Whisky-Delta

and is only limited by it's relatively high cost (DU is essentially 'free' being a waste product from nuclear power enrichment processes, while W is scarcer more universally useful (excellent machine tool material for cutting hard materials).

At the raw material costs, yes this is true, however various reports on the DTIC website suggest that through life cost comparison between WA and DU actually make them virtually the same due to the "clean up" costs, special handling and machining of the rounds, disposal of DU but also the high scrap value of WA. After writing a report on the mater i am also less convinced about the whole "environmental" and political argument against DU. Yes it is radioactive but to such a low level it can be handled safely, but also research has been published whereby if Tungsten is absorbed into soft tissue (tested on rats) then it leads to cancerous growths as problematic as potential DU ingestion. This coupled with the fact DU can be recovered on a battlefield or training area by the use of radiation detection devices, a luxury Tungsten does not offer, so arguably WA actually leads to "dirtier" battlefields....

i digress, but it is interesting, that it appears its just a niave view that "Its radioactive!!!..... we are all going to sprout 3 heads and die slowly" that is forcing DU out.

Whisky

At the risk of dragging up another discussion about the performance of the charm 3 round and it's depiction in SB I do have some observations/ questions. Firstly I would like to point out I do understand SB implementing of charm 3 and all rounds for that matter are based on as much credible information as is available and best guess, that being said...here I go.

1. Below is extract from SB ammunition data wiki

120mm L30: L27 CHARM3 3500 510 1675 1999

120mm L30: L28 3500 510 1670 2000s

So my first question is why does the l27 and l28 have the same penetrative value? One is a tungsten training round and the other is the core round designed for CR2 and most research I have read suggests du had around 10% greater armour piercing capability. These are credible sources as I have just used them for an essay submission for my MSC but I don't have them to hand right now, will dig them out if this statement is viewed as nonsense

2. Another extract from the ammunition table, this time for a 1980's 105mm L7 round

105mm L7: CMC105 3500 520 1501 1980s

While I couldn't find much info about this specific round it does seem curious a 105mm round developed in the 1980's for a tank gun 2 generations behind the L30 had the same penetrative value yet at a lower velocity?

3. Again.....This time of the German dm33 round which as a best guess appears to be around the same size pentrator size ad charm 3....I could be wrong though.

120mm RM: DM33 (L44) 3500 600 1650 1987

120mm RM: DM33 (L55) 3500 660 1710 1987

But again it seems curious a tungsten based round fired from a lower caliber weapon (44 calibre versus 55 of the L30)system outperforms charm 3 by such a margin, especially when there is 20 years between the rounds. I know rifling is said to loose an element of pressure due to gases escaping around the round in the barrel but some experts (i know it is a cop out but i would rather not say who and where i spoke to them on a public forum) suggest this would only equate to 1% loss in velocity.

Yet the dm53 round which due to its length would potentially weigh more and surface area is greater so drag coefficient would be higher. Is the data in SB Pro therefore assuming pressures in the gun barrel and propellant technology of charm 3 is far lower than the dm53 by such a margin?

Please do not think this is a flame against eSim or questioning your competency. ...far from it!! I know data on these sorts of things are hard to get solid information on and not biased opinion, but with the data that is present in the ammunition data tables and the high level facts such as du versus wa and effects of higher calibre weapon systems on these rounds etc it just appears to me there is some "inconsistency". I say it in speech marks as while it may appear to be inconsistency to me, it could very well be reasons for that.

I know it is easy to get hung up on these headline figures when in reality it is not as clear cut as velocity and rhae performance = probability of kill versus vehicle x but it's the information we have to hand right now

Regards

Whisky

Yes sorry Gui. ....sometimes auto complete text catches me out :bigsmile:

Cheers for the info, will give it a try, hopefully tommorow night but thinking my MSC essay on long rod penetrators may take precedence over SB. ..not all bad though :bigsmile:

Whisky

Aaaah. ...was not aware of such a thread and yes it seems it has already been mentioned.

Curious however that it was mentioned quite some time ago and yet hasn't been fixed? !

Whisky

Cheers for the response

Trying to guess what this will do...I assume I would change the language in the options but through copying everything except the voices folder all the guy and briefings remain in English but just the voices change to what language I set?

Whisky

Hello

After playing a few hours of SB I noticed that if you play the quick mission in the challenger 2, the commander loads smoke when in fact he should load hesh .

I have been getting around the problem but jumping to the tc position change the round in the breech (I know...bad practice) and back to gunner but I thought I would see if anyone else gets this issue?

Whisky

Evening

It only occurred to me today that if I set the language in SB to UK I get British voices and order commands. The same if I set it to US English but also if I change languages to German or Russian you get the correct lingual for a given vehicles usage and country of operation which is great.

The downside is the fact the language in the sum changes which means I can't understand briefings and I have not navigate through memory.

As the sound files already exist what would the possibility be of extracting the sound files of the commands and associating them with specific vehicles and put them in the mod/fx folder for example. That way I can keep the English language in the guy but have appropriate lingual for a given vehicle?

Whisky

Like I said, it is meant to slightly more representative than using a joystick, so while I appreciate what you are saying in regards to the pressure as opposed to movement of the thumb stick and resolution may be lower, I doubt the resolution of the thumb stick is much lower than my £10, 5 year old joystick Which I Can Track Targets Very Smoothly. obviously due to the height differential between the joystick and thumb stick means it is easier to make small corrections but again when using a joystick in SB you only ever use the first 20% ish of full axis movement and the remainder if you need to spend the turret round double time.

So while I appreciate the x360 controller may not be as accurate as the real thing or the controller you mention, I am sure there is a settings which can be adjusted so instead of using of the thumb stick to maximum torrent traverse being a 1 to 1 relationship, I can reduce the sensitivity so 100 axis movement of the stick equates to half the turret traverse speed, resulting in more precision.

I just can't find a third party tool to enable that, xpadder notionaly can but it seemed to make no difference in my test.

Regards

Whisky

Hello

As titled I am attempting to reduce the controller sensitiviry for controlling the main sights. I have essentially bought an xbox 360 game pad with the intent of using for a slightly more realistic representation of the challenger 2 grip. However, I have calibrating the game pad but when in steel beasts it is just too sensitive. I tried with more practice but it was impossible to smoothly track targets and find that I only end up moving the thumb stick within 20% of its extents as beyond that you rotate the turret/ sights far faster than is use able. I can't see anything inside steel beasts to adjust such a setting and I did try x ladder 5.3 but from what I can see it has made no difference.

Any ideas? Any one tried using a psi controller on the pc?

Regards

Whisky

Found the source of my info and it is correct the SB Pro CR2 is already modeled as the 74 ton combat weight

http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbforums/showthread.php?t=18881&page=4

Just scroll down to Ssnake post, the wiki must be out of date

It seems originally when released it was an error and modeled at the 62.5 tons but has since been rectified.

So CR2 commander are you suggesting a current 1200bhp engine and gearbox CR2 was compared to a MTU 1500bhp equipped CR2 and the original came out on top?

Whisky

BTW, The Challenger 2 TES weighs 74,84 metric tons.:gun:

I think that is the same weight as the current version of the CR2 in SB Pro is it not? I'm sure I read that in the "challenger 2 any good thread" but I could be wrong

I don't think we are far off Mark with current game engine technology. That's why I love Unity, it's so cheap and easy to design content for and with the correct shades like "hard surface" shades or marmoset content can look really good. I personally love making a 3d model which is actually a really low polycount but through the use of normal, spec, gloss and reflection maps, it looks very high poly.

Off topic has anyone tried the the "Spin Tyres" demo? I advise you all too if you have not. While the graphics are good the terrain deformation and physics is just like nothing else. I am not often "blown away" by games any more as most just focus on amazing graphics which is impressive up to a point.....This on the other hand....

http://spintires.com/#!/demo

Dare I say "imagine that in SB Pro!!"

Whisky

Thanks Defawolf, great info

Whisky

Out of curiosity, do the projects you complete for work run into the 20-30k polygon range and use 4096 textures?

Depends...when developing content for Unity or VBS2 which are quite up to date engines then yes. If that said model is one of the focal points of the simulation/ visualisation.

if however the model is for more legacy systems or software that uses Openflight, or the model is more clutter than the focal point, then it would most likely be less in polygons and texture res.

now a days polygon count and texture resolution is just pub talk numbers. Its more important to structure your models and textures to reduce the number of draw calls or state changes as modern gpu's can compute 10s of millioms of triangles per frame and many hundreds of megs of textures. However a scene/ model of just a few thousands could bring fps crashing down if model and texture design is not thoight out. Such as it can be more beneficial in some cases to have a higher res texture and have one than have multiple lower res textures etc Also its worth noting the polycount of the model is not the "on card" polycount of the model when it is rendered. This is because hard or smooth edges as well as uv splits also affect the end result of the models performance at run time, but rhis is a whole other discussion

End of the day it is down to the specific application and target hardware/ software the model is intended for and it needs to be designed appropriately. For my "hobby" CR2 I chose roughly those design targets, for a SB Pro model I imagine it would be different hut that would be why I would liase with the eSim developers as I have no experience with the SB Pro core software.

Hope this answers your question

Whisky

Everything is possible, however.........

from my perspective as a hobbyist Steel Beasts player, and the fact while i am professionally a 3D Modeller, doing tanks is again purely Hobby (my company is more air focused), so it is a case of of whether i have enough time, but also enough passion to pursue it through to the end. I do for the CR2 TES version, but i am planning on doing something different after that, say a Foxhound, MLRS or a M1A2 Tusk 2, so i shall i have to see.

From eSim (Ssnake's) perspective, correct me if i am wrong, but for a hobbyist to do the art content, there is no guarantee on quality or timely delivery and the eSim guys may need to spend extra up paid time getting the model implemented and working and that's even if the model is spot on as per their requirements. If there are problems, the time can increase exponentially.

The alternative is for a paying military customer to request the content to be modelled, which will be unlikely for the Chieftain and CR1 due to the number, or lack of countries who use them. Also bear in mind both CR1 and Chieftain have drastically different FCS's than CR2 and i imagine this is where the lion share of the eSim developers time lies when implementing a new model.

Not trying to burst your bubble, but just being honest. I was thinking from the perspective of the CR2 TES, it could just be a model swop, but ideally armour values will need to be adjusted and the functionality of the RWS implemented which i imagine is no small task.

Whisky

Cheers for the positive comments guys.

Ssnake - Absolutely, these are renders of my High Res model that will be used for Ambient Occlusion and Texture Baking only and not for the real time model. I have yet to properly start the low res, real time model.

The model in those renders is in excess of 10 million polygons with 2 levels of sub division so by no means real time.

The low res model, i havnt decided yet but may be around 20k - 30k triangles, but i will just see how it goes.

Texture wise, planning on 2 atlases, 1 x 4096 for hull, turret and basically everything except the tracks, then 1 x 512 or 1024 for the tracks, so basically 2 textures in total. I will then create normal maps, spec maps and gloss maps and use when applicable in different engines. E.g. Vega Prime and Openflight will just be diffuse, Unity will use all the bells and whistles.

EDIT: Thought i would clarify also, while this may be a hobby project, i do 3D modelling as my profession in a Simulation and Training Team

Regards

Whisky

Another couple:

"]"] "]

Hello

As promised, re hosted renders of my High Res CR2 to give you an idea.

"] "]"]

Without hijacking the thread any further, as promised please see the link to my Challenger 2 TES

http://www.military-meshes.com/forum/showthread.php?3512-Challenger-II-High-Poly

Keep an eye on the progress if your interested and hopefully I can finish it to a point whereby myself and eSim can talk further

Regards

Whisky

Fair comments ssnake

What I propose therefore is for me to get further along the modelling phase and then touch base with you via email to determine a way forward.

Once high res is done and the low res done to my specification, then I contact you guys to see how it should be changed to meet your criteria. Without knowing too much about the process of adding a model into SB Pro (have vs experience if there are any similarities) the majority of the software model is already available for the CR2 tes version. Would need some armour value updares/ guesses but hardest part I imagine would be implementing the loaders rws station. I think the enforcer rws is already modelled physically and in software but I wouldn't make an assumption it is a copy paste, add a few semicolons and syntax adjustments and hit compile!

Shall be in touch or if I can wing it, see you at ITEC

Whisky

Hi guys

Just found this thread and I have a request from a different perspective.

I for one would love the CR2 in "Megatron" or more formally TES guise. As a 3d modeller myself, and I am currently modelling this variant of CR2 could we explore the possibility of me providing the model to eSim for intergration into SB Pro?

As I work in a simulation and training team I understand the effort required to Integrate a New Model Into a simulation system but I would like to explore the possibility of me providing the "art" side of things.

I am currently 80% Wylam through the high res model and low res model is 40% complete. If this is possible then I would love to get a dialogue going between nose, defawolf and ssnake as I would need to ensure the low res model has appropriate level of triangles, number of LOD's, texture resolutions, texture numbers etc to ensure the model structure is appropriate for SB but also at least looks common with existing vehicles.

Let me know your thoughts

When I have updated my mil meshes thread I will post the link here

Regards

Whisky

Hi Guys

been away from SB Pro for a while, but i have now updated and i am in the process of getting back into it.

However i began delving into the tutorials (i have in fact only checked Leopard 2E GAS Gunnery) and found a bug whereby all the enemy fight back and the other friendly units engage the enemies in the scenario. I can only assume this is the case with all the tutorials and not that i just picked the only dud one....although i could be wrong..i just didnt have time to test further

Has anyone else encountered this issue? Is this a known issue planning to be fixed or will i have to copy all the .sce files into "my scenarios" manually change them all and copy them back?...tedious to say the least

Regards

Whisky

is that not just a massive limitation? All this money has been ploud into the "TUSK" addon armour, RWS etc, but no investment into a TIM for the TC?

cmon MoD!

Whisky

Hello

As there is not an "off topic" thread here on the forums, i thought i would post my question here.

Now i used to the idea that in Leopard, Abrams, Leclerc etc, in their latest guises have commanders independant thermal viewers. So the turret can be looking one way with the gunner using his thermal sight, while the TC is scanning in another arc, also with TIM. The following is an extract from the frapdo website, a good armour info source.

The commander has a Gyrostabilized site, model VS 580-10, from SFIM Industries of France. The upper unit of the VS 580, containing the Gyrostabilized panoramic sight and electronics, is mounted on the turret roof. A neodinium yttrium aluminium garnet, Nd:YAG, laser rangefinder is incorporated into an intermediate assembly which joins the upper unit to a lower telescope assembly inside the turret. The telescope assembly houses the optical viewing system, hand controls, electronics and the sight stabilization system. The sight provides all round vision without the commander having to move his head. The elevation range is plus or minus 35 degrees. The field of view with x 3.2 magnification optics is 16.5 degrees, and with x 10.5 magnification optics, the field of view is 5 degrees.

A thermal imager, the Thermal Observation and Gunnery Sight II, TOGS II, from Pilkington Optronics of Glasgow, UK, provides night vision. The sensor is the UK TICM 2 thermal imager. The imager is mounted inside an armoured barbette above the gun. An on-board compressor and gas bottle pack provide cooling for the imager. Symbols are overlaid on the thermal image to show the aiming marks and system status data. The thermal image, with magnification x 4 and x 11.5 is displayed in the gunner's and commander's sights. The thermal image is also displayed on relaxed-viewing monitors in the commander's and gunner's stations.

The gunner has a stabilized Gunner's Primary Sight, GPS, from Pilkington Optronics of Glasgow, UK. The sight consists of a sight body with a visual sighting channel, a head unit with a stabilized aiming mirror, a 4 Hz neodinium yttrium aluminium garnet Nd:YAG laser rangefinder and a display monitor with a monocular eyepiece. The laser rangefinder with wavelength 1.064 microns, operates over the range 200 meters to 10 kilometers. The range accuracy is plus or minus 5 meters and the discrimination is 30 meters The gunner is also equipped with a reversionary mode telescope, model L30, from Nanoquest, mounted coaxially with the main gun.

Now this seems to suggest that in the case of the Challenger 2, the commanders independant sight is a daysight alone, with no TIM capeability, and it is the TOGS II system mounted over the guns manlet that provides the thermal capeability to the gunner and commander on a seperate display. Does this therefore mean in the British Army's version of the Challenger the commander has no indepedant TIM capeability like al other western contemporary TC's?

I believe this was a an addition to the Challenger 2E, but i am sunsure, as sources mix information.

On a final note, does anyone know what that status of fitting Challenger 2 with the L55 Rheinmetal smoothbore is. All info seems to dry up after 2006.

Regards

Whisky

I must say i have very variable frame rates with my system.

XPS 420

EVGA 260 GTX

Q6600

4GM RAM

300gb RAID 0 Hard Drives

I went into the graphics setting and ramped up the details setting to 100 for all three sliders, in the belieif becuase i ca handle Crysis Warhead and High detail settings, at 1680x1050 i would never see the frame drop below 60fps. Also with it being simulation software desgined for the military (who notriously have accient computers) i thought it would fly. However i found in some mission i was dipping to around 5 - 10fps.

I have since juggled around the slidders and now i dont go below 25 - 30 but i just find it a bit supprising.

I running 190.38 driver, FYI, but so you know with the frame being sorted it doesnt detract from the pure quality of the sim, but i thought i would post my findings.

Regards

Whisky

to bw honest i am amazed about the negative remarks made about the AI. Codemasters, more than any other game developer, hyped the AI to be something ground breaking and amazing. It was pretty much the only thing that Ian Hislop?!?! talked about, that and the new ego engine.

When the demo is released i will try it out.

Regards

Whisky