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My new Toy!


DanTDBV

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2052912670_Leopard1A5Gunnertrainer.thumb.jpg.1acfa5974c038e48e43dbab32c460c58.jpg

 

 

An early Danish Army Leopard 1A3 Gunner trainer/simulator turret placed in a standard turret maintenance platform.

 

It has been set up with a PC running Steel Beasts Pro PE, with a screen at the Gunner’s station, and using the real existing Leo 1A5 Gunner Grip as the controller.

 

I wish that it was mine, but it is a part of the collection of The Guard Hussar Regiment Veteran Armor and Vehicles Union www.ghrvpk.dk

The turret was placed in Nymindegab and was slated to be scrapped, but was instead donated to the GHRVPK collection.

It is now used for letting kids of all ages, including me, trying out aspects of the Leopard 1A5, at open houses and other events. It has become my enjoyable job to handle this.

 

I am currently working on some controller layout and instruction pictures and intend to create a history plaquette for it also.

I also have Steel Beasts Pro PE at home.

 

My first post here.

 

Have a nice weekend

Edited by DanTDBV
I got new information about the simulator.
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That was the solution I saw on all similar trainer concepts. Much easier to fit a flatscreen in front of the doghouse. You just need to seal the gap with tape to block scatter light. No changes to the turret layout/construction are necessary.

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5 hours ago, DanTDBV said:

An early Danish Army Leopard 1A5 Gunner trainer/simulator. ... it is a part of the collection of The Guard Hussar Regiment Veteran Armor and Vehicles Union www.ghrvpk.dk

Couldn't find it on your homepage (maybe because my Danish is a bit rusty) - where is your collection located?

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11 hours ago, Gibsonm said:

Welcome,

 

That's a good crew procedural trainer.

 

I suspect the Gunner's seat is a bit cramped with the screen on the inside?

 

Or do you mean its attached on the outside and you look through the sight to see the screen?

Thank you very much.

 

Pretty much everything except the gunner grip has been stripped out. The screen sits where the sights where. It is very bare and it is only the Palmswitches, Lase, Dynamic Lead and Fire buttons on the grip that are used. The keyboard controlling the PC is behind where the TC seat would be.

It does nicely accommodate kids from 4 to 125. For the younger kids I disable the palmswitches, as it is impossible or very uncomfortable, for them to reach the other switches.  

 

I am considering making a switch/button box, that makes it possible to use the thermal sight and magnification, but since I limit a stint when there is a line to 4 to 5 kills, it may not be necessary. On the other hand when there are no guests, I can sit down and play around to.☺️ I do have access to 4 other Leopard 1A5's, so I will be doing something for my home setup.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 5 weeks later...

On Tuesday 19/11-2019 I had my first gunner scenario up and running in the GHRVPK Leopard 1A3 turret.

 

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It somehow gives something extra when you are pulling around the handle from the real deal.

 

A cold experience too, as the turret is in an unheated garage. But it was fun!

Edited by DanTDBV
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On 5/11/2020 at 1:23 AM, Toxzic said:

freakin awesome! does the manual traverse/elevation wheel works with the sim?

Yeah it is! Nope. They are not hooked up and they will not be. As Ssnake says they could be, but since they would never really be used in this setup it would be a waste of time and effort. 

 

 At this point the player only has the Gunners grip to work with. 

I do plan on creating a button box for changing, Turret rotation speeds, Sightranges, TIM on/off and TIM states.

For my home setup I will probably make one with a more full set of controls.

 

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After a long Covid-19 hiatus, things are happening again.
 

For a long time I have been fighting to get the PC running with 3 screens and I was not getting any responce from the big screen hanging on the back.

As luck would have it we got a 32" TV in donation for the sim, so now that has replaced the troublesome one on the back and is ready to hook up.

 

Finally i have found out why I have not been able to get 3 screens to work. There are 2 reasons. The GPU sporting 4 outputs only supports 2 screens at the time. The mainboard support onboard Graphics but the CPU does not have it.

 

I have now bought a PCIEx1 GEFORCE GT710 that also support 2 screens. PCIEx1 as that is the only available socket left on the board.

Now that I have the option of 4 screens, I intend to have 2 running with the Gunners view. The one at the Gunners station and one on the back of the turret. This will be the Host. The other 2 will be running with the external view. One inside and the other on the back of the turret. The one inside will be for hooking up the client to run the external view.
I will handle the screens with Actual Windows Manager.

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On 1/7/2020 at 2:23 PM, Marko said:

That's just Friggin cool.

All you need now is a way to simulate a hit to the tank. LoL

Well, they are not shooting back, so that would be a waste of time, but I understand what you are getting at.☺️

I have disabled opponent shootback as the Player Tank dies way to quickly and it takes a lot of time to restart.
 

It is used for entertaining our guests and if there is a line, each will only get 5 hits or 5 shots depending on how many are in line.

The hotseat controls only includes the gunners grip at the moment and I only use Pause/Unpause for swapping guests and Stop/Continue the route for instruction guests.

 

I have yet to figure out if it is possible to make the Player Tank invincible. I have been to busy with other stuff to ask about it in here, but it would be great as it would add some more environment.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Status report:

Tuesday 14 days ago I got the system up and running with 4 screens. 2 on the inside with one running the Gunners view and the other showing the external view and the 2 outside showing those same views. The external view shows some lack and stuttering, especially when there are explosions. I am not surprised at that as the PC only had 4 GB ram but the PC is certainly showing its age.

 

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I will bend the mounts for the top screen so that it will no longer get the glare.

 

It is nice to get entertainment while working. These 2 passed by while I was testing and oh how I love those sounds. 

 

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I have gotten 4 GB ram more and and after a very long hard fight, with putting in and pulling out rams and graphics card multiple times, I finally got it running with all 8 GB ram.

 

I was standing with my left foot on the horizontal bar on the lover middle right

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And I was resting my right knee either on the lover egde facing us between the wires and the bolthead or behind the bolthead in the space behind the fence. It is the worst place I have ever done PC maintenance. The knee is still sore.

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But!

 

Now the behind top screen is not getting any signal! Blargh!

 

I have tried replugging it multiple times and finally I gave up. It is plugged into a DisplayPort and this is the 6. I have had trouble with. 2 on one of my main GFX cards and 3 on the other at home and now this. All 5 at home was randomly loosing signal so the screen would just randomly turn black and sometimes it would blink on and off. I really hate Displayports.

I will try to solve it by trying a DVI to HDMI cable on Sunday.

 

With regards to getting the player tank to be invulnerable while the enemy is shooting at it. I could not get Enemy tank as impotent to work. They would just sit there and ignore the player tank.

The closest I have gotten is activating Repair all and Revive. However at certain times with multiple hits or heavier weapons the tank will be destroyed and the player will be put into external view. I have partially solved that by setting certain units to not shoot back. Especially helicopters. I have also done my best to stop infantry from appearing when enemy units are hit, but sometimes they still appear.

Fortunately I can work with it. so as long as we are running this old version on this relic of a PC, I will not do much about it. The entertainment value is still great and the setting we have here raise the experience to a whole new level.

 

I had 2 trying it the other day and they had a great time and boy did they catch on quick. An unexpected bonus with the exterior view screen inside the turret, was that the one waiting was helping the one in the hotseat with finding targets. 

 

Thank you so very much eSim Games for creating this great sim.

Happy Simming

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