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SB Pro PE 4.1 New Features (and stuff)


Ssnake

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3 minutes ago, Viper1970 said:

Really? And how does this update cost for owners of the previos version? Do you have to use a new codemeter stick or will this also be updated?

I have 4.023 and I expect to be paying.

 

The update usually is about $40 as mentioned here:

 

https://www.esimgames.com/?page_id=1530

 

However Ssnake has indicated that it will be less than that this time (and even less for pre-orders - details TBA).

 

Edited by Gibsonm
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O.k thanks. I also was at the page, but haven't found any information about 4.1.

 

I thought, as I bought the Classic Version, that it includes updates till a new version e.g. 5.xx comes out. Really don't know what the benefit of the classic version now is? Two years time limited license had cost me about 80$, even three years would be 120$.

 

I've paid 125$ for the codemeter version and now once again 40$ for the update. In my time of "not" using it only two free updates appeared 4.019 and 4.023.

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O.k. maybe, but for 2.0 to 3.0 and then to 4.0 it was the procedure. Even an upgrade from 2.5 to 4.023 costs 40$ and now the same for 4.023 to 4.1!

 

Sorry, but in this case I'm really a bit angry. If I had known this earlier I had choosen the time limted version.

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You have to remember that Steelbeasts Pro PE is a product that has had continuous updates and upgrades since it’s release to the public. 

 

Most gaming companies will bring out a “game” that has a life cycle of maybe 1.5 years. The upgrade to that “game” is labeled “game 2”. You get free updates for “game” during it’s life cycle but the upgrades to “game” come in the form of “game 2” and often times cost more than “game” did.  So you pay maybe $70 for “game”, get bug fixes and updates but after so many months “game 2” gets announced and its $80.  

 

Those companies could simply offer it as an upgrade or DLC costing much less, lets say $40 but most times if there’s a new engine involved it’s re-titled, packaged and costs more then it should for max profits. 

 

So although the title for eSims public version of their military trainer stays, the updates and upgrades over the years have improved it to such a level that by now it could be called Pro PE 5 or something and the company could say that you need a new dongle with each name change. 

 

Am I making any sense here?

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1 hour ago, Viper1970 said:

O.k thanks. I also was at the page, but haven't found any information about 4.1.

Haven't gotten around to update the eSimGames.com homepage. Will do so in the coming days.

 

Quote

I thought, as I bought the Classic Version, that it includes updates till a new version e.g. 5.xx comes out. Really don't know what the benefit of the classic version now is? Two years time limited license had cost me about 80$, even three years would be 120$.

The classic license gives you more flexibility in your computer usage, as the license is stored in its own hardware device (so it's truly independent from the computer(s) on which Steel Beasts is installed); last but not least you can have secondary licenses for classic licenses, and you may skip upgrades. Time-based licenses do not only expire after a defined period of usage (obviously) but they are also dependent on the Windows installation. On the other hand, one USB stick less to worry about, particularly if you have a notebook and travel a lot.

Now, the history of Steel Beasts upgrades shows that usually we don't care about the jump in version number. However, the team voted to call version 2.871 (the planned successor to 2.654) "3.0" because they felt it would reflect the overall effort better. Likewise all the work on the new terrain engine that we had invested until 2016 - even if we couldn't include it in the release - justified calling it "version 4.0" even if it was more like version 3.453 or something, purely based on compiler count. But we released version 2.2, and charged for version 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 3.0 (2.8), and 4.0 (3.4); version jumps are getting bigger these days because we develop in multiple branches (all our military classroom users are still on 3.5, nominally). So the version numbers are usually just that, sequential numbers that the compiler assigns to each new build. As an engineer I would have preferred to keep the tradition of absurdly odd version numbers; I'm not a very talented marketing guy.

 

Be it as it may be, I'm sorry if the new version numbers created the impression that there would be free updates until version 5.0 came along. The relevant question for "to pay or not to pay" is how much new content a new release delivers. As such it is a function of time:

Quote

I've paid 125$ for the codemeter version and now once again 40$ for the update. In my time of "not" using it only two free updates appeared 4.019 and 4.023.

In the past we wanted to maintain a pace of releasing an upgrade every 15...24 months; since version 3.0 we're closer to a 36 months release cycle. Like pretty much every software developer eSim Games has mostly fixed costs - the amount of money paid to its developers every month, irrespective of what they are working on. If they fix a bug, they can't create a new feature. If they only create new features, the software will quickly become unusable.

So

  • we'll provide free patches immediately after a new release to fix bugs that were discovered by customers. Ideally all software would be fault free, but that's simply unrealistic for commercial software development beyond a (very) low complexity level. Steel Beasts Pro has more lines of codes than the Windows 3.11 operating system had; there are more complex pieces of software in the wild, but it's nothing to write over a long weekend either.
  • we might also provide updates (=patches with smaller feature updates) if there is an opportunity for that, but also no later than maybe a year after a for-pay upgrade.
  • we'll make you an offer for an upgrade from time to time (as hinted above, every two to three years). Version 4.1 can still be upgraded from version 2.6 without paying extra, that's an eight year-long upgrade policy for owners of the classic license. If you want to skip it, that's fine. But I hope that the quality of our new offer will convince you that it'll be worth it.

 

To bring my argument to a close, here's what I wrote in another thread:

Quote

As far as I am concerned, we have reduced the price of the upgrade from the usual $40.- for a two-year step (which actually took three years) by $10.-, to make good for this slip-up; [a] $15.- [discount] for preorders, as soon as our web shop's ready to take them in. At the same time we completely reworked the lighting ..., we substantially improved the AI (at least as far as pathfinding is concerned), we replaced the old and inaccurate model of high explosives and fragmentation effects ... and we now have a model that can handle thousands of individual fragments, each with different properties, a model that takes account of objects to reflect pressure waves (or not, in the case of hedges).

 

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No changes to be expected for the Challenger.

 

We were once invited for a photo session by the British Army, then they insisted on censoring all photos after the session, rendering them useless. O.o

Why they invited us in the first place is still a mystery to me.

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1 hour ago, Ssnake said:

No changes to be expected for the Challenger.

 

We were once invited for a photo session by the British Army, then they insisted on censoring all photos after the session, rendering them useless. O.o

Why they invited us in the first place is still a mystery to me.

Are you referring to the photo session held at Lulworth in 2001? Images of the open TOGS door and anything that gave an indication of the top armour values were indeed censored, but the rest of the internal and external images complied with the requirements of the security branch.

 

Examples of the censored images attached.

 

Perhaps you are referring to another photo session.

Dcp_0183.jpg

Dcp_0355.jpg

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15 minutes ago, Gibsonm said:

 

I presume you mean these are the "approved" images, not the ones that were censored??

Yes, these are the approved versions. During the photo session, we had to periodically hand the camera over to security, who downloaded the cameras contents onto their laptop. We never had possession of the original images.

 

Although the image of the open TOGS door was seen as sensitive, the RAC recruiting brochure in 2001 had a picture of a CR2 with the TOGS door open. Our POC at Bovington/Lulworth camp sent us this leaflet along with a virtual 3d tour of the CR2 on CD. This CD was given away at recruiting events and was unclassified.

 

http://www.armchair-travel.com/military/

 

I still have a copy of the cd, but I can't get it to run. IIRC, the program has an issue with QT, or something similar.

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16 minutes ago, Rotareneg said:

Yeah, I got this picture a long time ago from that site. I think there are programs than can convert old QTVR stuff into more modern equivalents (html5 for example.)

 

KXlqMRk.png

Which gets us to the next point: can you use it in a commercial product...

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Some - but few - fragments may travel up to several hundred meters. The really dangerous zone starts at about 50m distance from the closest explosion (for 155mm artillery). But if you're in cover (e.g. behind a wall), that can still be relatively safe. With aircraft bombs, at 50m distance the overpressure might still get you.

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26 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

Some - but few - fragments may travel up to several hundred meters. The really dangerous zone starts at about 50m distance from the closest explosion (for 155mm artillery). But if you're in cover (e.g. behind a wall), that can still be relatively safe. With aircraft bombs, at 50m distance the overpressure might still get you.

Basically emulating the RL - who'd have though. ;)

 

Danger Close for a dismounted attack will be further out than Danger Close for troops closed down in APC / IFV.

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On 6/9/2019 at 11:29 PM, Ssnake said:

Memory usage reflects terrain caching; obviously, if free memory is there, we'll utilize it (that's what it's good for, after all). Steel Beasts will adapt, though. If not all of the terrain can fit into memory there will be minor delays when teleporting to distant units. If you remain in one vehicle or just hop to units that are only a few kilometers away, things will be just fine.

Nils, by memory usage you mean RAM or HDD usage? I have 24 Gigs of RAM (DDR3) and I want to ask if its possible to move steel beasts to the SSD and will it matter with heavy missions in terms of stutter? I have GTX 1060 6Gb.

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My remarks about the caching strategy were aimed at RAM (and even 8GB RAM will work just fine). SSDs can help with loading map data, obviously, but you still won't experience stutter if you keep them on a conventional HDD. While I have three SATA-SSDs in my computer, my Steel Beasts maps are stored on a remarkably unremarkable HDD.

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Any changes to helicopters? New types or changes in behavior? Maybe I don't currently know how to use them properly, and get them to act aggressive enough to cause a headache.

 

With the new Anti Air units and weapons, it seems that they are meat on the table now.

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Well, you still need to have suitable weapons in range, of course. Sending them in a massed frontal assault against a battalion of CV90/35s fully loaded with KETF is going to end in a complete disaster. Helicopters are vulnerable to ground attack, after all. At the end of the day however they aren't yet super sophisticated as far as evasive behavior is concerned (like constant changes of flight vector to throw at least long range cannon fire off, launching flares against missiles, etc.), that will remain work for a future upgrade.

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