Hi all. Sorry if I haven’t responded. I haven’t flown in like three years now, and I guess when the forum upgraded I stopped getting notifications. Hopefully that’s sorted now.

Despite my time away from the sim, I do intend to update VMT to work with 4.36. Just getting started - will take me a few weeks depending on how easy it is to figure out the database changes. I also need to excavate my gaming machine, which is currently under a pile of boxes from a recent move.

Anyway, hopefully have something for initial testing in a week or three.

Further update:

Finally worked through enough things that have broken in the ever-changing web tech landscape since the last time I touched this that I got the app up and running again. It doesn’t work, of course, but I think at this point I’m in “figure out what has changed in the BMS database” hell rather than “everything in web tech changes every six months” hell.

Anyway, still picking away at it.

If anyone has any way to get a BMS dev to just tell me what the changes are instead of me having to figure it out, that’s going to save me hours and hours, which could easily translate to weeks shaved off or when I can get a release out. The way this usually goes, I literally have a hex editor open, looking at byte-by-byte differences in file formats, to try to figure out what has changed. It is extraordinarily tedious. I don’t think the BMS devs owe me anything, it’s just that if one of them is able to give me targeted guidance, it would really help me out, and by extension, anyone that uses VMT. I’ll do it the hard way if I can, though.

Summary

Virtual Mission Tools (VMT) is a program for assisting mission planners and participants to better understand the situation, including views of friendly and enemy air forces and weather.

Screenshot

Motivation

I wrote VMT because I wanted a better way to view the overall situation in the missions I was flying. The Falcon 2D UI has a lot of great functionality, but I felt that having different visualizations of battlefield information could be helpful. I also wanted to be able to view information from my WeatherGen tool alongside things like flight paths and the disposition of enemy forces. Finally, I wanted to be able to share information about missions I was creating with other pilots in advance of the mission without having to distribute the mission itself, or have an instance of BMS running somewhere.

VMT is my ongoing effort to meet those needs. I and other members of the 1st VFW have been using it for several months in its earlier incarnations. It has now reached a point where I think it’s useful and stable enough to be distributed to the broader BMS community. I hope you find it useful.

Download and Installation

Current version: v058

The latest install can always be found here.

To install, simply download and unzip.

Status

VMT is something I use for every mission I create. I consider it stable and ready to go. That said, there are about a million features I’d like to add, and a few things that are obviously lacking. For instance, currently only airbases are displayed on the map. Display of ground forces is high on the list of things to be added in the near future.

Getting Started

VMT has a lot of features, so expect it to take a little while to figure them all out. Please ask questions here, but also note that VMT, like WeatherGen, has extensive in-app help. Clicking anything with a blue dotted underline or a blue question mark will pop up help for that feature.

To get going, download and unzip from the appropriate link above. Double-click VMT.exe, and when the app opens, click “Load Mission (.cam/.tac)” and select a mission from your Falcon install. Begin exploring!

https://youtu.be/oJaVqBMI2tw

All VMT Tutorial Videos

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL38Y5xS3fngEkAdUx5AZqU4ZfEWlploq_

FAQ

Q: Where should I ask questions?
A: Right here in this thread.

Q: Does VMT support 4.34?
A: Not yet. Now that 4.34 is out, I will be working frantically to support it, and I hope to have it ready before too long, but there are lots of file format changes that I will need to address, and I have to fit it in around family/work/etc., so I expect it will take me a little while. Go play with all the awesome new stuff while you wait!

Q: How does this relate to WeatherGen?
A: It replaces WeatherGen. It has all of the features of WeatherGen, and many more. It is not however, a web app. WeatherGen will continue to work, but no new features will be added to it.

Q: Doesn’t this do the same thing as Mission Commander?
A: Definitely not. For one thing Mission Commander can edit missions - VMT (currently) cannot. Mission Commander is a great tool for mission planners, but I wanted something that both mission planners and mission participants could use visualize the virtual battlefield.

* Change Log

** v058 [2018-09-18 Tue]
- Fix typos in download page.
- Build Linux version as well
- Change logo to 440th VFW's
- Fix various formatting problems
- Fix incorrect label on annotations copy button
- Improved map sizing and positioning: controls will never move below
  map. Instead, map gets smaller if necessary to accommodate controls
  when resizing window.
- Titlebar of map is collapsible to increase usable space.
- Tab names now remain visible even when scrolling content.
- Fixed width of dropdowns in annotation controls.
- Implemented "Save map image as PNG"
- Fixed intermittent bug where things wouldn't render right sometimes
- Flights can be opened in their own tabs
- Fix (again) high CPU when app is idle
- Flight colors and check state are now saved with briefing

** v057 [2018-02-01 Thu]
- Add missing help text

** v056 [2018-01-28 Sun]
- Annotations!
  - Add arrows, text, shapes, and lines to a map and save them with a
    briefing
- Can now save modified briefing when viewing a briefing
- Fix bug where dragging off the map makes things jump around
- Reverse use of triangles/circles in waypoints to match BMS
- Include download link in update notifications.

** v055 [2017-12-26 Tue]
- Fix bug where sorting was broken on flights page.
- Fix bug where flight color selection was not working.
- Fix occasional runaway CPU utilization.

** v054 [2017-12-22 Fri]
- Fix minor bug where "VMT Settings" text was showing when it shouldn't.

** v053 [2017-12-21 Thu]
- Add ability to have VMT automatically check for updated versions of
  itself.
- Fix problem where web links were opening in the app instead of in a
  browser.

** v052 [2017-12-18 Mon]
- Major speedup in mission and briefing loading.
- Add checkbox in map controls section allowing show/hide of borders
  of wind stability areas.
- Wind stability areas and weather override regions are automatically
  placed in edit mode when created.
- Fix bug introduced in v051 where squadrons weren't showing up for
  carriers and army bases.
- Fix bug where weather override edit button wasn't displaying
  correctly when editing.

** v051 [2017-12-16 Sat]
- Handle [[https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?31611-Release-Tyrant-s-Virtual-Mission-Tools-(VMT)&p=449550&viewfull=1#post449550][weird Balkans bad index bug]].
- Report warning when squadrons have no airbase
- Handle problem with improper handling of time in briefing files.

** v050 [2017-11-18 Sat]
- Fix bug handling consecutive steerpoints with the same time
- Fix bug where briefing wouldn't load due to nil time somewhere.

** v049 [2017-10-15 Sun]
- Fix bug where install ID was saved incorrectly in briefing files.
- Save version of VMT used to create briefing files; warn on load if a
  different version of VMT is being used.

** v048 [2017-09-30 Sat]
- Briefing notes: a simple (for now) text box where mission designers
  can put notes to be displayed when the briefing file is opened.
- Display version number in the title bar.
- Improved loading progress display: organized hierarchically,
  supports displaying warnings.
- Allow mission creator to choose BMS version when multiple versions
  are installed and pointing to the same directory.
- Bugfix: warn, don't crash, when a theater is in the theater list but
  no .tdf can be found.
- Bugfix: fix excessive CPU utilization when loading multiple missions

** v047 [2017-08-25 Fri]
- Use correct flags for teams.
- Fix errors loading related to objective names.
  - Error when reading the last string in the strings file.
  - Error when reading the objective name of a carrier objective.

** v045
- Initial public release

Update: I got my gaming machine dug out and running, and I’ve installed 4.36. Unfortunately, as happens basically every time, the build doesn’t work because the web tech stack I’m using has moved on. Not sure how people that live in the JavaScript ecosystem ever get anything done…

I’ll have to see if I can do something reasonable to get the build working again.

Current status: The next issue is somewhere in here:

That’s the section of the units file for a flight. It has changed since 4.35 somehow. The numbers in that picture are pretty much all I have to go on. If I’m being honest, I’m not sure I have the will to chase this down. Without any information about what has changed, it’s extremely difficult to derive what this means. I can look at Mission Commander and try to infer it from there, but after several hours of doing that, I’m none the wiser.

If anyone has an in with the BMS devs, five minutes from them will save me literally hours. All I need is to know what has changed in the layout of various files. It would take seconds of looking at the source code to determine that. Without that help, I think I may finally have run out of energy for maintaining VMT.

@asleepwater Sorry, been away from the sim for quite a while, and notifications for me stopped working when the forum upgraded. Did you figure this out?

Honestly I’m surprised LSOBot still works.

Right. Extra steps are required for OS X/Linux installations and I forgot to write them down somewhere visible.

For Linux, you’ll need to create a file at ~/.config/craigandera.org/VMT/settings.edn. (On OS X, this should be at ~/Library/Application Support/craigandera.org/VMT/settings.edn)

The contents should be as below. Obviously you will need to change the path to be correct for your system.

{
 :installations {"Falcon BMS 4.33 U1" "/path/to/falcon/4.33.3"
                 ;; ;; Some people have more than one install pointing to the same directory
                 ;; "Falcon BMS 4.33"    "/path/to/falcon/4.33.3"
                 }
}

The reason for this is that under Windows (which 99.9% of the users are using), we get the BMS location from the registry. We don’t have that on the other operating systems, so we simulate it with this file.

Current status: The next issue is somewhere in here:

That’s the section of the units file for a flight. It has changed since 4.35 somehow. The numbers in that picture are pretty much all I have to go on. If I’m being honest, I’m not sure I have the will to chase this down. Without any information about what has changed, it’s extremely difficult to derive what this means. I can look at Mission Commander and try to infer it from there, but after several hours of doing that, I’m none the wiser.

If anyone has an in with the BMS devs, five minutes from them will save me literally hours. All I need is to know what has changed in the layout of various files. It would take seconds of looking at the source code to determine that. Without that help, I think I may finally have run out of energy for maintaining VMT.

Further update:

Finally worked through enough things that have broken in the ever-changing web tech landscape since the last time I touched this that I got the app up and running again. It doesn’t work, of course, but I think at this point I’m in “figure out what has changed in the BMS database” hell rather than “everything in web tech changes every six months” hell.

Anyway, still picking away at it.

If anyone has any way to get a BMS dev to just tell me what the changes are instead of me having to figure it out, that’s going to save me hours and hours, which could easily translate to weeks shaved off or when I can get a release out. The way this usually goes, I literally have a hex editor open, looking at byte-by-byte differences in file formats, to try to figure out what has changed. It is extraordinarily tedious. I don’t think the BMS devs owe me anything, it’s just that if one of them is able to give me targeted guidance, it would really help me out, and by extension, anyone that uses VMT. I’ll do it the hard way if I can, though.

Update: I got my gaming machine dug out and running, and I’ve installed 4.36. Unfortunately, as happens basically every time, the build doesn’t work because the web tech stack I’m using has moved on. Not sure how people that live in the JavaScript ecosystem ever get anything done…

I’ll have to see if I can do something reasonable to get the build working again.

@asleepwater Sorry, been away from the sim for quite a while, and notifications for me stopped working when the forum upgraded. Did you figure this out?

Honestly I’m surprised LSOBot still works.

Hi all. Sorry if I haven’t responded. I haven’t flown in like three years now, and I guess when the forum upgraded I stopped getting notifications. Hopefully that’s sorted now.

Despite my time away from the sim, I do intend to update VMT to work with 4.36. Just getting started - will take me a few weeks depending on how easy it is to figure out the database changes. I also need to excavate my gaming machine, which is currently under a pile of boxes from a recent move.

Anyway, hopefully have something for initial testing in a week or three.

@suhkoi69:

please check the TE(KTO) here

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jlZWB02youdcHbBRJbysoEuOFiMEt5eR?usp=sharing

@Jackal:

Hi there, dear Tyrant.

Deeply sorry to follow my previous post this way, but I felt obliged to let you know that my issue is still.

This just for your information.

With appreciation for your hard work and commitment, and my best regards.

Ah well - not surprised, but would have been nice.

Not really sure what else to try at this point. I’ll have to think on it.

@suhkoi69:

please check the TE(KTO) here

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jlZWB02youdcHbBRJbysoEuOFiMEt5eR?usp=sharing

@suhkoi69:

Many thanks, Tyrant for this tool !
but if I may, just one point should be improved first: include the reading of the meteo fmap file and those available in the WeatherMapsUpdates directory.
this would be the best to prepare the briefings!

Yes, this is on my to-do list. I think it would be even better to make existing weather editable. Like, you could use that cool real-world weather app someone wrote, but then put overrides in it, so you’d have realistic weather but with a popup thunderstorm at landing.

Thanks for the suggestion - hope to get to it some day.

Good news! I believe I have Kuwait and Polar Vortex working. Apparently the XML files that make up part of the database can have gaps in them, where two consecutive items don’t have consecutive indicies. I’ve accounted for this now. Also, VMT was attempting to load images it doesn’t have a path to. There’s still a bug where it’s not computing the path correctly but at least now it will load the campaign. This bug is visible in the Polar Vortex campaign in that the flag for Germany (and I think Sweden) don’t show up properly. But I think I will put this out as it is on the dev channel for y’all to test out and try to figure out what’s up with those flags later.

Unfortunately I’m still completely stumped on your issue, Jackal. It’s possible that something I did in this release fixed it, but it would be by accident. Still, give it a try and see what it does. There are still a few things we can try if it’s not working for you.

This latest build (v063-5) is available at http://org.craigandera.vmt.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/dev

Nothing to report yet, other than that I actually did spend time on this this weekend. Upgraded BMS and installed a few theaters before I ran out of time. Will work on this again soon - I’m putting my other side projects on hold until I can address these issues.

@OPPOTATO:

I thought polar vortex was pretty well known, there was even a TvT on it.

I’m sure it is. It’s a measure of how sadly disconnected I have become these last few years. Just haven’t been able to fit flying in at this stage of life/family/etc.

Anyway, thanks for the report! I will look into it and get back to y’all.