Here’s fairly recent pics of my mass chaos system:

@Micro_440th as a former Aviation Technical Writer (mostly turbine engine manuals) and a RL civilian pilot, I appreciate the realism that BMS has gone with having the -1 and -34. The problem is that a lot of people, especially those transitioning from DCS are used to things like the excellent Chuck’s Guides series, they see these manuals and go there and not understand how these were written is truly as reference material, not how tos, like RL.

Making the disclaimer better that the BMS Training manual and secondarily the Comms+Nav is truly where everyone should start to learn to fly and employ systems would help. It’s less graphical than Chuck’s Guides, but honestly has better info on how to actually use the systems. Truly the -34 and -1 are reference material these days to understand the things going on behind the scenes or why what you did with the Training manual/Comms+Nav manual worked the way it did.

With native VR support coming, I thought it was time to start this thread.

First, let me start with what PointCtrl is. It is a very clever finger tracking unit. Think of TrackIR thats camera mounts on the VR headset and you wear two active dots with buttons on your index fingers. These small active dots’ buttons quite intuitively allow you to click on things in the virtual cockpit. As a long time home cockpit builder, I can tell you this melds VR and virtual cockpits into an amazing symphony. You look around the cockpit and you put your finger on the switch where it looks to be in the headset and hit the clicky buttons to move the switches. Plus it works with any aircraft’s cockpit. I had planned to rebuild a more thorough home cockpit, but PointCtrl stopped me. I determined with it in VR all I needed was a basic button box for the switches/levers I needed to reach often without looking at them (like gear, Master Arm, etc.). It feels so natural to use the switches, knobs, and buttons in every VR cockpit you sit in (in DCS VR).

On the hardware integration side, the very clever thing about PointCtrl is that is works on mouse emulation. No software integration is required, unlike other hand tracking solutions. This 3d world into 2d mouse movement works shockingly well.

I’ve played with the current lots of issues BMS in VR work around of the Vorpx VR wrapper/virtual desktop. There are some big issues there with PointCtrl’s movement being very amplified almost like it is at a much higher tracking resolution/DPI than what is shown on screen, but I really hope that the native BMS VR support may fix these issues.

Another interesting feature Aux button panels that attach to the side of your VR headset and add 6 functions. Originally these were the QWERTY but now with a firmware update with the V2 hardware, these can be DX buttons and do show up in the Alternative Launcher.

Edit to add:
A couple of videos of how it works. The support boards aren’t needed but does give you a physical stop so you don’t feel like you are just hanging out your hand in space if you like and a way to steady your hand if you want:

@UltraHawk6 they are an unauthorized Easter Egg of one of the designer’s children. On their birthdays the original load screen center (the RWR graphic) would change to their faces. I was playing just after midnight one night and it freaked me out with the baby’s face on that loading screen. I believe it was fixed the next patch, pre-1.08 even. Those kids are now adults!

Cool find @efsixteenblock50!

There were lots of cool Easter eggs in 3.0, like the pack burros in the Grand Canyon and besides for the Vegas Cowboy sign, IIRC some other Easter egg in Nevada. I feel like pretty much all the theaters had something but can’t remember them all now. EDIT Here’s a run down of the faucet, ELVIS LIVES!, etc.:

But it seems like there isn’t many others like I thought outside of Kuriles and Nevada…

Still in BMS as of 4.36 at least in Korea there is the mountain lake island with the woman’s face in it close to the DPRK/PRC border.

@qawa please don’t stop! I think it’s a bit of a hurry up and wait. For me, I’m waiting for the full implementation of F-15 before I take a dive into it. I love that it’s a model that DCS doesn’t really do (it’s a FC3 plane so it doesn’t really count). I personally Iwould love to have a F-5E in BMS too. We all I think have aircraft we would like to see and of course there is the OFM group, but again I haven’t taken a deep dive into them yet partly because I know it’s F-16 avionics still. So the whole other full fidelity airplanes in BMS will reach a critical mass and we appreciate you being part of the foundation!!! I think it will be the next major leap in BMS, much like we have seen many new/returning users with VR, I think the other aircraft will have a similar wave of bringing more people to BMS.

This has been inspiring! I have a lot of old stuff still, looks like most of the eFalcon releases, FF, OpenFalcon, RPs, original HFFM release download, etc.

I’m sure @Aragorn can still give you all the advice, but if you need the pdf circa 2003, I got it!

Here are some of my screenshots from 1999 and 2000:

@Stevie It doesn’t matter to me. Again, I’ve accepted my best zone for combat simming fidelity is 20 years ago, when the Eagle was in its twilight of its prime. Give me full fidelity mechanical scan, primitive to no datalinks, etc. to full fidelity and it’s true challenges instead of guessing at the modern Gee-Whiz easy.

I’m not going to be a modern fighter pilot IRL so the new systems don’t have the draw that they used to, give me the full up complexity when I was in my pilot prime, my vintage, which just so happens where we also have the best declassification and debatable the last of the challenging avionics and pilot’s management of all the aircraft systems. BMS shouldn’t do 4.5/5th Gen IMO, it will lose is hallmark fidelity. But that’s me!

@Micro_440th I was thinking about that right after I hit send from a document production level (which I did professionally for a short time). It has to be easier for a small volunteer team to work in that style format. Also if it’s all hyperlnked there are a lot of things you can do like modern RL docs. But one other big thing I’d hate to lose is the current document size chunk Ctrl+F search that I honestly use a lot outside of VR. Webpages could make that that harder, even with Google, etc. So output to PDF I think is still great for the end users.

@MaxWaldorf sir, this thread is for 4.37 screenshots. How dare you?!?

@MCDeedle agreed! My JetSeat is a must but even a simple bass pucks setup adds so much!

@kv said in How do people normally play VR?:

@vrfgipjp I see many people saying trackballs, why use a trackball instead of a regular mouse?

@rubbra said in How do people normally play VR?:

@kv Because a trackball doesn’t need to move so you always know where it is.

This and I don’t have open space for a mouse to move on my left side with my switch consoles.

@SemlerPDX said in How do people normally play VR?:

Voice commands are perfectly suited for VR, too. I wouldn’t use VR without voice controls, including speech-to-text typing. Obviously, I’m completely biased as I work with and make voice control systems for Windows and PC games

Yes and your profile is highly recommended! I’ve used before VR in BMS but really it’s indispensable in VR for me!

@SOBO-87 said in How do people normally play VR?:

Honestly, what I wouldn’t give to have PointCTRL working within BMS. It’s the best way of interfacing with a virtual 3D cockpit in VR that I’ve ever used imho.

I knew you’d be here saying it too buddy!

HOTAS, MFD frames, physical ICP, TekCreations landing gear panel, button boxes, older devices reused as button boxes, mouse for right hand, trackball for left hand.

But I so wish PointCtrl or Slugmouse would work in BMS!!! PointCtrl works so well for DCS that I would really only need a button box for only the few switches I like to be able to use without looking at them when under stress (Master Arm is one of those). Anything you can look and see in the VR cockpit can be naturally clicked on and it feels pretty close to using physical switches in case you like that tactile feel. Plus it is instantly usable across different aircraft types, you have no problem of your physical switch being in a different spot from the aircraft you are flying, you just look in VR close to it, move your hand the rest of the way and click it.

I really like the hand passthrough @MCDeedle and @oakdesign are using with the Quest 3. It would allow me to more easily find all my miscellaneous switches and would then play with BMS mixed reality pass through for the part of my home cockpit that is almost 1:1.

The answer is pretty much never VR controllers, they are too clunky to use with a HOTAS and don’t have enough tracking accuracy and buttons to be used as a HOTAS replacement.

@airtex2019 right, but it also simulates forward and back by just moving the seat back pressure areas plus belts tightening/loosening (i.e. chair back presses into you more on carrier launch) and even side to side roll/yaw acceleration feel with just one side of both the seat pan and back on one side moving.

@Korbi I have a first gen tactile feedback vest, 3rd Space, that I will use to get specifically G feedback on top of my JetSeat/bass shakers. If there was a simpler 4-5 harness DIY belt tension system I would add that in next.

I’ve always thought that G Seat are better for fighters that motion chairs, plus are smaller/fit in a home cockpit. They are rarer than even motion platforms but because they are simulating the feel of the seat/straps under G it is better for combat because a motion platforms can’t get all the rates and extreme angles a jet fighter needs, and that even taking into account for the motion platforms that you don’t really have to go to the same angles/rates to trick your body once outside references are taken away.

I was following Berigson’s G-Seat project pretty closely but fell off with life changes. I know there was a Racing Sim focused company that makes/made one and there was a guy on YouTube that made one that inflated bladders which I thought was a good DIY design. But then the software interface and knowing my tactile feedback system is a good 80%/20% answer already, I backed off the whole idea.

Good to know @airtex2019 is at least open to supporting what we need

I have now used my X65F on my kids’ Win11 24h2 PC which required me installing the last drivers and SST and then upgrading my main PC to Win11 23h2 (to keep the option for a Reverb G2 use) with that software+driver installed already has both worked fine so far!

Can you still upgrade W10 to W11 23h2? My kids PC that I currently have the G2 plugged in to updated from 23h2 to 24h2 automatically but I haven’t updated my sim PC to W11 at all and would like the option to still use the G2.

Do you have pilot breathing turned on or can you turned on the oxygen level to be able to hear it when the other things are too low to hear?

I’ve noticed a long standing issue where I won’t hear some of the audio like Threat, MSL, and have a lower comms volume, and also what is the most immediately obvious when the plane is already started/in the air is the pilot breathing. These will stay off/low until I press a mapped button that is not on my HOTAS and may need to be a device that I have those axes mapped too.

It seems very similar to the feature/issue of the throttle needing to be moved in order for it’s current position to be detected.

@Ricky can you do that for all the VCC commands? I’ve had a few cases where VA has recognized an command as an VCC one and it’s a bit distracting to have BogeyDope talkibg to me all the sudden