Graphical Options problem ?

[kgb613]

Hello there, some bit question about TIS. Is it normal that the TIS looks more bad on M1A1 than M60A3 ? Is it just because the M60A3 was release more earlier than the M1A1 on Steel Beast ? Here some screens of my ingame config, and here my config:

GPU: GTX 1080 8 Go

CPU: i7 4790 @3.60 GHz

RAM: 16 Go

OS: Windows 10 64bit

[TSe419E]

The early M1s used the absolute first edition of the thermal sight.  The M60A3 used an improved version because it was designed after the M1.  For some inexplicable reason they did not upgrade the one on the M1s until years after its introduction.

[Ssnake]

39 minutes ago, TSe419E said:

For some inexplicable reason they did not upgrade the one on the M1s

 

At the time, each thermal imager came with a quarter million Dollar bill to the taxpayer. With 7,000 M1s in service - do the math (=far from inexplicable).

 

This must be seen in the context that the old one was deemed "good enough" - and arguably it was. That you would successfully engage T-72s at ranges in excess of 3,000m simply wasn't doctrine until after Desert Storm. When the decision was made to 'not' replace the 1st generation thermal imagers the most likely war appeared to be in the European theater, with much shorter engagement ranges. Therefore, a better image quality wasn't much of a bonus, except on live fire ranges where you had less than stellar heating for targets in night fire exercises (like, tin cans with a burning lump of coal in them, hoping that it would somehow magically heat up the canvas of the target, which they usually failed to do).

 

Note that the M1s with the "bad" thermal imagers still kicked ass in Desert Storm. The M60A3s may have beat them in shooting competitions at night, but ultimately that wasn't a very relevant metric to predict combat performance. My conclusion is that the decision to spare the taxpayer the expense of 1.75 billion dollars was a good decision.

[TSe419E]

It was inexplicable in that they were putting M60A3s into service before they started manufacturing the M1s.  So why didn't they switch to the better sight when there were only a few in existence?

[Ssnake]

I can only speculate here, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was because the design was locked down for the M1 and they were contractually bound by it. The question is whether industry was willing and able to switch the TI while maintaining the same dimensions, power supply and signal interfaces, and possibly have the whole system re-certified or whatever (and if the Army was willing to bear the costs, and possibly delay the introduction of the M1; keep in mind that everybody was more than five years behind schedule because of the MBT-70 fiasco; the replacement of the 1960s era tanks (M48, Leopard 1) was deemed necessary to counter the threat of the new Soviet tank designs (and rightfully so)).

 

Military procurement of new systems isn't something that you just grab off the shelf and sort it out after the check-out. One could argue that there's an incredible amount of red tape that has accumulated over the decades. One could, however, also make the case that all that red tape exists for a reason, because of experiences made in previous procurements that went wrong in some way.