User manual

F4-BMS 2.0 Technical Manual
APPENDIX F: BMS COCKPIT BUILDER’S
GUIDE
INTRODUCTION
Falcon 4 is arguably the most complete, high fidelity combat simulation (without a security
clearance) of a modern tactical fighter aircraft available today. The sophistication of the model of
the F-16 and in particular the modeling of the avionics package make it an ideal candidate for
devotees of combat flight simulations who are interested in building physical cockpit hardware to
interface with their gaming experience.
Sadly, when Falcon4 was created support for cockpit builders was not high on the priority list. As
a result, the facilities for interfacing physical cockpit hardware to the game are somewhat
primitive. Future versions of the Falcon franchise may include more suitable interface design but
until then, keyboard for input and shared memory data values for internal aircraft state outputs will
have to suffice.
However, the advent of renewed work on Falcon4 code development presents an opportunity to
improve on facilities that do already exist such as they are.
Improvements that will appeal to cockpit builders are intended in several areas of the game:
¿ Making the shared memory values exported by the game coherent and updated constantly
as the game runs.
¿ Additional data values to supplement those already in the shared memory area.
¿ New keyboard callback functions that will allow a separate keystroke to be assigned to each
separate position of every functional switch and knob in the cockpit.
This document will describe such additions made as part of the Benchmark simulations (BMS)
project. Also contained in this document will be some description of features in the game that are
of interest to general users of the game but that are not completely explained elsewhere. A
number of questions have been raised in the forums about how certain features of the game
work, questions that are difficult to answer without access to the source code. For example,
information on how the data values in the shared memory area should be interpreted will be
included here.
SHARED MEMORY AREA
Changes to Shared Memory Updates
In a number of cases, both the databit values and floating point values contained in the shared
memory area were only updated when the on screen view in the game was set to display the
lamp or gauge associated with the data value.
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