Tacview – Understand what happened during your last flight! (alternative ACMI viewer)
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Falcas hi,
1. Attached is a Dropbox link to a new TE I made today with every file needed.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sf1t8zmt2bqrojn/Tacview%20Test%201.5.rar?dl=0
Theater used: KTO.
In order to reproduce it simply open a .vhs or .acmi file in Tacview and drag the relevant .ini file over the Tacview window.
Before 1.5 such an action added the .ini file data such as the route, STPT, lines and PPTs to the .acmi view.
Now it hides the aircrafts.
This is reproduced by other members of the 72nd.
2. Till version 1.5 the “Show object ID” button bellow the main window hid/ showed all labels, including the chosen aircraft’s label.
For me, when analyzing close encounters it’s easier without labels (such as BFM DF and the likes). -
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This new engine also supports real-time data recording… which will soon lead to real-time flight data recording for the devices and simulators which support this kind of feature (like DCS World, FSX, X-Plane…)
[…]* Real-time flight data recording, replay and analysis: Soon you will be able to see a flight in progress! Which is going to be very useful for instructors and referees.
Do you expect this to be possible in BMS in the future too? It would be amazing if we could get Tacview running real time, with access to IVC comms as well. For AWACS purposes that would be awesome (with some gamesmanship maybe required as far as how to deal with low flyers / terrain masking guys).
Feature request: would it be possible to make a bearing and range tool? Way this would work is click and drag and it displays bearing and range from the first click to the second. Maybe with a slight snap to object function. Ideally with a quick access way (example middle mouse button click and hold, or ctrl left click and hold or something like that)
Other idea: have a permanent readout of cursor bullseye location. Maybe in the bottom right, or top left?
With these two combined, and if there is ever a real time option, a GCI player could give a quick BRAA plus bullseye dec to someone calling a declare.
Thanks for all the great work!
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Thank you!
I was able to reproduce the bug and I have fixed it in Tacview 1.5.1. I will check for the labels too when I have the time.
Falcas hi,
1. Attached is a Dropbox link to a new TE I made today with every file needed.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sf1t8zmt2bqrojn/Tacview%20Test%201.5.rar?dl=0
Theater used: KTO.
In order to reproduce it simply open a .vhs or .acmi file in Tacview and drag the relevant .ini file over the Tacview window.
Before 1.5 such an action added the .ini file data such as the route, STPT, lines and PPTs to the .acmi view.
Now it hides the aircrafts.
This is reproduced by other members of the 72nd.
2. Till version 1.5 the “Show object ID” button bellow the main window hid/ showed all labels, including the chosen aircraft’s label.
For me, when analyzing close encounters it’s easier without labels (such as BFM DF and the likes). -
With pleasure
Thank you. -
Thank you very much, I appreciate feedback with this kind of screenshots!
I don’t think that real-time flight recording is possible with BMS.
While other flight simulators like FSX, X-Plane and DCS World are offering API (interfaces) to export data in real-time. BMS does not offer as much data as required. The only data exported in real-time is the cockpit data, which is not enough to display a battlefield. According to my investigations, this is not even enough to display the player aircraft… (time stamp and geographical position are missing).
As for the bullseye tools, I am adding this to the long to-do list. Meanwhile you can display the bearing and range between the two selected objects by right clicking on the button on the top of the 3D window between the two objects lists.
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Well for the online thing there is room to investigate it I believe.
Monster has already done it but there is the known thing with AI.
Just a hint, as the ACMI is written afterwards, meaning when the mission is ended maybe it stores all data in ram???… So you might be able to grab them from shared memory instead of a file?
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Isn’t there a .flt file generated in the acmi folder during recording? I’m not sure which data it contains and of how much use it is on its own though.
Sent from my Xperia Z1 using Tapatalk
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Shared-memory has - by definition – to be officially shared by the application. Aside cockpit information, Falcon 4 does not share any other data in real-time like ACMI data.
On the other hand, I was just thinking about the temporary flt files which are - maybe - written in real-time (not sure about that). Now, assuming they contain enough data, this will probably require a lot of work to read them. So, I will first make sure my new system is working fine all other - more open - flight simulators before investigating further the possible hack with Falcon 4 flt files.
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I absolutely am NOT a developer and don’t know how BMS internals work, so maybe I’m saying bullshit but… Online Squadron Collection displays real time data about players’ and AI’s aircrafts and already has bullseye display functions working: it definitely has to get these information somewhere and IIRC it reads shared memory.
Please Vyrtuoz do not take this as criticism, my only intent is to encourage you to investigate the matter deeper: IMHO TacView is a must have for all virtual pilots - I have the highly valuable Professional Edition and could not live without! - and it would be great to have GCI/AWACS-enabling functions integrated so to be able to use a unique tool for all extra flying needs.
Thanks for your attention and keep up your excellent work! -
Thank you BlueRaven! Believe me, I really want to support real-time data replay with Falcon.
I will check again the Online Squadron Collection and contact Monster when I will work on real-time data recording.
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Hey Vyrtuoz, you much probably won’t remember me, but we talked alot about alot of already implemented stuff in TV…
By that time it was “a dream” to have it all in TV, and now it’s reallity. Have been away for a while.
Thank you very much for this awesome application.Falcon BMS shared memory is indeed oriented for the cockpit data extraction.
But many data in that file is flight data that can be useable for TacView to track flights (at least basic data)… what’s missing in falcons shared data for TacView? It would be useful to know this info.
Also, TacView would only track “on-time” one flight only, I believe… right???
The bearing plus range tool that was requested by Tom, is a tool needed for AWACs main function of getting anywhere in the theater the bearing and distance from one point A to other point B, just like the Ruler in BMS map screen, or AWACs application in Monster’s apps.PS:
A question/ request of my own…
Will POH theater be implemented in TacView, someday? -
Thank you flyway!
Falcon BMS shared memory does not expose the absolute time and the aircraft position in space (like longitude/latitude or even x/y). Without this basic and yet critical data I cannot display anything interesting in Tacview.
Because Tacview is fully 3D it is a bit tricky to offer a measurement tool. But I think I have an idea which I may implement in the coming releases so you can measure distance like with a 2D display. Also, remember that the distance and bearing between the two selected objects (which includes the bullseye) are displayed and can be configured by right-clicking on the button between the two objects names drop-down boxes.
As for the POH theater: If give me a link to download a version compatible with BMS 4.33 U1 I will add it to Tacview. Meanwhile you can easily add it yourself by editing the xml configuration file like explained in the documentation: http://www.tacview.net/documentation/falcon/#q22
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Thank you flyway!
Falcon BMS shared memory does not expose the absolute time and the aircraft position in space (like longitude/latitude or even x/y). Without this basic and yet critical data I cannot display anything interesting in Tacview.
Because Tacview is fully 3D it is a bit tricky to offer a measurement tool. But I think I have an idea which I may implement in the coming releases so you can measure distance like with a 2D display. Also, remember that the distance and bearing between the two selected objects (which includes the bullseye) are displayed and can be configured by right-clicking on the button between the two objects names drop-down boxes.
As for the POH theater: If give me a link to download a version compatible with BMS 4.33 U1 I will add it to Tacview. Meanwhile you can easily add it yourself by editing the xml configuration file like explained in the documentation: http://www.tacview.net/documentation/falcon/#q22
Having written tools that work with shared memory, I can say that X/Y is implemented (check line 230 in Tools/SharedMem/FlightData.h). Time, however, is not, and I agree that this would be useful. You can kind of sort of infer it based on xdot/ydot/zdot, but it’s going to have accuracy problems, and won’t work when ownship isn’t moving.
I have also considered reading from the .flt file to make some “realtime” tools, but haven’t explored this at all. The first question is whether it’s even possible: the sad state of file locking in Windows means it might not be IIRC. But I haven’t tried.
Ideal would be for the devs to export much more data from shared memory, or to have some other API for access to the real-time state of the 2D/3D world. But that’s “ideal” in the sense of “giving me the features I want without preventing the devs from working on something else cool”.
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You are right Tyrant! I don’t know how I completely miss x/y/z in the shared memory…
I have to investigate the flt files too… I’m wonder how often their content is flushed on the hard drive. This will define by how much our tools are going to lag behind the action. (assuming they do contain enough useful information)
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Agreeing with Tyrant.
Falcon shared memory has X/Y and coordinates. Time also present maybe in unwanted format for TV.
But it would be easy to convert it programaticly.
POH has o e major let down about coordinates. Longitude has an intentional shift (to the West) to avoid East values (negative coords in Falcon) although (and again) easily re-shifted to the East to match TacViews real world. -
I can see how I would read the shared memory data. However, this will provide information only for the local aircraft. Because this data may not be useful alone, any idea how I could do the same for AI aircraft, and missiles?
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I can see how I would read the shared memory data. However, this will provide information only for the local aircraft. Because this data may not be useful alone, any idea how I could do the same for AI aircraft, and missiles?
If you can get Monster to tell you how he wrote F4AWACS, that would be one way. I think he does it by probing memory, though: therefore not through an official API, so personally I would be highly hesitant to go this route. But I could be wrong - would be great to hear how he did it.
Another option is the FLT route, as we discussed above. Good one if the file is not locked and the data is flushed often enough. If the file is locked, I have a way around that, but it’s got tradeoffs (involves using the Volume Shadow Service). Code is at https://github.com/candera/shadowspawn, but I wouldn’t bother to look at it at this point if I were you.
A third option I’ve contemplated is to introduce a network proxy. I have no idea if this would work, and it would rely on understanding the network protocol, but presumably if you could spy on the traffic by forcing data to flow through a proxy, you could get enough information to know where things are. A variation on this would be to write a standalone client. Again, no idea of either of those would work.
I’ve been pondering this problem myself, and those are the options I’ve come up with. Not having tried any of these, and given that I have zero contact with the BMS devs, you should not take them too seriously. I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this matter, since I have some utilities in mind that could make use of the same information. Input from the BMS devs would be especially welcome.
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Tacview 1.5.1 is available!
First, I want to thank all of you for your feedback. It was invaluable to pinpoint and fix new telemetry engine bugs.
There are quite a lot of important improvements in this new release:
- All reported bugs related to the telemetry have been fixed.
- You can now create and edit objects (like bullseye) directly from the tool menu.
- Now the HUD clearly display IAS/CAS and magnetic heading when available.
- Falcon 4 time zones have been added for all major theaters: day, night and sun position are now correct.
- Added support for X-Plane 9/10, 32-bit and 64-bit.
- FSX/Prepar3D flight data recorder as been fully rewritten to generate more accurate data and up to 5 times smaller acmi files.
Now, I know that not all of you are interested in FSX and X-Plane… However, everyone will benefit from the work which has just been accomplished.
I have created from scratch an universal exporter. Because they are very easy to work with, FSX and X-Plane were used as efficient testbeds for it. Now it has been debugged and optimized, I will be able to use it to create a brand new real-time data exporter for DCS World and, maybe later, a real-time exporter for Falcon 4…
Before doing that, the next step is to rewrite a part of Tacview graphical user interface so it can gracefully handle real-time data change and recording. As soon as this work is complete, I will be able to create real-time data exporters. And whenever I will make an improvement, tweak, or a fix in this universal exporter, all supported flight simulations will automatically benefit from it!
FEATURES & CHANGES
- X-Plane is now natively supported thanks to the XPL2ACMI plugin
- FSX2ACMI has been rewritten to be more accurate and to generate acmi 2.0 files 5x smaller than before
- New ACMI 2.1 file format which is up to 10% smaller thanks to longitude/latitude median reference point
- You can now add objects to the world directly from Tacview tools menu
- You can now edit core object properties directly from Tacview tool menu
- CAS is now displayed in HUD view when proper data is available and IAS is not available
- The type of speed available in HUD view is now explicitly displayed
- Magnetic heading is now displayed in HUD view when available
- Added support for TimeZone offset for Falcon 4.0 theaters
- Added an option to display labels only for selected objects
- Using shorter notation for telemetry in labels to reduce clutter
- DCS World dummy pilots and units names are not exported anymore to reduce clutter
FIXES
- CAS was not properly calculated when only spherical coordinates were available
- Merging a DTC file with VHS was often removing objects from the battlefield
- Fixed local and UTC time for Falcon 4.0 theaters (this fixes the sun position and sky color)
- Advanced telemetry AOA was not properly exported (in radian instead of degrees)
- Invalid time displayed in raw telemetry when loading a file from a different telemetry source
- XML flight log was listing objects colors instead of coalitions names
- Fixed small memory leak related to objects without data
- Remove bookmark command was not working for real
- Tacview now properly offers the zip.acmi file format when using the “Save As” command
- Multimedia keys were mistakenly intercepted (they are now available to your favorite music player)
- Increate about dialog box size to accommodate some foreign languages
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Gents
I cannot find any documentation for how to set up and connect for a Online Debrief. Our Squad attempted it the other day and was unsuccessful. Are there any ports that require opening ? Any help would be much appreciated!
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See the 3rd field down called TCP Port? That’s the TCP port that needs opening (42673 on mine).