How To: Drop a Bomb in Falcon 4.0 BMS on your Friend in Arma 3
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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!
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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)
My question is, would you be able to punch in 292.30 UHF and be able to communicate with Kunsan tower while also communicating with other humans on the same frequency if it were a TS plugin? I tried TARS for DCS once and that could be done but you had to add three more comm switches to an already crowded HOTAS to be able to communicate with players without triggering the in-game radio menus. Thankfully BMS has the in-game radio commands separate from UHF/VHF switches.
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My question is, would you be able to punch in 292.30 UHF and be able to communicate with Kunsan tower while also communicating with other humans on the same frequency if it were a TS plugin? I tried TARS for DCS once and that could be done but you had to add three more comm switches to an already crowded HOTAS to be able to communicate with players without triggering the in-game radio menus. Thankfully BMS has the in-game radio commands separate from UHF/VHF switches.
If the system is done right then yes. You could be on a UHF manpack on the same frequency as the tower in A3, or you could do a virtual tower setup with an external app. I mean if you standardize how the system is done then anything is possible.
ACRE uses internal state to do channels and is designed to work on stock TS servers with everyone in a single channel, so it is significantly different than IVC in how its set up. IVC and ACRE are not close to being compatible.
If you look up JTAC/FAC/etc videos with ACRE and Arma2 there is a lot of examples of people walking on A-10s from the ground.
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NouberNou! Great job on ACRE and all the other stuff!
Love it!Are you sure ACRE and IVC are incompatible? It should be relatively easy to make them compatible wouldn’t it?
Look at F4 AWACS…they control IVC from that program. The same effect must be possible with ACRE…or am I mission something? -
Look at F4 AWACS…they control IVC from that program. The same effect must be possible with ACRE…or am I mission something?
How sure are you of this? If this is true I am going to email Sakis back to ask him about it. He’s already been helpful for the Falcon Mod development.
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NouberNou! Great job on ACRE and all the other stuff!
Love it!Are you sure ACRE and IVC are incompatible? It should be relatively easy to make them compatible wouldn’t it?
Look at F4 AWACS…they control IVC from that program. The same effect must be possible with ACRE…or am I mission something?You’d need another piece of software to translate between them, that software would be rather complex because it’d need to be a client on both the TS server and the IVC server (most likely one for each client on IVC, and potentially one for each client that wishes to use ACRE to talk to IVC)…. You’d also have to send states and such of the radio… Honestly it’d not be THAT bad, but as they are now they are designed totally different (IVC can get away with a much more simple implementation because of the nature of Falcon vs. the nature of Arma, in Falcon a client is a radio(s) and just needs to be in a couple channels using virtual channels, in Arma a client can have 0-infinite radios potentially, and their number of radios changes, and their radio could be someone elses radio at some point).
I’ve thought about these types of applications before though to be honest for other scenarios (for example an FDC who isn’t in game and wants to use a different setup to handle calculating fire missions, etc) or other things.
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Yes now you mention it. You do need a program in windows to communicate with IVC.
1. Arma sends command to extra program
2. Program sends command to IVC
3. IVC does iets thingNow…
Lets make it simpler.
IVC can be used without Falcon being started. You can just start the IVC client then join a server and listen in…tune freqs…and even transmit.
So technically we dont need ANY script to have comms with Falcon from Arma. The only downside is you need to Alt-Tab to change freqs. -
Yes now you mention it. You do need a program in windows to communicate with IVC.
1. Arma sends command to extra program
2. Program sends command to IVC
3. IVC does iets thingNow…
Lets make it simpler.
IVC can be used without Falcon being started. You can just start the IVC client then join a server and listen in…tune freqs…and even transmit.
So technically we dont need ANY script to have comms with Falcon from Arma. The only downside is you need to Alt-Tab to change freqs.I could be corrected here about ACRE but since ACRE (or Ace?) allows custom key bindings, couldn’t you use something similar to custom keybind in-Arma key presses to IVC Commands?
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I could be corrected here about ACRE but since ACRE (or Ace?) allows custom key bindings, couldn’t you use something similar to custom keybind in-Arma key presses to IVC Commands?
It is more about matching frequencies, etc. You need to know in Arma when you can hear someone on IVC, and you need to know in Falcon when you can hear someone on ACRE.
Also since the fun in ACRE is realistic radio signal simulation you need to pass the audio through ACRE’s distortion code to make the audio more/less intelligible.
It is all technically possible, it is just a lot of work. I mean realistically you could probably add all the binds from IVC into ACRE (since ACRE is the more complex/featured program) and just have it work natively (since in this implementation I assume aircraft position data is already being sent to Arma to simulate the airplanes location for visual purposes). Falcon pilots would just join regular teamspeak and be in the same channel as everyone else and let ACRE do all the work. In ACRE2 you’d need some additional stuff coming out of Falcon like crypto/FH information, but that could honestly come out of Arma just as easily if needed (that stuff is, as far as I know done via a key fill by the ground crew and not the pilots themselves).
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It is more about matching frequencies, etc. You need to know in Arma when you can hear someone on IVC, and you need to know in Falcon when you can hear someone on ACRE.
Right, see in what I was picturing above, Teamspeak is completely out of the equation and it’s just Arma 3 Mod -> IVC directly, and IVC is the only voice client.
Also since the fun in ACRE is realistic radio signal simulation you need to pass the audio through ACRE’s distortion code to make the audio more/less intelligible.
IVC already does some of this, the only thing I think Acre does that IVC doesn’t is handling distance.
since in this implementation I assume aircraft position data is already being sent to Arma to simulate the airplanes location for visual purposes
We’re not actually doing that. There was no way to keep the aircraft in game oriented anything like what it was doing in Falcon, the control changes and airplane movement happen to fast in Falcon to populate over to Arma 3. At best you’re going to be 5 or more seconds out of sync with Falcon and the Airplane is going to be jumping all over the place depending on how the person is flying.
The other issue here is that, at least in my community, because of the poor poor poor poor poor optimization in Arma 3 - by which I mean the game runs terribly 99% of the time on 99% of machines with 20 FPS or less - most of the people I play with never set their view distance higher then about 3000m. I usually drop LGBs from a nice save 10,000 Foot Altitude, which is actually just beyond their view distance in Arma 3, so they wouldn’t see me anywhere.
Then there is the need to have them install some sort of F-16 mod…it just adds up and up and up. Right now all that’s required to use the system is for each Falcon client to run a small script in the background (after IVC and the natural display extraction from Falcon BMS I don’t feel like this is unreasonable) and the Arma 3 server to have inidb and the map code on it. These are very light requirements for the end user, and I want to try to keep it that way.
In ACRE2 you’d need some additional stuff coming out of Falcon like crypto/FH information, but that could honestly come out of Arma just as easily if needed (that stuff is, as far as I know done via a key fill by the ground crew and not the pilots themselves).
This is a problem because, as far as I know, there is no way to get the frequency information out of Falcon, which is where I have run into a wall everytime. I suppose you might be able to pull it out IVC….that might be acceptable. You will already be playing Falcon so spooling up IVC to might work. This could work - it’s clunky, and unnecessary (BMS Devs, hear our cries, provide us with an API!) but you could do a Falcon to IVC - to ACRE integration that would let you share comms over teamspeak. Maybe this is what you were getting at before and I just missed it.
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Ok I back away from the comms issue. Im sure there are people smarter than me who can handle that.
For the visualisation part:
You may be able to make some sort of prediction using the set velocity and commands to set pitch/bankvangles.Nevertheless, the view distance issue kill the nesecity of a visualisation of the aircraft. It would just mean we are limited to type 2 and type 3 control in CAS situation. Which is fine! It will be damn cool anyway.
Using MFDE as a ROVER system would kinda make it even better. -
Ok I back away from the comms issue. Im sure there are people smarter than me who can handle that.
For the visualisation part:
You may be able to make some sort of prediction using the set velocity and commands to set pitch/bankvangles.Nevertheless, the view distance issue kill the nesecity of a visualisation of the aircraft. It would just mean we are limited to type 2 and type 3 control in CAS situation. Which is fine! It will be damn cool anyway.
Using MFDE as a ROVER system would kinda make it even better.If you can pull a velocity vector, and up vector, and a ASL positional value from Falcon during live play that is all you need. You’d need something to translate that to Arma (which is why HLA/DIS implementations exist).
Arma can do interpolation of those values and replicate a model in flight, so even if the model is at 25,000 AGL we could have it in game, which would be nice for in the future if we ever figure out a way to send events back into Falcon, such as SAM, AAA, and misc ground fire.
The only thing I’d worry about is the fidelity of units on the ground… This might be sacrilege, but I’ve always seen this implementation being more full blown in a game like DCS (as much as I prefer BMS to that series).
Anyway, I am a big proponent of better fixed wing flight in Arma, whatever the source. I have kicked around the idea of integrating JSBSim as a FDM into Arma for a while, which is totally plausible, but sadly way out of my time constraints. If BIS added render to texture canvases in Arma you could honestly create a very high fidelity flight simulator using an external FDM. There really is no limit to what Arma can do if you really put your mind to it, it is a wonderful platform.
Also I don’t know if anyone has seen this here, but they just started a competition yesterday for addons/mods with up to 500,000 Euros in prizes… Maybe some talented people from this community will enter it and make something insanely awesome: http://makearmanotwar.com/
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I read that aswell…
Lets make money. -
Hmmm, you both have me wondering now if I can somehow get the drone footage I am broadcasting out to the Arma 3 Tablet application onto the MFD’s in BMS….
I wish I knew how to get in touch with the BMS folks to talk to them about an API, even after another year of updates it would be nice to have and fun to play with.
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I was just thinking…
What if the webserver, handling the location data, runs on the same server as the falcon server?
That potentially lowers the delay by a hundred of times…I was also thinking…since F4AWACS has ground unit positions, you can use Falcon as the platform for all the ground vehicles (Or atleast the ones relevant for that mission). That will instantly synchronise locations of these vehicles with the ARMA world!
The most ideal would be to have a Theater 100% optimised to match the ArmA stock theater. This is just an 11x11nm area so should be piece 'a cake for a experienced Theater builder.
Can’t ASharpe and Noubernou and me not get together on TS some day soon to share some ideas and knowledge?
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I was just thinking…
What if the webserver, handling the location data, runs on the same server as the falcon server?
That potentially lowers the delay by a hundred of times…Ideally, you could get a gaming server and do this with Falcon and ARMA 3 and the MySQL database running on the same server. This would be the best way to handle it, but dedicated gaming servers are expensive. Doing it this way, you could drop INIDB and re-write it to allow ARMA 3 and Falcon to read/write directly to and from the MySQL database, which would eliminate about 66% of the delay.
I was also thinking…since F4AWACS has ground unit positions, you can use Falcon as the platform for all the ground vehicles (Or atleast the ones relevant for that mission). That will instantly synchronise locations of these vehicles with the ARMA world!
I have not seen ground positions in F4AWACS. In fact, my talks with Sarkis (SP?) he said this wasn’t possible because of how he was reading the Falcon Data out of memory.
The most ideal would be to have a Theater 100% optimised to match the ArmA stock theater. This is just an 11x11nm area so should be piece 'a cake for a experienced Theater builder.
This is not actually ideal. There are a couple of problems with this, first the naval units from Falcon would be to crammed together on an 11x11 mile map. The A3 map, for future reference, is 30 KM x 30 KM, just so you know. But also if you put in a SA-7 it would be engaging you as soon as you took off from the airfield. The extra space for padding lets you add in extra airfields, additional ranges for air to air contacts, refueling tracks and also AWACs tracks, and put some of those things out of range of the AA threats. There’s a certain amount of tension that gets build up flying from Turkey to Lemnos that makes this kinda fun.
Can’t ASharpe and Noubernou and me not get together on TS some day soon to share some ideas and knowledge?
Yes. When I get home tonight I will PM my private TS details to the relevant members. It’s used by a small amount of gamers for fun stuff, so there may be others floating around on it but I also use it when I am doing group development with members of my team.
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Ok cool waiting for your PM.
With an ArmA compatible theater I was more thinking of a standard Falcon theater size map with all (or some Arma 1 2 and 3) maps. Whichever are used or can be used. Put all the islands some miles away from eachother and sync it generally with true lat/lng’s.
Most islands are infact based on island in the middleterenian and adriatic sea. Everon (from OFP) for example off the coast of croatia.
So you will have a very sea filled falcon theaterOR just have the full Aegean theater with the Arma3 island, as you allready did, but more detail for specifically tgat island. It should be easy enough to only draw the Falcon-side aircraft is it’s location is within certaon parameters.
Ohwww my brain is going wild! Haha
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Ok cool waiting for your PM.
With an ArmA compatible theater I was more thinking of a standard Falcon theater size map with all (or some Arma 1 2 and 3) maps. Whichever are used or can be used. Put all the islands some miles away from eachother and sync it generally with true lat/lng’s.
Most islands are infact based on island in the middleterenian and adriatic sea. Everon (from OFP) for example off the coast of croatia.
So you will have a very sea filled falcon theaterOR just have the full Aegean theater with the Arma3 island, as you allready did, but more detail for specifically tgat island. It should be easy enough to only draw the Falcon-side aircraft is it’s location is within certaon parameters.
Ohwww my brain is going wild! Haha
This is an interesting thought that had not previously occurred to me. It would in fact be possible to spin up, say, a Stratis theater. It would have a different offset to convert to Falcon, but moving the falcon coordinate offset to the Arma 3 side instead of the falcon script would mean that you could just pass it between theaters…So you could have server A running Stratis and Server B running Altis, and then have Falcon interacting with multiple theaters…
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Ok cool waiting for your PM.
With an ArmA compatible theater I was more thinking of a standard Falcon theater size map with all (or some Arma 1 2 and 3) maps. Whichever are used or can be used. Put all the islands some miles away from eachother and sync it generally with true lat/lng’s.
Most islands are infact based on island in the middleterenian and adriatic sea. Everon (from OFP) for example off the coast of croatia.
So you will have a very sea filled falcon theaterOR just have the full Aegean theater with the Arma3 island, as you allready did, but more detail for specifically tgat island. It should be easy enough to only draw the Falcon-side aircraft is it’s location is within certaon parameters.
Ohwww my brain is going wild! Haha
^ This is a great idea.
I have to say, I am consistently amazed at just how smart some of you guys out there are with modding these games. Finding a way to combine ARMA 3 with Falcon, even in a limited way, would be groundbreaking and simply too awesome for words.
I hope you guys can figure this out!
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The Kurile theater would be a good candidate too, if I understand what you guys are trying to do. Of course it needs a lot more work than Korea, so maybe it’s not a good candidate…I guess I’ll leave that to you guys to decide.