Gunners Reticle

[Marinevet1812_]

From what I remember as a M1A1 TC gunner was able to turn down the reticle intensity/brightness. Can this be done on this sim? 

[Gibsonm]

You can't adjust the brightness.

 

Pretty sure you can reverse the polarity though.

[Ssnake]

The question is, how many controls to we want the user to fiddle around with. Personally, I think that for selected vehicles we've already gone too far with depth of focus plane shifting in the thermal view, brightness and contrast for some thermal sights, or the brightness of reticules. It's selected in some vehicles (not the M1A1) because Steel Beasts is used in containerized crew simulators, and the changes for these simulators are seeping back into the Personal Edition.

I don't like it because it's distracting the player from the big picture. Now, you could say that this is something he'd have to deal with in real life, but IRL you have two hands and ten fingers and analog switches and dial knobs all around you, and you're four people in that tank and not just one. In Steel Beasts, you have a keyboard, and a mouse. In Steel Beasts, even if you're in the gunner's place you're usually still in the role of tank commander, platoon leader, and maybe even company team leader, and you need to maintain adequate tactical situational awareness. In Steel Beasts, you're in the gunner's place at this moment not just because it's fun, but also to make up for limitations of the AI, at least at times. And now you're confronted with the switchology of a number of different vehicles in your company team with which you have minimal to moderate familiarity.

 

IMO, as far as the Personal Edition is concerned, fewer controls are better. Yes, many of you are veterans of one or two systems simulated in Steel Beasts and you'd like to see more - but even if you're an M1 master gunner and you know everything there is to know your familiarity with the CV90/35 (ah, but which one?) will be minimal, and here we are, today's scenario is a company team of T-72s paired with CV90/30 because it's set in Finland, and all the work you invested last week in learning the Danish CV90/35 doesn't help you.

Maybe, in SB Pro 5.0 we'll make the level of detail configurable. But even then we won't have the same level of detail implemented for every vehicle because some are in and tailored to a specific customer demand, and some are in because we went and added them on our own initiative, to the level of detail with which we felt comfortable/that we had researched at the time of creation. And the M1A1 is our tank #1. The first fire control system we ever created when we were young and didn't know better. And we never had a military customer for it who was interested in the switchology. So it doesn't have these controls, and I think you're better off because of it.