What Is BMS2TARGET?
With the recent release of the new Thrustmaster Viper Mission Pack and Viper Panel, many users have shared their dismay that the landing gear and other indicators are not working/integrated with BMS. This isn’t a fault of the product or Thrustmaster as there are far too many applications of which each has its unique style of exposing simulation data. It isn’t fair to expect Thrustmaster to support all of those applications and this is where the community fills the gap.
Below you will find a couple of links to files that you can download that enable the LEDs on the Viper Mission Pack and Viper Panel to relay the indicators in the cockpits of BMS. There is a caveat though as I will explain below.
For the Viper Mission Pack and Viper Panel, there are LEDs that can be used to relay the indicators of the F-16 landing gear, the landing gear handle and the threat warning auxiliary panel. It also has two columns of five user-programmable LEDs. However, the LEDs in the threat warning auxiliary switches do not fully mimic those of the real aircraft. Specifically, the “altitude” switch can either be illuminated red or green on the Viper Mission Pack / Panel as opposed to “LOW” in amber and “ALT” in green. Also, the ACT/PWR switch can only be illuminated fully as opposed to individually for “S” and “POWER”. Therefore we have to accept some compromises in the way in which the indicators of the F-16 can be shown on the Viper Mission Pack / Panel.
For now, BMS2Target only supports the F-16 and the Viper Mission Pack. Support for the Viper Panel will be available shortly. In the future, I may expand it to the Warthog and the F-18 and F-15.
How it works:
BMS2Target.exe is a console application for 64-bit Windows. I have not built a 32-bit version and I would expect 99.99% of users will not be on Windows XP!
BMS2Target.exe reads data from the Falcon BMS shared memory and sends the relevant lamp data to the Thrustmaster TARGET software that is running the ViperTQSLEDSync.tmc script. The data is sent via TCP and only if the data changes. The TARGET script handles each packet through an event. Thus it is fairly efficient and should introduce any significant load on your CPU.
BMS2Target.exe reads the Falcon shared memory every 100ms (that’s ten times a second). It’s not too taxing on the system yet fast enough so that we humans shouldn’t notice any lag.
The TARGET script does not configure your ViperTQS for use with BMS. It merely controls the LEDs of the ViperTQS. If you are using a TARGET script to map your device to BMS, I advise you to use the Alternative Launcher instead. However, if you wish to use a target script to map the ViperTQS to BMS, well, you’ll have to try to figure out how to combine this script with yours. Please don’t ask me to help with combining scripts, you’re going to have to figure that out on your own.
Installation:
Download the files from the links at the end of this message. Copy BMS2Target.exe to anywhere you like on your PC. Copy the ViperTQSLEDSync.tmc file to wherever you keep your TARGET scripts.
How to use:
You can run BMS2Target.exe before or after starting the ViperTQSLEDSync.tmc script in the Thrustmaster Target script editor and also before or after starting BMS.
Detailed instructions provided by @r00t can be found here: https://forum.falcon-bms.com/post/386186
Tested aircraft:
F-16 CM Blk 40
F-16 CM Blk 50
F-16 CM Blk 52
F-16 DM Blk 52
Other variants of the F-16 may or may not function as expected. Let me know of any problems and I will endeavour to correct them.
Need Help?
Please supply the output of the BMS2Target console and the output of the TARGET script editor console in a message below along with a description of your problem.