S1E8: Bugs and Quirks of Falcon BMS

1. Bugs and quirks, examples, and workarounds
2. Meet the Community interview: Micro on Falcon Events
3. Editorial on Falcon BMS, bugs, and the need for stability
4. Some podcast changes and poetry

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
You've tuned into the Tactical Frequency,a podcast centered around all things Falcon BMS.
Welcome once again to the Tactical Frequency. Today's topic bugs quirks, all
the weird problems associated with Falcon BMS. Let's talk about some of these negatives

(00:30):
in a constructive light and maybe evenhow we can handle some of them as
users of the flight sim Later on, we'll have an interview with Micro,
the founder and owner of Falcon Events. We have a prerecorded interview that we
will play at a later segment.Greetings, Michael sign Is Bible Clinger.

(00:51):
Welcome to the podcast. We coverall things related to Falcon BMS here on
the Tactical Frequency. Now it's importantto note that we want to have a
positive outlook on the content here onthis show. We don't want to bring
up negatives just for the sake ofit. We want to be constructive.

(01:15):
If we can't be constructive, thenwe really should ask ourselves what are we
even doing here? It's time topack it in and move on to something
else. But thankfully we can beconstructive, and thankfully BMS is a fantastic
f sixteen flights him for the civilianmarket. It's free and there is nothing

(01:38):
quite like it available for download.So let's distinguish at the outset between bugs
and quirks. A bug, Iwould say, is a severe problem when
Falcon BMS is behaving in a waythat is objectively wrong and unintended. This

(02:01):
behavior would be from a flaw inthe logic of the simulation. Now,
an example of a severe bug wouldbe if you try to use the flight
sim correctly and it crashes to desktopthrough a mistake in the code. That's
a simple way of explaining a severeexample of a bug. A quirk,

(02:27):
on the other hand, or anoddity, would be behavior of the flight
symn that is unintuitive, perhaps notideal, maybe unexpected, and could therefore
possibly be changed as part of aquality of life update. Maybe this is
something that requires you to learn alittle bit more about the nuances of the

(02:50):
flight sim in order to work around. Now, sometimes both bugs and quirks
have workarounds. This is where wecan be constructive and help each other out
and identify ways for Falcon BMS pilotsto get around the problems that we face.
So let's start talking about examples.Here, one example of an oddity

(03:13):
in Falcon BMS is the inability torebind your comm's menu keys. These are
the buttons on the keyboard that correspondto the menus for the AI radio communication.
For example, to talk with aWAX, to talk with your wingman,
to talk with ATC, to talkwith the tanker. Those buttons should

(03:36):
not be rebound. If you rebindthem, weird things happen. That's something
that we can't really work around otherthan saying don't do it and just keep
them the way they are bind yourother controls the way you want them.
Another oddity in BMS is what wecall the click dance. This is where

(03:58):
you have to click things in acertain way before you commit to your flight,
or else you'll get the wrong commsplan and the wrong IF plan.
The only real way to deal withthis is to do the click dance each
and every time. It is theworkaround to the problem. Now. Maybe
the developers could fix this as partof a quality of life update and ensure

(04:20):
that you always commit with the correctcomms plan. That would probably be a
good idea for a future update.Another oddity with BMS is that almost every
major version requires you to update yourkeybindings from scratch. You have to redo
all of your joystick and throttle keybindings. Now I get why this is.

(04:46):
It can be a little bit complicatedwhen the developers introduce a new callback.
There's a new dial or a buttonor a switch being modeled in the jet,
But it does seem like overkill tomake us rebind everything when there's only
a you change is being made.So that's an oddity to be aware of.
Some people have recommended, hey,maybe you can copy your key file

(05:09):
over between versions. I mean sometimes, yes, it's a little bit dangerous
to do in the sense that youmight get weird things going on. It
all depends what was changed between whichversion, and the developers don't recommend that
you do that. Now. Anotheroddity is with a wax. But I
mentioned a lot of this in thelast episode, so I won't go over

(05:30):
a lot of it. Sometimes awax just acts a little bit weird.
They won't give you the correct information, or they'll give you wrong information,
or my favorite is when they justdon't answer you. Related somewhat tangentially to
a wax is ATC. Now,ATC does two weird things that I've noticed.

(05:53):
One is that they ignore you duringvectoring. So imagine you're coming back
from a success will flight, youask ATC for vector's approaches, vectoring you
around, and all of a suddenyou just notice it. For the past
minute, ATC hasn't talked to you. They've just seemed to have forgotten you.
All these other flights are getting vectored, and you're suddenly five ten miles

(06:15):
away from base. That's been aweird scenario. Let's say that I found
myself in a number of times,and we're not exactly sure why it happens,
but it just seems to happen.It seems to happen less frequently nowadays
to me. But I also knowthat a lot of us obsessively ask ATC

(06:39):
to say again if we don't hearfrom them in the last thirty seconds or
so, and that seems to bethe workaround that some of us have adopted
now. Another ATC weirdness is thatif you land perhaps a little bit roughly
bounce off the runway, ATC canrevoke your clearance. And it seems to

(07:00):
be kind of overkill because I've hadit where I've landed and ATC revokes the
clearances, I'm already on the grounddoing arrow breaking down the runway. That's
just an oddity. It's not agame breaking bug or anything, but it
is kind of weird and I don'tknow if any workaround other than just finish
your landing and ignore them now.I asked for more examples of oddities on

(07:26):
the Tactical Frequency Discord and I receiveda lot of feedback on this one.
This is probably the most feedback I'veever received on anything that I've asked.
Prime, also known as Aviation Plus, reminded everybody of a particular oddity in
BMS. The data cartridge has twobuttons, Reset and Clear. They sound

(07:47):
similar, but they do different things. Reset resets, as its name implies,
but only the things that it's connectedto. So reset in your targets
resets only your target data. Butif you push clear, this resets everything,

(08:09):
and that's unfortunate, to say theleast. You lose all the MFDs,
You lose everything. All of yoursettings that you put in there are
gone. So never click clear onthe data cartridge unless you really mean to
clear it now. Obviously, theonly workaround is pay attention and never click

(08:30):
it. You could also back upyour data cartridge, so it's the file
that's named after your call sign.It's an I and I file, So
if your call sign is Viper,it'll be viper dot I and I in
the user slash config directory of FalconBMS. Opie Potato submitted another idea.

(08:52):
He pointed out that sometimes missions arefailed for arbitrary reasons. You're flying your
bar cap, you come back,you fired six missiles at the enemy and
killed six MiGs, and mission failed. You didn't stay on the station on
time. But one workaround for thisis that you actually frag the bar cap

(09:13):
with a shorter time on station.So if you're supposed to patrol for twenty
minutes or thirty minutes, don't dothat. Drop that down to five minutes
or thirty seconds, something less.Not as realistic to say I'm going up
there for thirty second patrol, butit will make the campaign evaluation think that

(09:37):
mission was a success even if youonly stayed there for the thirty seconds.
So it is a workaround now.Ideally, maybe the developers could improve this
in the future and have the missionevaluation be a little bit more let's say
broad in its scope to take intoaccount the fact you shot down six people

(10:01):
while you were up there on patrol. But it is a complicated thing to
look at, and so the workaroundthat we suggested with the patrol time is
probably the best way to go aboutit. Now, related to planning missions,
Ripper from the sixth pointed out thatwe get some unexplained fragging errors when

(10:22):
we try to frag something, weget some error messages something like no waypoints
or no slots. Now, someof this could be that maybe you're scheduling
too far into the future and acampaign engine doesn't like that. So sometimes
you have to find that sweet spotof when to frag the flight. Other
times you're fragging too close to theflot. There's a lot of oddities with

(10:46):
custom theaters that you've got to becareful about. This one's a little bit
harder to figure out when you needto, but it's definitely an oddity.
Now, another oddity that I've noticedis that when you use your rocket pods,
they fire all at once. Theydon't fire rockets individually. Now I

(11:11):
miss my rockets from Jane's IF,which I flew many years ago. I
love the idea of picking off tankswith rockets, but it's a lot harder
to do in BMS because of thisproblem. So rocket pods have not gotten
the love and attention that I thinkthey deserve. So I did create a

(11:33):
sort of workaround, and it's postedon the BMS forms a link it on
the discord. But there's a slightlycomplicated way of getting these rockets to work.
And this is more for theater developers. So if you're a theater developer,
if you're making theaters for Falcon BMS, then there is a fix for
this so that your theater will allowrockets to fire individually. Now related to

(12:00):
rockets, it seems that mission evaluationfor rocket kills is a little bit broken.
You don't seem to get the creditthat you should get, and this
is probably because nobody uses rockets,so the developers have not really explored keeping
this up to date. We've beentalking about quirks. Let's switch this up

(12:24):
now and talk about a bug.We notice that wingmen of human flights don't
fire at all in multiplayer. Thishas been noticed by me, It's been
noticed by Old Craig, It's beennoticed by a bunch of other people that
I've flown with. We can't getour wingmen to do anything in multiplayer.

(12:46):
Now, I believe I've heard thatthis might be fixed in update three,
which should be coming out sometime thisyear, we believe, which would be
great. There's not much you cando to work around this. Don't take
AI wingmen. You're gonna have totake human wingman with you, So find
your friends and take them with you. A multiplayer or you have to fly

(13:09):
in single player. Let's see,I've got a couple of minutes left.
Let's cover a few more of these. We've had some real fun with spawn
bugs or quirks. Now, OpiePotato noticed that sometimes for him, you
can spawn a little sideways on therunway or correction on the taxiway somewhere along

(13:33):
that area. Your jets kind ofrotated a little bit. Now for me,
I've noticed that sometimes when I spawn, I get launched off the ground.
I have spawned halfway in the air, going up into the air.
It's very weird. One time Ithink I got launched into a mountain.
And this was when multiple people wouldspawn at the same time on the carrier,

(13:54):
somebody would get catapulted off related tocarrier spawning issues. One time I
spawned on the water part with myjet and did not sink. It was
flat on the water and I actuallytook off just fine in my hornet.
So those are some amusing oddities.I think some of the spawning issues have

(14:18):
been addressed since then, but I'mnot entirely sure. These are issues that
we've had in Falcon BMS for years, off and on with different versions,
So I'm not saying all of theseare present, but I've seen a lot
of these personally, and a lotof other people have seen them as well.

(14:43):
So that's it for some of thesebugs and oddities that we've got.
Now Coming up now after the break, we're going to go to an interview
by Micro, the founder of FalconEvents, as part of our Meet the
Community initiative. To please stay withus, please keep listening. Your support

(15:09):
means a lot. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie. You've probably heard phrases like
this in military movies. This ispart of the NATO Phonetic alphabet. It's
a way of saying words that representletters. For example, Alpha represents the
letter A, Bravo represents the letterB. You can probably already guess that
Charlie represents the letter C. Thesewords are used in place of letters because

(15:33):
they are meant to be used overmilitary radios. Radio transmissions are not always
clear, particularly when you're in themiddle of a war. It also doesn't
help that English has many letters thatall sound similar B, C, D,
E, G, P, tV, and even Z if you're
from America. There are even somepronunciations that matter. Quebec is the code

(15:58):
for Q, but it's supposed tobe pronounced k back. Knowing all of
this, you can spell any Englishword with this system. Tango foxtrot would
be the initials of this podcast.The tactical frequency Falcon one, Trespass two.
We'll guide you out on the tacticalfrequency. I'm here now with Micro.

(16:30):
He founded a community called Falcon Eventsin twenty twenty. In twenty twenty
one, Micro joined the Falcon BMSdev team. Thank you for joining us
today. Micro, Hi man,thanks for inviting me to your great podcast.
Thank you. I'm glad you likeit. First question I should ask

(16:52):
you is what exactly is Falcon Events? Well, um, Fucon Events.
As you said, we're founded intwo thousand and twenty. I'm during the
pandemicademic. The background was I wasin a squadron since to some nineteen,
but I leave the squadron and Ithought about, Okay, let's let's create

(17:15):
something which isn't usual and which ismore open. It has some structure similar
to the squadron, but it's morelike like an open platform. So the
Fucking Events is basically a platform wherethe BMS community has an opportunity to meet,
fly together, learn from each other, train in different skill sets,

(17:37):
etc. Overall, the idea ofFucking Events wasn't is since the beginning to
connect and to couple collaborate with asmany BMS groups or squadrons and users worldwide
as possible. So we have basicallygood connections to all around the world,
US, Taiwan and Great Britain,squad groups, persons, whatever. And

(18:03):
again we are we are no nosquadron. We are an open platform for
everybody's welcome to join, to leave, to fly wherever they want and how
often they like. UM so weare at the beginning, we organized trainings
for interested people based on their requests, on their skill sets, and over

(18:25):
over the time we figured out,okay, there's a real interest from users
to have a kind of more structuredprogram and that was the reason why we
we UM have founded the Fucking EventsSchool, and so we started it two
thousand and thirty two with a coursesymbols of eleven consecutive courses where everybody interested,

(18:48):
so we're talking about BMS beginners oreven advanced users can can participate um.
In addition, we also organize multiplayermissions events from small to bigger sizes.
And what also is important to usto have is like workshops where we

(19:11):
try to organize and invite guest speakersor any kind of specialists in their feed
or real life guys or BMSS guysand having a workshop in a Q and
a session for the users which areinterested. In terms of our team and
our core user base, so weare mostly based or let's say, coming

(19:34):
from Europe, and most of theguys are coming also from Germany, so
we have like a strong German,Austrian, Switzerland BMS communities which is very
active since fifteen plus years. Sothat's also maybe a little bit special.
So a lot of guys, includingmyself, have a lot of personal friendships

(19:57):
in the community and visit each otherfrom time to time personally, so and
this is this is kind of specialfor me. And this is like you
know, like this goes over thehobby itself, which is which is great
and in terms of our team.So when I found it fucking Events,

(20:18):
I was basically alone. But nowwe have let's say instructor pilot team consists
of three guys, and let's sayconstantly pilots who fly with us UM are
let's say ten to twelve. Andthat's basically hopefully the overall picture that that
I can give you about fucking Events. You mentioned a flight school training program.

(20:42):
What is a training program like?Does this take you from zero knowledge
or is this for somebody who's alreadygone some level of understanding. It's it's
basically for everybody in every skill set. So you can start with zero knowledge
about BES or multiplayer itself. Youcan start with basic understanding of BMS,

(21:07):
or you can even start when youare an more advanced experienced pilot which just
needed a refresher or maybe learn somethingnew which he doesn't have learned yet.
So the pilot who sent his applicationon our website basically decide where he wants
to start. What are some ofthe advanced topics that you train? So,

(21:32):
yeah, the advanced topics. Sothis is so we have some some
special courses, so to say,from here and there right now, it's
closed air support. So it's basicallyone of my my personal favorite tasks in
BMS or aviation itself. So thatmeans we have like an eight week weekly

(21:57):
flight doing has training and you know, growing, growing procedures and yeah,
basically we do the same for atow air stuff. So because my passion
is less in air to air.So when we are doing at ironvite,
a guy from a squadron who isreally in air to air and they they

(22:18):
give some sessions and some flights forthe guys who were interested and and so
on and so forth on on.Yeah, on very specialized tasks so to
say. So it depends the changesall the time. In addition to our
regular trainings and flights, I seefrom the website you have a list of

(22:38):
events that mentioned which flights are happening. When can the public join these events?
Yes, of course they can.Um everybody again, everybody is welcome
to join. Everybody is welcome evento use our ATO to post their own
events. So that that was thethe idea behind the ADO, that even

(23:02):
other groups or persons can use thisADO to create their their their their session
and basically everybody's welcome. But theyshould have realized what what the mission is,
what the task is, and thentake the seat they fit through their
skill level. I understand you saidthat Falcon Events is not a squadron.

(23:22):
Do you still have some form ofmembership? Do you actively recruit? Yeah,
so recruiting is open. Recruiting meansyou can basically send your your application
for the flight school if you wantto participate. So it's constantly open.
We have we have some seats freethis year. In terms of membership,

(23:45):
Um, we have let's say wehave our students who went through the courses.
Who are they are kind of ourso to say, yeah, regular
lose users. But the the teamitself consists only these three instructor pilots.
What type of pilots are you lookingforward to join? Basically everybody who is

(24:11):
interested in in BMS, in aviation, flying, multiplayer, involving in their
skill set, having you know,a good good good Yeah, let's say
a good portion of motivation to getbetter and yeah, that's that's the that's
our goal. So everybody's welcome andyeah, that's uh. Then we if

(24:36):
we start with them, we geta little interview, UM, so to
to learn more about them, hecan learn more about us and then we
are realize if it's working out ornot. Do you have a code of
conduct or a list of rules orum, let's say, do you have
a list of bannable offenses or anythinglike that. Yeah, we have something

(24:59):
like that UM in our SUP.So it's basically very very very basic.
So the the the most important thingis respect all others, no matter who
he she is, So no no, no bad talk or et cetera.
So that's in our SUP. Youcan you can find that. Can you

(25:22):
tell us a little bit more aboutyour SUPs. I was looking through them
and I was impressed with the formatof the document. It was very simple
and yet it was informative. Yeah, it's it has a story. UM.
The story is basically based on ouron our German speaking community, UM.

(25:45):
I think twenty eighteen or something,the four big German squadrons UM decided
to have a to have a standardSUP for all their squadrons. So basically
air very squadron has the same SUP. Because the reason was because they they
meet once a year and at abig event and they want to have like

(26:07):
an standard for all the all thestandards so to say, which was similar
and I adopted those let's say Germansquadron SPS, switched them to English,
improved them, and now I'm alsopart of the let's say team, which
are constantly evolved those soops And that'sthat's the cool thing, you know,

(26:32):
also flying with different groups and havinglike the basics already covered and you don't
have to brief or talk about itanymore. That's that's great. Into it
totally time and deconfliction saver. Howdo you begin the process of integrating pilots
who are not used to your SOPsum So basically the process goes as follows.

(26:56):
If if we have a pilot signedin for one of our flights of
trainings, or he sends a request, so he got in touch with us
on discord or on our website,chat wherever, and we we have a
have a chat and what what theywhat they what they want to learn,
what they want to do, whatthey want to achieve? And um,

(27:17):
if they just want to fly,can want to fly with us at school,
they can come and and and andhave a good training maybe, but
if they want to have more theythey sent their application on our website and
we will then get in touch withthem and yeah, I have the first
chat on discord, let's say athirty minute chat where we find out who

(27:40):
you know, like like, areyou cool? Do you think we are
cool? And then we are decidingto start the training wherever they they like,
and uh yeah, that's basically thisthe progress a process of having people
on boarding for the school and ifthey just want to fly with us,
they can just flight of us andtake the seat and that's it. Can

(28:03):
you walk us through a quick summaryof what a Falcon event would be like
an actual flight from the perspective ofsomebody who's listening here, he wants to
fly, he looks at your ATO, he signs up. What would his
experience look like from that point onward? Yes, UM, so basically,
um, depending when the mission starts, we have we have people are joining

(28:29):
on our discord. In the pastit was team speak. UM. Hopefully
in time, UM, we willcheck what the ATO says, we will
check what the the people uh youknow, we're singing the people with the
atos, who's missing, who's who'snot there, and we reassigned seats till
then we also started the server,so we have with our server and then

(28:56):
we will start the mission. Basically, UM, an IBC check. Then
we will go into in the briefingsession, so we have a general mission
briefing where the the mission creator orthe mission commander gives a quick overview.
Um and and yeah, then weare going to detail briefing in the flights

(29:18):
and rejoin on the on the let'ssay mass mass briefing and yeah, altogether
with question sessions or let's say questionaround basically like everybody do. Um and
yeah. Then we are starting themission after mostly thirty two forty five minutes

(29:41):
of briefing, briefing time and IVCcheck time, so pretty standard. Do
you do a comprehensive debrief after eachflight? Yeah, um we we we
do that. Um if time allows. Sometimes the mission goes at law,
we will switch that debrief to aday later maybe if it's there's interest or

(30:07):
uh we uh yeah, we triedmostly to do the debrief after the mission.
UM. We opened tech view session. UM. We will then hosted
by our stream or tech view itself, and then each flight goes through what
went well but not so well,lessons lurd etc. And the we are

(30:30):
concentrating on some highlights and you knowsome some lessons. Word you mentioned that
there's a heavy presence of German speakingpilots at Falcon events. Are comps done
in German English? Or is ita mix? That's that's English. Always
as as soon as we have aknown user or member who is not natives

(30:55):
German speaking, we switched instantly toto English. That's totally fine if they
are just Germans. You know,in the briefing and debriefing we talk,
we talk German, but in themission itself we stick to English. Actually,
I know I'm curious about that iswhen you speak in German with you
know, completely German flight. Isthere is the brevity pretty much NATO brevity

(31:18):
or is it you have a subsectionof different types of brevity. It's it's
the same basically, So it's ait's no need to to mix it up
even you know, sometimes it happens, but yeah, we always stick to
the brevity as good as we can. To the netw brevity. Oh,

(31:41):
I think we have here. Itis he's invited to join us. Welcome
to the frequency, gentlemen. Howare you guys? Ah, very good
so far? How are you along time? No? See, sir,
I know it is micro the dudewho puts on the best events in
Falcon BMS that you guys have everseen him just saying, oh, come

(32:06):
on, no dude, that doyou remember the red It wasn't a red
flag thing, but it was theseries of stages that you put together.
Nobody participated, but um, itwas too hard. But it was the
funnest thing I've ever done. AndI wish we could have got more people
to do it, and I wishyou'd rethink a way to do that.
I've been jonesing for like that.Yeah that was that was a fun thing,

(32:29):
yep. But the but the goodthing is you want it, so
yeah, Well, we don't haveany competitive competitors, Yeah, exactly.
All we do is we get togetheras a group of friends and we go
fly and we play a useless campaign. But like, we never really try
and put ourselves up to a testwhere we have a scoring guide where we're

(32:52):
actually looking at like, okay,this is what you fundamentally did wrong.
We do a little bit in trainingand stuff like that, but we never
do straight head to head competitions ofwho can do it the best? Yeah,
and that's all fighter fighter life isall about, right, competition being
better than you were yesterday? Yeah, Yeah, that was a fun,

(33:15):
fun thing. But the the thethat's cool that you mentioned it. See
what I realized is like having thosekind of events, it's cool, you
know for the guys who are oradvanced, but but you know, having
you know, like more people whoare pretty pretty at the beginning of their
PMS career, there's no way theycan participate. At least they are say

(33:38):
like, Okay, this is crazystuff you are trying to do here,
So so I I will not participate, but yeah, maybe I do this
again in in in November or something. We will see, maybe we find
the middle ground that's just a littlebit less advanced from what you originally came

(33:58):
up with. Up what can wedo to get younger people involved in talk
in BMS? And that's something Ithink about nearly daily, you know,
like having having a training, havinghaving modern um in modern more learning environment

(34:21):
which fits more to the world outside, you know, like like real real
like you know, you don't orlet's say, people doesn't learn quite well
mostly when they have a manual toread four or five hundred pages plus.
Some get motivated, some get youknow, like get get away with this.

(34:43):
So I want to learn with videos. I want to learn with multi
media. I want to learn withwith in the best case, flying with
with someone, you know, that'sthat's I think cold water is the best
best way of flying, the bestway of learning BMS. Uh So,
I think we need a modern,more modern environment to onboard new people,

(35:07):
which comes by default with BMS.And you know, I like, I
like the documentation, I like thequality of it, and I like,
you know, like the overall structure. But we need more modern ways of
trying to teach onboard people which areyounger and you know, I'm more used

(35:30):
to it to modern learning techniques.I think that's one of the the ideas,
or let's say, one of thepossible improvements that we could develop in
the future, hopefully. Micro Thankyou very much for joining me today.
Yeah, thank you for the invitation. It was a great talk to you.

(35:52):
Thank you. We'll be back withmore content on the other side of
the break. Please stay with us. We're just getting started. We'll be
back soon after this message. Whenyou fire an air to air missile in

(36:15):
Falcon BMS, you're supposed to makea fox call to let people know what
you just did. Let's take anexample, Box three, Rock two six
five forty five twenty five thousand flanker. The three in Fox three means that
the caller has fired an AIM onetwenty am RAM or a missile that is
in the same category. These aremissiles that have their own radar and can

(36:38):
track the target on their own rockin this example is the code name for
the current bulls eye. In manymultiplayer communities, if there is just one
bulls eye, you might hear peoplesay bulls eye without a code name.
Two six five forty five. Thatis the location of the target with respect
to bulls eye. Twenty five thousand. That's the altitude of the target.

(37:01):
Flanker is the NATO code name forthe type of target. In this case,
it could be A twenty seven.For more information on FOX calls,
have a look at the manuals thatcome with Falcon BMS. Falcon one Copy

(37:22):
Fuel Yellow. Please stay on thetactical frequency. Welcome back to the tactical
frequency. I want to say atthe outset, I have great respect for
the product that is Falcon BMS.It's not easy to take the Falcon four

(37:45):
point zero source code and turn itinto the version that we have today,
which is four point three seven Updatetwo Now, other projects tried to do
the same thing. Probably the onewith the best success was Free Falcon,

(38:06):
and they eventually stopped updating. I'velooked at the Free Falcon source code.
It's available somewhere on some corner ofthe Internet. I would say that it
would be a monumental task to bringthe new Falcon BMS features into Free Falcon,

(38:27):
and that is a version that hasbeen updated many times since four point
zero. So in essence, wehave a lot to be thankful for about
where BMS is. With all ofthat said, it's been abundantly clear that
the Falcon series as a whole,or at least, let's say the Falcon
four extended life, has not excelledin the past in the area of bugs.

(38:55):
How can I say that, Well, first of all, the Falcon
four point zero experience was buggy inthe original release, and to be fair,
the developers of Falcon four point zerodidn't finish what they started. Yes,
they released it, but they werestill trying to issue updates. They

(39:15):
were still trying to fix the bugsthat were there. They weren't done,
but Micropros went out of business beforethey could finish. So Falcon four point
zero was not really the finished productthat it could have been. And on
top of that, some of thedecisions in the codebase were a little bit,

(39:36):
let's say, questionable. What Imean is that in terms of style,
readability, code safety, the codelends itself to bugs when you try
to make changes. So the BMSdevs have to be very careful about making
changes because they inherited this codebase.I keep hearing about how there are bugs

(39:57):
that go as far back as Falconfour point zero that are current being fixed
within Falcon BMS today, and that'sgreat news for all of us. Now,
with that's said, not every changeby the Falcon VMS dev team will
be positive. That is the wayof software development, and I get that.
I do software. I understand thatbugs are practically inevitable. We haven't

(40:22):
figured out a way to prevent allbugs. Now, to the credit of
the Falcon VMS developers. I recalla story that I heard years ago about
the dev team, and this story, from what I gather, took place
even years before I had heard it. And the gist of the story is

(40:43):
that the Falcon experience was so unstablethat the developers decided we're going to focus
on stability. We're going to makethe tactical engagements to be stable enough so
that pilots can fly multiplayer with nocrashes. And you have to understand that

(41:05):
back in that time, the dynamiccampaign was too unstable for multiplayer. That's
the way the story was relayed.Now, I think it's safe to say
that, if true, that wasthe correct way to go. Focus on
stability, not on features, noton anything else, but to stabilize what
you've already got. Now, maybeit may not be obvious, because there's

(41:30):
always going to be a balance betweenstability and new features and getting a new
update out the door. But thisis where I want to introduce the main
point of this segment. Falcon BMSneeds a developmental focus on stability over almost
anything else. Okay, why,Well, the nature of Falcon BMS,

(41:52):
it does not lend itself to shortsessions. When you want to plan a
flight, you're probably going to investhours, particularly if this is a multiplayer
event, you're looking at two orthree hours. For a large event.
When you think about you've got thirtypilots, you go through a briefing,
you go through the fly, yougo through debriefing. If you can find

(42:13):
an event like that, it canlast a while. And this is why
we have to treat friendly fire incidentsso seriously. If you have somebody that
goes into multiplayer and just randomly shootsteammates all over the place, these people
suffer. The people that are beingshot down don't get to enjoy all this
time that they wasted, and wastedtime is wasted time. Now I have

(42:37):
to ask, and maybe this isjust philosophical, is it better when an
event is ruined because of a crashto desktop rather than when someone else shoots
you down by mistake? I mean, I guess it doesn't really matter in
the sense that wasted time is wastedtime. So a crash to desktop,

(43:00):
for example, it creates frustration.It causes people to, let's say,
be more likely to speak negatively toand about developers. And this is true
in any game, in any simulation. This is not unique to Falcon BMS.
For example, of half the peoplein your flight crash on the first
flight of a new version, athought running through some people's minds are going

(43:22):
to be how do they miss this? How do the developers not catch this?
And again, this thought process istrue for every product, but Falcon
BMS uses more of our time thana lot of other games. This means
that the effect of a bug canbe more severe in a simulation like Falcon

(43:45):
BMS. These types of problems bringdown morale of a community, but they
also bring down the morale of thedev team. Developers don't enjoy criticism anymore
than the rest of us. Theyare human. However, from the user's
perspective, is incredibly unbelievably frustrating toface bugs right away on day one,

(44:05):
particularly ones that are incredibly common,and this can lead users to say,
well, where's the testing? Arewe the beta testers? And you know
what, it's easy to think thatwhen this has become all too common in
the video gaming industry these days,with early access to becoming more the norm
and less the exception. But onthe other hand, I know that there

(44:29):
is a Falcon BMS testing team,so this shouldn't be the case that the
public should feel like they're the testingteam. And my point in bringing this
up is all about perspective right now, user perspectives, and whether right or
wrong, you have to take theperspectives of the users and the developers into
account. Now. I know personallyit can be frustrating to face bugs or

(44:52):
friendly fire incidents. When I puta lot of work into Falcon BMS events
only to find setback after setback,I have to take a break. This
is just the nature of BMS.Flights take long. You put in a
lot of work, and sometimes itjust you know, it doesn't pay off
in certain circumstances, but of coursemost of the time it does. Now,
let's take two examples of bugs.In four point three seven Update one,

(45:16):
there is a major memory leak introducedinto the flight SIMB. This effected
twenty four seven dedicated servers, serverslike Falcon Lounge and Veterans Gaming. They
couldn't function for very long because ofthis memory leak. Now, the second
example of a bug is what Imentioned previously in an earlier segment. AI
wingmen in multiplayer would not launch aweapon in four point three seven. Sometimes

(45:40):
they'd merge with the enemy, they'dgo up right behind them, they'd stay
on them, but they just wouldn'tdo anything. And the end result is
your wingman was one percent useless,never drops a bomb, never launches a
missile. Now, both of thesebugs disrupted normal operations, They created frustration,
and they wasted time. Now,another perspective is to say, and

(46:01):
it's quite easy to say, look, these bugs and quirks don't matter,
put up with them. You're gettingFalcon bms for free. And you know
what, there is some truth tothat, and we're all still flying,
right, But how far do youpush this? How far can you take
this point of view? Let's talkextremes for a second. On the one

(46:22):
hand, if you release a buggymess every single time, no one will
fly because no one will be ableto fly again. We're talking extremes.
Imagine a release where there's a crashto desktop every flight. Every time you
commit, you crash. Well,that would do more harm than any complaint
from your community. On the otherhand, what if the developers refuse to

(46:45):
release anything until they reach perfection Again, in the extreme cases, would mean
we'd probably never see a release.And this isn't what we want either.
What we need is a balance inflights in communities, and how do we
achieve this. Well, for one, what I said earlier, stability should

(47:07):
be prioritized over pretty much everything elseover the release schedule, because you don't
want a buggy mess delivered to youfaster, and stability should be prioritized over
features because I can't use a featurethat doesn't work. Number Two, testing

(47:29):
should actually be part of the developmentcycle in a very serious way. Now,
I've heard different stories, different rumors, I've heard things from different sources,
but I'll give you the positive.The positive that I've heard recently is
that the Falcon BMS testing has receivednew and serious focus, and I sincerely

(47:52):
hope that this is true and thatthis is the future for Falcon BMS.
After I'll think about that stability storythat I told you earlier, where the
developers were focused on making tactical engagementsmore stable before they even worked on the
campaign. That's the way to goabout it. I'd like to see that
focus today. Wouldn't that be niceif, looking forward to four point three
eight and the new terrain render,if we could be confident that we weren't

(48:15):
going to crash to desktop after everyflight. I'm not saying that'll happen,
obviously, I'm just saying, wouldn'tthat be nice if we had that assurance
going into it that the bugs weretaken care of all? Right? Step
three Another thing that can be doneis that the developers should fly regularly.

(48:36):
Now, this doesn't apply just tothe Falcon BMS dev team. This is
a universal rule I become convinced ofyears ago when it comes to any sort
of video game development. If you'rea developer and you don't enjoy the game
you're working on, then you willget burned out. You won't have an
outlet for the stress, and that'sgot to go somewhere. You also become

(48:58):
out of touch with the user experience. Quirks soon become baked into the game
and stuck in there for years.In fact, as a developer, you
probably won't even care that there arequirks because at some point you're switching to
being worried about bugs only. Butbugs become hard to rute out because you're
relying on non developers or other developerswho don't have the source code to do

(49:21):
your testing and troubleshooting. Now,think about this. If the actual devs
were playing their games and they witnessthe common bugs themselves every week, wouldn't
it be easier for them to figureout how to isolate these bugs how to
solve them. Now, developers caneasily convince themselves that they are doing more

(49:43):
by working harder and playing less,and in some areas. This is true,
but it's inevitable in my opinion thatsomething has to give now Number four.
This isn't really fixing bugs, butit's thing else that I'd still would
like to bring up. I'd liketo see releases for Falcon BMS be more

(50:05):
holistic. For example, I'm notreally a fan of how Falcon BMS will
come out with a new release,but F four Radar, which is also
developed by a developer on the BMSdev team, is released later, and
then maybe weapons delivery planners behavior isa little bit spotty in that update and

(50:25):
it needs an update as well.From a user perspective, people are going
to wonder why can't all of thesejust be working at the same time,
And I think that's a fair question. I mean, I understand people are
working on different things and different schedules, but really I think it would go

(50:47):
better for the community. I thinkit would present a better image if all
of your software was working correctly atthe same time. So I'd like to
close this segment with last note.At the end of the day, there
is always a risk of a dividebetween the user and the developer, and

(51:08):
bugs and quirks and weirdness can makethat divide much larger, and sometimes this
divide can be very negative in somecommunities. I'm speaking generally, of course,
and the users might say, well, the developers don't listen, they
don't care, And the developers mightsay the community isn't helping. All they
do is complain, And of coursea bitter divide isn't the way forward.

(51:31):
And I'll share this story in TeamVersus Team twenty twenty one, the official
event the developers put on. Ihad a lot of fun doing the GCI
role. One highlight for me iswhen the developers actually showed up for a
flight and they flew on our sideone time. In particular, while I

(51:52):
was on call as the GCI,so I was essentially handling the Awax duties
for their flight. I was tellingthem where the band guys were and that
sort of thing. Now, duringthat flight, they discovered some bugs,
they had some fun doing it,and they actually got to see Falcon BMS,

(52:13):
the sim they spend so much timeworking at, operating at a scale
that is rarely seen with this manypilots involved. I think it would be
nice if we could get that sortof engagement more often in the community.
Stick with us. We'll be rightback for our final segment. Don't go

(52:46):
anywhere. We'll continue after this break. Have you ever listened to a multiplayer
mission and heard people say something likefox three or defensive say two. This
is what is known as brevity.Are pilots who fly flight sims just trying
to sound cool by speaking in asort of pilot code. No, not
at all. First, let's understandthat the radios in the F sixteen are

(53:09):
half duplex. When you're transmitting,you're blocking yourself from hearing any other transmissions
on that same radio. Another problemis that if two pilots transmit at the
same time, these two competing transmissionsend up clashing. In Falcon BMS,
the non transmitting pilots don't hear voices. Instead, they hear garbage audio that

(53:30):
sounds like bad dubstep music. Usingbrevity is not strictly necessary, but a
team that doesn't use it will beat a disadvantage. You can begin learning
brevity by watching videos of multiplayer missions, as well as by opening the real
life non classified manuals that come withBMS, specifically the BM and ATP drag

(53:57):
Net One. Single Group North isthe tactical frequency, trying some new music
out today, folks. I wantedto mention a little bit of some of
the changes that we're doing and explainsome of what's going on here. So

(54:19):
the format of the show largely isthe same thing, probably from a listeners
perspective, but from my perspective onthis side as the host, we made
it quite a few changes. Sofrom now the breaks are a little bit
more dynamic, and we switched upthe music selection. We added some more
music. The significance of the dynamicbreaks so that we have an easier time

(54:44):
to transition to a live format.But the primary reason was because of interviews.
So when I've been doing these interviews, when I first started, we
were recording short interviews and then tryingto fit them into our short segments.
We were doing segments of ten minutesand that was our interview. But then

(55:06):
we were going over that, orwe were having people speak on two subjects
and we wanted to fit them intotwo segments, and it was getting a
little bit more complicated. And thenon top of that, I started doing
longer interviews with our guests. Istarted letting them talk longer, I started

(55:27):
asking questions longer, we started froma formal interview going into a conversation and
it resulted, in my opinion,in some very nice conversations and some good
content. Now, of course,I can't share all of that in here.
Podcast episode only goes for an hour, and I've been recording two hour
conversations with some of these guests.It's a lot of content, and this

(55:52):
has required me to do a lotof editing to something I have not wanted
to do, but it's been worthit in my opinion. But now switching
up the way that the show isbeing done, we're able to fit in
more content, and that's leading meto this question. I would like some
more feedback from you the listener.Are you enjoying these interviews that we're presenting,

(56:15):
these meet the Community segments that we'vebeen getting, and these other interviews
by let's say, experts in thecommunity who are able to talk about these
sort of scenarios and these sort ofsubjects like GCI, the communities and squadrons
and things like that. If you'reenjoying these things, please let me know.
And how much of the podcast doyou want devoted to interviews into community

(56:40):
interaction, And for that matter,how much of this podcast should be devoted
to monologues, to opinions, tomy thought process as to where Falcon bms
should be. Are the tips andadvice that we're doing actually useful to those

(57:06):
of you in the community who arelooking for that sort of content. It
wouldn't be a lot easier in everycase, by the way, if I
had feedback on those particular things.And it's great when I get feedback,
and I appreciate it. Like thisepisode, when I asked about that topic

(57:28):
on Quirks and Bugs, I gotso many responses. I was actually surprised
when I saw how many I got, So I appreciate it. It really
helps the show, it helps theproduction, and I hope we get more
of that feedback. I guess whatI'll do here. I'm going to close
with a poem. So for thoseof you that I listened a few episodes

(57:49):
back, you'll remember we did acomedy sketch on Bob the Wingman. Here
we go a poem. There oncewas a wingman named Bob, and am
ray him. He has sayed toLob, he forgot to id, he
just yelled fox three. Perhaps heembraced the wrong job. Now, obviously

(58:10):
we're just poking fun at ourselves.If you've committed a friendly fire incident in
Falcon BMS recently, don't take thattoo seriously. I want to strike the
right balance between some of the serioustopics that we're discussing and maybe introducing a
little levity. And I also wantedto mention I hope that what I mentioned

(58:36):
about the bugs and the quirks isunderstood in the right vein. I don't
want this to be seen any ofus to be seen as an attack on
the BMS dev team or a complaintabout the status of BMS. I don't
want it to come across as ifBMS is a buggy mass and it's a
problem and you can't do anything withit. Instead, I want this podcast

(58:59):
to be a platform for all ofthese ideas and discussions that we should have
in the community. And discussing someof our negatives I think is important.
I think we would be remiss ifwe didn't cover it, so please understand
it in this vein. I thinkwe have a great flight sim I think
the developers are on track by andlarge. Are they perfect? No,

(59:23):
I don't think we're perfect either asa community, but I think that's where
we should aim to attain. Mycall sign is Bible Clinger. Thank you
very much for listening to me forthis hour. Hopefully I'll catch you in
another two weeks. Falcon One dragnetone, you are now leaving the tactical frequency