BMS Helios Profile Updated... Again!!

Hello again fellow simmers!!

After a break in Falcon of over a year, I'm back and ready to release my new Helios profile for Falcon BMS!  I've been working on this profile for the past few months and have integrated new features thanks to YAME and being able to learn more about how to work with Helios.

Before we go any further, let me just thank the fellow simmers (you know who you are!  THANK YOU!!) who have found my work useful enough and worthy of clicking the DONATE button on the right side.  While I do this work for free, it's nice to be appreciated in that way and does give me a great incentive to improve on the profile.

As always, this profile is designed to work with a touchscreen with a resolution of 1920x1080.  I use this profile with my own custom .key file and a modified TM WH profile from Morphine's profile.  However, the new profile now comes in two flavors --- a single-screen setup which I expect to be the more popular one and a two-screen setup which is what I'm primarily using.

Credits go to xflight.de/Martin for the original images, Red Dog for his charts, Lightning for his MFDE program, Roccio/Focaldesign/Scorpion for their work on YAME64, Kolbe for the excellent .key file organization, Morphine for his original TM WH profile, and Falcas for his WDP program.


Here's what the new profile looks like:

Two-screen setup

One-screen setup

As the two-screen setup was the primary profile, most of the features of that profile have been ported over to the single-screen setup.  I'll talk about the two-screen setup first and most of what can be seen on the front console in the two-screen setup is the same on the single-screen setup.

First up is the front consoles touch zones.  These are "hidden" buttons that open up various other panels or send input to the sim.

On the top left and right of the front console are the buttons to show/hide the side consoles.  However, unlike the previous profile, there is now only ONE side console that incorporates both the left console and right console of the F-16.  This should make ramp starts much easier and quicker.

Touching the CMDS display shows the Countermeasures panel.

 

The RWR opens the Charts panel and the small Data Card picture opens the Data Card panel on the left touchscreen.

The Altimeter and HSI sections are split into 4 quadrants with the upper left/right used to decrease/increase by 5 and the lower left/right used to decrease/increase by 1.  The Trim gauges can be "pressed" to reset the trims to center.

For the Altimeter and HSI functions to work, the falcon bms.cfg file must be edited and this entry added at the first space at the top:
set g_nKnobAccelerationDelta 300


On the lower left corner is a Buttons panel which is moved to the lower right corner in the single-screen setup.  The first button is the COMMS button which brings up the Comms panel containing all the radio commands in BMS.  While the sim is ideally paired with some sort of voice command software such as VAC, Voice Attack, or LMC, this page still serves as a handy reminder of all the radio commands in the sim.

Tower

AWACS

Wingman

Element

Flight

Tanker

The OBS button can be used to start/stop recording via FRAPS or OBS and is mapped to SHIFT+F11 by default.  The Smoke, Pause, and Freeze buttons function as advertised and the TIR Pause button pauses TIR and resets the view to the front view.  I've found this very useful for practicing air-to-air refuelling.

The CPD button shows the CPD which is a new feature of YAME.  Currently, only the central bottom three OSBs are working to display gauges/map/mission data respectively.  On the map screen the respective labels work as advertised.  In a future version of YAME, a higher-res map image can be used and the OSBs work more reliably.  On the bottom of the screen, just beside the trim gauges, is a small gray button.... sometimes the CPD panel will not sync with the CPD button and this small gray button is used to resolve any synchronization issues.  Again, in the future version of YAME, this will be fixed.

Because of the current low-res map in the CPD, I've added a Map screen that should be more useful.  The main map is divided by green lines into sections.  Pressing on the relevant section will fill the screen with that section, pressing the screen again will return to the  main map.  Pressing anywhere on the screen that is NOT a map section will close the map, or pressing the MAP button on the second touchscreen will also close the map.  This is useful for opening/closing a section-view of the map.

Next is the VIEWS button that brings up the Views panel which can be used to control external views and grab screenshots without having to use the keyboard.  Most of the contents of the Views panel is a work-in-progress as I experiment with various layouts and which views are more useful than others.  On the two-screen setup, the VIEWS button can be pressed to close the panel.  On the one-screen setup, pressing anywhere on the panel that is not a button will close the panel.

Finally, there is the SYSTEM button that brings up the System panel.  The primary use for this panel is for starting up BMS, showing the FPS counter, and exiting a mission.

A few cool improvements I've made for this version was to make the Canopy spider switch just a switch guard like in the real F-16.  It is now necessary to lift the spider cover to access the actual canopy switch underneath.

The HDG knob now changes it's label from HDG to CRS to indicate which setting is going to be changed when pressing on the HSI.

The MFDs have also gotten new rocker images which looks more in line with the graphical style.  The rockers on the ICP have also been changed, and the N/S/E/W labels have been added.

The ALT GEAR handle has been adjusted to have a larger touch zone, which should make it easier to activate in case of emergency.

The TFR button now also syncs with the button inside the cockpit, making it easier to tell when the system is activated or not.

The MAL & IND button has also been implemented to show all lights in the cockpit as well as in the Helios profile.  All warning lights from the side consoles and even the eyebrow lights have been implemented and the TWA and TWP buttons now have an on/off state.  The cockpit mouse enable/disable button has been integrated on the left eyebrow lights for easier access and checking.  I've also added a new panel for the HMCS and NVG controls.

One of the biggest implementations to the new profile is a fully-working UHF and TACAN panels.  Big credit goes to Weepop for inspiring me to do this.  The UHF CHAN rotary is fully working and can cycle up/down with no issues.  The individual channel knobs can cycle up/down with no issues as well, although there is a sync issue with the numbers when going from 3XX.XXX and back to 2XX.XXX.  This is a limitation within Helios.  The touch zones for the UHF is shown below and although only one knob is highlighted, it is the same for the four other knobs.

The same has been done for the TACAN panel and defaults at 106X.  Each digit can cycle up/down with no issues.  Unfortunately, there may be a time when the default backup channel can be changed and saved in the DTC so that it is pre-loaded in the jet... there is no way to sync that with Helios.  If the default backup channel is changed in the sim, the profile itself must be changed to reflect this, otherwise it will just show 106X and there will be synchronization issues.  The touch zones for the TACAN panel is shown below and although only one section is highlighted, it is the same for the three other sections.

Now for the single-screen setup.

Due to the limited space of just using a single screen, I've had to be a bit more creative with the hidden buttons on the front console.  Here are the touch zones for the single-screen setup.

On the top left and right of the front console are the buttons to show/hide the side console.  However, unlike the previous profile, there is now only ONE side console that incorporates both the left and right console of the F-16.  This should make ramp starts much easier and quicker.  Because this is the single-screen setup, I've had to remove some of the cosmetic panels to make room.  Note that the TWA panel is duplicated here for when it is needed during rampstart.

The RWR, Altimeter, and HSI remain the same.  The Trim gauges can be "pressed" to reset the trims to center.  Pressing on the CMDS display shows the Countermeasures panel.

The LG lights will show the backup TWA panel and the Speedbrake indicator will show the HMCS/NVG panel.  It may be useful to show the TWA panel during flight for better SA and is thus placed in this position.

Pressing the DED will show the Data Card panel.  When the Data Card is up, it has it's own touch zones with the ones on the left and right used to change which Data Card page is shown.  The red touch zone in the middle can be used to close the Data Card panel, or press on the DED again.

As with the two-screen setup, all the lights are implemented in the profile.

For this update, I've stopped using MFDE for gauge displays and have started using YAME64.  One of the benefits of YAME is that gauge placement can be saved in a layout file which can be easily distributed and changes to gauge placement or gauge size can be entered manually for pixel-accurate adjustments.  Another advantage is that YAME pulls the extraction images straight from BMS so the DED/MFD/PFL displays are exactly what is seen in the pit without having to use BMS's CDE.  I wasn't too fond of the YAME caution panel so I've made my own that blends in with the rest of the profile.  The developers of YAME are also actively improving on the program and listen to community feedback so it can only get better and better with time.

As always, the main goal of this project is to eliminate the need of using the mouse or keyboard once inside the cockpit in the 3D world.  All the necessary switches and controls should be present in the profile and should be easy and intuitive to use.



Here are the the files for the new profile:
Two-screen setup:

• -Ice's BMS 4.33 v4.17 -- place this on your /Documents/Helios/Profiles directory
• -Ice's Falcon BMS ver.3 -- unzip to your /Documents/Helios/Images directory, so you should end up with a /Documents/Helios/Images/-Ice's Falcon BMS ver.3 directory
• BMS - FPM by -Ice.key -- put in your /BMS/User/Config directory. This is Morphine's profile with a few edits and adapted to Kolbe's format.  This is v1.7 of my .key file.
• Ice's BMS WH Profile ver7.1.tmc -- open and run with TARGET Script Editor.  This is also from Morphine's profile with a few edits (updated 17-04-2017)
• Ice2ScreenSetup  -- place this on your /YAME64/layouts directory

One-screen setup:

• -Ice's BMS 4.33 v4.16S -- place this on your /Documents/Helios/Profiles directory
• -Ice's Falcon BMS ver.3S -- unzip to your /Documents/Helios/Images directory, so you should end up with a /Documents/Helios/Images/-Ice's Falcon BMS ver.3S directory
• BMS - FPM by -Ice.key -- put in your /BMS/User/Config directory. This is Morphine's profile with a few edits and adapted to Kolbe's format.  This is v1.7 of my .key file.
• Ice's BMS WH Profile ver7.1.tmc -- open and run with TARGET Script Editor.  This is also from Morphine's profile with a few edits (updated 17-04-2017)
• Ice1ScreenSetup -- place this on your /YAME64/layouts directory

Any suggestions and issues regarding this profile, please post on [this thread] and I'll do my best to help!  Thank you for trying my profile!