Tyrant's Virtual Missions Tools Q&A

Post by **Tyrant** » Tue Sep 11, 2018 1:39 pm

This topic is for questions (and answers!) about Tyrant's Virtual Mission Tools (VMT) program. Visit the VMT Homepage for more information. There is also a thread on the BMS forums.

Post by **Tyrant** » Tue Sep 11, 2018 1:58 pm

I have a question! Tyrant, you haven't released in a while, are you still working on it?

Glad you asked, Tyrant.

Yes. I was real busy helping out get the 440th up and running but have gone back to chipping away at VMT in my spare time. I expect to ship a new release before too much longer.

Post by **Nick** » Tue Sep 11, 2018 5:48 pm

"Now I'm really worried about him."
"Everything's okay, he doesn't call VMT 'My PRECIOUS !!!' yet - hihi ".

Post by **Tyrant** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 1:58 pm

I'm uploading a new dev build now. For those that aren't familiar with the dev builds, they're basically pre-release betas that I push out from time to time. Installing the dev build won't interfere with the stable/release builds. Dev builds will only be announced here, not on the BMS forum.

Changes in this version (v057-52):

- Fix all the things I broke in the last build.

Dev builds available at http://org.craigandera.vmt.s3-website-u ... s.com/dev/

Post by **Tyrant** » Tue Sep 18, 2018 1:36 pm

v058 (stable channel) released.

Downloads and change log: http://org.craigandera.vmt.s3-website-u ... om/stable/

BMS Announcement: https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/sho ... post477173

Post by **Tyrant** » Thu Sep 20, 2018 1:48 pm

v058-2 (dev channel) uploading now.

Changes:
- Remove highlight from flight when closing flight tab.
- Make tools tab always visible.

Which reminds me to point out that if you click this button for a flight:

: Screen Shot 2018-09-20 at 9.43.10 AM.png (40.67 KiB) Viewed 17788 times

You will get it displayed in its own tab:

: Screen Shot 2018-09-20 at 9.44.40 AM.png (157.81 KiB) Viewed 17788 times

Note to mission makers: these tabs will also be present in the VMTB, so you can have info about the flights relevant to the mission open when someone opens the briefing. At some point I will also add weather forecast to the flight plan.

Post by **Skat** » Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:00 pm

Has it been considered to be able to launch and run on an IOS platform

Post by **Skat** » Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:11 pm

Skat wrote: ↑
Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:00 pm
Has it been considered to be able to launch and run on an IOS platform

NVM I figured it out

Post by **Tyrant** » Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:16 pm

Cool. Just in case anyone else is wondering: mobile platforms (Android, iPhone, iPad, etc.) are not supported. This is a desktop application. It does run on OS X and Linux with a one extra setup step, described on the VMT home page: vmt.

Post by **Zeus** » Mon Oct 08, 2018 1:13 am

I keep forgetting to ask you if this is on your bug list: In the tools tab, the GBU-39s (SDB) are missing from the menu of weapons.

Post by **Tyrant** » Mon Oct 08, 2018 11:31 am

Huh. Yeah, I'll have to look into that. VMT does some filtering on the full weapons list to get the list it shows you (no use showing things an aircraft can't carry, for instance) so perhaps there's something wrong in that logic.

Post by **Tyrant** » Mon Oct 08, 2018 1:10 pm

OK, so it's pretty obvious why this is happening: VMT removes weapons from the list that have a zero hit chance against MoveType "NoMove". This is to remove nonsensical things like AIM-9M from the list of weapons you can aim at, say, a building. But SDBs have the following hit chance, according to MIssionCommander:

: Screen Shot 2018-10-08 at 9.09.36 AM.png (47.71 KiB) Viewed 17724 times

And VMT shows the same numbers when I read the file. I'm not quite sure how to interpret this. @Nick, any ideas?

Post by **Nick** » Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:55 pm

Tyrant wrote: ↑
Mon Oct 08, 2018 1:10 pm
And VMT shows the same numbers when I read the file. I'm not quite sure how to interpret this. @Nick, any ideas?

Check private message (DISCORD).

Post by **Tyrant** » Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:58 pm

Thanks. As suspected I did not correctly interpret the data. I'll get a fix rolled out in a future release.

Thanks Zeus for the bug report and Nick for the correct info!

Post by **Tyrant** » Fri Apr 19, 2019 12:27 pm

Just to get in front of the question, let me say that I will be upgrading VMT to support 4.34 as soon as possible after it ships. I don't have access to pre-release installations, so on the day 4.34 drops, VMT won't support it. Sorry!

I will be dedicating my free time to getting 4.34 support going as soon as I can get a working copy installed, but as the file formats are radically different, and VMT relies heavily on reading files from your Falcon install, it may take a while. I'm especially interested to get a look at the new weather features, since that's been a central feature of VMT since it was called WeatherGen.

I imagine people will have enough to keep them busy for a bit while I get it working, though.

Post by **Tyrant** » Sat Apr 20, 2019 11:11 am

Well that was quick...

Will be working on this as much as I can to get VMT updated as soon as possible. Going to take me a while, though.

Post by **Tyrant** » Sun May 12, 2019 8:16 pm

TL;DR: Not done yet. Making good progress.

Just thought I'd drop a note here about how things are going. I'm definitely not done yet, but I finally got some substantial time to work on the upgrades, and they're going well. I think there are basically four major phases to the upgrade to support 4.34:

1) Write a description of the 4.33 data format I use internally.
2) Import the new data format using #1 to verify that everything is the same.
3) Test, because although this approach should minimize changes, you know: software.

4) Figure out what I want to do to support the new weather features.

So far, #1 is done and #2 is going quicker than I had hoped. #3 is inherently variable, and you'll know when I get there because I'll cut a dev release (without working weather) and ask for your help. But if it goes well I should be able to get to #4 fairly soon.

The question of what to do about the weather is still a bit vague for a couple reasons. For one, I'm not totally sure how I want to deal with the new "towering cumulus" feature - how should these be modeled in generated weather? It's especially weird because it's yes/no. What happens if it suddenly flips from yes to no or vice versa? For another, I need to figure out how to deal with cloud height now that it can vary from cell to cell rather than being global. There are questions there both in terms of the model and in how to present it in the UI.

Anyway, just thought the one or two of you paying attention might like an update. Cheers!

Post by **Nick** » Sun May 12, 2019 8:55 pm

YouTube · Post by **Thumper** » Mon May 13, 2019 4:30 pm

I'll bet there are 4 of us at least!

YouTube · Post by **Thumper** » Mon May 13, 2019 4:31 pm

I'll bet there are 4 of us at least!

Post by **Tyrant** » Mon May 13, 2019 4:31 pm

I'd better start putting in overtime then!

YouTube · Post by **Thumper** » Mon May 13, 2019 4:32 pm

Tyrant wrote: ↑
Mon May 13, 2019 4:31 pm
I'd better start putting in overtime then!

And you'll be paid at the appropriate rate!

Post by **Tyrant** » Mon May 13, 2019 4:34 pm

Time and a half? Sweet. Even I can do*that* math.

Post by **Tyrant** » Wed May 22, 2019 12:09 pm

Thought I'd drop another quick update. Work is continuing - I have been putting in whatever time I can here and there. Things are definitely progressing. I'm able to read the 4.34 mission files without the app choking on them, and the main UI is displaying some of the info from them. Now I have to work through all the places where the UI isn't doing what it's supposed to. Some of this is just dealing with the inevitable fact that web technology moves so fast right now that apps break every six months if you don't chase down a seemingly-endless chain of mutually incompatible updates - a lot of the work so far has been of that nature. But with luck I'm actually on to the part where I deal with the differences in the mission data.

When I've got something that I think works, I will drop a beta. Not sure exactly when that will be, as it's extremely hard to estimate how long it will take to fix bugs when you don't yet know what's causing them. And as this is a holiday weekend in the US, I won't have much time to put into this again until early June.

Once the bugs are out of the main part of the UI, I'll turn my attention to updating the weather generation aspects of VMT. I've been thinking a lot about this, though, so I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do and I'm hopeful that it will be straightforward. Once that's in, you'll see another beta. Then fixing any bugs based on feedback and I'll ship the final version.

One note: I'm pretty sure that the new versions will *not* support 4.33. It's just too much extra work to deal with the differences, and frankly I'm not sure why anyone wouldn't just use an older version of VMT in the short period where 4.33 is still being flown.

Post by **Raytio** » Wed May 22, 2019 12:12 pm

You can say web tech moves fast but thats just because its broken so bad to begin with.

Thanks for the update!!

440th Virtual Fighter Wing

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