Time to U1: 3 months
Time to U2: 1 month
Time to U3: 3 weeks (!?)
You guys are bangin.
Windows 10, 22H2
AMD Ryzen 5900X
32 Gb DDR4-3600
Nvidia RTX 4070
4k @60hz, v-sync
VKB Gladiator NXT and mouselook ftw
Time to U1: 3 months
Time to U2: 1 month
Time to U3: 3 weeks (!?)
You guys are bangin.
@Seifer omg this changelog tho … it’s almost like a major release!
https://www.falcon-bms.com/changelogs/falcon-bms-4-36-update-1/
new training missions? new cockpit textures? new/improved AI and JTAC interactions?
improved ACMI recording? improved models? and docs? the list just goes on…
I was only expecting a few CTD fixes and maybe the AIM-120 thing.
this is amazing work, BMS team, in just a few short months! can’t wait to try it out…
@chihirobelmo forget the code, I think many of us are excited to see that you’re a member of the dev team now!
I have no vote for or against Steam integration but I want to take a moment to acknowledge the huge changes BMS has already undertaken, in the past 12 months, to reduce the barrier(s) to entry and increase visibility.
easy downloader and updater – no more bittorrent! no more needing to maintain a setup/staging folder for updates!
much easier to sign on to the new forum… better search features, and also google indexing of threads!
integration of Alt Launcher (which has caused added confusion in the near term, for some old timers, but still must admit it is a huge net win for newb-friendliness)
the recent, huge overhaul of virtually all the main docs
dozens of new youtube videos, incl from the devs and doc authors
lots of under-the-hood improvements to make the code work better, by default, out of the box, for a wider variety of modern desktop systems… sometimes little things, like making borderless-mode the default, go a long way to removing technical barriers and reducing confusion
release cadence brought down from ~3 years to ~3 months to ~3 weeks!
Yes, true it’s still not anything like a one-click Steam download or a retail, shrink-wrapped software experience… but it has moved so far in that direction, over the past year… certainly more than I ever thought it would.
“Falcon BMS - As Legit as it Gets”
Congrats, BMS team!
tip 1- long-press Uncage in AG mode, to switch to STRF.
tip 2- small controlled bursts… think of it as a shotgun, not a machine-gun.
tip 3- I never knew this until I saw it on someone’s youtube video… the TGP will go into a “CCIP” mode focusing on the area of projected impact.
The MFD will refuse to become SOI so it helps to get your preferred zoom factor dialed in, before switching to STRF. (I think I like 2x wide fov … but ymmv)
The TGP is a game-changer!
bonus tip 4- have a good, long-lasting flare program… like 1/sec for 12 sec (or longer). angry people are going to be shooting manpads at you.
the bullets in BMS appear to “time out” after ~2.5nm range… so it seems not possible to spray downward from 20k ft, staying out of manpad and shilka range
It’s range is 57nmi
If a Tu-160 blackjack bomber is screaming straight toward you at mach 2.3 and does not maneuver at all… and you are screaming straight toward it at mach 1.2… and both of you are at 35k ft or higher… and you fire the missile at optimal loft trajectory when the blackjack is 56.51 mi away… and you work for Raytheon and your job title is Marketing Manager… then you might reasonably say the AIM-120C range is 57 mi.
Recently several people have asked for guidance on Logitech X3D Pro bindings… it’s a struggle to describe in words, how to use the new gamepad callbacks to allow the single hat to be used as cursor, TMS, DMS, CMS and Comms.
So I made an Alt Launcher template… may or may not add it to the stock AL templates, depending on feedback.
I know it will seem like heresy to some, to use the physical trigger as the dx-pinky-shift… but it’s really the only button you can easily press and hold, while still accessing all other buttons with your thumb or left hand.
Get the XML template, and instructions, here =>
https://gist.github.com/arithex/2bbd32a053a88e3b0ea87d25b13df188
@digle said in Small EOY update...:
Is there a reason about this short period of time between releases since 4.35 ?
Remember 4.33 took several years to be debugged
New debugging tools ? Change of the software architecture ?
I’m not a BMS dev so folks can correct me if I’m wrong. Just looking from the outside, I saw a few new tools, and things happen since 2020… beyond the inside-baseball stuff Seifer outlined.
the move to x64 only, and end of life for Win7 (and soon Win8) reduces the test-matrix by a lot
I think in mid 2021 (sometime early/mid 4.35 era), the dev team started using AppVerifier [1] to catch mem leaks, double-free bugs, and heap buffer-overruns … uncaught SEH exceptions, etc. and other related tricks eg. /GZ or /RTC compiler flag, for debug-builds, to catch stack buffer-overruns.
One can imagine there was probably a huge logjam of noise in those initial reports… imagine 20 years of accumulated bugs (and starting out with a lot, lol)! But through heroic efforts of Seifer and other devs, once the random noise of dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of nondeterministic CTD bugs is squashed… at some point you begin to cross an inflection point, enjoying increased velocity in all other aspects of development and testing.
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/devtest/application-verifier
Definitely the hardest part of C/C++ development is enforcing clear lifecycle-ownership of memory and other resources (network connections, file handles, COM objects, etc)… C++ smart-pointers, combined with RAII [2] mindset, is the best “tool” I know of to tackle that.
[2] https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/raii
Those things were there before 4.35, but it seems like a clear change in strategy to embrace them, as loosely coupled dependencies. (eg. the default ACMI format no longer compat with the builtin playback feature.)
@drillerman52 this is your official forum
first step (FAQ) is to make sure you have working audio…
next step is to run with -mono
command line switch (select the ‘Debug’ button on the launcher screen) and send us the generated log files from \Falcon BMS 4.37\User\Logs
@NEVES oh no, did you delete your entire user/config folder?
that was not what I meant… I was referring to the file you posted here, which is in %LocalAppData%\Benchmark_Sims
@Scorpion82 said in News from the frontlines... 4.37 U4:
May I ask what “A/C Data in proto format” means? Is it a new file format?
think of it as “JSON for C++” if that helps
I don’t expect it’s much faster, but it means (a) we spend less time fixing bugs in crufty old 1990s code parsing binary files, or raw text files, and (b) the structure of those files becomes extendable in a way that’s more future-proof and resilient.
@NEVES this happened to 1 other person, about 2 weeks ago.
https://forum.falcon-bms.com/post/394223
I don’t have any explanation… sounds like it was data-loss due to a power failure.
But seems astronomically unlikely yours would fail in the exact same way, at the exact same byte.
Possibly some race-condition with the RSS reader thread, and the main thread loading the config file. I’ll look into it. Thanks!
@NEVES I don’t understand what’s corrupted, or how, but you’re free to delete the stuff in %LocalAppData%\Benchmark_Sims
As you can see, all it does is remember which checkboxes you’d selected in AL.
But if you share the log file, it may help me understand what’s going wrong. It should be almost impossible for this little xml file to get corrupted.
@vagabonds65 not quite… ::
is just ip6 shorthand for “all zero”
I think you’ll want the IPaddress line to look something like
[Contact 2]
Description = Host a Game (IPv6)
IPaddress = 1234:abcd:1234:abcd:1234:abcd:1234:abcd
Just to be clear, for anyone else stumbling upon this – if your throttle device signals a dx button as pressed, when it’s in the cutoff position (which you can configure VKB STECS to do [1]) and the axes properly report 0% when at the detent… then you probably don’t want to set g_bUseAnalogIdleCutoff in cfg or set an idle-detent in AL/BMS at all – just use the callbacks Kavelenko mentioned above.
[1]
Also note, there are a pair of confusingly-named and labeled callbacks, designed specially for this purpose – map these to the dx button numbers that are signalled, when the respective throttle axes are in the cutoff range.
These callbacks shutoff fuel to the left/right engine, when signalled.
SimThrottleIdleDetentLeft 314 0 0XFFFFFFFF 0 0 0 1 "TQS: CUTOFF RELEASE - Left Engine"
SimThrottleIdleDetentRight 314 0 0XFFFFFFFF 0 0 0 1 "TQS: CUTOFF RELEASE - Right Engine"
hth
@Ransom46 if you are truly using analog idle detent, it is not necessary to map any of those callbacks
@NEVES please open that log file and share the contents, via http://pastebin.com