How To: Drop a Bomb in Falcon 4.0 BMS on your Friend in Arma 3
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If this is a joke…I fell for it too…
Other wise…AWESOME!!!
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If this is a joke…I fell for it too…
Other wise…AWESOME!!!
….Arma has the ability to be linked to other games. I’ve done it for a militairy department. It could be done with dcs or falcon if the coders cooperate.
Thats the whole power of the engine flexibility.https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?16782-Arma3&p=240267#post240267
Could u provide us some more information (non-secret) about your experience in this A3 comm stuff?
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This is not a joke.
The map ratios are not 1:1. I think the Arma 3 map is 65% to the Falcon 4.0 Aegean Theater map we were using. I have some calculations on this - I actually found them on another site (https://sites.google.com/site/nothize/flight-simulator/Falcon-4-BMS/ais) - that I can share later with the community.
There’s nothing really secret going on here - like everyone else I am using Falcon Shared Memory and also reading the process directly to get GBU information (it only works with GBUs, for now) and the aircraft location. A C# Script is reading this information and writing it into a MySQL Database by posting it to a PHP file (the C# script COULD write directly, but there are technical reasons we have it pointing to a PHP file). A second C# Script is running on the Arma 3 server, and is capturing player information and writing it to the same database, that is the “Altis Blue” interface you are seeing - it aggregates data from both games onto one map. For this demonstration, someone was watching the map and guiding me on my drop. That second C# script can also read data out of the database and write it back to an INIDB (Arma 3) Mod file. Arma 3 reads the INIDB file, sees the bomb drop information written from the Falcon monitoring script, and spawns a bomb.
None of that is very difficult to do. We don’t draw the airplane in Falcon, just can’t update it fast enough.
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was having my morning coffee, and came across this thread. Nearly spit some out, after taking a sip. too funny! yes, I’d love to “cluster” some of my A-hole buddies this way too! nice work!
nothing says friendship like a good air strike!!!
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This will open a whole new dimension in Falcon (and Arma)!
Asharpe, I have somecscripting experience in arma…
I know you can set a velocity vector for an object. If you have a source for a location in a point in space, you can read the airspeed and use the SetVelocity command. That will give atleast a somewhat fluent movement.
Just by taking 65% of the speed easily compensates for the map size difference. And still looks good in Arma.Contact me if you want. I’m willing to assist.
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I actually have three or four scripters already assisting with the project, but I will let you know if we need some more help.
I have thought about what you have suggested, but there is no guarantee that the physics will be handled the same in Arma as in Falcon. What we are discussing is maybe allowing designaters in ARMA to designate for the bomb. We can’t have it lock the designation, but we can have it aim for and hit a specific point with some fancy math.
Implementing additional weapons would be fairly simple as well, we just haven’t fully mapped out where we want the project to go.
The real project here was building the website interface for interacting with ARMA, which we use from our tablets while playing the game. But most people here won’t care much about that, I think.
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I think people will be eventually….whe we come to a point that we can have full missions combined.
Think of the potential of what you’re working on! Falcon players hook up with arma players to finish a mission allong side of oneother.Your interface could even send 9-lines from arma to the falcon player.(on a second screen or tablet)
And probably a lot more I cant think of now -
I think people will be eventually….whe we come to a point that we can have full missions combined.
Think of the potential of what you’re working on! Falcon players hook up with arma players to finish a mission allong side of oneother.Your interface could even send 9-lines from arma to the falcon player.(on a second screen or tablet)
And probably a lot more I cant think of nowThis is why I am interested in finding out if I can do something with more data out of the Falcon Shared Memory app. The next best thing for this would be some sort of joint communications software to share comms with Arma players.
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IVC!
How hard can it be to send transmit and freq-change commands to IVC? -
IVC!
How hard can it be to send transmit and freq-change commands to IVC?The problem with IVC is that it requires a hosted player. What’s more, IVC is inherently TeamSpeak with a dedicated plugin. Why can’t IVC work with Teamspeak as a plugin? That’s what I would like to know.
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Ok, this is THE most amazing thing I’ve seen all week, I wish mods like ACRE or TaskForceRadio could be interlinked with IVC, that would be the dawn of a new era!
My warmest congratulations to the minds and skills behind this idea, pleeease keep it up! -
If anyone owns both games and is interesting helping to test this, please PM me here at the forums and I will get in touch with you for Server/Teamspeak information.
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The problem with IVC is that it requires a hosted player. What’s more, IVC is inherently TeamSpeak with a dedicated plugin. Why can’t IVC work with Teamspeak as a plugin? That’s what I would like to know.
because its not in the license. its in the BMS manual.
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because its not in the license. its in the BMS manual.
Mmm, I think you misunderstood what I was saying. If they can write IVC software that takes Falcon outputs and creates a TS server out of it, why can’t they open those outputs up to be used by a Teamspeak plugin instead? That completely negates their need for the TS license.
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The problem with IVC is that it requires a hosted player. What’s more, IVC is inherently TeamSpeak with a dedicated plugin. Why can’t IVC work with Teamspeak as a plugin? That’s what I would like to know.
IVC only requires a host. Player need not be there. And I would rather not have IVC as a plugin for Teamspeak because, in my experience, Teamspeak servers have been unreliable compared to IVC.
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Send you a PM ASharpe. Got no reply from you though……
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Send you a PM ASharpe. Got no reply from you though……
Yeah I’m still working through some technical issues with the code before it’s ready for testing.
IVC only requires a host. Player need not be there.
I suppose one COULD pay out the ass for a dedicated server somewhere solely for the purposes of hosting IVC. Or one could pay much much much less to host a TS server.
And I would rather not have IVC as a plugin for Teamspeak because, in my experience, Teamspeak servers have been unreliable compared to IVC.
My experience has been exactly the opposite. About 60% of the time when using IVC, it seems to miss the release of the radio button. You hear the squelch telling you it’s not recording, you talk and nothing comes across, but because IVC misses the trigger the next time someone hits the radio button it warbles because the app thinks you’re talking over someone. We end up having to double, sometimes triple tap the comm button when we are done talking to get it to recognize just one release.
Let me tell you, that’s working GREAT in the middle of a dogfight…I should mention, Falcon and IVC are running on a dedicated server in our environment, so I am not sure why this is so much of an issue for us.
Your argument here in favor of IVC is almost totally negated by the fact that IVC…is Teamspeak. With a different UI and access to hooks in the Falcon problem. Those hooks should really be publicly exposed so the mod community can make use of them.
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I never experienced the issues with IVC you are describing. That must be user(config) related. The only issue I ever saw which looks/sounds that same is when someone gets shot down while he is transmitting. That user needs to back out of falcon when it happens. Which you do anyway when you die.
The problem is in this particular case, the whole (read 95%) of the falcon community uses IVC over teamspeak. So that why I would advice to use that for VHF/UHF comms. And ACE’s radio stack for the HF and FM freqs. Maybe we can modify ACE somehow to work with IVC?
I know IVC = teamspeak. But the ability to tune freqs instead of having ‘channels’ makes it more usable for this application.I allso dont see the ‘cost’ problem with IVC. It commes with falcon and it runs on most Falcon servers. We wont need it in arma if we dont do a joint Op with falcon anyway.
Just trying to help btw…if im stepping on toes. No harm intended.
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Yeah I’m still working through some technical issues with the code before it’s ready for testing.
I suppose one COULD pay out the ass for a dedicated server somewhere solely for the purposes of hosting IVC. Or one could pay much much much less to host a TS server.
….or just have a cheap-ass laptop running IVC from your bedroom. Not that complicated and cheaper than a TS dedicated. And I have never had the issue you have spoken of with IVC. It sounds more like your comm switches/however you have your HOTAS setup is causing problems. TS, on the other hand, is constantly dropping connection and people keep setting off that annoying “whisper” on top of the fact that TS is terribly optimized for the needs of BMS: package flights with comms needed on separate victor channels while simultaneously having tactical on uniform, then tower frequencies where you need to contact the BMS ATC while simultaneously coordinating traffic with other human players in the pattern–TS won’t be able to handle AI comms and human comms on the same channel.
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Nou here. If anyone doesn’t know me from the Arma community I created ACRE (along with Jaynus), which I think was being confused above as part of ACE but I also work on ACE as well. I also wrote a basic CCIP/CCRP system for fixed wing aircraft, wrote JDAM/LGB guidance code, a few SAM simulations (mainly the SA-15 because cold launch is HOT), and a few other aircraft related things (and of course all the field artillery stuff I work on as well).
This is something that I am glad someone has finally done! There is really nothing stopping full integration of these two platforms if you can get object data IN to Falcon (it looks fairly obvious we are getting object data OUT of Falcon). Arma is pretty much open to getting things in and out, and its not that hard (there is native DLL calling functionality in the engine, though it can only communicate via text).
If anyone needs any help with ideas or running things on the Arma end through someone let me know. I can’t make any commitments on doing the actual leg work unfortunately (way overburdened as it is), but I would love to see this idea go further.
If you are looking for a fairly defined standard of communicating information between simulations there are two different standards you can look at, one is DIS and the other is HLA, both of which could probably serve as a model for intergrating BMS and other simulations together (for example, maybe SAM Simulator? :D).
Also any radio stuff too. I am a radio freak (obviously ACRE) and would love to know more about aircraft radios and if anyone would be interested in either changing IVC or working on an alternative system that can communicate with ACRE in Arma.
Also FYI IVC is basically a custom version of TS and the TS server. There is no reason that it couldn’t be implemented on a normal TS server (though it’d look ugly in the normal TS interrace because of the channel creation/movement, etc)
Very exciting stuff!