Here’s fairly recent pics of my mass chaos system:
Here’s fairly recent pics of my mass chaos system:
Thanks @Thommo, I’m glad an Aussie is kicking it off right for us!!! I am so thankful to everyone that has helped keep Falcon alive this long, yes the developers, but everyone that continues to fly it too! It’s been an amazing 25 years.
I basically bought BMS as an 19th birthday present to myself, so Falcon 4.0’s many different flavors has been basically a part of all of my adult life! So thanks to everyone and BMS FOREVER! Friday is my personal 25th year of owning Falcon 4.0:
Thanks for keeping the dream alive everyone!
It is also about 22 years since I thought it was dead with 12/07/99 being when original team was laid off. But looking back, it was the best thing that could have happened for Falcon, only not for the designers. Thanks to whomever was disgruntled enough with Hasbro to leak the source code!
This years survey is up! Stick through it, it is front loaded with civilian MSFS/XPlane questions but starts to have more combat specific and even BMS as a primary sim choice. Good way to represent the community of both combat flight simmers and BMS:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/flightsimsurvey2022?partner=MSFSAddons
Very cool and fitting at almost 25 years to see the Microprose logo in 4.37u3!
@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:
On the practical side, OpenXR for some people increases performance and avoids some SteamVR annoyances. It will definitely increase performance for those of us that have Dynamic Foevated Rendering (DFR) headsets like the Pimax Crystal. It may also allow for those of us that have PointCTRL to be able to use @fredemmott’s MSFS workaround. So to whichever BMS team member implementing it, hats off to you and looking forward to it greatly!!!
That time of year again to represent BMS in particular and combat flight sims in general!
@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:
@Dee-Jay said in Santa's wishlist for BMS:
@ZoneStalker995 said in Santa's wishlist for BMS:
I wish we had some more of the modern F-16 features like Link-16, missile warning systems and towed decoys, but I’d settle for just having an AWACs datalink like DCS. Its unpleasant fighting SU-35s and J-20’s without modern era upgrades.
- You would certainly not be able to use L16 correctly because of its complexity.
- MWS do not work as you think.
- Towed decoys prevent hard manoeuvres.
Anyone that wants a glimpse into the Link16 setup should watch this, it’s the best explanation I’ve had on it (granted I haven’t really gone looking that much though):
In general what @ZoneStalker995 and everyone else that compares DCS/Eagle Dynamics’ design philosophy to BMS needs to understand that @Dee-Jay and the rest of the BMS design team are not going to give you a cool toy without the real pain of the setup and realistic integration of that system. IFF is a great example and was in these wishlist threads for years. When we finally got it even though most of us wanted just a nerfed interrogation capability (like DCS’s IFF method), the full Mode 4 was added was definitely deeper than most people expected, despite @Dee-Jay and others warned us the whole time. Overall though it is a much better implementation IMO than DCS and one of the reasons I only dabble in that sim and always focus on BMS. That’s what they are doing again with those listed systems.
Viper ECM operation right now is one of the rare systems that DCS is modeling more realistically than BMS and is an example of one of the few Falcon 4.0 legacy systems that still exist in a nerfed format. If BMS probably had their way, we would not have a jammer modeled at all and would have waited until there was more information on how the ECM panel actually works and everyone would be on the same jammerless level (and actually what ED did in their Viper and Hornet at first in a rare case of getting their system mostly right before giving an unrealistic capability). My understanding from posts here is ED only beat BMS to the release punch on this and internal BMS builds have the ECM panel finally modeled more realistically.
The other thing I would close with is that as I’ve gotten older I have became more at peace with my sims not having the latest and greatest “toys” of systems. I’m now ok with a decade+ lag now of when it gets into the jets to when it is modeled in a sim. That is at least what it takes for information on a system’s operation and effectiveness to come out to see how to truly implement it. Despite ED saying their Viper is specifically a 2005 Block 50, they already have mission creep away from that time snapshot into systems that they don’t have enough background information nor simulator engine to truly implement correctly. I really trust in the BMS guys to get it right when it’s time, but everyone should accept if you want true realism due to OPSEC, you have to be simming in the past, not right now. If you want right now, you will be only playing games, not completely simming. Playing games is fun too, don’t get me wrong, and I do it too sometimes in DCS.
@Korbi said in Not looking forward to the VR update:
@Snake122 said in Not looking forward to the VR update:
Pics of my mod to see physical cockpit, removed some foam under my eyes and some plastic that would sit on m/around my nose:
Gonna need to try that!! Nice idea.
Also check out the link from Bergison’s site. Mods like his to the Oculus and Reverb 2 involve removing material of the actual headset. Gets you more FOV, but you are definitely voiding warranties and I get hesitant around my lenses.
Since this is how the thread has gone, my current cockpit for reference minus a FFI I recently added which will be of minor use in VR
!
I also experimented with 3x55" 4K TVs in a U configuration, which I honestly loved. But the main home TV died and one of the got pressed into family use.
@Seifer Thanks again for your updates and happy to see this honest behind the curtain again from you and the rest of BMS!
Hoping for big things for the 25th anniversary (coughcough 4.38) at the end of the year but even then 4.37 is still an amazing thing! Form the dark days of all the source code fights and C&Ds and etc., I would have never imagined when I first bought Falcon 4.0 on 12/15/1998 this is were we would be. Thank you BMS for keeping Falcon a thing for literally my full adult life!
@Aragorn
Happy to see her:
https://kommandostore.com/products/aim-9-sidewinder-atamonica-bundle?_pos=5&_sid=28880eaf2&_ss=r
I’m more of a Aim-9 fan anyway:
Also no qualms about derailing this thread, I feel like right now there is nothing constructive going on. Maybe if/when TacView gets more accurate data to confirm we aren’t GIGO the whole situation. Yes, there is probably some ghost in the machine sometimes with AIM-120 but I trust @Mav-jp like all of BMS to have done his homework and if you don’t support a MPRF on a fighter sized target you can’t expect good PK.
@Coral36 Honestly, BMS users have been very lucky with constant performance improvements through the last couple of updates. I think 4.38 will force some users to come into this decade’s hardware or maybe late last if you like to buy used. That’s a pretty fair upgrade expectation for finally a current generation of terrain engine.
Here is @I-Hawk’s current experience with current 4.38 development build performance and hardware expectations that are subject to change as it comes into release form:
https://forum.falcon-bms.com/post/376076
@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?!?
@SOBO-87 said in On what grounds would you wish 4.37 to be developped?:
@vfp said in On what grounds would you wish 4.37 to be developped?:
one more thing how do you push buttons in vr? how do you control the plane besides throttle and stick ,and how much time
you can stay with vr without loosing your eyes and head? can you stay for 5 hours for example?Push buttons = PointCTRL finger tracker, mouse emulation. That currently works with DCS, X-plane, P3D and MSFS. As simple as pointing at a button with your finger and clicking a button on the side of your finger.
Flight time = 5hrs. Yes no problem, I regularly (2 times a week) fly 3-5 hours in VR, and have done as much as 10hrs in a day, I have been doing this for the last 7 years - in that time I’ve had 6 eye tests and have had no negative effects on my eyesight or anything else from VR. I also fly high performance RC aircraft and have noticed no eyesight issues from VR impacting my RC flying. There are absolutely some people who are sensitive to VR, however I get on with it extremely well. This is largely due to tuning my setup to maintain smooth FPS etc.
Honestly, I’m so tired of the general anti-VR sentiment and the feeling that VR can only be for short, non serious experiences. And that you cannot fly seriously in VR for any length of time, this is frankly bulls!%t. I and many other ppl fly seriously in VR, I use an IRL Kneeboard and modified VR headset so I can easily read it in VR. The hardware is out there to allow direct manipulation of cockpit in an extremely intuitive and quick way. Modern headsets are comfortable, light weight, high resolution and offer image quality comparable with monitors. The problems have been solved, it’s not 2014 any more.
I don’t understand the pushback against VR. Would I like a full F-16 simpit, with 270 deg screen and triple projectors etc? Yes absolutely - but I cannot afford it, and I don’t have space for it. VR + PointCTRL gives me 90% of the immersion of a sim pit for 5% of the price and 99% less space footprint. Plus it’s not fixed to one aircraft. I totally understand why some people don’t get on with it. But it does work for a great many people. Quit yucking my yum!
Yes us VR supporters are a tiny niche of the BMS community, but that’s because BMS doesn’t support it “if you build it, they will come” as they say.
I have no problem with BMS devs saying they have no interest in VR. I think it’s unfortunate and they are missing out but it’s their free time they are spending to bring us this sim, so they will work on what they want. It does make me sad that the dev who was working on VR is MIA though. Hope they are ok.
This! PointCtrl makes a 3d cockpit almost as immersive as a fully 1:1 3d cockpit for a fraction of the cost. It beats anything that isn’t a 1:1 simpit. Right now I can’t get it to work in the Vorpx VR workaround for BMS VR, but since it crashes ~ 90% due to the UI, I can really test it well. But BMS is still very stable when you are in the 3D environment, getting there/getting out is the issue.
If you don’t want to pay/wait for a PointCtrl (which it is pretty simple, we should be able to get it to work in BMS at some point), one other solution is to remove some of the underside of the facial interface foam, or maybe even some of the plastic like Bergison has done here: https://bergisons.simpit.info/making_of_other
That works exactly like NVG look under works in real life. I modified my Pimax 8KX with just the facial interface and not the irreplaceable plastic of the headset and can see all of my ICP or one MFD at a time.
Also I am currently using a 180 degree 3x55" 4K TV setup and would go back to VR if I could, but it is an ok makeshift solution. Nothing beats 1;1 headtracking, especially in BFM.
For kneeboard, I am currently using VRK, a virtual kneeboard that shows up in VR with a drawing tablet to write, such as 9 lines, and saved graphics/pdfs for reference. This could in theory work with with BMS since it is inserted into your SteamVR view no matter the VR app although it’s developer seems to have stopped supporting it. However there is a simialr replacement program in the works that is very similar.