July 14, 2023 • 60 mins
1) AWACS and GCI; 2) Interview with Eagle-Eye on GCI and BMS; 3) Eagle-Eye on his squadron the Belgian Virtual Tigers; 4) History of GCI'ing in Falcon BMS; 5) The Future of GCI'ing in Falcon BMS
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Episode Transcript
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You've tuned into the Tactical Frequency,a podcast centered around all things Falcon BMS.
Today's episode is going to be abouta wax and GCI. Are we
talking a little bit about the futureof this in Falcon BMS and just about
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the subject in general. What canyou do with the a wax and what
can you do with the GCI?Welcome once again to the Tactical Frequency.
My call sign is Bible Clinger,and we've got a whole hour ahead of
us, so let's get to it. First of all, obviously, we
are a podcast about all things FalconBMS, and Falcon BMS is an F
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sixteen simulator for the civilian market,and I should mention that outside of the
necessity of owning Alkan four point zero, it is essentially a free mod,
a standalone mode, I should say. But the point of me bringing this
up is that it models the Fsixteen. The F sixteen aircraft does not
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have a great radar, It doesn'thave a great ability to see everything around
it. It relies on the informationfrom other aircraft, from other sources,
and that makes it way more effective. This is where a wax comes in.
So a wax is usually a giantplane in the sky that picks up
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all the information that you could possiblywant about how many bad guys are out
there, what type of aircraft theyare. All that sort of information can
tell you where your friendlies are at. Now in the modern era, there's
also an advanced data link, andthis data link known as Link sixteen.
It's not modeled in Falcon BMS,but it shows you a lot more information
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right on your system. So youcan just look down at the radar or
at some other screen and you cansee what's there. In BMS, we
model an earlier version. We havean earlier version of the data link,
and that's one because it's earlier,it's not as advanced, doesn't have as
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much information, so you need torely on the AWAX to give you a
lot more information than you can pickup at a single time. So in
BMS, this is modeled by havinga little menu. You can push Q
and this brings up the menu andyou can ask the AWAX what's around me,
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what's going on? That is knownas requesting a picture. So the
picture is a description of all theaircraft that are out there in your vicinity
that are relevant. Now, AWAXwill only describe up to three groups.
Now there's a lot of technical stuff. We won't get into the full idea
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of what is a group, whatare the contact all these types of things.
It's a little bit beyond the scopeof this. But the important thing
is to understand that you can askawax this question and a WAX will give
you this information based on bull's eye. Again, bull's eye is a little
bit beyond the scope of what we'rediscussing now. The second thing you can
ask a WAX is you can requestthe vector to the nearest threat in regular
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verbiage, the way a pilot mightsay it. The slang brevity would be
to requests a bogy dope. Bogiedope is asking where is the nearest threat
in relation to me? Now?In BMS they give it by bull's eye.
I've been told that that should bein bra Again, if you don't
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know the difference between those, wedid cover it in a previous segment and
you could find this information. Thedifference is BULLSEYE is based on an arbitrary
location everyone's agreed upon, and BRAUis based In this case, it would
be based on your aircraft in relationexactly to you. Now requesting this only
gives you the closest threat. Shemight ask, hey, where's the aarest
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threat, and he's like, hey, he's right in front of you thirty
miles, and you don't know aboutthe other threats that are all around.
So those are the two basic things. The third thing you can ask awax
is you can lock something up anddeclare it. When you ask for declare,
that's asking a wax to tell youwhat is this? Is it friendly?
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Is it enemy? What can youdo with it? We'll be back
with more on a wax after thebreak. To join the tactical frequency discord
use invitation code, uppercase, romeo, lower case, Charlie Niner, Sierra
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Niner, Bravo, Yankee, Papawhiskey, keo. New pilots tend to
struggle with bull's eye in the heatof the moment. It's hard to do
the mental math. Bulls eye isan arbitrary position agreed upon by all parties,
and other locations are given relative tothat location. For example, let's
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say an enemy is at bulls eyezero nine or zero fifty. How would
you interpret this bulls eye call?Imagine standing directly on the bullseye location,
face compens heading zero nine or zero. The enemy is out there fifty miles
from where you're standing. Some advancedtricks involve knowing where bulls Eye is ahead
of time. For example, ifBullseye is on the flot, then perhaps
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you can deduce that in that theater, all Bullseye calls west and east of
Bullseye are on the flot, andall calls north of Bullseye are an enemy
territory. You have to be ableto mentally picture the map the Bullseye location
and the locations given for the otherfighters. If all else fails, you
can use your cursor on the FCRor HSD to correlate bulls Eye locations Falcon
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one, drag net one picture clean. You're listening to the tactical frequency.
Welcome once again to the tactical frequency. We are discussing A WAX and GCI.
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So the idea here is that youuse the a wax to maintain your
situational awareness. You have more knowledgethan your F sixteen radar can pull for
you at any given point. Thisallows you to be much better aware than
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you would otherwise. So if oneside has an AAX and the other side
does not, you'll notice a hugedifference if you watch the replays over of
what happened. So how do youmaintain situational awareness? Well, first you
can ask for a picture. Thenyou have to figure out what AAX has
told you which groups are really relevantto you. If he's told you about
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three groups, maybe only one ofthem is close to you and the other
two are way out in the middleof somewhere else. All right after that,
Now, let's say you're part ofa bigger package. The cap flight
should be asking for the vector tothe nearest threat, or asking for bogey
dope. When the cap flight asksfor that, they'll figure out which one
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is closest and what they should do. Now. Periodically a new picture should
probably be requested, particularly after dealingwith a close threat, or maybe when
the close threat isn't so close.Maybe that would be a good time to
ask, hey, what else isout there? Now? A WAX has
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shortcomings in Falcon BMS, and Ibring this up for a reason. But
let's cover some of these shortcomings.First of all, sometimes, at least
for me, AWAX just sometimes doesnot respond. I ask it for a
picture and he's just completely quiet.He doesn't say anything. Now, it's
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been better now in the most recentversion of Falcon BMS, which by the
way, we are on four pointthree seven as our major version as of
this recording, but in the pastit was much worse. I remember flying
with somebody else and I would aska WAX. I'd have to ask it
two or three times before I'd getan answer, and it was really noticeable,
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and the person I was flying withit was noticing this too, so
we were trying to figure out whatwas going on, but we never really
made any progress. It just seemedlike some sort of bug. Another shortcoming
is that a WAX doesn't alert anyof the flights that are run by humans
about enemy activity. This means youcan get jumped very easily. Now.
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Oddly enough, this used to bebetter. In earlier versions of Falcon BMS.
You used to get more information,but for whatever reason, this is
the way it is now. Ifyou're flying with other flights that are run
by AI, so that is,if you're in a package and there's another
flight with an AI flight lead,you'll hear AAX talk to them and give
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them updates. A WAX will onethem, Hey, by the way,
there's something out there. AX issuddenly very useful. A third shortcoming is
that AAX sometimes gives inaccurate information.Sometimes, like the other end of the
map, it'll tell you that something'sthere, but it won't tell you about
something that you're aware of that's muchcloser now. To be fair, this
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might be a theater issue. Thatis, this might be a custom theater,
which a theater in Falcon BMS is. You can think of it like
a pack that has a map andmaybe assets like database and different other things,
like they all packaged into one onething. It's about as close to
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a bare basic mod as you canget for Falcon BMS. So maybe some
of these packages aren't put together verywell. In certain areas that AAX doesn't
like, an AWAX gets confused aboutwhich direction is which. And this brings
me to another point. AWAX sometimesgives inconsistent responses When you ask for a
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picture call versus bogey dope. Sometimesyou get information that just doesn't seem to
match right. Like you'll ask forone and you'll be told all the pictures
clean, it's nothing's out there,and then you'll ask for the other one
and he oh, yeah, there'ssomething out there, and that seems very
odd. Now there's probably a reasonfor that, but it's not very intuitive,
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all right. Another problem or shortcomingwith AX is that the information is
very raw. It just gives youthe information here are the three groups that
are out here. It can't thinkoutside of the box and tell you how
to get yourself out of a badsituation. For example, if you are
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asking for bogey dope, you mightbe told about a threat nearby. It
won't tell you, however, thatyou're being sandwiched. There's another threat from
the opposite direction. AX has nointelligence to think you might need to know
about this. If you're asking fora picture, it'll be happy to rattle
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off information about all three groups withoutwarning you that you're merged. You'll have
to hear that in the picture callto realize he's like three miles behind you.
This brings being to the next point. A WAX doesn't call that you're
merged. AI in BMS merge allof the time, and that makes BVR
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difficult, and that's really for adifferent episode. But a WAX never lets
you know that you're merging, someoneelse's merging, or how to avoid getting
into that scenario. Okay, sowhat can we do about this, Well,
obviously BMS can get better, itcan update, the developers can do
more with a wax, that's true. But there's another possibility, and that's
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that humans can take the role ofthe awax. So if you can picture,
you're flying your jet, you're tryingto do emission, but instead of
pushing Q or whatever key it ison your keyboard, but you push that
key and you get your menu andyou push whatever the number is for request
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picture. Instead of that, ifyou could just cue the radio, you
just start talking on uniform and youjust give your call sign you ask for
a picture. So let's say youknow the GCI's call sign is whatever,
dragnet use it dragnet Falcon one,request picture, and a human responds back
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to you right over the radio.So that's what some of us had been
doing in BMS for that's say,the last few years or so. It's
been actually going on for longer thanthat, but we'll cover a little bit
about some of the history later.Now, to distinguish between AI and human
what we typically do is when wesay a wax in BMS, just by
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convention, we mean the AI thatcomes with Falcon BMS. When we say
GCI typically now in multiplayer communities,we specifically mean a human taking on the
awax role. That's not the reallife definition, of course, but that's
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just how you're going to hear it. So if you're about to do a
multiplayer mission and somebody says, hey, do we have a GCI, they're
asking is a human taking over therole. So if you're told by the
way, hey we're flying this missionwith a GCI, now you realize you'll
have to make those calls on theradio. So pay attention to the briefing
who you speak to. It's youmay not know, you may not know
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who's doing it. You just mayhave a call sign that you're going to
talk to or maybe a frequency.Maybe the flight lead will have to push
you to a frequency. In twentytwenty one, when we did the Team
versus Team official event that was puton by the Falcon BMS developers, I
flew on the yell four side,as we call it. We were a
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team yellow and we set up acomplicated GCI setup and so pilots would actually
turn to a certain known frequency tocheck in and they would announce what they
were doing and where they were going, and behind the scenes, the person
taking in the check in information wouldactually pass you on to a human GCI.
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You wouldn't know what frequency to goto until they told you and they
handled that transition. So we couldin theory, have one, two,
three, four, five different gcisavailable in theory, and you could be
assigned to one covering your region orwhatever made sense if it was somebody who
could help you with the air toairmission. So that's an example of what
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we could do. But later onwe're going to cover some of the problems
with this role in Falcon BMS,and we'll cover some potential solutions, but
that's going to happen later on inthe program. We're going after the break,
we're going to go to an interviewwith Eagle Eye, and I'll just
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mention very quickly that he's been oneof the examples of how to GCI and
BMS in my opinion, he's beenvery good at it. So we'll jump
right to that interview after the break, and then after that we're going to
still continue with him on the segmentafter that where we'll talk with him about
the Belgian Virtual Tigers, his squadronin Falcon BMS, and we'll do that
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as part of the Meet the Communityinitiative. So please stay with us.
We've got more content coming right hereon the technical frequency. We're just getting
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started. We'll be back soon afterthis message. Falcon BMS comes with a
lot of manuals. If you're newto BMS, where should you start?
The first manual you'll want to useas probably the training manual. This is
meant to be used when you flythrough the tactical Engagement training missions. These
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training missions come with Falcon BMS andare there for you to learn various subjects,
from starting the jet to operating theradios to employing weapons. But the
training manual is how you know whatto do every step of the way while
you fly these missions. You shouldhave the Training Manual andy on another monitor
or on another electronic device. Theother manuals you want to read are the
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DASH one and the DASH three four. They're called this because they have DASH
one and DASH three four in theirvery long names. If you're looking for
a reference on how to fly theF sixteen or use any of its systems,
you'll want the DASH one. Ifyou're looking for information specifically on weapons
employment, you'll want the DASH threefour Falcon one drag Net one. We're
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keeping you informed on the tactical frequents. Joining us now is Eagle Eye.
He has been both a Falcon BMSpilot and a GCI for years and why
not, he's been a student airtraffic controller in real life and he joins
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us today to talk about gciing.Eagle Eye, thank you for joining us
today, Yeah, very much,thank you to you for inviting me.
No, it's my pleasure. Actually, why do we even have gcis in
Falcon BMS? To clarify, whydo we have humans taking on the role
of a wax in BMS. Well, first of all, one of the
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main disadvantages of the a wax inBMS is that it doesn't provide any proactive
control. So that is where ahuman can definitely make a difference in actually
telling pilots that something is coming theirway that they should know about without the
pilots having to constantly ask or aquery the a wax if something is coming
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their way. So that is thebiggest advantage. But also with recent iterations
of BMS, it has much improved. But back in the old days,
a wax was quite basic and wasn'treally able to provide picture calls that were
complex, you mainly got one groupthat might have been relevant to you.
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Honestly, I don't think that AIcan ever be as good as a human
because there's always that human factor thatcan decide what is relevant to this pilot
at this time and what isn't andsort of don't want to call it gate
keeping, but sort of keeping itrelevant to the actual moment so as not
to overload a pilot with so muchinformation that he basically doesn't know what is
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going on even if you just toldhim. A pilot's perspective, if he's
joining a multiplayer fly and he's told, oh, by the way, we're
gonna have GCI, what's the practicaldifference for him in that flight? There
comes an extra factor in that thepilot also has to be aware of the
phraseology and the brevity to use,which if you're using the AIAO act,
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you can just use the com menuand I will sort everything out for you.
Is the brevity difficult to learn foreither the pilot or the GCI.
It's like learning a new language.So depending on how good you are at
learning a new language, I'd saythat it's not something that is impossible to
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overcome, but it definitely definitely takestime, experience, practice to get good
at it, especially to do itfluently. How can someone get started to
learn how to GCI and Falcon bms. There are multiple events or missions that
are flown every day through the FalconLounge uo A virtual squadrons that run their
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own missions, campaigns that are runby other groups outside or sorry, outside
of those that are already mentioned.So I would say, if they already
have a GCI there, just askif you can tag along and maybe do
something on a low complexity mission andjust be GCI for them with the support
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of somebody that knows already what he'sdoing, or with friends, and just
keep it low key and be aGCI to them, and then later debrief
the pilots would then come back tothe GCI and tell them, Okay,
this is what I would have likedin that moment, and then the GCI
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can take that on for the nextflight and gradually you'll learn you mentioned the
human element of gc iing. Whatare some extra brevity examples that pilots or
the GCI can use that currently can'tbe used with the AIA wax Well.
One thing as a GCI is thatthere might be a very complex air picture
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in total, like there could beto say, a number five groups,
but only two are relevant. Thenthe GCI could say, Okay, these
two groups are irrelevant to you,but those other three are not at this
time, but I am monitoring them. Or as the A WAX, the
AI A WAX would just give youa full group picture of all the five
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groups that are in that area.As for a pilot, there's what they
call trucker English in aviation as well, so there's the brevity and the phraseology
that you can use. But ifit's not clear, then you revert to
plain English, and that is somethingthat you can't do with AI AI A
WAX as well. If you don'tunderstand something, just speak normal English,
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get things sorted out and make surethat there's no confusion anymore. If an
existing group of pilots want to incorporatea GCI, how much authority should the
GCI be given If that depends onthe kind of mission or um. Yeah,
the kind of mission sort of dictatesthat in the sense that GCI can
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either be very proactive and be aguiding force, or it can actually be
some an informative station like UM.So, depending on how much authority the
pilots want to maintain, the GCIcould be you turn this heading now and
you engage that target, or itcould be very loose control in the sense
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of there's a group right there,and if you want to engage it,
you do so at your own discretion. But now you know at least that
there is a group there. Canyou give us an example of a mission
in which you participated that relied heavilyon the GCI in order to be a
success. Generally dCas are very GCIhave because the OCA that is coming towards
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them will generally try and maintain asuperior superiority in numbers and in complexity.
So in that sense, in thatsituation, the GCI can be a massive
multiplying factor to the DCA that willenhance their situational awareness and end their effectiveness
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at engaging the OCA that is comingtowards them and is also protecting whatever they
are protecting. What's a common mistakethat you see in pilots when you are
the GCI. Radio discipline is sometimesa bit of an issue. Whereas as
a brevity means keeping it as shortas possible. You don't want to hog
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the frequency for too long, toomuch, and if you're not very fluent
in the brevity in the phraseology,you'll key to mic and then start thinking.
Maybe you'll say something that is sortof irrelevant at the point and just
hug the frequency, and during thattime nobody can talk, and you lose
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valuable seconds that you might be usingas a GCI to direct other aircraft to
other groups and be effective. What'sa common mistake you see in gcis when
you're the pilot, too much informationsharing. So you get, as I
mentioned before, there's those five groupsand only two of those are really relevant
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to you, but you still getthe picture on the full five groups.
That's so much information to grasp inlet's say the thirty seconds that it takes
to give the full picture, andyou get five different bulls eyes or five
different bearings from one bulls eye toget a picture call, and by the
time you've heard the last one,you don't remember what the first one was
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anymore. Can you give me thatexample of the longest call that you've given
us a GCI for a picture call? I remember one where there was it
was a big box, but eachbox corner had two groups, so and
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because they were all hot on theDCA that I was guiding, I couldn't
just say those two leading groups bothhad two or those the leading edge had
two groups at each side. Ihad to give the full group. So
at that point I was sort ofunsure of how to properly relate this to
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the pilots without making it too complexthat they just didn't know. So I
try to. But then during abouthalfway through, I remembered, or I
realized that whatever I'm saying now evenI'm sort of flabbergasted, and I already
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forgot what I just said, SoI can't even imagine what it must be
like for those pilots currently hurtling aroundat mark point nine trying to get weapons
on station. So at that pointmidway through, I sort of took a
breath, then just basically said disregardand just started anew with just the leading
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edge, and then once they sortof properly took that in, I then
said trailing edge and then gave thelatter one. But that was one that
probably took about as long as Ias it did to give this explanation.
Now, so you're listening to aninterview with Eagle Eye on gc I.
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After the break, we'll be backwith Eagle Eye on his group, the
Belgian Virtual Tigers. Stay with us, don't go anywhere. We'll continue after
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this break. Have you ever listenedto a multiplayer emission and heard people say
something like fox three or defensive saytwo. This is what is known as
brevity. Are pilots who fly flightsims just trying to sound cool by speaking
in a sort of pilot code.No, not at all. First,
let's understand that the radios in theF sixteen are half duplex. When you're
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transmitting, you're blocking yourself from hearingany other transmissions on that same radio.
Another problem is that if two pilotstransmit at the same time, these two
competing transmissions end up clashing in Falconbms. The non transmitting pilot let's don't
hear voices. Instead, they heargarbage audio that sounds like bad dubstep music.
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Using brevity is not strictly necessary,but a team that doesn't use it
will be at a disadvantage. Youcan begin learning brevity by watching videos of
multiplayer missions, as well as byopening the real life non classified manuals that
come with BMS, specifically the BMand atp Falcon one drag that one trespass
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two. We'll guide you out onthe tactical frequency eagle eye. Tell us
a bit about your virtual squadron,The Belgian Virtual Tigers all right, So
the Belgian Virtual Tigers or the BVTfor shorts, are a Belgian obviously virtual
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squadron basically based on the thirty fourTiger squadron in Klein Abrugel. We've been
around since nineteen ninety eight, sowith the release of the original Falcon four,
and I think because of that,we are probably one of, if
not the oldest still remaining virtual squadronin Falcon four. Throughout the years,
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we've been close to death so tospeak, with only two members, but
we've always been active, so wehave a continuous streak for the past twenty
five years. Actually this year weare celebrating our twenty fifth anniversary on the
first of August. That's a reallygreat legacy. Congratulations for that. Thank
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you. What type of Falcon BMSflights do you run at BBT And while
we try to simulate the Belgian AirForce as realistically as possible and as the
sim allows, us to, sothat includes all the mission types that the
Belgian Air Force actually does in reallife. So we don't do CE,
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we don't employ harms or mavericks becausethose aren't used in the inventor or those
aren't in the inventory of the BelgianAir Force. But we do everything else
basically. But the thirty first isa multi role squadron, so they do
both air to air and the airto ground. Where does BBT fall on
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the spectrum of mill sim Would yousay that you take BMS and the realism
more seriously than the typical Falcon BMSgroup that you've met. I wouldn't say
more than the typical BMS group thatwe've met, because I feel like BMS
in general is quite realistic minded.Sure you can go and just go and
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drop a bomb, return home,or maybe not even do that and have
a great time. But I thinkFalcon BMS as sim because it's because of
the way it's been developed throughout theyears. It's not very arcade friendly.
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So I think most groups and mostplayers tend to lead more towards the more
realism sides, So I think wealso fall in that spectrum, maybe a
bit more towards the realism factor becausewe try to do things as realistically as
possible with relation to the Belgian AirForce. Are these BVT events, these
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flights open to the public. Wedo general sorry, we do regular coops
with other groups. We've done coops with Dutch squadrons, with Greek squadrons,
Italian, German, UK Americans.So we've also joined Falcon Lounge and
UAF events. So our own groupflights are relatively closed in the sense that
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for our own flight members, orour fmgs as we call them. When
people who want to who are thinkingabout applying with us and want to feel
what it's like, we let themfly a few flights with us just so
they can get a feel of isthis something for me or is this something
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that is too low or too highabove my standards? But generally, if
you want to fly with us,just hit us up for a co op.
You mentioned recruiting. Are you activelyrecruiting now and if so, what
are your requirements to join the BVT. Yeah, we're actually pretty much always
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recruiting because we are a relatively smallgroup. There's officially i'd say about a
dozen pilots, but actively we haveonly about five or so because everyone is
always Our mindset is that real lifealways comes first, so with people having
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work or family or other hobbies,those have priority over the BBT. We
are a computer group that flies theF sixteen, but we don't force people
to fly with us regularly. Asfor requirements, there is sort of a
soft requirement that you have to beBelgian because of our link to the thirty
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first obviously, and hard requirement thatyou have to speak Dutch. But other
than that, it's mostly the mindsetthat is important. What you already know
or what you can do in theF sixteen is less important than how you
approach training with the F sixteen andlearning how we do things and how we
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fly our omissions, and then alsohow you position yourself in the group and
how you fit into the group.We are a tight knit group of friends
for first and foremost, who justhappened to fly together. What are the
necessary attributes of a good pilot Beingopen to learning and receiving feedback and taking
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that in stride and using it tobecome better, just having a good overall
approach to the tasks at hand.You mentioned that mission calms are done in
Dutch. Does the brevity change atall. Or are you guys basically using
NATO brevity. Oh, no,we are so. Once we fly themissions,
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about ninety five percent of everything isdone in English. Actually, so
the missions themselves are done in Englishbecause of the brevity. We don't have
our own Dutch brevity. But sometimesduring the briefing we'll say something in Dutch
just to elaborate further on what weactually mean. And we used to have
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monthly lands as well, where wecame together, all in the same place
physically with our computers, and flewtogether, and then we'd do academics and
just for the ease of having toexplain everything and just having overall social fun,
it was easier to have everyone speakDutch or at least understand it.
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I wanted to ask you about thoseland events. I recall reading when you
sent me the document on the historyof the BBT. You guys were at
one point doing monthly land events.That must be a lot of work.
Can you tell us about that?Yeah, it was. If it wasn't
for COVID, we would probably stillbe doing those, but actually recently so
(36:58):
after COVID. No, let mewind back a bit, so before COVID,
we did actually have monthly lands andwe came together at least once every
month, which was in the vicinityof Antwerp, so people from all around
came to Antwerp set up their computer. In the morning, we flew a
(37:19):
mission or two, and then bythe evening we picked everything up, put
it in a car and drove backhome. But now since COVID, we
couldn't do that. And during COVIDpeople basically said, okay, I spend
a lot of time or more timethan usual on my computer now, so
they upgraded and the configurations have becomefar more complex, far more advanced and
(37:46):
bigger, so it's not always asfeasible anymore to actually pick up your whole
rig and located somewhere else, becausewe found that after COVID, we tried
it a few times and we discoveredthat we spend more time doing technical support
(38:07):
than actually flying, so we sortof quit that. But now we still
try to do monthly or bi monthlyget togethers on the same location where we
did our lands, but just tohave a drink and chat. Some maybe
do a academic because we can dothose with the with just a laptop and
(38:27):
a beamer. But we are nowthinking to get started on doing bigger land
events that instead of one day,we'll just get a weekend there and arrive
maybe on Friday evening or Saturday morning, set up, and then go all
the way to Sunday evening. Walkus through a quick summary of what a
(38:50):
BBT Falcon BMS mission would be likefrom the perspective of one of your members.
After they have signed up, they'reready to fly. What's the mission
experience like there? So every missionstarts with a briefing it depending on how
we sometimes refly missions just to that'sone of the benefits of BMS refliability and
(39:15):
the same mission, it's never reallythe same. But as we fly a
mission again, generally the briefing issomewhat shorter, but the briefing can take
between fifteen and forty five minutes.Then we'll actually fly the mission, and
then we might spend between depending onhow late it is. Because we fly
(39:38):
on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Usually Wednesdayevenings, generally people try to get off
as soon as possible because they haveworked in the morning. Saturdays are a
bit more a bit looser, butgenerally debrief will either happen immediately after the
flight through our voice coomps and whichthat can take between fifteen and an hour.
(40:04):
Maybe we'll use tach few for that, and generally after that will also
have a written debrief in our discordchannel where we go over everything that happened
during the flight. So basically thebriefing and the mission are not really as
important as the debrief or in termsof time spent on each subject. We'll
(40:43):
be right back after this break.Stay with us. If you're getting ready
for a multiplayer flight, then youwant to be prepared for the briefing.
The briefing is important in Falcon BMSbecause you need a coherent plan for BMS
tactical engagement missions. In campaign thereis no direct respawn. Instead, you
need to make the most of whatyou have come prepared with a pen and
(41:06):
paper, a writing tablet, oranything really that lets you take notes,
write down such things as the joker, BINGO values, tack end target information,
BVR numbers such as MAR, andanything else that the flight lead is
briefing. If he's telling you aplan, then treat it as if it's
important. It's better to be overpreparedthan underprepared. Have all of this information
(41:29):
handy so that you can perform wellin the jet. There are third party
programs such as Weapons Delivery Planner thatlets you put this information on the in
game kneeboards. One last thing,save your questions until after the briefing.
There are few things as annoying toa lead in a briefing as a wingman
who hijacks the briefing with questions thatare already being answered. Drag Net one
(41:52):
single Group North. This is theTactical Frequency. Welcome back to the Tactical
Frequency. We are doing an interviewwith Eagle Eye, a prerecorded interview,
(42:14):
and during that time we actually managedto get a caller, so let's go
to that right now, mister HaggisHero, Welcome to the Tactical Frequency.
Many thanks for accepting my um myquestion here. Umgi, yeah, I
guess how are you doing? Along time? No speak? Been a
(42:37):
while, it has um but myquestion is uh BBT. The Belgium Virtual
Tigers have been involved in the fourcommunity since probably it's release. Are you
as a group looking forward to thepoint three eight release the new terrain and
(42:59):
now you're for the oh bring somenew players that will take BMSS under the
wings and treat it seriously like mostin the community, such as yourselves do
at present UM. So yeah,we have been around since the original Falcon
four released in nineteen eighty. Innineteen ninety eight. As for for three
(43:24):
eight, I suspect seeing the influxum that for three seven had with adding
VR, I think that we willsee a bigger influx maybe with the new
terrain that's coming in for Tree eightor is that that is slated to come
(43:45):
with for three eight UM, becauseI think a lot of people from DCS
might come over to Falcon BMS toat least have a look and see what
it's all about. And with thatin mind, I know that there is
a huge DCS community within Belgium thatwouldn't touch BMS with a long pole,
(44:10):
even if they were paid for it. But I think with Falcon BMS bringing
in a new terrain, they mightcome over to at least have a look
see what it's like now, andmaybe they'll stick around, and maybe that
would be a good thing for us, since we are, as far as
I'm aware, the only Belgian virtualsquadron in Falcon BMS, or fully Belgian
(44:36):
at least there are Belgian members spreadall around, so I think if we
can tap into that, we mightget an influx in new members in the
BBT as well. So in thatsense, yeah, I'm very much looking
forward to the new terrain as Iam, as well as upwards as they
see many thanks for answer, Thankyou for very much, Eagle I for
(45:00):
joining us today. You're welcome onceagain, thanks for having me. That
was our interview with Eagle Eye.We did two parts. That last part
was part of the Meet the Communityinitiative. If you've got a squadron,
(45:21):
as I said before, that you'dlike to get on here represent tell us
what you do, let us know. So I wanted to get back to
our original topic on a WAX andGCI. You've heard a little bit from
Eagle Eye on the subject of GCIand what it involves, how it changes
the dynamics. In my opinion,it is incredibly immersive. It really changes
(45:46):
the feeling of what you're experiencing inthe flight sim So let's travel back a
little bit. A number of yearsa group of us tried to do this.
We tried a GC and at thetime there was not a lot of
support for it. So we're tryingto use the regular two D screen,
(46:06):
the one where you go into BMS, you load into the campaign, and
then you just don't commit to aflight, and we just look there and
we set up IVC, which isthe radio program that comes with BMS.
We set up IVC so that wecould talk to each other from inside and
outside three D. So I actuallywas doing this. I was actually the
GCI one time, and it becamereadily apparent this was going to be a
(46:30):
very difficult process. The GC.I can only see flight leads from the
two D screen. Spotting aircraft feelsarbitrary. It's rather spotty. It's almost
random as to whether you can seean aircraft or not, or at least
that's the feeling that it gives.Once everybody merged in the fight, I
(46:55):
was pretty much useless. Now youmight say, well, that's the way
it goes. A wax can't helpemerges. That's true. But I felt
useless leading up to them. Hergeas well. It's hard to guess at
iding aircraft when you have to makejudgments if you have, for example,
in BMS, the offensive split wherea wingman goes in one direction and the
lead goes in the opposite direction,and then they tried to brack it the
(47:19):
enemy. Well, how do youknow that the wingman is over there?
You really don't if you're the GCIand you can only see the flight lead.
So this made it very difficult tofigure out what was going on.
So an older program was developed andit was called F four a wax.
It did a great job at whatit did, but it had some major
(47:42):
flaws. By the time I startedto use it, the text that it
would display was garbled. Now thedeveloper would update it, but he didn't
seem to be invested in keeping itup to date long term. He did
it as a courtesy for people.Now, as I said, it would
only detect flight leads like the twoD screen, so that was the same
(48:05):
problem. And then in addition,humans needed to run an additional client to
update their location information to a serverthat needed to be run, so there
was added complexity. Another problem wasthat flight leads were always visible. This
led to controversy. It led toarguments and even some hostilities. During a
(48:30):
team versus team event, there wasa red side and a blue side,
and the red side during the teamversus team event went so far as to
say that they considered the use ofF four awax to be cheating. Now,
the Blue side was rather undeterred becausethey didn't have a working a wax.
(48:52):
After they crossed a certain point,the fly awax just stopped responding in
that theater. So Blue was lookingat this as you're saying, well,
when we can't fly with a waxand we can't fly with GCI, so
we just boycott the event at thispoint, We're just not going to fly.
And that was a bit of animpass. The Red guys couldn't do
(49:15):
much about it. The person whowas running the event said that four A
wax was allowed. It was legitimateprogram for that event. And you know
Blue was asking like, at leastfixed the A wax if you can,
But by then the event was undergoingand that couldn't happen. And all of
this makes sense as to how wegot there, but it led to people
(49:37):
being unhappy. And to be clear, by the way, Red didn't like
the fact that flight leads were alwaysvisible. It didn't matter if you were
flying low, if you were flyingfast, if you were flying high,
didn't matter what you were doing.You were always visible to the other sides
GCI. So I can understand thatobjection. Now. The problem though,
(49:59):
is that once Blue had a tasteof having human support as GCI, it
changed the gameplay for many people.There were BMS pilots that said, I
don't want to fly with AX evenat this point, because GCI made such
a huge difference. We had oneevent that I talked about in the past.
(50:21):
It was a massive event, lotsof things going on, and the
GCI was the package commander and leda whole bunch of humans to fight a
whole bunch of aircraft. We're talkingtens and tens and tens of aircraft in
the air and being shot down.It was a wild event. Okay.
Enter F four radar. This wasa program developed by Tumbler before he joined
(50:45):
the Falcon BMS dev team. Itwas a much better program. It can
detect individual aircraft. Now it's alwaysbeen a little bit buggy as certain things
in BMS changes and then Tumbler wouldupdate for radar. The interface between BMS
and F four radar is very bad. I know some of the techniques being
(51:07):
used. It's not very good andTumbler has said that it is a pain
to maintain. Now. This iswhere there are some problems, and there
are some good things. It's abit of a mixed bag. Where it's
good, it's very good. Theinterface is much better than four a wax.
(51:27):
It does more than four a wax. Eventually you could even see some
ground units in there as well,so you could even as a GCI kind
of have the heads up at hey, there's a SAM out there that we
didn't brief. We didn't know about, and I need to alert them that
this SAM site has suddenly popped up. All of that is fun, it's
great. On the technical side,there are bigger issues. For example,
(51:49):
F four radar is not really optimized. It is a GUI program, It
has a graphical user interface, butit seems to have just run in one
read. You can feel the entireprogram lock up when it's polling data.
You can't even drag a line acrossthe screen to get your BRA information.
Now, Tumbler has said multiple timesthat he's very, very busy and updating
(52:15):
this takes even more of his timethan he would prefer. Tumbler gets to
updates for F four Radar usually aftera new BMS version is released. That
is, they're not in sync.Even though he's a developer on BMS.
He doesn't update F four radar asthe final product of that version of BMS
(52:40):
is being put out the door,So this complicates things for squadrons. Think
about this. If you're a squadronthat relies on four radar, well,
now you have to make a decisionwhen a new Foalcon BMS release happens.
Are you going to suspend your regularoperations not use a GCI during the first
(53:00):
week or two weeks or however longit takes for an update, or are
you going to stay on the oldversion of Falcon BMS. You'll get people
in your squadron who will update nomatter what new version comes out. They
update, and then you can't flywith those people if you don't update.
(53:20):
So now you've got a bigger issue. It's important to me that we address
these problems. But after the break, let's address solutions. Let's talk about
the future of GCI in Falcon BMS. Stay with us to join the Tactical
(53:45):
Frequency discord use Invitation code uppercase,ROMEO lowercase, Charlie Niner, Sierra Niner,
Bravo, Yankee, Papa Whiskey QLO. What are some of the prerequisites
to learn and Falcon BMS here arejust a sample. First, you need
self motivation and time. BMS isa study sim You need a personal commitment
(54:07):
to learn, one that doesn't relyon others. Second, you need to
fly regularly. You won't get betterunless you're learning new things and solidifying what
you've already learned. Third, youneed some hardware. A throttle and stick
are greatly recommended, particularly a pairwith a lot of hat switches. Can
you fly with a keyboard and amouse? Yes, painfully, it's really
(54:32):
not recommended. Fourth, head trackingor VR, get one or the other.
The gold standard for head tracking istrack IR, but other cheap alternatives
will do just fine. Fifth,you need to buy a copy of Falcon
four point zero. It goes forabout five U S dollars on Steam.
Falcon BMS itself is free, butits license is a mon for Falcon four
(54:54):
point zero for legal reasons. Falconone, drag Net one, Coffee Fuel,
Yellow sending relief. Please stay onthe tactical frequency. I should mention
(55:15):
that four Radar is currently the goldstandard of GCI programs in Falcon BMS.
I'm not saying it's the best programever made for GCI, but within BMS
it is the best program. Ifyou GCI now, you are probably using
four radar. If you're not,you probably should be. If you've got
something better, let the community know. Okay, how do we fix all
(55:38):
these problems? For a while,I've been saying I think BMS should have
an API. If you're not aprogrammer, that might be a little bit
foreign. But what I'm suggesting isthat there should be an interface for programs
outside of BMS to be able totalk to BMS and influence BMS in some
(55:59):
cases. And this needs to beon a wider theme than just GCI.
But the way the GCI program worksnow, the way four radar works now,
is that it accesses data through someweirdness that is not very stable,
and it's not very easy to doin the short term. If we wanted
to update F four radar, itshould at least be multi threaded a little
(56:23):
bit more optimize things like that.What the BMS dev team can do is,
in my opinion, prioritize either aWAX or GCI, and if you
can do both, just pick one. I happen to see some leaked video
where a WAX was given the abilityto respond to what they call spike calls,
(56:47):
so you could say Spike north anda WAX would tell you what is
north of view. It was avery nice edition. At the very least,
we could get a WAX the abilityto warn us about enemy activity that's
very close to us. That wouldbe nice, all right. Now,
I also am aware, I wasjust made aware very recently before doing this
(57:10):
episode, after I had planned mostof this episode that the Benchmark SIMS team
has been working on an idea forimproving GCI. The plans will, from
what I understand, will not happensoon. And my concern is that AX
(57:31):
and GCI is not a high prioritybecause of the way that four Radar is
delayed in its updating. A lotof this will come down to how BMS
implements this new system. Now,it has some really good, great possibilities.
It has some negatives, but ithas some positives. This is what
I understand. The BMS server willbe broadcasting the GCI data using a known
(57:59):
protocol. This protocol can be readby any client that understands the protocol.
This is actually a public protocol.This means that if you're a programmer,
you could write your own client.Now, the negative to this is that
This probably means another port has tobe opened on the server. If the
admin doesn't open it, you don'tget to GCI on that server. The
(58:22):
benefit, though, is that,from what I understand, there is currently
software out there that already supports exactlywhat BMS is doing. That means that
from the get go, assuming allthings work out well, we will have
a very nice GCI application in thefuture that will actually surpass what we have
(58:49):
in a four radar because the datais coming from the server. This should
address all of the cheating concerns thatwe had years ago, it should address
all of the technical bugs, hopefullythat we've had for years. And from
what I got to play around within a related piece of software, it's
got some very nice features. Now, some of this is speculative, and
(59:15):
some of this I've been told directly, and some of this comes from my
own research. To be clear,I am not on the Falcon BMS dev
team, so I can only gowith the information that I have at hand.
My call sign is Bible Clinger.Thank you for joining me for this
(59:37):
hour. Hopefully I'll catch you againin another two weeks. Falcon one Dragnet
one, you are now leaving thetactical frequency
You've tuned into the Tactical Frequency,a podcast centered around all things Falcon BMS.
Today's episode is going to be abouta wax and GCI. Are we
talking a little bit about the futureof this in Falcon BMS and just about
(00:30):
the subject in general. What canyou do with the a wax and what
can you do with the GCI?Welcome once again to the Tactical Frequency.
My call sign is Bible Clinger,and we've got a whole hour ahead of
us, so let's get to it. First of all, obviously, we
are a podcast about all things FalconBMS, and Falcon BMS is an F
(00:57):
sixteen simulator for the civilian market,and I should mention that outside of the
necessity of owning Alkan four point zero, it is essentially a free mod,
a standalone mode, I should say. But the point of me bringing this
up is that it models the Fsixteen. The F sixteen aircraft does not
(01:21):
have a great radar, It doesn'thave a great ability to see everything around
it. It relies on the informationfrom other aircraft, from other sources,
and that makes it way more effective. This is where a wax comes in.
So a wax is usually a giantplane in the sky that picks up
(01:45):
all the information that you could possiblywant about how many bad guys are out
there, what type of aircraft theyare. All that sort of information can
tell you where your friendlies are at. Now in the modern era, there's
also an advanced data link, andthis data link known as Link sixteen.
It's not modeled in Falcon BMS,but it shows you a lot more information
(02:08):
right on your system. So youcan just look down at the radar or
at some other screen and you cansee what's there. In BMS, we
model an earlier version. We havean earlier version of the data link,
and that's one because it's earlier,it's not as advanced, doesn't have as
(02:30):
much information, so you need torely on the AWAX to give you a
lot more information than you can pickup at a single time. So in
BMS, this is modeled by havinga little menu. You can push Q
and this brings up the menu andyou can ask the AWAX what's around me,
(02:53):
what's going on? That is knownas requesting a picture. So the
picture is a description of all theaircraft that are out there in your vicinity
that are relevant. Now, AWAXwill only describe up to three groups.
Now there's a lot of technical stuff. We won't get into the full idea
(03:14):
of what is a group, whatare the contact all these types of things.
It's a little bit beyond the scopeof this. But the important thing
is to understand that you can askawax this question and a WAX will give
you this information based on bull's eye. Again, bull's eye is a little
bit beyond the scope of what we'rediscussing now. The second thing you can
ask a WAX is you can requestthe vector to the nearest threat in regular
(03:39):
verbiage, the way a pilot mightsay it. The slang brevity would be
to requests a bogy dope. Bogiedope is asking where is the nearest threat
in relation to me? Now?In BMS they give it by bull's eye.
I've been told that that should bein bra Again, if you don't
(04:00):
know the difference between those, wedid cover it in a previous segment and
you could find this information. Thedifference is BULLSEYE is based on an arbitrary
location everyone's agreed upon, and BRAUis based In this case, it would
be based on your aircraft in relationexactly to you. Now requesting this only
gives you the closest threat. Shemight ask, hey, where's the aarest
(04:23):
threat, and he's like, hey, he's right in front of you thirty
miles, and you don't know aboutthe other threats that are all around.
So those are the two basic things. The third thing you can ask awax
is you can lock something up anddeclare it. When you ask for declare,
that's asking a wax to tell youwhat is this? Is it friendly?
(04:46):
Is it enemy? What can youdo with it? We'll be back
with more on a wax after thebreak. To join the tactical frequency discord
use invitation code, uppercase, romeo, lower case, Charlie Niner, Sierra
(05:08):
Niner, Bravo, Yankee, Papawhiskey, keo. New pilots tend to
struggle with bull's eye in the heatof the moment. It's hard to do
the mental math. Bulls eye isan arbitrary position agreed upon by all parties,
and other locations are given relative tothat location. For example, let's
(05:28):
say an enemy is at bulls eyezero nine or zero fifty. How would
you interpret this bulls eye call?Imagine standing directly on the bullseye location,
face compens heading zero nine or zero. The enemy is out there fifty miles
from where you're standing. Some advancedtricks involve knowing where bulls Eye is ahead
of time. For example, ifBullseye is on the flot, then perhaps
(05:49):
you can deduce that in that theater, all Bullseye calls west and east of
Bullseye are on the flot, andall calls north of Bullseye are an enemy
territory. You have to be ableto mentally picture the map the Bullseye location
and the locations given for the otherfighters. If all else fails, you
can use your cursor on the FCRor HSD to correlate bulls Eye locations Falcon
(06:16):
one, drag net one picture clean. You're listening to the tactical frequency.
Welcome once again to the tactical frequency. We are discussing A WAX and GCI.
(06:40):
So the idea here is that youuse the a wax to maintain your
situational awareness. You have more knowledgethan your F sixteen radar can pull for
you at any given point. Thisallows you to be much better aware than
(07:00):
you would otherwise. So if oneside has an AAX and the other side
does not, you'll notice a hugedifference if you watch the replays over of
what happened. So how do youmaintain situational awareness? Well, first you
can ask for a picture. Thenyou have to figure out what AAX has
told you which groups are really relevantto you. If he's told you about
(07:21):
three groups, maybe only one ofthem is close to you and the other
two are way out in the middleof somewhere else. All right after that,
Now, let's say you're part ofa bigger package. The cap flight
should be asking for the vector tothe nearest threat, or asking for bogey
dope. When the cap flight asksfor that, they'll figure out which one
(07:44):
is closest and what they should do. Now. Periodically a new picture should
probably be requested, particularly after dealingwith a close threat, or maybe when
the close threat isn't so close.Maybe that would be a good time to
ask, hey, what else isout there? Now? A WAX has
(08:05):
shortcomings in Falcon BMS, and Ibring this up for a reason. But
let's cover some of these shortcomings.First of all, sometimes, at least
for me, AWAX just sometimes doesnot respond. I ask it for a
picture and he's just completely quiet.He doesn't say anything. Now, it's
(08:26):
been better now in the most recentversion of Falcon BMS, which by the
way, we are on four pointthree seven as our major version as of
this recording, but in the pastit was much worse. I remember flying
with somebody else and I would aska WAX. I'd have to ask it
two or three times before I'd getan answer, and it was really noticeable,
(08:48):
and the person I was flying withit was noticing this too, so
we were trying to figure out whatwas going on, but we never really
made any progress. It just seemedlike some sort of bug. Another shortcoming
is that a WAX doesn't alert anyof the flights that are run by humans
about enemy activity. This means youcan get jumped very easily. Now.
(09:13):
Oddly enough, this used to bebetter. In earlier versions of Falcon BMS.
You used to get more information,but for whatever reason, this is
the way it is now. Ifyou're flying with other flights that are run
by AI, so that is,if you're in a package and there's another
flight with an AI flight lead,you'll hear AAX talk to them and give
(09:33):
them updates. A WAX will onethem, Hey, by the way,
there's something out there. AX issuddenly very useful. A third shortcoming is
that AAX sometimes gives inaccurate information.Sometimes, like the other end of the
map, it'll tell you that something'sthere, but it won't tell you about
something that you're aware of that's muchcloser now. To be fair, this
(09:58):
might be a theater issue. Thatis, this might be a custom theater,
which a theater in Falcon BMS is. You can think of it like
a pack that has a map andmaybe assets like database and different other things,
like they all packaged into one onething. It's about as close to
(10:18):
a bare basic mod as you canget for Falcon BMS. So maybe some
of these packages aren't put together verywell. In certain areas that AAX doesn't
like, an AWAX gets confused aboutwhich direction is which. And this brings
me to another point. AWAX sometimesgives inconsistent responses When you ask for a
(10:39):
picture call versus bogey dope. Sometimesyou get information that just doesn't seem to
match right. Like you'll ask forone and you'll be told all the pictures
clean, it's nothing's out there,and then you'll ask for the other one
and he oh, yeah, there'ssomething out there, and that seems very
odd. Now there's probably a reasonfor that, but it's not very intuitive,
(11:01):
all right. Another problem or shortcomingwith AX is that the information is
very raw. It just gives youthe information here are the three groups that
are out here. It can't thinkoutside of the box and tell you how
to get yourself out of a badsituation. For example, if you are
(11:24):
asking for bogey dope, you mightbe told about a threat nearby. It
won't tell you, however, thatyou're being sandwiched. There's another threat from
the opposite direction. AX has nointelligence to think you might need to know
about this. If you're asking fora picture, it'll be happy to rattle
(11:48):
off information about all three groups withoutwarning you that you're merged. You'll have
to hear that in the picture callto realize he's like three miles behind you.
This brings being to the next point. A WAX doesn't call that you're
merged. AI in BMS merge allof the time, and that makes BVR
(12:09):
difficult, and that's really for adifferent episode. But a WAX never lets
you know that you're merging, someoneelse's merging, or how to avoid getting
into that scenario. Okay, sowhat can we do about this, Well,
obviously BMS can get better, itcan update, the developers can do
more with a wax, that's true. But there's another possibility, and that's
(12:37):
that humans can take the role ofthe awax. So if you can picture,
you're flying your jet, you're tryingto do emission, but instead of
pushing Q or whatever key it ison your keyboard, but you push that
key and you get your menu andyou push whatever the number is for request
(12:58):
picture. Instead of that, ifyou could just cue the radio, you
just start talking on uniform and youjust give your call sign you ask for
a picture. So let's say youknow the GCI's call sign is whatever,
dragnet use it dragnet Falcon one,request picture, and a human responds back
(13:20):
to you right over the radio.So that's what some of us had been
doing in BMS for that's say,the last few years or so. It's
been actually going on for longer thanthat, but we'll cover a little bit
about some of the history later.Now, to distinguish between AI and human
what we typically do is when wesay a wax in BMS, just by
(13:43):
convention, we mean the AI thatcomes with Falcon BMS. When we say
GCI typically now in multiplayer communities,we specifically mean a human taking on the
awax role. That's not the reallife definition, of course, but that's
(14:03):
just how you're going to hear it. So if you're about to do a
multiplayer mission and somebody says, hey, do we have a GCI, they're
asking is a human taking over therole. So if you're told by the
way, hey we're flying this missionwith a GCI, now you realize you'll
have to make those calls on theradio. So pay attention to the briefing
who you speak to. It's youmay not know, you may not know
(14:26):
who's doing it. You just mayhave a call sign that you're going to
talk to or maybe a frequency.Maybe the flight lead will have to push
you to a frequency. In twentytwenty one, when we did the Team
versus Team official event that was puton by the Falcon BMS developers, I
flew on the yell four side,as we call it. We were a
(14:50):
team yellow and we set up acomplicated GCI setup and so pilots would actually
turn to a certain known frequency tocheck in and they would announce what they
were doing and where they were going, and behind the scenes, the person
taking in the check in information wouldactually pass you on to a human GCI.
(15:13):
You wouldn't know what frequency to goto until they told you and they
handled that transition. So we couldin theory, have one, two,
three, four, five different gcisavailable in theory, and you could be
assigned to one covering your region orwhatever made sense if it was somebody who
could help you with the air toairmission. So that's an example of what
(15:39):
we could do. But later onwe're going to cover some of the problems
with this role in Falcon BMS,and we'll cover some potential solutions, but
that's going to happen later on inthe program. We're going after the break,
we're going to go to an interviewwith Eagle Eye, and I'll just
(16:03):
mention very quickly that he's been oneof the examples of how to GCI and
BMS in my opinion, he's beenvery good at it. So we'll jump
right to that interview after the break, and then after that we're going to
still continue with him on the segmentafter that where we'll talk with him about
the Belgian Virtual Tigers, his squadronin Falcon BMS, and we'll do that
(16:26):
as part of the Meet the Communityinitiative. So please stay with us.
We've got more content coming right hereon the technical frequency. We're just getting
(16:47):
started. We'll be back soon afterthis message. Falcon BMS comes with a
lot of manuals. If you're newto BMS, where should you start?
The first manual you'll want to useas probably the training manual. This is
meant to be used when you flythrough the tactical Engagement training missions. These
(17:07):
training missions come with Falcon BMS andare there for you to learn various subjects,
from starting the jet to operating theradios to employing weapons. But the
training manual is how you know whatto do every step of the way while
you fly these missions. You shouldhave the Training Manual andy on another monitor
or on another electronic device. Theother manuals you want to read are the
(17:30):
DASH one and the DASH three four. They're called this because they have DASH
one and DASH three four in theirvery long names. If you're looking for
a reference on how to fly theF sixteen or use any of its systems,
you'll want the DASH one. Ifyou're looking for information specifically on weapons
employment, you'll want the DASH threefour Falcon one drag Net one. We're
(17:56):
keeping you informed on the tactical frequents. Joining us now is Eagle Eye.
He has been both a Falcon BMSpilot and a GCI for years and why
not, he's been a student airtraffic controller in real life and he joins
(18:19):
us today to talk about gciing.Eagle Eye, thank you for joining us
today, Yeah, very much,thank you to you for inviting me.
No, it's my pleasure. Actually, why do we even have gcis in
Falcon BMS? To clarify, whydo we have humans taking on the role
of a wax in BMS. Well, first of all, one of the
(18:41):
main disadvantages of the a wax inBMS is that it doesn't provide any proactive
control. So that is where ahuman can definitely make a difference in actually
telling pilots that something is coming theirway that they should know about without the
pilots having to constantly ask or aquery the a wax if something is coming
(19:04):
their way. So that is thebiggest advantage. But also with recent iterations
of BMS, it has much improved. But back in the old days,
a wax was quite basic and wasn'treally able to provide picture calls that were
complex, you mainly got one groupthat might have been relevant to you.
(19:29):
Honestly, I don't think that AIcan ever be as good as a human
because there's always that human factor thatcan decide what is relevant to this pilot
at this time and what isn't andsort of don't want to call it gate
keeping, but sort of keeping itrelevant to the actual moment so as not
to overload a pilot with so muchinformation that he basically doesn't know what is
(19:53):
going on even if you just toldhim. A pilot's perspective, if he's
joining a multiplayer fly and he's told, oh, by the way, we're
gonna have GCI, what's the practicaldifference for him in that flight? There
comes an extra factor in that thepilot also has to be aware of the
phraseology and the brevity to use,which if you're using the AIAO act,
(20:17):
you can just use the com menuand I will sort everything out for you.
Is the brevity difficult to learn foreither the pilot or the GCI.
It's like learning a new language.So depending on how good you are at
learning a new language, I'd saythat it's not something that is impossible to
(20:37):
overcome, but it definitely definitely takestime, experience, practice to get good
at it, especially to do itfluently. How can someone get started to
learn how to GCI and Falcon bms. There are multiple events or missions that
are flown every day through the FalconLounge uo A virtual squadrons that run their
(21:02):
own missions, campaigns that are runby other groups outside or sorry, outside
of those that are already mentioned.So I would say, if they already
have a GCI there, just askif you can tag along and maybe do
something on a low complexity mission andjust be GCI for them with the support
(21:26):
of somebody that knows already what he'sdoing, or with friends, and just
keep it low key and be aGCI to them, and then later debrief
the pilots would then come back tothe GCI and tell them, Okay,
this is what I would have likedin that moment, and then the GCI
(21:48):
can take that on for the nextflight and gradually you'll learn you mentioned the
human element of gc iing. Whatare some extra brevity examples that pilots or
the GCI can use that currently can'tbe used with the AIA wax Well.
One thing as a GCI is thatthere might be a very complex air picture
(22:10):
in total, like there could beto say, a number five groups,
but only two are relevant. Thenthe GCI could say, Okay, these
two groups are irrelevant to you,but those other three are not at this
time, but I am monitoring them. Or as the A WAX, the
AI A WAX would just give youa full group picture of all the five
(22:32):
groups that are in that area.As for a pilot, there's what they
call trucker English in aviation as well, so there's the brevity and the phraseology
that you can use. But ifit's not clear, then you revert to
plain English, and that is somethingthat you can't do with AI AI A
WAX as well. If you don'tunderstand something, just speak normal English,
(22:52):
get things sorted out and make surethat there's no confusion anymore. If an
existing group of pilots want to incorporatea GCI, how much authority should the
GCI be given If that depends onthe kind of mission or um. Yeah,
the kind of mission sort of dictatesthat in the sense that GCI can
(23:15):
either be very proactive and be aguiding force, or it can actually be
some an informative station like UM.So, depending on how much authority the
pilots want to maintain, the GCIcould be you turn this heading now and
you engage that target, or itcould be very loose control in the sense
(23:40):
of there's a group right there,and if you want to engage it,
you do so at your own discretion. But now you know at least that
there is a group there. Canyou give us an example of a mission
in which you participated that relied heavilyon the GCI in order to be a
success. Generally dCas are very GCIhave because the OCA that is coming towards
(24:03):
them will generally try and maintain asuperior superiority in numbers and in complexity.
So in that sense, in thatsituation, the GCI can be a massive
multiplying factor to the DCA that willenhance their situational awareness and end their effectiveness
(24:29):
at engaging the OCA that is comingtowards them and is also protecting whatever they
are protecting. What's a common mistakethat you see in pilots when you are
the GCI. Radio discipline is sometimesa bit of an issue. Whereas as
a brevity means keeping it as shortas possible. You don't want to hog
(24:51):
the frequency for too long, toomuch, and if you're not very fluent
in the brevity in the phraseology,you'll key to mic and then start thinking.
Maybe you'll say something that is sortof irrelevant at the point and just
hug the frequency, and during thattime nobody can talk, and you lose
(25:14):
valuable seconds that you might be usingas a GCI to direct other aircraft to
other groups and be effective. What'sa common mistake you see in gcis when
you're the pilot, too much informationsharing. So you get, as I
mentioned before, there's those five groupsand only two of those are really relevant
(25:36):
to you, but you still getthe picture on the full five groups.
That's so much information to grasp inlet's say the thirty seconds that it takes
to give the full picture, andyou get five different bulls eyes or five
different bearings from one bulls eye toget a picture call, and by the
time you've heard the last one,you don't remember what the first one was
(25:56):
anymore. Can you give me thatexample of the longest call that you've given
us a GCI for a picture call? I remember one where there was it
was a big box, but eachbox corner had two groups, so and
(26:19):
because they were all hot on theDCA that I was guiding, I couldn't
just say those two leading groups bothhad two or those the leading edge had
two groups at each side. Ihad to give the full group. So
at that point I was sort ofunsure of how to properly relate this to
(26:45):
the pilots without making it too complexthat they just didn't know. So I
try to. But then during abouthalfway through, I remembered, or I
realized that whatever I'm saying now evenI'm sort of flabbergasted, and I already
(27:08):
forgot what I just said, SoI can't even imagine what it must be
like for those pilots currently hurtling aroundat mark point nine trying to get weapons
on station. So at that pointmidway through, I sort of took a
breath, then just basically said disregardand just started anew with just the leading
(27:32):
edge, and then once they sortof properly took that in, I then
said trailing edge and then gave thelatter one. But that was one that
probably took about as long as Ias it did to give this explanation.
Now, so you're listening to aninterview with Eagle Eye on gc I.
(28:00):
After the break, we'll be backwith Eagle Eye on his group, the
Belgian Virtual Tigers. Stay with us, don't go anywhere. We'll continue after
(28:21):
this break. Have you ever listenedto a multiplayer emission and heard people say
something like fox three or defensive saytwo. This is what is known as
brevity. Are pilots who fly flightsims just trying to sound cool by speaking
in a sort of pilot code.No, not at all. First,
let's understand that the radios in theF sixteen are half duplex. When you're
(28:45):
transmitting, you're blocking yourself from hearingany other transmissions on that same radio.
Another problem is that if two pilotstransmit at the same time, these two
competing transmissions end up clashing in Falconbms. The non transmitting pilot let's don't
hear voices. Instead, they heargarbage audio that sounds like bad dubstep music.
(29:06):
Using brevity is not strictly necessary,but a team that doesn't use it
will be at a disadvantage. Youcan begin learning brevity by watching videos of
multiplayer missions, as well as byopening the real life non classified manuals that
come with BMS, specifically the BMand atp Falcon one drag that one trespass
(29:30):
two. We'll guide you out onthe tactical frequency eagle eye. Tell us
a bit about your virtual squadron,The Belgian Virtual Tigers all right, So
the Belgian Virtual Tigers or the BVTfor shorts, are a Belgian obviously virtual
(29:56):
squadron basically based on the thirty fourTiger squadron in Klein Abrugel. We've been
around since nineteen ninety eight, sowith the release of the original Falcon four,
and I think because of that,we are probably one of, if
not the oldest still remaining virtual squadronin Falcon four. Throughout the years,
(30:22):
we've been close to death so tospeak, with only two members, but
we've always been active, so wehave a continuous streak for the past twenty
five years. Actually this year weare celebrating our twenty fifth anniversary on the
first of August. That's a reallygreat legacy. Congratulations for that. Thank
(30:44):
you. What type of Falcon BMSflights do you run at BBT And while
we try to simulate the Belgian AirForce as realistically as possible and as the
sim allows, us to, sothat includes all the mission types that the
Belgian Air Force actually does in reallife. So we don't do CE,
(31:07):
we don't employ harms or mavericks becausethose aren't used in the inventor or those
aren't in the inventory of the BelgianAir Force. But we do everything else
basically. But the thirty first isa multi role squadron, so they do
both air to air and the airto ground. Where does BBT fall on
(31:29):
the spectrum of mill sim Would yousay that you take BMS and the realism
more seriously than the typical Falcon BMSgroup that you've met. I wouldn't say
more than the typical BMS group thatwe've met, because I feel like BMS
in general is quite realistic minded.Sure you can go and just go and
(31:52):
drop a bomb, return home,or maybe not even do that and have
a great time. But I thinkFalcon BMS as sim because it's because of
the way it's been developed throughout theyears. It's not very arcade friendly.
(32:12):
So I think most groups and mostplayers tend to lead more towards the more
realism sides, So I think wealso fall in that spectrum, maybe a
bit more towards the realism factor becausewe try to do things as realistically as
possible with relation to the Belgian AirForce. Are these BVT events, these
(32:34):
flights open to the public. Wedo general sorry, we do regular coops
with other groups. We've done coops with Dutch squadrons, with Greek squadrons,
Italian, German, UK Americans.So we've also joined Falcon Lounge and
UAF events. So our own groupflights are relatively closed in the sense that
(33:05):
for our own flight members, orour fmgs as we call them. When
people who want to who are thinkingabout applying with us and want to feel
what it's like, we let themfly a few flights with us just so
they can get a feel of isthis something for me or is this something
(33:27):
that is too low or too highabove my standards? But generally, if
you want to fly with us,just hit us up for a co op.
You mentioned recruiting. Are you activelyrecruiting now and if so, what
are your requirements to join the BVT. Yeah, we're actually pretty much always
(33:49):
recruiting because we are a relatively smallgroup. There's officially i'd say about a
dozen pilots, but actively we haveonly about five or so because everyone is
always Our mindset is that real lifealways comes first, so with people having
(34:10):
work or family or other hobbies,those have priority over the BBT. We
are a computer group that flies theF sixteen, but we don't force people
to fly with us regularly. Asfor requirements, there is sort of a
soft requirement that you have to beBelgian because of our link to the thirty
(34:37):
first obviously, and hard requirement thatyou have to speak Dutch. But other
than that, it's mostly the mindsetthat is important. What you already know
or what you can do in theF sixteen is less important than how you
approach training with the F sixteen andlearning how we do things and how we
(35:01):
fly our omissions, and then alsohow you position yourself in the group and
how you fit into the group.We are a tight knit group of friends
for first and foremost, who justhappened to fly together. What are the
necessary attributes of a good pilot Beingopen to learning and receiving feedback and taking
(35:27):
that in stride and using it tobecome better, just having a good overall
approach to the tasks at hand.You mentioned that mission calms are done in
Dutch. Does the brevity change atall. Or are you guys basically using
NATO brevity. Oh, no,we are so. Once we fly themissions,
(35:52):
about ninety five percent of everything isdone in English. Actually, so
the missions themselves are done in Englishbecause of the brevity. We don't have
our own Dutch brevity. But sometimesduring the briefing we'll say something in Dutch
just to elaborate further on what weactually mean. And we used to have
(36:13):
monthly lands as well, where wecame together, all in the same place
physically with our computers, and flewtogether, and then we'd do academics and
just for the ease of having toexplain everything and just having overall social fun,
it was easier to have everyone speakDutch or at least understand it.
(36:37):
I wanted to ask you about thoseland events. I recall reading when you
sent me the document on the historyof the BBT. You guys were at
one point doing monthly land events.That must be a lot of work.
Can you tell us about that?Yeah, it was. If it wasn't
for COVID, we would probably stillbe doing those, but actually recently so
(36:58):
after COVID. No, let mewind back a bit, so before COVID,
we did actually have monthly lands andwe came together at least once every
month, which was in the vicinityof Antwerp, so people from all around
came to Antwerp set up their computer. In the morning, we flew a
(37:19):
mission or two, and then bythe evening we picked everything up, put
it in a car and drove backhome. But now since COVID, we
couldn't do that. And during COVIDpeople basically said, okay, I spend
a lot of time or more timethan usual on my computer now, so
they upgraded and the configurations have becomefar more complex, far more advanced and
(37:46):
bigger, so it's not always asfeasible anymore to actually pick up your whole
rig and located somewhere else, becausewe found that after COVID, we tried
it a few times and we discoveredthat we spend more time doing technical support
(38:07):
than actually flying, so we sortof quit that. But now we still
try to do monthly or bi monthlyget togethers on the same location where we
did our lands, but just tohave a drink and chat. Some maybe
do a academic because we can dothose with the with just a laptop and
(38:27):
a beamer. But we are nowthinking to get started on doing bigger land
events that instead of one day,we'll just get a weekend there and arrive
maybe on Friday evening or Saturday morning, set up, and then go all
the way to Sunday evening. Walkus through a quick summary of what a
(38:50):
BBT Falcon BMS mission would be likefrom the perspective of one of your members.
After they have signed up, they'reready to fly. What's the mission
experience like there? So every missionstarts with a briefing it depending on how
we sometimes refly missions just to that'sone of the benefits of BMS refliability and
(39:15):
the same mission, it's never reallythe same. But as we fly a
mission again, generally the briefing issomewhat shorter, but the briefing can take
between fifteen and forty five minutes.Then we'll actually fly the mission, and
then we might spend between depending onhow late it is. Because we fly
(39:38):
on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Usually Wednesdayevenings, generally people try to get off
as soon as possible because they haveworked in the morning. Saturdays are a
bit more a bit looser, butgenerally debrief will either happen immediately after the
flight through our voice coomps and whichthat can take between fifteen and an hour.
(40:04):
Maybe we'll use tach few for that, and generally after that will also
have a written debrief in our discordchannel where we go over everything that happened
during the flight. So basically thebriefing and the mission are not really as
important as the debrief or in termsof time spent on each subject. We'll
(40:43):
be right back after this break.Stay with us. If you're getting ready
for a multiplayer flight, then youwant to be prepared for the briefing.
The briefing is important in Falcon BMSbecause you need a coherent plan for BMS
tactical engagement missions. In campaign thereis no direct respawn. Instead, you
need to make the most of whatyou have come prepared with a pen and
(41:06):
paper, a writing tablet, oranything really that lets you take notes,
write down such things as the joker, BINGO values, tack end target information,
BVR numbers such as MAR, andanything else that the flight lead is
briefing. If he's telling you aplan, then treat it as if it's
important. It's better to be overpreparedthan underprepared. Have all of this information
(41:29):
handy so that you can perform wellin the jet. There are third party
programs such as Weapons Delivery Planner thatlets you put this information on the in
game kneeboards. One last thing,save your questions until after the briefing.
There are few things as annoying toa lead in a briefing as a wingman
who hijacks the briefing with questions thatare already being answered. Drag Net one
(41:52):
single Group North. This is theTactical Frequency. Welcome back to the Tactical
Frequency. We are doing an interviewwith Eagle Eye, a prerecorded interview,
(42:14):
and during that time we actually managedto get a caller, so let's go
to that right now, mister HaggisHero, Welcome to the Tactical Frequency.
Many thanks for accepting my um myquestion here. Umgi, yeah, I
guess how are you doing? Along time? No speak? Been a
(42:37):
while, it has um but myquestion is uh BBT. The Belgium Virtual
Tigers have been involved in the fourcommunity since probably it's release. Are you
as a group looking forward to thepoint three eight release the new terrain and
(42:59):
now you're for the oh bring somenew players that will take BMSS under the
wings and treat it seriously like mostin the community, such as yourselves do
at present UM. So yeah,we have been around since the original Falcon
four released in nineteen eighty. Innineteen ninety eight. As for for three
(43:24):
eight, I suspect seeing the influxum that for three seven had with adding
VR, I think that we willsee a bigger influx maybe with the new
terrain that's coming in for Tree eightor is that that is slated to come
(43:45):
with for three eight UM, becauseI think a lot of people from DCS
might come over to Falcon BMS toat least have a look and see what
it's all about. And with thatin mind, I know that there is
a huge DCS community within Belgium thatwouldn't touch BMS with a long pole,
(44:10):
even if they were paid for it. But I think with Falcon BMS bringing
in a new terrain, they mightcome over to at least have a look
see what it's like now, andmaybe they'll stick around, and maybe that
would be a good thing for us, since we are, as far as
I'm aware, the only Belgian virtualsquadron in Falcon BMS, or fully Belgian
(44:36):
at least there are Belgian members spreadall around, so I think if we
can tap into that, we mightget an influx in new members in the
BBT as well. So in thatsense, yeah, I'm very much looking
forward to the new terrain as Iam, as well as upwards as they
see many thanks for answer, Thankyou for very much, Eagle I for
(45:00):
joining us today. You're welcome onceagain, thanks for having me. That
was our interview with Eagle Eye.We did two parts. That last part
was part of the Meet the Communityinitiative. If you've got a squadron,
(45:21):
as I said before, that you'dlike to get on here represent tell us
what you do, let us know. So I wanted to get back to
our original topic on a WAX andGCI. You've heard a little bit from
Eagle Eye on the subject of GCIand what it involves, how it changes
the dynamics. In my opinion,it is incredibly immersive. It really changes
(45:46):
the feeling of what you're experiencing inthe flight sim So let's travel back a
little bit. A number of yearsa group of us tried to do this.
We tried a GC and at thetime there was not a lot of
support for it. So we're tryingto use the regular two D screen,
(46:06):
the one where you go into BMS, you load into the campaign, and
then you just don't commit to aflight, and we just look there and
we set up IVC, which isthe radio program that comes with BMS.
We set up IVC so that wecould talk to each other from inside and
outside three D. So I actuallywas doing this. I was actually the
GCI one time, and it becamereadily apparent this was going to be a
(46:30):
very difficult process. The GC.I can only see flight leads from the
two D screen. Spotting aircraft feelsarbitrary. It's rather spotty. It's almost
random as to whether you can seean aircraft or not, or at least
that's the feeling that it gives.Once everybody merged in the fight, I
(46:55):
was pretty much useless. Now youmight say, well, that's the way
it goes. A wax can't helpemerges. That's true. But I felt
useless leading up to them. Hergeas well. It's hard to guess at
iding aircraft when you have to makejudgments if you have, for example,
in BMS, the offensive split wherea wingman goes in one direction and the
lead goes in the opposite direction,and then they tried to brack it the
(47:19):
enemy. Well, how do youknow that the wingman is over there?
You really don't if you're the GCIand you can only see the flight lead.
So this made it very difficult tofigure out what was going on.
So an older program was developed andit was called F four a wax.
It did a great job at whatit did, but it had some major
(47:42):
flaws. By the time I startedto use it, the text that it
would display was garbled. Now thedeveloper would update it, but he didn't
seem to be invested in keeping itup to date long term. He did
it as a courtesy for people.Now, as I said, it would
only detect flight leads like the twoD screen, so that was the same
(48:05):
problem. And then in addition,humans needed to run an additional client to
update their location information to a serverthat needed to be run, so there
was added complexity. Another problem wasthat flight leads were always visible. This
led to controversy. It led toarguments and even some hostilities. During a
(48:30):
team versus team event, there wasa red side and a blue side,
and the red side during the teamversus team event went so far as to
say that they considered the use ofF four awax to be cheating. Now,
the Blue side was rather undeterred becausethey didn't have a working a wax.
(48:52):
After they crossed a certain point,the fly awax just stopped responding in
that theater. So Blue was lookingat this as you're saying, well,
when we can't fly with a waxand we can't fly with GCI, so
we just boycott the event at thispoint, We're just not going to fly.
And that was a bit of animpass. The Red guys couldn't do
(49:15):
much about it. The person whowas running the event said that four A
wax was allowed. It was legitimateprogram for that event. And you know
Blue was asking like, at leastfixed the A wax if you can,
But by then the event was undergoingand that couldn't happen. And all of
this makes sense as to how wegot there, but it led to people
(49:37):
being unhappy. And to be clear, by the way, Red didn't like
the fact that flight leads were alwaysvisible. It didn't matter if you were
flying low, if you were flyingfast, if you were flying high,
didn't matter what you were doing.You were always visible to the other sides
GCI. So I can understand thatobjection. Now. The problem though,
(49:59):
is that once Blue had a tasteof having human support as GCI, it
changed the gameplay for many people.There were BMS pilots that said, I
don't want to fly with AX evenat this point, because GCI made such
a huge difference. We had oneevent that I talked about in the past.
(50:21):
It was a massive event, lotsof things going on, and the
GCI was the package commander and leda whole bunch of humans to fight a
whole bunch of aircraft. We're talkingtens and tens and tens of aircraft in
the air and being shot down.It was a wild event. Okay.
Enter F four radar. This wasa program developed by Tumbler before he joined
(50:45):
the Falcon BMS dev team. Itwas a much better program. It can
detect individual aircraft. Now it's alwaysbeen a little bit buggy as certain things
in BMS changes and then Tumbler wouldupdate for radar. The interface between BMS
and F four radar is very bad. I know some of the techniques being
(51:07):
used. It's not very good andTumbler has said that it is a pain
to maintain. Now. This iswhere there are some problems, and there
are some good things. It's abit of a mixed bag. Where it's
good, it's very good. Theinterface is much better than four a wax.
(51:27):
It does more than four a wax. Eventually you could even see some
ground units in there as well,so you could even as a GCI kind
of have the heads up at hey, there's a SAM out there that we
didn't brief. We didn't know about, and I need to alert them that
this SAM site has suddenly popped up. All of that is fun, it's
great. On the technical side,there are bigger issues. For example,
(51:49):
F four radar is not really optimized. It is a GUI program, It
has a graphical user interface, butit seems to have just run in one
read. You can feel the entireprogram lock up when it's polling data.
You can't even drag a line acrossthe screen to get your BRA information.
Now, Tumbler has said multiple timesthat he's very, very busy and updating
(52:15):
this takes even more of his timethan he would prefer. Tumbler gets to
updates for F four Radar usually aftera new BMS version is released. That
is, they're not in sync.Even though he's a developer on BMS.
He doesn't update F four radar asthe final product of that version of BMS
(52:40):
is being put out the door,So this complicates things for squadrons. Think
about this. If you're a squadronthat relies on four radar, well,
now you have to make a decisionwhen a new Foalcon BMS release happens.
Are you going to suspend your regularoperations not use a GCI during the first
(53:00):
week or two weeks or however longit takes for an update, or are
you going to stay on the oldversion of Falcon BMS. You'll get people
in your squadron who will update nomatter what new version comes out. They
update, and then you can't flywith those people if you don't update.
(53:20):
So now you've got a bigger issue. It's important to me that we address
these problems. But after the break, let's address solutions. Let's talk about
the future of GCI in Falcon BMS. Stay with us to join the Tactical
(53:45):
Frequency discord use Invitation code uppercase,ROMEO lowercase, Charlie Niner, Sierra Niner,
Bravo, Yankee, Papa Whiskey QLO. What are some of the prerequisites
to learn and Falcon BMS here arejust a sample. First, you need
self motivation and time. BMS isa study sim You need a personal commitment
(54:07):
to learn, one that doesn't relyon others. Second, you need to
fly regularly. You won't get betterunless you're learning new things and solidifying what
you've already learned. Third, youneed some hardware. A throttle and stick
are greatly recommended, particularly a pairwith a lot of hat switches. Can
you fly with a keyboard and amouse? Yes, painfully, it's really
(54:32):
not recommended. Fourth, head trackingor VR, get one or the other.
The gold standard for head tracking istrack IR, but other cheap alternatives
will do just fine. Fifth,you need to buy a copy of Falcon
four point zero. It goes forabout five U S dollars on Steam.
Falcon BMS itself is free, butits license is a mon for Falcon four
(54:54):
point zero for legal reasons. Falconone, drag Net one, Coffee Fuel,
Yellow sending relief. Please stay onthe tactical frequency. I should mention
(55:15):
that four Radar is currently the goldstandard of GCI programs in Falcon BMS.
I'm not saying it's the best programever made for GCI, but within BMS
it is the best program. Ifyou GCI now, you are probably using
four radar. If you're not,you probably should be. If you've got
something better, let the community know. Okay, how do we fix all
(55:38):
these problems? For a while,I've been saying I think BMS should have
an API. If you're not aprogrammer, that might be a little bit
foreign. But what I'm suggesting isthat there should be an interface for programs
outside of BMS to be able totalk to BMS and influence BMS in some
(55:59):
cases. And this needs to beon a wider theme than just GCI.
But the way the GCI program worksnow, the way four radar works now,
is that it accesses data through someweirdness that is not very stable,
and it's not very easy to doin the short term. If we wanted
to update F four radar, itshould at least be multi threaded a little
(56:23):
bit more optimize things like that.What the BMS dev team can do is,
in my opinion, prioritize either aWAX or GCI, and if you
can do both, just pick one. I happen to see some leaked video
where a WAX was given the abilityto respond to what they call spike calls,
(56:47):
so you could say Spike north anda WAX would tell you what is
north of view. It was avery nice edition. At the very least,
we could get a WAX the abilityto warn us about enemy activity that's
very close to us. That wouldbe nice, all right. Now,
I also am aware, I wasjust made aware very recently before doing this
(57:10):
episode, after I had planned mostof this episode that the Benchmark SIMS team
has been working on an idea forimproving GCI. The plans will, from
what I understand, will not happensoon. And my concern is that AX
(57:31):
and GCI is not a high prioritybecause of the way that four Radar is
delayed in its updating. A lotof this will come down to how BMS
implements this new system. Now,it has some really good, great possibilities.
It has some negatives, but ithas some positives. This is what
I understand. The BMS server willbe broadcasting the GCI data using a known
(57:59):
protocol. This protocol can be readby any client that understands the protocol.
This is actually a public protocol.This means that if you're a programmer,
you could write your own client.Now, the negative to this is that
This probably means another port has tobe opened on the server. If the
admin doesn't open it, you don'tget to GCI on that server. The
(58:22):
benefit, though, is that,from what I understand, there is currently
software out there that already supports exactlywhat BMS is doing. That means that
from the get go, assuming allthings work out well, we will have
a very nice GCI application in thefuture that will actually surpass what we have
(58:49):
in a four radar because the datais coming from the server. This should
address all of the cheating concerns thatwe had years ago, it should address
all of the technical bugs, hopefullythat we've had for years. And from
what I got to play around within a related piece of software, it's
got some very nice features. Now, some of this is speculative, and
(59:15):
some of this I've been told directly, and some of this comes from my
own research. To be clear,I am not on the Falcon BMS dev
team, so I can only gowith the information that I have at hand.
My call sign is Bible Clinger.Thank you for joining me for this
(59:37):
hour. Hopefully I'll catch you againin another two weeks. Falcon one Dragnet
one, you are now leaving thetactical frequency
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