Getting and installing BMS

In the olden days, getting and installing BMS could be a bit of a chore, but at least it was (sort of) free because Falcon 4.0 was largely abandonware and while the installer required you to point to a valid Falcon4.exe file, that file could be “found” trivially on the internet. The bigger obstacle was a very long and obnoxious registration and log-in requirement to download a multipart sequence of builds and updates from a slow website.

These days, it costs a trivial amount to get your hands on a legal copy of Falcon 4.0, which you sort of need because the ownership checking is a bit more thorough. But on the other hand, no registration or login is needed (in spite of the official instructions saying so, but they are written for an older version anyway) and between direct download and torrent options, and having a sensible and working updater, the download process is much more palatable.

To get the instruction from the source, go to the Falcon BMS install/update help page, or directly to the downloads page, which link to further documentation.

Requirements

The official requirements are listed as:

• Windows 7 (64 bits)
• i5 2500K 3.3 GHz
• 4Gb RAM
• 3D GFX card 2Gb dedicated VRAM (DX11 compatible mandatory)
• 15Gb HDD space required

What is not listed, but requires a special mention in spite of sounding like a trivial detail, is a sound card. It is worth mentioning because even if you intend to install BMS for the purpose of running an online multiplayer server, you still need that sound card as well as a DX11-compaible graphics card. If you intend to run the server in a virtualised environment, the virtualisation needs to cover those media capabilities as well.

Falcon 4.0

To install BMS, you ned to have Falcon 4.0 installed. While you can technically get rid of Falcon 4 once BMS is installed, that adds an unnecessary step to future repairs and re-installs, so the (relatively) piddling size of this late-'90s game might as well be considered part of the BMS installation footprint.

You can most readily get Falcon 4 from GOG.com (along with Falcon, Falcon A.T. and Falcon 3.0 + a couple of expansions), or from Steam. Steam also offers the same package as GOG for a extra cents.

Download & install

Go to the official BMS download page and get either the downloader tool and run it, or get the full installer via torrent. Either way, you end up with the full installer .exe file in a location of your liking — just run it and follow the instructions.

What you get

IVC

Internal Voice Communications

Documentation

https://wiki.falcon-bms.com/manuals

Additional downloads

Weapons Delivery Planner

https://www.weapondeliveryplanner.nl/about/index.html

Mission Commander

https://www.weapondeliveryplanner.nl/about/mc.html

Weather Commander

https://www.weapondeliveryplanner.nl/about/wc.html

F4Wx Real Weather

https://forum.falcon-bms.com/topic/8267/f4wx-real-weather-converter

F4RADAR

https://forum.falcon-bms.com/topic/18356/f4radar-lightweight-standalone-radar-application