Possible future of BMS ATC?
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@Stevie said in Possible future of BMS ATC?:
I should think there would be a way to integrate BMS operations with VATSIM using export/import of flight parameters and sound between the two:
This would have to be done cooperatively, as there are live Controllers active in VATSIM. How you would get VATSIM to register combat losses/fallouts and how to get VATSIM IFF and civil traffic onto your BMS radar would also be challenges…but I can’t think of why a smart coder couldn’t cobble an interface together within the freeware continuum…
Otherwise, I’d have to agree - shouldn’t expect to see this become BMS-naive. At least, not within my lifetime.
I would not find the logic of mixing both worlds when they are not similar in any way, even though aircraft are used in common. Even in real life, civil aviation differs greatly from military aviation, in procedures, training, preparation, use of technique and piloting. and in our simulation world the differences are even greater. Yes, it would be logical for there to be an exchange of information between, for example, Falcon BMS and ARMA3, although they are different worlds, there are many combinations for both worlds to intertwine in military operations. In fact there are some guys if I remember correctly from France, who achieved this. From Falcon BMS they pointed the TGP at a point on the ground and in ARMA3 they guided an LGB bomb towards the target, the communication was in one direction, but that shows that it can be done.
You cannot mix water with oil, everything belongs in its place.
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@VIPER-0 - I’m not conjecturing about “mixing” them…I’m conjecturing about creating a NEW world.
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@Stevie said in Possible future of BMS ATC?:
@VIPER-0 - I’m not conjecturing about “mixing” them…I’m conjecturing about creating a NEW world.
I listen to you, I am all ears.
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@Stevie said in Possible future of BMS ATC?:
@VIPER-0 - I’m not conjecturing about “mixing” them…I’m conjecturing about creating a NEW world.
I think we would need more Human AWACS than ATC to be honest…
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@VIPER-0 - I’m thinking most (if not all) of what would happen in the tactical world would still happen within BMS…the only things that VATSMI need know is the “usual” information about Areas of Operation.
The tricky part is sensor and/or IFF sorts of info - system to system stuff. FOREX - if a Viper does a Mode 3 CIT interrogation, all of the Mode 3 capable transponders need to light up…which drives Controllers crazy, but would be reality!
Same but in reverse for civil tallies on Viper radar…but I think transfer/sharing of both data sets is likely possible - but would have to be processed in a program outside of either VATSIM or BMS. And people that are interested in this sort of thing would need to for groups similar to BMS Virtual Squadrons in order to cooperate - I know the VATSIM community hosts “fly-ins”, and this would be similar to that.
Actually, I have a LOT of these sorts of ideas…we (cockpit builders, at least) already use a lot of programs that work outside of BMS but augment it - WDP, Weather Commander, MFDE, DED Capture, AIC, F4toPokeys, F4toSerial, FoxVOX, Helios…just to name some. They just don’t cross communities. But they illuminate possibilities. I’m already thinking of coding a few things on my own for my cockpit, but I’m going to have to gain some skills first.
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@MaxWaldorf said in Possible future of BMS ATC?:
Nope…
Thanks for the expansive detailed reply.
My focus was more on the possibility of ATC voices sounding less robotic and phrases sounding EXACTLY THE SAME USING EXACTLY THE SAME WORDS EVERY SINGLE TIME. That has nothing to do with VATSIM, etc. Just a more natural and conversational experience, which would add a lot of immersion and realism over the current setup.
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@SoBad it’s $300/yr and using MS Speech engine for TTS and reco … just exchanging text messages with a LLM in the cloud? ick…
Not clear from the video that they’re feeding real context (weather, traffic, your position etc) to the LLM.
I’m sure this will be a thing, within a few years, but right now I’m not seeing it.
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I don’t need to say more…
This is a payed software because it requires a ChatGPT subscription behind.
ATC is deeply rooted into our engine.
At what point did you think it would make sense to make people pay for such service?We are a free software and always stay…
Just not compatible.
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@MaxWaldorf I don’t wish to speak for him, but I get the feeling he may have been referring just as much to the concept, as the implementation.
LLM could be used for a wide range of local or localised ATC functionality, without having to lean on a paid service.
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@S3NTRY I don’t know how big their H100 cluster is or how busy it is, but I see some reviewers already complaining it takes about 20 seconds to respond to simple back and forth interactions.
Running the LLM locally on your 4090 while flying a 3d flight sim? idk if it’s even possible but if so, I expect it’s going to impact your fps, and for more than 20 sec!
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@airtex2019 there are a lot of factors buried in your response, but suffice it to say, it’s a fair point.
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end point, don’t get impressed by AI unless you have half your wage to put in it
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The ATC in BMS epitomises the work of the devs and their trademark. I.e the Bewnchmark by which all other military flight simulators are judged. I’m yet to see any written debate or be part of any discussion of the topic that doesn’t ref BMS as the very “best” the market has to offer. Quite some statement in itself, let alone for software, albeit constantly improved, of its age.
The big question I guess is “how does it stay there” and improve with the constraints the devs work under.
All suggestions, proposals and ideas should be welcomed I think even though most will fall by the wayside I’m sure.
I do suspect the pretty sim will come up with something similar eventually but lets be frank - they have said they have been working on it for longer than it took NASA to build and launch the JWST and some of us older folks are running out of time!
Kind Regards,
Gary
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@MaxWaldorf said in Possible future of BMS ATC?:
I don’t need to say more…
This is a payed software because it requires a ChatGPT subscription behind.
ATC is deeply rooted into our engine.
At what point did you think it would make sense to make people pay for such service?We are a free software and always stay…
Just not compatible.
You start out saying that you don’t need to say more, and then you said much more that should have been said in your first reply.
I think you’re a man of amazing skills, but I suspect that no one has ever accused you of being too tactful with people.
AGAIN, and I clarified it in my second post on this thread, I was simply talking about the ATC voices sounding more conversational and less robotic. Perhaps a third and fourth voice. Perhaps more random replies that are worded differently, but mean essentially the same thing. None of these require a “paid service.”
As @airtex2019 pointed out, very correctly, what you claim as prohibitive will be commonplace and probably open-source free in the future.
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@SoBad fwiw there are separate efforts underway to use generative tech to make new TTS voices (accents) and/or allow new phrases to be voiced in existing Falcon-world accents … this is something that hamstrung development for a long time (and why the carrier LSOs all sound like Stephen Hawking)
but it’s not LLM or even traditional NLP (natural language processing) … still menu-driven comms, and selecting from a slightly-varying array of response phrasing.
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@SoBad - in a lot of cases using the exact same words is the result of Military COMs standard, so I wouldn’t be as concerned about that as I might be with simply an expanded pallet of voices, and quality of voices. That could be welcome.
I know there are also commercially available voice packages out there…it would be nice to be able to use those, if anyone actually was agreeable to paying for them…I know I certainly wouldn’t mind training one to make up a database of BMS compliant phrases, if I had to.
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@airtex2019 said in Possible future of BMS ATC?:
@SoBad fwiw there are separate efforts underway to use generative tech to make new TTS voices (accents) and/or allow new phrases to be voiced in existing Falcon-world accents … this is something that hamstrung development for a long time (and why the carrier LSOs all sound like Stephen Hawking)
but it’s not LLM or even traditional NLP (natural language processing) … still menu-driven comms, and selecting from a slightly-varying array of response phrasing.
Thanks for the responsive comments and the info about separate efforts being underway. That video link was interesting to me because it showed how non-robotic voices using more humanistic tones really enhances the feeling of interacting with ATC.
I get Stevie’s point about wording being more strict in a military environment. but it isn’t to the point of being robotic. I was a city cop for 30+ years, and we operate in a quasi-military environment where many words and phrases are part and parcel of the radio dispatching environment. But the human element always introduces small variations in word choice, phrase construction, pauses, intonation, etc. that make it obvious that humans are on the air.
For example, the recent efforts made by a “virtual crew chief” shows an impressive feeling of dealing with something more than phrases repeated again and again with the exactly identical set of words, pauses, intonation, etc. The virtual crew chief, even though script based, chooses from-- in almost every different phase of the start-up process-- numerous options of words, phrases, etc. that mean the same thing, but give it a much better sense of interacting with a person. And that video I linked showed the future promise of interacting with virtual people in a way much more like in real life-- hence the thread title “Possible future of BMS ATC”. It might take a number of intermediate steps to get there, but I think it’s inevitable eventually, with natural language implementation as commonplace (and free) as spelling dynamic libraries are today for programmers, for instance. This whole subject certainly deserves more than a dismissive “Nope.”
Thanks for the discussion. And now I finally understand why I kept seeing references to Steven Hawkings! (I don’t fly carrier craft and have no experience or interest in it, hence my ignorance of that part of the BMS environment.)