=VG= SemlerPDX

According to Stark, the service was still running but was not operating properly (as opposed to a crash to desktop). He restarted it and everything is running normally now. If it happens again soon, feel free to post up here and we'll take care of it. *All PR Admins here will regain their ability to restart the server through TCAdmin in August, one of our Tech Team had a life issue so it has postponed our progress on that front.

Jabal always looks so great from the carrier! Nice screenshots, man!

For those here who don't know, Gold is bad... Great for space shuttles and fighter jets and CPU and tiny integrated circuit chips, and everywhere else it's just a bullshit marketing gimmick. Plenty of vids exposing the bs of "gold plated" connections, etc. on so called "performance grade" consumer electronics cables. Fun fact: See those 4 lines on the white thing? Those are the connections.... See the big golden metal square things that hold it? They are holders, and not to get all science-y, but they conduct exactly zero signal or connection or current or voltage or ground. But if you put this cable side by side with a silver/steel colored end, the gold one will sell at nearly twice the price, while the other collects dust, because...gold.

Who still uses non-rechargeable batteries?! Chinese shop lol Wired FTW, but for anything that takes 2 AA's like the wireless X-Box controller, it's not hard to figure out: They sell rechargeable AA's in a 4-pack, ya keep the other two charged up so when it starts flashing LOW mid-game, you can quickly swap them at the next opportunity (not easy during a race, I hate it..). But it's the price to pay for getting a little less wired for a few controllers. They don't make wired Oculus Touch controllers.... just sayin'

A small bug has been found, the Keyboard Layout is not remembering it's settings when the profile is reloaded because the variable didn't get loaded in the initialization file as intended. This will be fixed for the final version. If you use a different keyboard layout than the default QWERTY, and you don't want to have to set this each time this profile loads until the next update, you can simply add the line to the KEYPRESS_Variables command as shown in the image below. Copy the variable AVCS_BMS_KeyboardLayout and insert a 'Set an Integer Value' found under "Other > Advanced" and paste in the variable name. Below, select the box "Retrieve Saved Value" and nothing else. Again, this will be done for the final version, and only people with non-standard keyboards need to be concerned.

BETA UPDATED TO v0.99 (final beta!) Please download newest version! Link below and updated in the main post above! You don't have to remove the 0.98 beta profile, but it is recommended to not use both at the same time or variables may get messed up. Thanks to everyone for helping to finish up final testing! SitRep: I've finished integrating the proposed changes I received through the v0.98 beta, and the v0.99 beta is now available for download (click here). There is now an alternate All-Humans Mode that can be turned on, and will assume all pilots are humans unless you individually set Computer Pilots per callsign/flight/wing numbers. All the same "Set a Human Pilot" commands have been copied to make "Set a Computer Pilot" equivalents. You can also change the Keyboard Layout from the default QWERTY by voice command or just executing the "change" command found under initialization. Per request, to speed up the interaction of adding/removing pilots from the exclusion lists, you can now say the entire Callsign + Flight Number + Wing Number when asked for the callsign. Example: "Set a Human Pilot" "say the callsign" "Cowboy 7 3" "Cowboy 7 3 - is this correct?" "Yes" ... (bypassing the need to individually set Flight Number and then Wing Number!) This will jump to the confirmation at the end of the command and greatly reduces the time spent interacting with the voice control system configuration. During my testing, I found there must be a clear separation between the Flight Number and Wing Number when spoken, to avoid "Cowboy 7 3" getting recognized as "Cowboy 73", and your own results may vary. Please test and let me know. The old system is still in place, and you can even just say the Callsign + Flight number, and it will notice and skip to the Set Wing Number segment of the script. The entire idea was to allow a lot of options to recognize how we speak, and the only catch is that we need to enunciate and keep succinct breaks between words for this style of input. Further beta testing in this final 0.99 phase should help judge if this will work or if it needs adjustment. Additionally, there are now VoiceAttack command log notifications whenever the profile loads showing the current profile settings, and also voice notifications if either PTT mode or the new All-Humans mode are On. Here's a copy of the changelog: Beta v0.99 Changelog Jul2019 New Commands: -Change Default Keyboard Layout allows choices between QWERTY, QWERTZ, & AZERTY (per user request) -Turn On/Off All-Humans Mode : Reverse mode assumes all pilots are humans, add Computer Pilots individually as needed (per user request) -Copy of all Add/Remove Human Pilots commands for Computer Pilots & All-Humans Mode Fixes/Improvements: -Can state an entire callsign plus flight & wing numbers when asked for Callsign (per user request to speed up the voice system interaction of adding/removing human pilots) -VoiceAttack log entries displays profile information on startup (current keyboard layout, push-to-talk mode on/off state, All-Humans mode on/off state) (per user request) -Speech notifications on startup for PTT mode and All-Humans mode if they are enabled (see above) -Forced profile initialization if not initialized on any command use (per bug report: on first download/import of profile, trying to use any command fails until voiceattack restarted) *wheelchock2 had asked about a query system. I have not made a system to ask which callsigns have been set/saved to either a Human Pilot or Computer Pilot, as it was always designed to be a throw-away use concept, add a few for the afternoon, adjust for different flights, reset at the end or beginning of a days' use of Falcon BMS. I'd like to know if there is serious interest in a query system before I create one as it will add a bit of size to the profile, increase it's RAM footprint further, and possibly increase profile load time even further. It would not make sense to add this if there is too little use for it. Personally, I remove all human pilot callsigns before every flight, when I'm at the 2D map/mission planning phase. Please let me know how you guys use the profile, and if you'd use something like a query system.

It's not on the Server Rules page, I suppose I should put it there, too... I have written about this aspect, like many "rules" for our Falcon BMS Server, they are more of guidelines than actual rules, as there is rarely ever a need to discipline players in a flight sim. I don't specify how many or how often, but basically we expect players to use AI for their own flights only and within reason. On that note, I will put this quote in more prominent locations so it doesn't go unseen:

Noop. Sorry. Please take any further discussion to the relevant bug report thread on the PR Mod website, that is where the love is needed, where multiple groups can contribute to the same discussion. And note the quote, too, please because what's needed to be said has been said. It's a sad situation, would love if it was fixed, and no one here is preventing that.

I'm not exactly sure if it would cause issues, but you could try it out for a while and we could see. If it causes any problems, we can discuss this again at that time. The campaign file could really use some attention and tweaking, so I'll be getting into that, and if you're regularly watching the server, I'll make sure you know when I'm taking it down or restarting to Day 1. I'll also get a more realistic custom weather model as we had before in 4.33 eventually, I've just been spinning plates with too many things to do at VG lately, plus my own projects and goals, and a little free time too. Finally, if it's ever down, you can feel free to post up in the forums here, in the chatbox on the home page, or message me personally. I intend to find other VG members here to learn how to restart it, but for right now, I'm the only active member who has access and can restart it if it crashes. Don't be shy - I don't mind taking a break from whatever to start it back up if it crashes. Cheers!

File format matters, it has to be one of the mainstream formats like png, jpg, haven't tested a .gif (might work, even if it doesn't cycle - might cycle) Size examples from Binary are similar to mine, I'm currently using a .png with transparency and it's 172px x 172px at 58.3kb Limits are in place because previous iterations of the VG website had swollen to over 300 terabytes, nearly completely comprised of unrestricted uploading of images and large file attachments over the course of years. Meant we couldn't move the site to a less expensive host in New York, so we had to change how it's done. When we finally did, a lot of links were broken as we couldn't migrate all those files and images. You can archive and remove leaving blank chunks in posts that may get crawled here and there for years, or you can enforce smaller sizes and encourage the use of imgur links in posts, and dropbox links for files. But for Avatars and profile background images, you're restricted to the 200kb limit if I am not mistaken. If you use Photoshop, select "Save for Web..." to get great looking images at a fraction of the size. TMI, but after finally learning PS some time ago, I started using a tip I got to make all my photoshop images massive, like 4K (3840 x 2660), and then shrink them down for whatever size they'll be used at, like 300 x 300, or 480 x 60 banners, etc. using the Save function options in PS. A great tip.

Noop. Sorry. This was proven quite some time ago. It's in the code itself. Seems to need a fair number of people over the course of a map or few to make it happen, to get a map running that will have the bug happening. But it requires no editing or changing of any config files (unless adding the name we use and the IP and the number of players for a COOP match, with all COOP map maplist is what you would call customizations). Our clean run tests did knock at least that much out, can't blame freshly downloaded and installed files with no changes except a server license key and a name/MODT & basic COOP setup. That's all you need to reproduce this..... and a server that remains populated throughout the day for days/weeks on end, on a Windows server that rarely goes down. Not that uptime is a factor, just noted it in case trying to duplicate an environment. Again, best wishes and good luck to you - it is not something that anyone wants to persist. But we don't hold the keys to the kingdom, we aren't the cause/reason, and for our COOP team here, we do promote from within. I do hope you don't get discouraged if it's difficult to get working with the PR Dev team on the issue coming in from the outside without PR Mod coding experience already. Keep at it! Cheers!

Sorry, the answer is no. Apply to the development team, perhaps they will let you be a contributor like Double. AFAIK that is the only way to get access to the source code and server files that are not available to the general public without application. We don't have any say over that here, wrong website. No worries. Best wishes and good luck! That bug is quite the nuisance.

^What he said... Network Address Translation. It's a good thing!

You're a binary co-processor unit that I'm still not convinced is not a bot, and you're asking us how to use PayPal? I don't think you can, you're from Germany, dude. Germany HATES PayPal (not without reason). But all joking aside, if you could, you would go to the paypal website and create a user account. From there you can add a credit card, debit card, or bank account as a payment method. Then when you donate to a place like us that accepts paypal, it will first take you to a screen here where you can choose a donation amount, then it takes you to a secure PayPal portal to finalize the transaction, giving you a final option to choose which saved payment method you want PayPal to use, or just whatever default method you have set. Bing bang boom, done. When a bill is paid directly from a PayPal account to places that accept PayPal (like our website host, for example), we don't even have to worry about fees. Only if one were to take cash out, then they would lose 30% to fees (so best use is just as our bill pay/donation acceptance, which we do). Understood, brother?

Is it time to ditch the Oculus Rift (CV1) and buy an Oculus Rift S? If I ever told any of you that Oculus Rift is cool, if you have the money, a capable PC, and if you already play a few games like War Thunder or Elite: Dangerous that have native VR support, but also told you to hold off for the next generation of VR, well... you may wanna keep holding off. Here's why: The original Oculus Rift (Consumer Version 1) is awesome now, mostly due to the fact that you can buy a comfortable facial interface replacement that makes it possible to play for hours without getting a Ski Mask face, allows more airflow for less heat-buildup, and if you have good over-the-ear headphones, you can take off the Rift earpieces and use VR like I do with full surround sound immersion via the Logitech G35. I bought custom prescription glasses made for the Oculus Rift, they are curved the opposite way, and sit like monocles over the Rift lenses. They cost about as much as regular prescription glasses (expensive!), though I did choose the extra options like the blue light filter coating. Definitely worth it because it provides comfortable and clear viewing with reduced eyestrain, all without the discomfort of trying to wear actual glasses with frames inside the Rift (which could scratch the lenses easily!). The included Oculus Touch controllers are so advanced, and intuitive, that I cannot believe anyone would consider VR without these controllers. The Vive wands, the PS4 wands, etc, all pale in comparison. The ergonomics are as perfectly designed as the Playstation Dual Shock 3 controllers, with analogue buttons everywhere, and of course, vibration. They even sense when you are simply touching a button or not, to translate SO many real world hand gestures from grabbing to pointing to finger-guns to the old standard one-finger "come here" gesture, and many more. (thumbsticks are buttons, too, because of course they are ) The only controller issue would be the fact that they are a little small for an adult with medium to large hands. But, since the Oculus Rift has been out for awhile, there are plenty of third party options available for sale such as gel covers that marginally increase the size enough to fill the gap, while increasing comfort for extended use. Also, the old CV1 Oculus Rift can run fairly well on just a GTX 970 and 4th generation Intel CPU (I have the 4690k, and a super clocked EVGA GTX at 1509MHz, so results may vary) VS. On the other hand, the new Oculus Rift S is also amazing tech, but is brand new. Because of this, for now, there are no fancy gel controller covers for larger hands, no comfortable facial inserts for sale yet, and the included facial piece is just as difficult to wear for any period of time as the original CV1 version was. From what I can tell from reddits/etc. the custom prescription glasses I have for my CV1 Rift may not fit correctly in the Rift S, and that's a huge add-on cost. They say it's easier to wear glasses with frames in the Rift S, but unless I can try a demo, I'm not gonna take that at face value. They said the same about the CV1, and I strongly disagree. There are no included headphones, just a few built-in speaker holes directly over the ear on the headstrap. It apparently has a 3.5mm jack for headphones, though a lot of the users that posted said they wear earbud style headphones. Personally, I've hated those since the 1980's, so for me, I'm not considering that as an option. It looks like it might be difficult to fit the Logitech G35 surround sound headphones over that headstrap, and like many people, I feel that complete immersion requires surround sound and either a quiet room or over-the-ear style headphones like the G35 and G933. It "can" run on a GTX 970 like it's predecessor, but will likely be able to take advantage of more modern graphics cards and CPU's to help maintain at least 45FPS as required for a "no nausea" VR experience while in motion. The resolution has been improved to the point where the very apparent screen door effect of the Oculus Rift CV1 is all but completely gone, according to reviews. With a closer and tighter fit around the nose, there is less face exposure to outside air, and this has led to complaints about heat buildup. I use a small fan that constantly blows over the top of the Oculus Rift CV1 when I use it from a desk setup, and it makes it possible to spend more than an hour or two in VR without noticing the heat. According to reviews and posts so far, the Rift S has fewer/smaller openings to allow such a fan to help dissipate the heat buildup. I already notice immediately if I move my hand (and touch controller) out of view of my Oculus Sensors mounted near the ceiling - if I block it by reaching under my chair, desk, etc. it switches to a sort of inertial mode and can lose that under certain circumstances. With the Rift S, the sensors are on the HMD itself, so I assume it could have even more issues when playing from a desktop setup vs. a room scale setting. With any luck, my sensors will function with the new systems, and add to the tracking. That would be great, but I'm sure the new Touch controllers designed for the Rift S will work well just as if they were the old ones, only with the tracking ring on top. It should be noted that because the Rift S uses a single screen for both eyes, the inter-pupilary distance is no longer adjustable as it was on the Oculus Rift CV1. Anyone with outside the average range will certainly have issue, and even those inside the range will be unable to fine tune it to their exact IPD, which some are counting as a step backwards for this pioneering VR company. So, for these several reasons, I am not upgrading my VR setup to the Rift S at this time. Even if money were not a factor, sadly, I don't think it would be a very enjoyable and comfortable and equally immersive experience. VR is awesome in the Oculus Rift CV1 right now, there's even a wireless kit available! It's comfortable to wear, easy to cool, accommodates my less than perfect vision, and is completely immersive thanks to the Logitech G35 (and the buttkicker under my seat!). I just have to deal with this screendoor effect for a little while longer.

^ That's a feature, not a bug

SitRep: I have several great suggestions and will be working on adding several of these ideas to the next working beta (0.99b), if possible. My release plan is simply this beta, and the 0.99b beta, for a few weeks until VoiceAttack beta that we are using gets it's own release, and then I'll add any final changes and polish, and release it as a version 1.0 - I don't expect much need for editing in future unless the radio menus get changed again, but will maintain the profile and entertain any useful suggestions even after final release. If anyone has any other suggestions, feel free to let me know! Thanks for all the feedback so far!

*For anyone with issues, per a message I received about keys not getting through: You can ensure that keys are getting sent to the application by opening the VoiceAttack Profile, and clicking on Options along the top, and select "Send commands to this target" and then write in *Falcon BMS* between asterisks (*) for a wildcard catchall for the BMS game window. This will ensure these keystrokes go where they are needed. See image:

Thanks for the feedback! If people prefer English for VoiceAttack, there is no sense to waste time on localization. I believe I can include an option for QUERTY or AZERTY. Is this correct? // AI COMMS Menu Lists Set Text [KEY_AWACS_LIST] to 'A' Set Text [KEY_WINGMAN_LIST] to 'Z' Set Text [KEY_ELEMENT_LIST] to 'E' Set Text [KEY_ATC_LIST] to 'T' Set Text [KEY_FLIGHT_LIST] to 'R' Set Text [KEY_TANKER_LIST] to 'Y'