Fellow pilots,
@justonce01 and I are proud to provide you with this (Optional) Balkans Airbase Voice Modification! Here is the download link:

Balkans_Airbase_Voice_v1_00_211118_2030.zip

These files were made for free distribution for the Falcon 4 BMS Community. You use them at your own risk. I am not responsible for anything that happens to your Falcon 4 BMS installation as a result of your use of these modification files.
BACK UP ALL NECESSARY FILES BEFORE INSTALLING THIS UPDATE!!! Read the instructions and follow them! Back up your files!

What it does: The files in this modification were updated to allow for the Falcon BMS Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) to say airbase names in their original voices (the voices you are used to hearing in Falcon BMS), and print the correct airbase names in subtitles. Airbase names were taken from the airbase object names as defined in the Balkans Theater Update Version 4.35.3 v 14808.0393 for every Airbase (103 total) in the Balkans Theater, as shown in Mission Commander. Airstrip vocalizations are generalized (e.g. “Bosnian Airstrip”). ATIS names were also updated to allow ATIS to (attempt to) say the proper name for all airbases, with airstrips using the generic form for any airbase/airstrip that has a valid ATIS VHF frequency assigned. ATIS uses built-in Microsoft Text to Speech software, so I am not responsible for any “mispronunciations” made by ATIS - blame Microsoft!

This modification is specific to the Add-On Balkans Theater and will not affect your KTO Theater or any other Add-On Theater(s) you may have installed. As a bonus, I also corrected a number of incorrect or poor-sounding pilot voice fragments (“frags”, e.g., “furball”, “platform” and several others, corrected voice frags for all pilots for “2-5” through “6-9” (which used the incorrect voice), and made some other minor ATC corrections and fixed inconsistencies between spoken words and subtitle text.

What was done: This modification contains 5 modified files:
1) …Add-On Balkans\Sounds\F4Talk95v1-0-0.csv
2) …Add-On Balkans\Sounds\fragfile.xml
3) …Add-On Balkans\Sounds\falcon.tlk
4) …Add-On Balkans\Sounds\TTSEval.dat
5) …Add-On Balkans\Campaign\stations+ils.dat

No other Falcon BMS or Add-On Balkans files were altered, changed, deleted, modified or updated.

Current Versions: The following versions were used to produce this modification:
- Falcon 4 BMS 4.35.3 (x64) Build 24585 by Benchmark Sims
- Add-On Balkans Version 4.35.3 v 14808.0393 by @Cougar56th

These modification instructions assume the user is familiar with Windows file structure and the file locations of their Falcon 4 BMS 4.35U3 installation and Add-On Balkans installation. It also assumes that the user has properly installed Falcon BMS 4.35U3 and Add-On Balkans Theater using the above latest versions (as of today).

Installation Instructions:

1. In your Add-On Balkans folder (…Falcon BMS 4.35\Data\Add-On Balkans) locate these 5 files and save them to a safe place in case you want to revert back to the original files at some point in the future):

   1. …Add-On Balkans\Sounds\F4Talk95v1-0-0.csv (dated 11/1/2020)
   2. …Add-On Balkans\Sounds\fragfile.xml (dated 11/1/2020)
   3. …Add-On Balkans\Sounds\falcon.tlk (dated 11/1/2020)
   4. …Add-On Balkans\Sounds\TTSEval.dat (dated 11/1/2020)
   5. …Add-On Balkans\Campaign\stations+ils.dat (dated 1/4/2021)

2. Unzip the Balkans Airbase Voice_v1_00.zip into a convenient folder.

3. Once you have unzipped Balkans Airbase Voice_v1_00.zip, you will see 1 folder (“Add-On Balkans”) and this readme file. Read the readme file.

4. After ensuring you have saved your original files, open the “Add-On Balkans” folder in this extracted zip file, and you will see two folders (“Sounds” and “Campaign”).
   a) Copy all four of the files from the “Sounds” folder from this extracted zip to your …Falcon BMS 4.35\Data\Add-On Balkans\Sounds folder, overwriting the four files currently in that folder.
   b) Copy the one file (“stations+ils.dat”) from the “Campaign” folder from this extracted zip to your …Falcon BMS 4.35\Data\Add-On Balkans\Campaign folder, overwriting the stations+ils.dat file currently in that folder.

5. Verify you have all the right files in the right places, then start up Falcon BMS in Balkans Theater and go fly! Your ATCs will now tell you the correct airbase name for wherever you are flying from when making ATC calls for Approach, Departure, Tower and Ground (using the correct frequency, of course), in their own voices! ATIS information will also say and subtitle the proper airbase name for whichever airbase ATIS VHF frequency you have tuned to.

Uninstalling this modification:

1. To uninstall this modification, simply copy your saved ORIGINAL files and paste them back into the original folders, overwriting the modified files.

Revision Notes
Rev 1.0 (11/18/2021)

1. Modified falcon.tlk with over 1200 new .wav files which were produced using Real Time Voice Cloning Toolbox/Source Voice to Text-To-Speech (RTVCT/SV2TTS) and my own proprietary single voice trained synthesizers and vocoders made specifically to clone Falcon BMS voices. Slavic airbase name .wavs were made by justonce01 using the same tool and my trained synthesizers/vocoders. See this link for details.
2. Added 157 new Frags in fragfile.xml and corresponding frag additions in F4Talk95v1-0-0.csv.
3. Minor corrections in F4Talk95v1-0-0.csv to mismatches noted between voice and text (including changes to Frags 2792, 2848, 2851, 2852, 2860, 2875 and 2876) to match spoken words.
4. Modified/added airbase names in Line 24 of TTSEval.dat to allow for correct ATIS airbase names to be spoken and subtitled.
5. Modified all entries for Tower, Ground and Approach frags and ATIS IDs in stations+ils.dat to make proper calls to airbase name frags and ATIS. No other items (frequencies, TACAN etc.) were altered in stations+ils.dat

Many thanks to Benchmark Sims and the Falcon 4 Community for keeping this outstanding flight simulator alive and kicking over 23 years of sim aviation history. Also credit is due to Corentin Jermaine for creating and granting open license to use the RTVCT/SV2TTS toolbox and to @blue-fish at the RTVCT GitHub site for helping me with developing the proprietary single-voice-trained synthesizers and vocoders for Falcon BMS voice cloning. Also great thanks and mad props to @justonce01 for learning how to use the RTVCT/SV2TTS and my single-voice-trained synthesizers and vocoders to produce accurately-pronounced names for Bosnian, Croatian, Slovenian and Yugoslavian airbase names, and to @Cougar56th for developing and maintaining the Balkans Theater effort.

Regards,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)

All,
After a quite a bit of work, I have found a free public tool to clone the Falcon Four voices (12 pilot voices, 2 ATC voices, 3 LSO voices) called “Real Time Voice Cloning Tool” (RTVCT) or alternatively called, “Source Voice to Text-To-Speech” (SV2TTS), available here:

CorentinJ/Real Time Voice Cloning Tool by Corentin Jermaine.

This tool runs in Python , using PyTorch for its AI for training, and, while it doesn’t provide an unmistakable clone, it is certainly close enough for what we might want to do with it in Falcon 4 BMS.
I have found that this RTVCT tool, after training the synthesizer and vocoder using the voice wavs extracted from Falcon 4 for each voice, can then reproduce those voices by typing what you want them to say in the tool (it’s a GUI based tool), and then it will save the output file as a .wav file (16 bit PCM Mono 16Khz sampling rate .wav).

It may take a couple of tries and require a bit of “phonetic spelling” to get a good output .wav, but once you get it, the sound is easily close enough to be used in game with very little loss of immersion. You still need to reprocess the output wav by resampling the 16bit PCM Mono wav file from 16KHz down to 8Khz, which is what Falcon uses, but there are any number of tools (Audacity, Goldwave, etc.) that will do that for you quickly and easily. You can then use Falcon 4 TlkTool to insert the new .wavs into Falcon.tlk to make them work properly, and update the F4Talk95v1-0-0.csv and TTSEval.dat files to get proper subtitle text, airbase names etc.

Here are some examples:

Falcon 4 BMS Female Air Traffic Controller (Voice 12F):
Glenda1.wav

Glenda2.wav

Glenda3.wav

Glenda4.wav

Glenda5.wav

Glenda Ground Truth Falcon 4 .wav file

Falcon 4 BMS Male Air Traffic Controller (Voice 13M):
Don1.wav

Don2.wav

Don3.wav

Don Ground Truth Falcon 4 .wav file

These are not “spliced” words - I typed them into the SV2TTS (Real Time Voice Cloning) Toolbox (sometimes with a little phonetic spelling to help the vocoder), and this is the output file that the tool produced. It sounds pretty close to the real Falcon voice set to me, and works well in game.

Samples of all 14 primary Falcon Voice Clones and Ground Truth .wavs are available here: Falcon 4 Voice Files

I have already used this method to clone all Falcon 4 voices and then did the renaming and “re-voicing” of airbase names for all Coalition, Kuwaiti, Saudi, Bahraini, and Emirates airbases and airstrips (generic for the airstrips) of the Mideast 128 Theater airbases for SpbGoro’s outstanding theater. All necessary sound files are included in SpbGoro’s latest updates (v7 and up). Independently, I have also changed over 30 callsigns in my installation of Mideast128 Theater, but I have not published those yet (they will become available with a very large TE project I am working on for the Theater). I’ll publish some “how to’s” for airbase renaming and callsign renaming in new threads in the Sounds forum at a later time.

See this VERY useful thread by MeuMestre on the methodology used to change a callsign, for example. Another very useful tool for this work is Khronik’s outstanding TlkTool GUI.

The SV2TTS RTVCT isn’t necessarily easy to get installed and running, and runs best when you have an Nvidia GPU where it can use the CUDA cores to do the necessary computations (CPU can be used but it is slower). Instructions on how I got RTVCT installed and running on my Win10 PC with an NVIDIA RTX2070 Super GPU are available here: SV2TTC Installation and Operation for F4 Voice Cloning .pdf. You can pull me up in chat (@Tomcattwo) if you have issues with the installation.

Warning: this is not for the faint of heart, but it IS do-able. Also, you use this installation procedure AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Note: I do not have or know LINUX, Ubuntu or Mac operating systems, so I can be of no help on those if that is where you intend to try to do your installs. Sufficient information is available in the Github to get you going on those systems.

Also, it takes quite a bit of disk space (~up to 20G GB+ without any additional speech libraries other than what you need to clone Falcon 4 voices) for the files and speech libraries necessary to do this work, so make sure you have enough space!

It takes a fair amount of work to “train” the synthesizer to recognize a particular specific voice pattern, but I have already done this work and the necessary synthesizer and vocoder files for all Falcon 4 BMS voices for use in RTVCT are available here. There are three files you will need: F4 synthesizer pretrained files.zip, F4 vocoder pretrained files.zip, and F4 Speaker Files.zip.

Instructions on where to put these are included in the Installation and Operating Procedure .pdf

Caution – these are BIG files (6.1GB for the synthesizer pretrained files, zipped, another 0.93 GB for the Vocoder pretrained files, zipped, another 0.7 GB for theF4 Falcon Voice files, zipped).

I really hope some of you may want to try this to update other theaters with appropriate voice updates etc. Feel free to contact me if you have questions on this.
Regards,
Tomcattwo

“Four-Ship, Three In…”
Sunset takeoff from Al Minhad, UAE in MIdeast128 Theater

“Contact…” Sunset Refueling over Saudi Arabia in Mideast128 Theater

Regards,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)

@VDK (and all)

Here you go:

Hawk’s Allied Force Campaign Planning Guide Part 1

Hawk’s Allied Force Campaign Planning Guide Part 2

Enjoy!
Regards,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)

All,
In the main Balkans Theater thread, @justonce01 asked: “Has there been any consideration of adding the few missing airbase names via the cloned voices project?”

Currently, by my count, there are 21 Balkans airbase names that were previously updated (18 NATO, 1 Croatian, 1 Slovenian, and 1 (Lecce) which does not appear in the list of Objectives (Airbases and Airstrips) per Mission Commander). There are enough “slots” to update a total of 51 airbases/airstrips by substitution. That means I can update 31 more airbase names (and also clone the 20 currently renamed airbases) to the Falcon ATC voices (12 Female and 13 Male).
Here are the totals that I see in MC:

• Greece: 4 Airbases, 0 airstrips
  Slovenia: 8 airbases, 2 airstrips (1 Airbase already renamed)
  NATO: 49 airbases, 0 airstrips (18 already renamed)
  Bosnia: 5 Airbases, 2 airstrips
  Albania: 10 Airbases, 1 airstrip
  Hungary: 6 Airbases, 0 airstrips
  FRY: 11 Airbases, 3 airstrips
  Croatia: 10 Airbases, 4 airstrips (1 Airbase already renamed)
  Total: 103 Airbases, 12 airstrips

My initial plan to update airbase names would be:

1. Clone all existing Airbase Names (18 NATO, 1 CRO, 1 SLO) = 20 slots
2. Make a “generic” slot for each non-NATO team (e.g. “Slovenian Airport” etc.) which would play for every airbase/airstrip on that Team = 7 slots
3. Add 23 more updated/re-voiced NATO Airbase names = 23 slots
4. Add a “generic” slot for the left-out NATO Airbases (e.g., “NATO Airbase”) - see below

There are currently 29 NATO airbases that have not been renamed/re-voiced. Per the above plan, I can only include 23, so six will NOT be included. I am not very familiar with this theater. Therefore, I am looking for inputs from the community for which 6 NATO airbases should NOT be included in this project (i.e., those that see the least player usage in TEs, campaign etc.) and will get just the “generic” “NATO Airbase” voice update.

Left to my own devices, I will look at the map and find the 6 NATO airbases furthest from the front (the Adriatic area), and will not include those: Matarello, Peretola, Ampugnano, Grosetto, Pratica di Mare, and Latina.

When completed, and with permission of the Theater Developer (BMS or someone else?), I will provide the necessary updated sound files as an optional Theater modification.
Regards,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)

Nevada users:
As distributed, Nevada 1.7.1 will have ATIS using “Korean” airbase names. Here is a link to a file that will fix that problem and have Nevada 1.7.1 ATIS speak the real airbase names. It’s easy to install:

1. Download the corrected TTSEval.dat file here
2. Paste the file TTSEval.dat (dated 6/30/2022) in your …Add-On Nevada\Sounds folder, overwriting the existing file TTSEval.dat (dated 3/20/2022).
   That’s all there is to it!

Regards,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)

All,
Made some progress today. V12F (“Glenda” the female ATC) is done. 153 cloned airbase name .wav files (3 per available slot) have been generated. 153 more to do (for V13M “Don”, the male ATC). Then tweak a few files, resample all the new .wavs to 8 KHz, mash them all back into the falcon.tlk file, test the mess then make some instructions for the readme and zip it up, and post!

I’ll also include some fixes that I included in Mideast128’s sound updates (fixes frags for “platform”, “furball”, some other inconsistencies, and corrections for frags “2 6” through “6 9” for all pilots (those used the wrong voice).

Should be done within the next couple or three days.

Regards,
TC2

@SpbGoro. And All,
I have been working to update airbase names in Balkans Theater, and during that project, I found that since 4.35, we are no longer “slot-limited” on airbase frags! That means I can add as many additional airbase frags as we need, allowing me to do proper renaming of every airbase in Mideast128 Theater! I won’t do the airstrips - they’ll remain “generic” by country, but when I finish Balkans, I will do all Iraqi, and Iranian (and any Coalition airbases that were left out) airbase names for Mideast128. Estimate 2-3 weeks to complete this work.
Regards,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)

Update 11\07\21:
Some really good news on this project.

1. I finished the voice cloning for V13M “Don”, the male ATC, and then went on to clone a few more airbase names for a test
2. I updated all the necessary files and added an additional 30 .wavs with properly identified frags (5 airbases above the 51 slots I had done) and then repacked the falcon.tlk file with the extra frags and all the other non-airbase fixes I had done previously for Mideast128 Theater (over 900 new .wav files)
3. Initial testing of the new falcon.tlk file outside of the sim was good, and the cloned wav files sound very good.
4. Then I took it up in Falcon BMS for some test flights from Amendola and from Grazzalise (which was one of the new “extra” airbases I added above the 50 slot limit) and both worked properly (ground ops, taxi, takeoff, approach and landing sequences). Both flights sounded fine for both the male and female ATCs.

What this test shows is that, since 4.35, we are no longer “slot-limited” for airbase frags! I can put in as many as I like and have proven it will work.

So, I ask for a little patience. I now plan to add cloned airbase voice frags for every airbase (but not airstrips) in the Balkans Theater. My clones will probably murder the pronunciation of many of the Slavic language airbase names, so apologies ahead of time. This will take me another 2-3 days to finish since I now have to clone and re-pack another 50 or so airbase names (6 .wavs per airbase ~300 more .wav files), then edit the .csv file, fragfile and TTSEval files and stations+ils.dat, make installation readme instructions and then zip it all up. If I don’t run into any snags, I hope to have it all finished by Friday this week.
Regards,
Tomcattwo

Status Update 11/14/21:
We are still working to get all the .wav files together. Some are taking a little longer to produce than expected, but no worries. I ask for a bit more patience. We’ll have this mod out soon.
Regards,
TC2

@Aragorn
This might help:

From “USAF F-16 Emergency Extraction Card.pdf”

Idle thrust is the bottom picture. I am guessing the PW 200/229 Engines have a similar danger area.

For some frame of reference, generally a human cannot hold their hand/fingers in or on something that is 140 degrees Fahrenheit or hotter.

Regards,
TC2

@Aragorn
Passing your (very astute) questions over to @jagfour or another experienced pilot/ground crew member.
R/,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)

@Crassus ,
I just got the same question asked on my YouTube post, and was provided with this OUTSTANDING video by the author of the comment (tommyzDad). I encourage everyone to watch this all the way through: it is a real USAF F-16 ramp start taken from the perspective of the Crew Chief (who was wearing a GoPro or similar head camera). After seeing this, I will revisit with @Ricky about adding the T2 (pull chocks) command to the “Cleared off” command.

Enjoy the video!!

Regards,
Tomcattwo
((VoiceClone)

@Korbi said in Virtual Crew Chief for BMS:

Guys what you did here is awesome, thank you!!
Now to complete this venture, maybe we could talk to BogeyDope about a proper shutdown after the flight and add this to the routine. That would add a even better step towards immersion into our beloved simulator.

@Ricky has been in touch with BogeyDope about adding new responses when checks fail, (such as a hot start). Not much to be done on shutdown by Crew Chief other than chocks and pins (and the ladder). Reporting gripes can happen outside the cockpit, so I don’t see a lot for VCC to do on shutdown.

Hotpit is not something, the crew chief would plug in, would he?

A ground crew does plug in for Hotpit refuel. I have been in touch with BogeyDope about adding responses for Hotpit Refuel (and I sent him the BMS Checklist for Hotpit Refuel). It’s low on the list, but maybe we will see that one day.
Regards,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)

@CriticalMass
I suspect that the Virtual Crew Chief for BMS profile hasn’t registered your joystick axes. Try this:

1. Open Voice Attack - I am assuming you are using AVCS, so the Active Profile in Voice Attack should be: “AVCS4 Falcon BMS Radios (v1.42)”

2. In the line for the active profile in Voice Attack, click on the drop down arrow and select “Virtual Crew Chief for BMS” as the active profile. Voice Attack should make it active, and you should get a popup box explaining that Virtual Crew Chief for BMS needs to determine your joystick axes, and instructing you to follow the instructions in the Voice Attack events window with a button to Continue.

3. Press the continue button and the box should disappear, and in the events window, Voice Attack will ask you to move the joystick corresponding to Pitch. The profile should tell you it’s captured, and ask you to press the c key to continue.

4. Follow the instructions for roll axis, rudders and toe brakes (if your setup doesn’t have toebrakes, hold the s key to skip that step).

5. When it’s completed, Voice Attack will inform you that the profile has captured your sticks, and tell you that you can repeat this process any time with the voice command “Configure Joysticks”.

6. Then click the dropdown down arrow in the active profile line (top of the Voice Attack window) and select “AVCS CORE (v1.11)” from the dropdown window. Voice Attack will go through the process of making “AVCS4 Falcon BMS Radios (v1.42)” the active profile again.

You should only have to do this ONCE (not each time you want to use VCC4BMS). The “Virtual Crew Chief for BMS” profile stores the joystick axis information you just gave it.

By the way, you can escape from any Virtual Crew Chief for BMS Command by saying “Standby” or “Disregard”. Crew Chief will acknowledge and you can then do another command, as needed.

Give it a try and let me know if this worked or didn’t. Copying @Ricky so he sees this as well.
Regards,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)

@Crassus
As I understand it, when you are ready to have chocks pulled, the crew chief is no longer plugged in to the comms circuit with the pilot - the pilot uses hand signals to have the chocks pulled. @Ricky had a command to pull chocks in one of our test versions but I don’t recall if we left it in the V1 download version or not, since it wasn’t realistic. (EDIT: I just checked the profile. The command for chocks has been removed.) Personally, I made a command to pull (install, remove) chocks in AVCS4 Falcon BMS Radios (V13M.42) profile.

[TLDR] yes use keyboard or a voice command in another profile (such as AVCS4).
Regards,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)

@jayb said in Virtual Crew Chief for BMS:

Amazing work - any video showing it in-game ?

Here you go, @jayb

Great coding by @Ricky!!

Many thanks to BogeyDope for the original VCC and for letting us use his profile and sound files! Also credit to @SpbGoro , creator of Mideast128 theater - this demo is an F-16C Block 40 (~1990s vintage, and has no HMCS). I did make (at least) 1 error during the startup: forgot to put the EGI in Align.

By the way, the VCC4BMS download .zip file in the first post also contains a “kludged together” F-16 Flight Checklist, I made, which is a merge of the 4.35 Checklist and 4.37 Checklist plus integrated commands for VCC4BMS. Feel free to share and enjoy!
Regards,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)

@Gary ,
The way that such ATC replies are put together is internal to BMS programming. I’ve been able to do a lot with ATC programming regarding airbase names and callsigns and such, but changing how the programming does the concatenations for ATC responses is a lot more complicated than you might think. Such a change would have to be done by a BMS dev, and it isn’t likely a change like this will make the cut.
Regards,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)

@Gary @jayb ,
This is a video of the original VCC from BogeyDope. It was made for DCS.

In the original version, when a command was given by the pilot to the Virtual Crew Chief, all the Virtual Crew Chief replies were based strictly on timing - and occurred whether the pilot took any actions or not. While it was way cool, it did not react to the reality of what was actually happening in the sim, it simply provided timed responses.

What we (@Ricky and I) have done, with permission from BogeyDope, was to alter the profile to actually sample Falcon 4 BMS data as the sim is running, and the profile only sends Crew Chief replies when the pilot actually performs the actions in game. In this way, VCC4BMS responds when the pilot actually takes the actions expected (and waits for the pilot to do so until the correct action is taken or the command is halted by giving voice command “Disregard” or “Standby”. This is as real as it gets though I sure wish we had a graphic “Crew Chief” we could see out the cockpit window (right, @Aragorn ?)

I am working on putting together a Falcon 4 BMS Video Demo of a full startup using VCC4BMS. Stand by…I will post it when I get it done.

Regards,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)

@Bertuz
How to Include VCC4BMS in AVCS4 Falcon BMS Radios (v1.42):
First, make sure AVCS is loaded and that AVCS4 Falcon BMS Radios (v1.42) is the Active profile. Then:

Step 1: Open the AVCS4 Falcon BMS Radios (v1.42) Profile for editing

2: Click the “Options” Button on the Profile Page

3. In the window that pops up, Under the Tab “Profile General”, Look for "Include Commands from Other Profiles. Click on the 3 dots (…)

4: In the new window that opens, click on the big gray + sign.

5: In the new window that opens, click on the dropdown, and scroll down till you see Virtual Crew Chief for BMS. Click on that and it will show in the bar.

6: Click on OK.

7. In the Include Profiles Window, Click OK.

8. In the Include Options Window, click on OK

9: In the Profile Window, click “Apply” (unless it is grayed out).

10: Click on “Done”

Regards,
Tomcattwo
(VoiceClone)