Falcon BMS Discussion

I bought a Voodoo5 for Falcon 4.0. I loved it that much. Can’t wait to see the old magic in VR. Good thing I’m still current on the viper :wink:

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here it is

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That would be a big plus for F4.

Same here. I remember thinking this is what it’s supposed to look like.

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Whoo!

Man, now yet another reason I wish I wasn’t going to a funeral tomorrow… :pensive:

Initial reports are very good regarding performance and appearance in VR. :open_mouth:

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Yes, I’m impressed so far. I’ve only flown the Navigation TE and have one landing, but it was pretty smooth with the “high” res textures enabled. Cockpit was very legible, save the one-eyed HMCS. I wonder if there is an option to have it one both eyes. With the new terrain engine, it will really be legitimate.

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Can you jump in and out of VR as in MSFS?

Your reasons will likely pale next to those of the deceased. :laughing:

I hope that wasn’t too inappropriate but given the context of your post I figured it would be ok. In any case, funerals are never great obviously. Sorry for your loss.

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Rendering Pipeline toggles are a DX12_1/ Vulkan API feature,
I doubt DX11_0 supports it, I havent seen a DX11 title do that either…

I thought I was using DX11 in MSFS, but now I’m not sure…

I am runnung DX11 in MSFS and are jumping between VR and pancake regularly.

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Retrospectively (in 2018) I tried on HW - MB QDI Legend Briliant 1S (Intel 440BX, slot 1), Pentium III 650, 512MB SDRAM, ATI Radeon 7000 32MB DDR AGP 4x, 3Dfx Voodoo 2 12MB PCI, Sound Blaster PCI 128, HDD WD 40GB ATA 33 (UDMA 2 / 33 MB/s) CD drive, Floppy Drive 1.44MB - original MicroProse Falcon 4.0 with patch 1.08.

Tested on first campaign of first day, airport in Soul
Resolution 800x600 and 1024x768
Windows ME (9x)
Diffrent GPUs with original Win 9x drivers, if possible the lasted versions.

Radeon 7000 32MB: when I selected D3D graphic there was a problem with fonts in game (unreadable). FPS on runway +/- 16. Unplayable.
BTW later I found in Radeon GUI compatibility option Alternate pixel center, switched from default to active fixed it issue with unreadable font.

Voodoo 2 12MB: font is OK when selected Glide and surprisingly game is running much more fluently. FPS on runway +/- 27! Big difference. BTW available also 1024*768 resolution. Much better than modern Radeon 7000/VE, even there is missing HW T&L feature and in general Radeon 7000 was the weakest of the Radeon 7000 family.

Matrox Millenium G400 32MB: D3D, better result in 1024x768 resolution then on Radeon 7000/VE. FPS (1024x768) on runway close to 30, after left runway over 30. Non problem with font.

I also tried it on GeForce 2MX 400 and GeForce FX 5200 128MB and even that I had second newest driver for Win 9x game was not possible to run into 3D, game always freeze.

Here are my impressions with those of that time competitors: Jane’s F-15 and DID F-22 TAW. All games were released in 1998/1999.

New benchmark in flight simulators?! Well, frankly original graphic is horrible. Yes, there’re photo textures. Landscape is folded from repated phototextures but this is valid for F-15 and F-22 TAW also (of course without photo textures).

Textures on F-16 itself, other planes or aifields are horrible. Even D3D or Glide I could see cubes on runway. 3D cockpit is horrible, 2D is much better but when I compare 2D cockpit with F-15 the result isn’t too much better.
BTW as my friend notice, when you completely switch off textures then you can see nice 3D models of all planes! But when texture is applied result is horrible (look at MiG-21 or IL-28)!

Special effects: blasts are worse quality then in F-15 or F-22 TAW. Smoke effects are much better in Falcon 4.0, reflections on the cockpit good.

Clouds are horrible. The same is almost valid for Falcon 4.0 Allied Force but there were sometimes nice 3D clouds. On the other hand Allied Force is basically qualitatevely like Super Pack 3/4.

Result: even if Falcon 4.0 is using photo terrain textures, graphic in general looks better nowadays in Jane’s F-15 and especially in F-22 TAW (compare with original graphic). Original graphic in F-22 TAW looks more acceptable nowadays. Probably it’s because TAW isn’t using photo textures everywhere and the graphics look more cartoony (like difference in Battlefield 3 - phototextures and Battlefield 4 which is more cartoony but looks better in time).

Compare @damson video original Falcon 4.0 https://youtu.be/yMmaj-u0Muo with Jane’s F-15 https://youtu.be/TbGfIIxlhdQ and F-22 TAW https://youtu.be/aHDUb6aYJgw?t=798 - it’s F-22 ADF, TAW has improved multilayer clouds.

I also tested Falcon 4.0 1.08 on other HW:
AMD Sempron 3400+ (2Ghz) socket 754 (CPU from 2004), Nvidia nForce 3 chipset Asus K8N, 512 DDR 333Mhz, SB Live 5.1! Digital a ATI Radeon 9000 128 MB DDR AGP 8x, Windows Millenium
With new technologies like is Anisotropic Filtering (16x) + Anti Aliasing (4x) Falcon looks much better because textures in the distance do not ripple.
1024x768 32 bit with all details on maximum. First campaign of first day, airport in Soul, FPS on runway +/- 40, after take off 50-60.

Note: Windows XP 32 bit had big trouble to run original Falcon 4.0 1.08 patch. The sound is cut when campaign loading to 3D, all windows are very slowly opening, and when I wanted to rotate with F-16 on munnition screen almoust it was not possible to rotate. Compatibility mode with Windows 98 didn’t help.

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May I ask you for Voodoo 5? I would like to test it! :slight_smile: I have Voodoo 2,3 and 4 but no Voodoo 5.

No surprise for me. I’m still in contact with one of BMS developer. When we talked together about his HW, he said: I have a GTX 1050 Ti 4GB (legendarry Pascal GPU). The most of BMS developers have a old HW, that’s also a reason why BMS is running well on old HW.

But in new BMS version with new terrain very probably HW upgrade will be necessary. Of course this isn’t a problem for you who has RTX 3080/4080 and similar +/- GPUs.

Recently I tested Falcon BMS 4.36 U3 on business laptop HP Zbook Firefly 14 G8: Intel Core i7-1185G7 (Tiger Lake, 11th Gen), Intel Iris Xe Graphics (with 96 EUs, the most powerful iGPU of Iris XE Graphic), 32 GB DDR4 3200 Mhz (dual channel), FHD IPS display.

Falcon BMS 4.36 U3
DX11
1920*1080
AF 8x
All option default on the maximum

First day, first campaign, Soul airport. FPS 18-19 on runway, after take off 22 but there are a many buildings near to airfield (city development with may block of flats, skyscrapers).
Later above a capital city around 30+ fps in some altitude. Not bad for Intel iGPU! Respectable performance.
Changing resolution to 1366 (1360)*768 means fully playable on maximum details in campaign.
Just as example how good is Falcon BMS optimised.

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Paul, I haven’t figured out a way to do it on the fly. There is a VR toggle you set before entering the sim via the launcher. So I doubt it. But, I haven’t read the VR docs either.

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You’re right! I do feel a bit selfish to whine, even facetiously. It was an elderly great uncle on my wife’s side, and wasn’t unexpected, but thank you.

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Well when you get back from more somber responsibilities I hope you will find BMS VR as amazing as I do. This is way better than I had hoped! The first thing I tried was the F-18 in the AAR TE. Still super-hard but much easier than 2D. That flailing hose is freaky…and gorgeous…and cruel. I’ve always loved the lighting in BMS. The atmospherics, while obviously flat and old fashioned, in some ways feel more real than DCS and X-Plane because those more modern sims lean towards a slight saturation of color. Totally subjective but that’s my take. The single-eye HMS works for me to be honest. Some controls are hard to read without leaning in but, hey!, I can lean in! It’s a brave new sim world and I could not be happier with how we have finished 2022!

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Thanks for the report, that’s pretty exciting!

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Well, installing, mapping controls and learning BMS in a morning is a bit of a steep curve…but worth it.

VR performance for me was excellent (3070, 32GB DDR5, 12700KF slight OC on GPU and CPU). Very smooth, no stutter at 3/9 views even down low. I wasn’t sure how to bring up a frame rate display in BMS and was having too much fun to load an external one.

Definitely not the eye candy that DCS can be, but absolutely enjoyable. Incredible, considering the age of the base platform and what the team have accomplished.

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How is spotting in VR? Does BMS smart scaling work as well in VR as one would hope?