustive than the one made by Reddog : there are more details, it is better described for many things in my opinion…
The old -1 had less/nothing to do with the main purpose of a - 1. It had mixed up user manual, training manual, comms/navBook and sometimes even - 34. So a total mess.
What we have now is a clear structured manual guideline. The new - 1 is not perfect yet but we will get better. -
@Micro_440th That makes sense. So where should a writeup like that from the old -1 ideally be found now? I would think additional detail on a training mission or the comms/nav book section 5.1 could be logical places.
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@suhkoi69 For now it is discussion topic and I will add saving the data in the browser session so you can prepare a briefing or have a mission building discussion. I could even let you move the STPTs. Things will slowly evolve. Anyway it was proposed to make the Bullseye moveable also because today the Mission.ini or Pilot.ini never saves the data so it defaults to the Theater bullseye default. Once we the STPT 25 is updated with the bullseye data in the .ini then maybe we can leave it but for now here is my use case:
After the briefing I drop my Pilot.ini on a cloud drive and then drag and drop this on my Electronic kneeboard on to the interactive map. I then need to adjust the bullseye to the mission selected bullseye because as of today that is not in the Pilot.ini.
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@jc1 It shows the weather doppler radar colors which are not to be confused with Weather Commander. Weather commander shows the Weather types (Sunny, Fair, Poor, Inclement) these types are shown on the Weather channel look when you drop an .fmap.
The Doppler radar is a pure simulated doppler radar return of rain drops so it will only show radar returns for rain of large droplets. So the Doppler radar uses the following:
- Inclement Weather Is the only weather type producing rain with droplets large enough to be seen on a RADAR return.
- It uses temperature gradients to look for frontal systems to predict rising air.
- It uses pressure to look for rising air and very low systems will create faster moving and more rising air.
It takes this data and infers where there is light rain (green) or heavy rain (yellow to red). I will add purple in the future for the massive Cumulonimbus ones.
People who draw weather by hand usually don’t get the data correct but with real-life data, when you use F4Wx then you will get some nice looking Radar returns for the weather.
So NO the Doppler is NOT Weather Commander colors at ALL. Weather Commander is a Weather building tool and not a Meteorological chart like the Doppler is “trying” to be.
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@suhkoi69 Hi thanks for pointing this out I will have a read and discuss it. I can easily add the flight path distance from the furthest point to Home Plate following the flight path. Since Joker is +1000 no point in shows that on the Mission tab.
The system allows already to add the playtime at each STPT to compute the total Estimated fuel. Give it a try.
Again good feedback!
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@ohommes said in Falcon BMS - Interactive Maps:
Hi thanks for pointing this out I will have a read and discuss it. I can easily add the flight path distance from the furthest point to Home Plate following the flight path. Since Joker is +1000 no point in shows that on the Mission tab.
The system allows already to add the playtime at each STPT to compute the total Estimated fuel. Give it a try.
Again good feedback!according to me, the playtime you mention, doesn’t mean the same thing to me. the playtime is the time which I can use for the combat in addition. in other words, it is the fuel I have left after deducting the fuel needed to go to the target and the fuel needed to return safely to the base.
let’s take my example: block 50 configuration with 2 fuel tanks (total fuel = 12200) I have a bingo at 3300, joker 4300,
fuel used to go to target = 1000 lbs for startup, taxing, holding, climbing + 2130 lbs ( distance * average fuel rate at 25kft so 142NM *15lbs/NM )
->> fuel total available ~12200lbs
->> joker ~ 4300lbs
->> fuel used to go to target ~3100lbs->> fuel available on target area ( here waypoint 7) = 12200 - 3100 - 4300 = 4800 lbs
so with a fuel rate for 350kts (~100lbs / min) I get 4800 /100 = 48 min
so the playtime is 48min at waypoint 7 if I arrive on target zone having consumed 3100lbs
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@ohommes I would just like to add his feeling about the weather maps with Interactive Maps. When I see the graphical representation of the weather, I have the impression to see the weather TV news that I could know when I was very young. I find it much too approximate and this is not at all usable for planning a mission from my point of view…
I think these days satellite maps can give the position of clouds and associated ceilings accurately … and so displaying cloud base, cloud cover and cloud size doesn’t seem so silly. Indeed, it is easy to have a radar satellite image, a visible field satellite image and an infrared satellite image…
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@suhkoi69 Sorry maybe I misunderstood; You are requesting a calculated max playtime based on getting to the target area and take bingo into account? That sounds like an interesting feature to add. The duration per steerpoint was just to get a better Flight Time and Estimated fuel and it seems to work remarkably well.
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@suhkoi69 Interesting idea to create a simulated Satellite view and overlay it . I will add these to possible features list. Currently workin on METAR for airports.
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@ohommes At some point would it be possible to be able to zoom further in? I believe the underlying graphic is hi-res enough. It would be nice to more clearly see valleys vs. high ground.
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@jayb Possible yes but you will exceed the HW support on many devices especially Tablets and macOS desktop on certain browsers. For example even though all the maps are 4096x4096 they are scaled at runtime to 3840 to fit in the Image Scale and Rotate HW accelerators. You won’t be able to drag as you see now or measure smoothly if you go beyond the3840 resolution. It will be one sluggish monster app. So I am not planning zoom in more than we have unless many people have much much newer HW . Also I leave the viewport management to the browser which makes stuff really fast. The 3840x3840 is linked to HW video buffers for HD replay but once you exceed that the feel of the UI is total trash on some platforms and browsers.
For the Terrain: I am planning in the future to have terrain height available and create 2D charts with alt, speed and terrain over the planned route. But this is further into the future.
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Hi,
I display maps and navigation info on a separate computer (MacBook), not my BMS computer. Would it be possible to use the interactive maps on a Mac, on which BMS is not installed ??
Many thx, Vordy
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@Vordy I do this all the time!
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A long time ago (in BMS terms), you could easily zoom in to any point on the 2D UI map by FIRST putting your mouse cursor at your point of interest and then simply zoom in.
The entire UI map and mouse cursor would dynamically center in the UI window as you zoomed. Very intuitive, and much more accurate/quicker.
A few versions ago (4.34 or 4.35), this was changed, and now you have to mouse-grab the map, adjust, zoom, adjust, zoom, etc. to zoom in to a point of interest.
Jus’ sayin’…
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@SoBad
New update is here that will alleviate some of your UI challenges: ( keep last zoom level and settings across browser restarts and reload sessions). If anything I might add scroll wheel zoom in the future but first other features. Not to long ago you had to use the scroll bars on windows to move map, there was no zoom. So With time and people’s feedback things will evolve. Also it needs to work on all platforms and OSS. Just saying … thanks for the feedback. -
Update Febuary 18th 2023
- Remember session last zoom level
- Save preference settings in browser
- Performance and Minor bug fixes (not always .fmap is available)
- Airport popup UI changes
- Update doppler radar with weather beam scan and occlusions
- Updated Bingo calculation
- Added METAR for airports in tooltip and route from .fmap
Thanks to @ohommes for this update!
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Good job!
but I noticed something wrong , probably beyond your control:
the altitudes of waypoint are wrong on my side… they didn’t match with the mission file …I suspect the altitudes aren’t written in INI fileI hope this feature request will be adden next…
@ohommes said in Falcon BMS - Interactive Maps:
@suhkoi69 Interesting idea to create a simulated Satellite view and overlay it . I will add these to possible features list. Currently workin on METAR for airports.
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@suhkoi69
Yes totally correct! The altitudes should be in the .ini and i asked about this multiple times and was told it was the last parameter before the description. And negative. Other things not in the .ini that could be is the bullseye location on stpt 25 but it never is. So nothing i can do. I do want to create an altitude chart with flight altitude, terrain height and cloud base and speed so you can plan routes correctly but first need to reverse engineer the terrain data just like i did with the fmaps. -
Update March 17th 2023
- Draw Circles
- Save / Restore Whiteboard
Thanks as always to @ohommes for this wonderful update