Falcon BMS 4.35 U3 - Incremental Installer

[Bad Boy]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

on behalf of the entire BMS development team, I am happy to announce that the latest iteration of the Tommo Inc Falcon 4.0 total conversion modification - Benchmark Sims 4.35 U3 - is available for you to enjoy as of RIGHT NOW!

BMS 4.35 U3 requires a legit installation of a Falcon 4.0 (all older and newer versions are accepted alike, i.e. Microprose, Hasbro, GOG, Steam, Retroism). The check is performed both at setup time and every time you start BMS. If no valid installation is found, BMS will exit with a corresponding error message.

U3 is an incremental update on top of 4.35 base + U1 + U2, so you need to have the BMS 4.35 Full Installer package and Update 1 and Update 2 available on your PC. You can both update your existing 4.35 base + U1 + U2 installation as well as perform a fresh 4.35 base + U1 + U2 + U3 installation from scratch, as you like. See the installation instructions below for details.

This mod may not be used for any commercial purposes. Any such use may constitute a violation of the intellectual property of Tommo Inc and the non-commercial Terms and Conditions under which Benchmark Sims make this mod available to you.

Installation instructions (they will be shown as well once you run the U3 installer):

_DESTINATION FOLDER: Update 3 must be targeted at the original Falcon BMS 4.35 Setup folder, NOT at your Falcon BMS installation location! After the update installer has been finished, it will run the Falcon BMS Setup program to either apply the update to an existing BMS 4.35 base + U1 + U2 installation (choose ‘Manage product updates’), or perform a fresh 4.35 base + U1 + U2 + U3 installation from scratch.

CONFIG FILE: U3 does not replace your existing config file.

Step-by-step details:

(1) The pre-requirement for installing the update is to have the original BMS 4.35 Setup folder available. That is the one with the blue colored Setup.exe. Take a note on the folder name where this exe is. This folder is NOT your actual game folder that you use to start BMS itself. It’s the folder wherever you downloaded and extracted the original BMS 4.35 base installer.

(2) Note: You need the original BMS 4.35 Setup folder + U1 + U2, as U3 is incremental only (like all BMS updates).

(3) Next, RUN (do not unzip) the U3 installer. It will ask you where the BMS setup folder is. Select the folder that you have identified in the 1st step.

(4) Note: Running the U3 installer will NOT actually install U3! Instead, it will update your original BMS 4.35 Setup folder + U1 + U2 to include the new U3 data.

(4) After the U3 installer has finished, it will run the blue colored Setup.exe that you have identified in the 1st step. Either perform a fresh new installation, or update your existing 4.35 base + U1 + U2 installation by choosing ‘Manage product updates’. U3 will now be shown in addition to the 4.35 base + U1 + U2 installation.

(5) After the update, when starting BMS, the version string in the BMS UI will now read:
Falcon BMS 4.35.3 (x64) Build 24585_

Here’s the 4.35 U2 -> 4.35 U3 changelog:

ATC:
- Improved flight insertion according to take off time.
- Fixes a bug where the ATC was missing some calls in case leader was dead and new leader was calling
- Fixes Airbases not lighting in MP when player is not #1.

AI:
- Fixes BVR tactics for  AI wingmen of player's leader
- Fixes loops in the wingmen BVR tactics comms.
- AI now evades missiles in MP.
- Fixes AI not taking off from carrier sometimes (race condition between atccmd message and airframe).

Graphics:
- Improves alpha sorting (objects burning through clouds issue)
- Fixes lit objects (lights, sign and alpha lit such as building window) burning through fog.
- Fixes wrong object altitude computation for fog.
- Fixes glitch while chasing bombs in weapon camera;
- Improved sky fog computation, ambient color values, terrain fog distance.
- New sunrises and sunsets.

CTDs:
- Fixes tanker brain is storing raw pointer, which can become dangling.
- Fixes in weapon fire message when trying to shoot a flight of helicopters.
- Fixes if Harm is launched in HTS and lockedtarget is destroyed in the same time.
- Fixes external padlock CTD while overGing.
- Fixes AirTaskManager race between simloop and campaign.
- Fixes HARM when accessing POS from HAD.
- Fixes sound CTD due to bad initialization.
- Fixes left over from previous frames which were not being flushed and caused CTD.

Serious bugs:
- Fixes a NaN in airframe fuel that caused aircrafts such as AN2, J5, MiG17 to become zombie.
- Fixes a deadlock between UI and campaign while leaving campaign;
- Fixes RWR not catching STT locks;
- Fixes deadlock of campaign and simloop thread, when campaign is doing cleanup and simloop is running SFX exec.
- Fixes sound deadlock in campaign.

Other:
- Allows head adjustment position with mouse while using trackIR.
- Fixes to look closer when using trackIR.
- Fixes ships engaging non deagged entities, wasting missiles and killing FPS in the same time.
- Fixes airbase repair, which was broken in U2.
- Fixes dying aircraft tracking with radar.
- Fixes Problems with slots assignments;
- Fixes airbases flooding when no parking PT available.
- Section line up fix.
- If all tactics fail, output debug showing what went wrong and keep current tactic.

Data:
- RTTRemote: bumper version to 4.1
- Fixed fuel tanks (critical).
- Fixed CTD in Tactical Reference: removed J-20 and MQ-9 from the TacRefDB.xml file (index not updated but that is not an issue) because these vehicles are not in the 4.35 DataBase.
- Fixed unit "MIM23 Hawk" battalions Element Flag: AN/MPQ-55 RDR is now defined only as "Is Target Acquisition Radar".
- Fixed E-8C beeing invulnerable in 2D.
- Fixed Flight Elements data + squadron store pointer.

A) The primary distribution method is by TORRENT, as always:

Falcon_BMS_4.35_U3_Incremental

B) If you can not use the torrent - please DO try it first! - we will have direct links as a fallback (as soon as the torrent is “stable”):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pb7g7wz32ripeb2/Falcon_BMS_4.35.3_Incremental.rar?dl=1

Please do NOT post alternate download mirrors in the forum if you want to offer a mirror. Give the torrent some time to get stable (won’t take longer than a day). If you want to offer a mirror, please PM one of the mods, they will take care about adding the links here.

A big THANK YOU to everyone in the BMS development team and to the gents from TOMMO INC who made this release possible!

Now download and enjoy!

[Bad Boy]

We would like to bring to your attention that we found a bug in U3 code. Thanks @victor031 for bringing this up and reporting the bug: https://forum.falcon-bms.com/topic/21415/atc-issue-ai-won-t-land

Basically, some aircraft will refuse to land in overhead situation. Please, add this to your Falcon BMS.cfg located in your Falcon BMS 4.35\User\Config folder (it can be anywhere, just append it as the last line), which will disable the offending code:

set g_sPriorityFixes "-76"

If you do not do it, you risk having several aircraft stuck.