Need some help.
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Can we make a distinction here? A HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) will have a multitude of buttons AND hat switches, whereas a Joystick will just have a bunch of buttons. Both can have a throttle wheel or slider … lets not use that as a qualifier. So the real question to thumper235 is which kind of stick do you have? A hotas type or a joystick? If you answer the latter then you’ll find yourself spending more time getting the keystrokes memorized before you really get your shooting eye. You can fly with a joystick just fine. You can even fly with the keyboard only - but you loose more of the Simulation Immersion that BMS is striving for. Before you go and buy an uber expensive stick you should understand that BMS has a steep learning curve, it’s not just point and shoot. If you really want to get good at it you will be spending TIME learning avionics, weapons, procedures, energy management, threat reactions, and more all ontop of basic flight. It’s time consuming to get there, but you will have fun. If you’re not a fan of learning, though, you may not enjoy the journey there. I’ve only been using BMS for about a year now - off and on - and I’m still trying to learn what’s going on half the time. Read what you can find, interpret it, and ask questions when you need to. You’re library already has some information in it that you don’t need to access from online - when you try to launch BMS click the Documentation and Manuals button rather than Launch, and read those through. I started with the original brick some years ago when Falcon 4.0 was kicking me back to my desktop while in flight, whether a simple dogfight or complex campaign mission, and this was before someone made the patches to 4.0.8. The remaining manuals you can read like a change log, that is if you’re just starting out in Falcon. There are many changes that have gone on, and the BMS manual is ultimately correct, but you may want to refer to the older manuals to understand what is going on in some cases.
!Viva el halcon!
-Babite -
@ Thumper,
Setting up your HOTAS is crucial! I would recommend not even flying until you map out your HOTAS with the key bindings. That way, you will know where every assigned function on your HOTAS is. You need to start there sir. I don’t know about everyone else, but I use the “keystrokes” keyboard file, as the “bms” keyboard file has lot’s of issues with my HOTAS for some reason. Hope this helps.
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guys, he already said he doesn’t have a HOTAS.
I recommend modifying the ‘keystrokes’ and/or ‘BMS’ key files to better suit your flightstick/keyboard combo (ie. hitting ‘Ctrl-Alt-Arrow Up’ all at once just to lock or bug a target is a bit of a handful).
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guys, he already said he doesn’t have a HOTAS.
I recommend modifying the ‘keystrokes’ and/or ‘BMS’ key files to better suit your flightstick/keyboard combo (ie. hitting ‘Ctrl-Alt-Arrow Up’ all at once just to lock or bug a target is a bit of a handful).
Sorry for not seeing that. It is still much harder to fly bms without a HOTAS. You can trick your single stick to do a lot of very basic functions, but you do truly need a HOTAS. I can see this being very confusing for a lot of people just starting out flying bms without a HOTAS.
@ Thumper,
Do not have your single stick set up for throttle and rudder. Use the keyboard strokes for that. That would make things very difficult to fly at best.
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you don’t need a HOTAS to play falcon. you might be better off but a keyboard and stick works perfectly fine. never once have i come across something i cannot do with it.
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HOTAS is like the TrackIR … it should almost be considered as a minimum spec. Rudder is optional.
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Agree with above. A non-HOTAS style joystick is bread and water for BMS. It’s technically good enough to live but no fun.
On a different issue, I can’t imaging going through your BMS experience without being comfortable with the .key file. Life would be hard if I couldn’t freely open Frederf.key in Notepad and make simple changes or at least know what a callback is. I don’t need this callback? Delete the line. I don’t the text label? Change it. I want to remove a keyboard bind? Change the key code to 0XFFFFFFFF. I want to do pinky+256 shifting? Copy-paste the unshifted bind, change callback & DX ID.
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I’ve been running Falcon since SP4 and i’ve never had a HOTAS (i can’t because i dont have an actual computer desk, just a chair in front of my 40 inch HD TV…i’ve got a small apartment). Just a decent flight stick will do the trick (but TrackIR is a must, as far as i’m concerned), and a decent gaming mouse helps too.
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What do you use for your xMS hats?
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@Cik:
you don’t need a HOTAS to play falcon. you might be better off but a keyboard and stick works perfectly fine. never once have i come across something i cannot do with it.
I did the same for about a year. It is definitely, 100% doable; there are limitations. I’ve even heard of a guy who flies BMS with ONLY a keyboard. Supposedly (I don’t know for myself), he’s even connected to that tanker that way …. once.
Just because it ‘can’ be done, doesn’t mean it’s the easiest/smartest/fastest/most effective way to do it.