I have built an app that makes it easier to find information in the multiple BMS manuals. It is nothing fancy, but I have come to use it a lot myself so thought I would share it.

Besides regular search for a word or phrase that any pdf reader can do, the app can perform more flexible search. The app will look through all BMS manuals for the search word(s) and apply the search logic that the user has requested.

Results are presented as shown below (a search for “stt”). For convenience, a link to open the page directly in a browser is made available.

In my own experience, the flexible search modes often help me find what I am actually looking for when normal search comes up empty handed. If I want to recall how the campaign priorities work or find the table with ALIC codes for HARMs, I search for it. With traditional search this process quickly runs into a few bumps, however. I can’t just type in “campaign priorities” and choose Find in my pdf reader. Well I can, but nothing shows up. In this case, the Proximity Search mode fixes that:

Installation and setup

New version out 09Jun2024. See this post for details: https://forum.falcon-bms.com/post/401242

Download: The latest version can be found here:
https://github.com/JBoysen1/BMSManualFinder/releases/tag/v1.0.0

For more information and details on how to install or customize, please take a look at the Github page: https://github.com/JBoysen1/BMSManualFinder/wiki

Any feedback is appreciated, especially regarding any findings related to the search results.

-JayB

I have released a very simple, free app for Android devices to help with building situational awareness when facing Bullseye calls. The app is named BullseyeHelper. This demo video shows it basic use in less than one minute:

Background

When airborne in BMS we may receive bullseye calls, for instance telling us where enemies are or where a tanker is available. Seasoned virtual pilots are able to quickly figure out what the picture is from that information. Some of us have used pen and paper to plot the location of our jet vs. those enemies to figure out if the enemy is close enough to be a concern.

This app is essentially a digital version of such a pen-and-paper tool that runs on your phone or tablet.

Features

You can simply tap the screen to place markers (and optionally rotate your own jet to the proper heading). The app will then tell you distance to contact and which heading you need to assume to point the jet at the contact. For higher accuracy, type in exact coordinates in the two fields up top.

The app also contains practice modes so everyone can become better at building the mental image of our jet vs. the enemy. It works by throwing bullseye calls at you for you to solve.

Finally, the app can connect to BMS which automatically places your ownship on the bullseye chart.

The video - or these screenshots - should convey how the app works in showing the tactical picture and how practice mode works.

The picture below shows that the enemy is 73nm away, at our 8’oclock. If we wanted to point the jet directly at him, we should turn left and assume a heading of 228.

The next picture below is from the “hard” practice mode, including a countdown after which the picture of both jets will be revealed (the screenshot is from an older version)

How to use it

In-game you would find your ownship bullseye coordinates either on the HUD (only in A-A or NAV mode AFAIR) or on the HSD, lower left corner.

You then put in ownship and enemy symbols by simply tapping the screen. Every tap alternates between placing the ownship and enemy symbol. For proper heading of ownship, use the rotation arrows. Hold to rotate, tap for fine tuning.

You may also type coordinates into the two fields at the top for

• control over accuracy of coordinates vs pressing with a finger, and
• ability to enter the exact heading for ownship

With the keyboard you start entering values by tapping one of the two grey fields at the top. In this screenshot, I have entered ownship coordinates radial 20, distance 85 and heading 340 and I am about to press Send (button in lower right corner):

The entry fields accept coordinates in two formats, either “20-85-140” (for coordinates radial 20, distance 85 and heading 140) or equivalently “020085140”. In the latter format you must supply 3 digits for each coordinate value.

Enemy or tanker coordinates only require the first two values as input (radial and distance), since we usually do not receive a heading value from AWACS.

Practice

To practice bullseye calls, simply tap one of the Practice buttons at the bottom. Every time you press a button, a new challenge is produced to be solved within a certain time. In the practice modes you may tap the screen to indicate where you believe the symbols will appear once countdown is done.

The “hard” mode gives you your coordinates and those of the enemy, the challenge is to build the picture mentally before it is revealed after the countdown (default 10 seconds) and you can see if you got it right.

The “easy” mode works the same way, only here you are shown the placement of your own jet as a help so you only need to place the enemy jet at the correct location to gauge distance and aspect from that. Default time here is 5 seconds.

The HSI mode is described in detail in post from 22Jan2022 in this thread.

The RESET button cancels practice modes and BMS mode and returns you to the standard mode (plain bullseye chart).

Connect to BMS (optional)

The app will work entirely on its own, no connection to BMS is required. That said, the app is able to connect to BMS by running a small companion program. If you choose to do so, a connection to BMS will enable you to press the BMS button and have your ownship information entered for you.

For this to work, you need to be in-game in cockpit in 3D. The phone must be on WiFi (no cable required) and the wifi needs to be the same network as the PC for the UDP communication to work.

The BMS button will turn black to highlight the selection of that mode. When connected, every press of the BMS button will load the current position for your ownship. Enemy markers can then be placed on the screen with a simple tap, or (if you prefer extra precision) by using the enemy entry field and the in-app keyboard.

The github page has more information on how to set up the companion program.

Resources

You may find the Android app and the companion program here:

Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.companyname.BullsEyeHelper

Github page with more info, apk file and companion program (BMSBullsEyeServer) : https://github.com/JBoysen1/BullsEyeHelper (select latest release on right-hand side for downloads)

The app has been tested on Android 8, 10 and 11 devices, both phones and tablets. If you find any issues, feel free to report them here or as issues on Github.

Updates

10Dec2021: Version 2.21 fixes an issue on Android 10 with inability to use keyboard after having tapped to place symbols

13Dec2021: Version 2.30 adds options to perform range scaling (range increase/decrease) and rotation of ownship heading for proper “X o’clock” call

21December2021: Version 2.40 adds zoom functionality

10January2022: Version 2.45 fixes layout for tablets and has some minor improvements

22Jan2022: Version 2.50 has a countdown slider and a new HSI practice mode.

29Dec2022: Version 2.61 adds continuous mode to BMS and a few minor improvements

27-Jan-2024: No changes to the app. There is now an alternative version of the server application on Github. It should be able to run even if the system does not have specific .NET packages installed. The advice is to first try the regular, smaller “BMSBullsEyeServer.exe”. If that fails to start, try the new server application “BMSBullsEyeServer_SelfContained.exe”

A new version of the manual search utility is out, brought up to 4.37.4 and with some small improvements.

The default set of manuals that are searchable has been brought up-to-date to match BMS 4.37.4 by adding the new F-15 training manual to the set.

New with this release is a feature that can help when searching for single words and abbreviations. Normally the app uses substring searches, so “carrier” would also find “carriers”. But sometimes that is not useful, eg. search for “ALR” and you will also get hits on “already”, when you really just want to know about the campaign setting of ALR (Acceptable Level of Risk). An option to treat the search word as a whole word has been introduced.

Also new is a small preview of results shown when the mouse hovers over the link. For a large result set this can help narrow down which search result to open.

Both new features can be seen here:

The latest version can be found here: https://github.com/JBoysen1/BMSManualFinder/releases/tag/v1.0.0

Long line at the gas station, ME 128:

Just got off the boom, hanging with my AI buddies (and celebrating that my screenshots are working again)

@Icarus
@foxster

A new version is out, Beta-v6.

As from Beta-v6, the app detects installed browsers and sets them up for use with deep-links to manual pages. It will always include the system default browser and up to 2 other browsers.

The Config\Browser.cfg can be used if you would like to add and use an additional non-installed browser that could not be detected by methods relying on install check. In that case, add a line in the Browser.cfg with information for the extra browser.

Also from Beta-v6 the app writes events to a log file in the Log\ subfolder. The file can be useful for troubleshooting any issues.

Finally, the app now shows a timestamp for when the index was built.

The Wiki page now explains how you could go about searching through docs that come as part of a theater install.

All, I am about to push a version 2.2 which allows you to tap the screen to place enemy and ownship symbols on the Bullseye chart, instead of using the app keyboard. You may still enter coordinates using the app keyboard, both methods work.

For the practice modes, tapping the screen will place a circle showing the user estimate for where the symbols are going to end up. I believe that was the notion behind your idea, @foxster. An example is this screenshot (I was a little bit off for both symbols):

In the regular mode (not practice, not BMS) every tap alternates between placing the ownship and enemy symbol. That way the keyboard is not necessary to use any longer, unless:

• you want very high control/accuracy of coordinates, or

• you want to enter the precise heading for ownship, or

• you want to place a symbol outside the 100nm default distance, in which case the rings will scale to accomodate the longer distance from BE.

In this mode the ownship heading defaults to 360 as a nod to Rolling Fire but you can change it with the keyboard. If someone has a gesture suggestion for the heading let me know.

The BMS button will fetch the full set of coordinates for ownship (including current heading) and display that. In BMS mode, every tap will place an enemy marker and give directions towards it.

The release should roll out to devices soon (it has passed Google Play review). I will also put together a short demo video of the app

To be continued…

-jb

@tgw One thing especially with 4.36 that I am looking forward to is the improved fog. That might give us the ability to come closer to encountering situations like this. Notice how the stern is barely visible from the LSO station so imagine the cockpit experience:

Image is from this video:

@Amadeus75 said in Tankers that refuel humans only:

This is just a brainstorm, but…
I think, it would be cool if there was the possibility for a kind of “emergency call” for the tanker menu.
Just like you may declare an emergency with the ATC.
…
Imagine, you have 300 lbs left with still four hornets in front of you… and you could give the tanker a distress signal so you could get higher priority.

That’s a good idea. If you watch RL refueling ops videos the tanker crew asks the jets for fuel state and sets up the queue accordingly

I have put out a new version 2.50 of the BullseyeHelper app.

Changes in 2.50

• The Hard practice mode is working again

• The countdown in the practice modes now has a slider so you can adjust how fast you want to be when doing the exercises. Note that while the exercise is running, you can not adjust the time. You can change it from 5-20 seconds using steps of 5 (so 5,10,15,20 seconds).

• There is a new practice mode, HSI Practice, see below

HSI practice

With this method, you learn how to use the HSI in the jet as a bullseye aid.

Say that we are given this picture: You: 90-50, Contact: 180-100

You start out by determining who is furthest away from bullseye, you or the contact. In this case that would be the contact at 100 nm.

A basic flowchart of how you then use this mode through 4 easy steps could be this:

Or in a single picture:

So what would that look like in the jet? Something like this:

By projecting the bearing line from you to the contact through the center, you get the required heading as approx 210. As for distance, remember that radius represents 100 nm. Since the projected line is a bit longer than one radius, he is probably 110-120 out.

One thing I particularly like about this training mode is that you use something which is already in the jet. No outside tools required (like this app or printed bullseye charts).

When testing it out in the jet I used the heading bug for the first marker (the one on the circumference which decides the radius). That made it a bit easier, since then there is only one marker that has to be imagined. And then the CRS arrow can help with the projected heading.

In the app, the practice mode is used like shown here. My estimates of where the markers should be are the yellow circles, placed by tapping the screen:

The HSI practice mode may seem complicated at first. But once it “clicks”, it is no more complicated than the two other modes. It could be interesting to hear if anyone can consistently beat 10 seconds in 5 out of 5 tries, assessment of heading and distance included.

The numbers used above are nice round numbers for illustration. In reality you will get bullseye calls that are much closer. So use the timing slider to become good and quick

@Alfred said in Back to 4.36:

@MaxWaldorf I clicked on torrent after scrolling to the bottom of the page from this site
https://www.falcon-bms.com/downloads/
it says Falcon 4.36 BMS Torrent (magnet), the downloaded file was “Falcon BMS_4.36.3_Full_Setup” but this didn’t run. So I went back to and old executable I had which is a base 4.36 with no updates!

The file you must have gotten is “Falcon-BMS_4.36.3_Full_Setup.torrent” (pay attention to the extension here). That is not something you run as a program, this is a torrent file which you use with another program like qBitTorrent. That program will then start downloading Falcon BMS, which in this case will be a fully patched 4.36 up to and including U3.

@the_tr00per If you saw this with 4.37.8, maybe put a message into the test thread so it can be logged (and maybe fixed) ?

https://forum.falcon-bms.com/topic/30024/4.37.8-testers-needed/

@Mongoose I had some issues back when I mapped trim onto my Warthog stick. By mistake I mapped to some of the other trim callbacks and got poor results. Make sure that you are mapped to the 4 callbacks that start with “STICK: TRIM” + Up/down/left/right.

I would have placed a screenshot image here but do not have enough privileges, whatever that means. But you go into the Launcher, filter for “trim” and then you’ll be able to find 4 the mappings that you want to use, and a whole lot of other ones you want to avoid.

And then, as said, tap the trim, don’t hold it

@Seifer yeah when I read about these new comms I imagined that the welcome message would be triggered by a check-in. But regardless, more messaging gives more immersion so a welcome addition!

@Seifer Are the new AWACS messages related to using the Check-in/out commands ?

@brddog006 that is strange indeed. You could consider showing a video of when you fly the approach, maybe people can come up with ideas from how the cockpit is set up, Or it is a bug, either way a video is always very useful if you’d bother

@brddog006 Do you hear the beeps from the 2 sets of ILS beacons? First one about 4 NM out, second one around 1 NM from threshold

@vAiCon Indeed, more in-depth naval operations would fit a lot of campaigns like a glove !

Oh, I spent way too much time flying around the Norwegian fjords. This is awesome !

At some point it would be convenient for the Launcher to show the callback names as well, such as SimHotasPinkyShift. Right now we just have the label text. That would mean that we could filter for the callback name too

Can I just ask, I use DMS Up/Down on a shifted layer to adjust the seat elevation (good for landing). So I hold in my shift button and press DMS UP or DOWN, then release the shift button. Are we not supposed to use it like that ?