The tutorial scripts are…
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Hey there Syonco and other newcomers,
this here might be a little bit long, but maybe other newcomers will “hopefully” read it too. And hey, you are no “player” if you want to fly complex simulators… that’s the first thing to understand. You want to handle almost real stuff and situations here.
I wish I’d be in your situation right now! Believe me, the first steps is the first real fun you will never experience again once you learned all the things. But you need to know how, to get all the sweets out from it, no matter if it’s about Falcon 4.0, DCS A-10 etc. … you can more destroy the fun with an arcade like approach to such things. I still own the old Falcon 4.0 (box, manuals, charts etc.) I got in the age of 14… and now I’m 27, many things changed and I’m still using it from time to time. I suggest you look in eBay for it or print out the Falcon 4 Allied Forces manual because it’s in PDF format.
Just start your way from the beginning, nice and clean. Forget about dogfights, radar symbols and campaigns. The tutorial missions are described perfectly in these manuals. The basics in there, will seem boring for you, but you really have to know how the F-16 behaves in different situations because… if you don’t… it doesn’t make sense at all to even fly towards a dogfight. Optimal turn-rates… what happens to my curve rate if I just pull hard G’s till the F-16 got no energy left and starts beeing a sitting duck for all the other fighters with no altitude left to exchange for speed. If you move your nose, you already give energy away. You will need these infos later, if you want to know, how to evade incoming missiles. It’s about the same thing.
Believe me, your brain will take all the notes and you can use it in every simulator. Starting from the middle… your brain tries to jump to the next level too fast by skipping all the basics. But your brain needs the tools before he can understand more advanced subjects. To make things more interesting, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND watching “Art of the Kill” which came in Falcon 3.0 Gold?, (from wikipedia =>)
“A video tutorial that teaches aerial dogfighting basics - _“Art of the Kill” - used Falcon 3.0’s built-in ACMIrecorder to reconstruct engagements, explain tactics and counter-tactics. Falcon 3.0 was also the subject of dozens of aftermarket books, some written by actual F-16 pilots.”
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=956634374962818858 All in one.
In several Parts._ The Pilots name is Pete “Boomer” Bonanni. He actually wrote many chapters in the Falcon 4.0 manual, the tutorial missions, some things about himself and the simulator. The “Art of the Kill” is all the Falcon 4.0 Tutorial Missions except to all the new ones (which came with all the Mods), just in video format.
Give your brain the tools he needs for flying this simulator. Instead of making it boring, make the learning process sweet! (printed Manual in hand while making some training, watch the Art of the Kill… google a bit for info… experiment a bit (radar modes, missile modes)… and after you made all the basic tutorials… watch some youtube videos for more complex and detailed stuff and THEN… take the ultimate challenge in campaigns.
Did you know, the AI uses different air defence tactics with ground radar, by going on- and offline, pinging you from several radar sites and then suddenly a SA-2 comes online under you? (I never saw the AI handling such real-life things in other simulators.) It happened several times, before I could speak out that a missile under a friend of mine suddenly went straight up… he already went down in flames.
Or did you know, that every enemy you see in the campaign map you only can see because your allies are tracking them at the moment or spot them earlier maybe on a recon mission (by sight, by radar etc.)? Transport choppers actually fly to the target and transport soldiers over there, which you can later see on the map, or having them spot other enemy units, everything is in movement. All this you will learn later and believe me, there always will be an WOW-effect and an addition to fun.
Greetings,
Cabal -
im in exactly the same boat syonco. the frustrating thing for me is that i actually bought the original falcon 4.0 13 years ago and was fairly clued up. i then stopped playing for a few years and forgot all of it.
ive tried several times to get back into falcon over the last few years but after a few hours hours i just annoyingly lose interest. its almost as though the older ive got the shorter my attention span has become.
so here i am again about to try and rekindle my interest. i think another big problem is that back when it was 1st released i could just go through all the tutorials from the original manual (which i still have) but with the new changes with mods and whatnot a lot of the stuff from the manual is outdated which is where i normally hit the brick wall.
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That is exactly why we need to write a new manual!
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so here i am again about to try and rekindle my interest. i think another big problem is that back when it was 1st released i could just go through all the tutorials from the original manual (which i still have) but with the new changes with mods and whatnot a lot of the stuff from the manual is outdated which is where i normally hit the brick wall.
Please read my big post #23 (above yours). You still can use the old manual for the more important stuff. If you can handle the tutorials like in the manual, you should have no problem with the new ones which came with the mod.
That is exactly why we need to write a new manual!
We got everything we need.
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There is more documentation in the works guys. As far as learning the systems go just take it slow and learn one thing at a time. Do the ramp start over and over until you have it down pat and then move on from there. It just takes time. The training scripts are not as complete as we would have liked but we just didn’t have the manpower to make them more complete. Hopefully now that BMS is out there, the community will pick things up and create whatever is needed.
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There is more documentation in the works guys. As far as learning the systems go just take it slow and learn one thing at a time. Do the ramp start over and over until you have it down pat and then move on from there. It just takes time. The training scripts are not as complete as we would have liked but we just didn’t have the manpower to make them more complete. Hopefully now that BMS is out there, the community will pick things up and create whatever is needed.
I am seriously considering starting writing a new manual/tutorial from scratch in order to somehow contribute to the community. I am not an artist/modeler/coder, but I somehow feel an obligation to somehow contribute after seeing how much time some people have devoted to BMS. I know few people who don’t want to start playing because of not only the sheer amount of new information you have to absorb, but also due to the fact that it is scattered across several manuals/pdf. I feel that the community could benefit from new members.
The upside of this process would be that I would truly master all the aspects of F16, since you can’t write a good manual/tutorial if you don’t understand it, right? The only thing holding me back from this task at the moment is how monumental it is. We are looking at several hundreds of pages of manuals.
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Why don’t just start sticking with the old tutorial manual? Please read my post #21.
A friend of mine just started out with the tutorials missions and the describtion of it, he had no problems. There is nothing monumental. It’s about how you approach things! If want to do everything step by step, why don’t you do it. Just watch the youtube/google video link about the Art of the Kill course of Falcon 3, which I posted in my big post. You do the same thing in the tutorial missions, which are described in the original manuals “Falcon 4.0 and Allied forces”, you work with the ACMI recorder… set it up to watch the recorded stuff and start to understand. You learn handling the ACMI recorder in these original manuals too. Everything is described.BTW the basics of flying will never change, no matter if documents will be released or not.
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Cabal,
First, I don’t need to study the manuals, I know most of the stuff, although I am not pro like some of the guys here. That means, I am not saying it’s not possible to start with the old manual and work your way up from there with the other manuals. It is very possible. I have done it too. All I am saying is, it is an issue for some people and this community is already so small that I think every new member counts.
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You’ll need 2 years just getting acquainted to the new specificities of BMS in some aspects.
In that time we’ll have the manual suite correctly covered! Don’t worry, we are working on it
We do have already a brand new manual that will make use of any older Falcon manual not required to read. It’s already more than hundreths of pages and it will be released soon
So be patient - it’s only two days you fly with BMS. We’ve been testing and developping it for 5 years. -
My training script does point the camera to the correct place and the text do mention the panel name and the control name.
If however, you still can’t locate the control, just hit “shift k” and it will be moved for you automatically in most cases.
If you think some part or parts of the script can be written better, let me know. -
There goes my contribution. You guys are insane. I mean do you even have regular jobs?
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In times of “casual gamers”, “fast arcade stuff” and KISSed games (keep it simple stupid)… yeah it’s an issue… =
But it is how you approach the stuff… and the stuff needs to approach the newcomer too. Maybe the BMS installation somehow could direct newcomers to that “Art of the Kill” video or other videos… to keep them entertained and more motivated.@Red Dog
Thanks alot for this pic… now I’m extremly horny
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after trying the ramp start and getting stuck (couldnt find the lever at the bottom of the throttle) im seriously thinkin of skipping ramp starts altogether. it just sounds like it would get repetitive doin it over n over again.
i realise there are probably a fair few people who enjoy gon through the pre flight checks everytime but how many people DONT bother with ramp starts?
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95% of people have issues with finding it for some reason
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after trying the ramp start and getting stuck (couldnt find the lever at the bottom of the throttle) im seriously thinkin of skipping ramp starts altogether. it just sounds like it would get repetitive doin it over n over again.
i realise there are probably a fair few people who enjoy gon through the pre flight checks everytime but how many people DONT bother with ramp starts?
Sometimes you need to enter stuff in the DED pre-flight, you don’t have time to do that if you start at taxi / takeoff
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Also the hotspot, iirc, does not move with the throttle so if you have the throttle advanced or back a ways the hotspot will not line up with the switch. It still works but you have to do it a couple of times to get a feel for where the spot is. Or use the keyboard.
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I am seriously considering starting writing a new manual/tutorial from scratch in order to somehow contribute to the community.
Great idea. When do you think you’ll have it finished?
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Great idea. When do you think you’ll have it finished?
Rough guess is 7 years. Or 3-4 weeks. Depends.
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And now you know why no one else has bothered, either
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And now you know why no one else has bothered, either
Nowhere did I state I wondered why nobody bothered.