Falcon BMS - Interactive Maps
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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
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All, The March 17th updates are life now and you can save (see save button in toolbar settings menu) the Whiteboard annotations to your Downloads folder and you will find a Whiteboard.png there. To restore after reloading the page you can drag and drop the Whiteboard.png onto the map again. Enjoy!
To draw ellipses use the Ctrl-key with Pencil on Windows and Command-key on macOS.
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Update April 4th 2023
Map Filter (Default or Greyscale) Whiteboard full style control (color, line style, fill style, opacity and erase size) MIL-STD-2525D Land Unit Symbology ( BMS used only)
Thanks to @ohommes for this MASSIVE update!
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@suhkoi69 said in Falcon BMS - Interactive Maps:
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…
Is it still planned?
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@suhkoi69 I did the research to build simulated satellite images based on:
Cloud optical Thickness and light Radiance charts and cloud optical thickness to cloud type and cloud base to determine the cloud thickness from base and Cb size in BMS. From this I can model the cloud coverage in the 59x59 cells of weather and create simulated cloud reflections to a satellite imager based on the BMS data to make it look like a real satellite image showing coverage and reflection based on liquid or ice types and maybe add some cloud shadows for Cb clouds.So it is still planned but had my focus was on the Military Symbology to create better SA for the missions.
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Update May 2nd 2023
- ADDED: Performance optimizations (canvas refresh, ruler, mouse listeners )
- ADDED: Improved network loading times
- ADDED: Quick min/max zoom with Shift.
- ADDED: Additional map filters for night mode and higher contrasts.
- ADDED: Cloud Rendering for SCT, BKN and OVC.
- ADDED: Adjust window size to new chart width x height ratio
- ADDED: Whiteboard.png stacking (hold ShiftKey and drag and drop)
- ADDED: Added more Symbology (For Air, Sea and Land)
- ADDED: Multi version .fmap support (version 5, 8 )
- FIXED: Draw Bullseye always on top
Thanks to @ohommes again for this beautiful update!
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@Micro_440th thank You for this nice update and video.
It is very clear, but I have one comment.
Adding the C2 symbols is working fine, when opened from the website.
After installing to my local drive I cannot add these symbols anymore.Kind regards,
Falcon316