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Playable Challenger 2?


Iceman

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There is a correction mode for long range HESH engagements where you enter the observed point of impact into the fire control system, the intended point of impact, and it then computes a new firing solution from that information ... sort of "forward artillery observer mode with integrated gun".

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There is a correction mode for long range HESH engagements where you enter the observed point of impact into the fire control system, the intended point of impact, and it then computes a new firing solution from that information ... sort of "forward artillery observer mode with integrated gun".

Not compatible with TIS I assume?

The gun elevation just throws thermal sight off-target.

Maybe I was wrong to try to use HESH at all with TIS?

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Not compatible with TIS I assume?

The gun elevation just throws thermal sight off-target.

Maybe I was wrong to try to use HESH at all with TIS?

Well from what I've seen (and caveat - I'm not CR2 qualified) the CR's TIS is mounted on the mantlet and therefore appears to move with the gun.

For "flat" APFSDS engagements that's fine.

For HESH engagements where you need to apply a fair bit of elevation for long ranges it would seem problematic as you then elevate the gun (and TIS with it) to achieve the required range.

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Not compatible with TIS I assume?

The gun elevation just throws thermal sight off-target.

Another thing waiting to get fixed. If I remember it correctly, what happens in real life is that the gun remains artificially depressed/decoupled from the firing solution, and moves to the right position only when the trigger is pulled.

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By the way, if British MoD didn't want eSim near its precious chally, where did you record its main gun sound?

By far CR2 main gun firing sound is most... um... aesthetically appealing of the bunch.

CR2 is slow, bulky, punches rather weak, fires rounds in golf-ball trajectory against moving targets (HESH), and sports an Achilles' heel on no other than its center mass. (Well, at least smaller than Soviet tanks I guess)

But there is something very appealing to this tank.

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By the way, if British MoD didn't want eSim near its precious chally, where did you record its main gun sound?

By far CR2 main gun firing sound is most... um... aesthetically appealing of the bunch.

CR2 is slow, bulky, punches rather weak, fires rounds in golf-ball trajectory against moving targets (HESH), and sports an Achilles' heel on no other than its center mass. (Well, at least smaller than Soviet tanks I guess)

But there is something very appealing to this tank.

This is what happens when you go tank shopping on a budget. :biggrin:

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By the way, if British MoD didn't want eSim near its precious chally, where did you record its main gun sound?

Can't speak about the sound. And it's not as if we have been totally stonewalled either. It's just that we haven't received the kind of support that is given by our army customers because so far the MoD is no customer.

I'll spare you a rant about the experiences that we made with them so far. It's not going to change anything. Let me just say that it's sad to see them doing the same costly mistakes over and over, and seemingly never learning anything from it. The lost opportunities are mind bending. I'm not sour grapes because we lost a competition. We weren't even given the chance to compete even at times when we had a product off the shelf that was leaps and bounds better than what the MoD pursued (that was in pre VBS days).

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I thought that's what most militaries usually do, instead of spending money on great products, spend excessive amounts of money on cheap products with a large price tag so they can lau... er, distribute money to uh... other projects.

everyone is complaining about it, nobody is doing anything about it.

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Not compatible with TIS I assume?

The gun elevation just throws thermal sight off-target.

Maybe I was wrong to try to use HESH at all with TIS?

Actually this IS correct behavior.

The confusion comes from that we THOUGHT the gun stays depressed in TI, only elevating when the trigger is pulled. This is wrong - a misconception on our part actually. We were assuming it worked this way because it made more sense to us (in all of our infinite tank experience) but it turns out the actual tank, well, doesn't have to make sense.

On the actual Challenger 2, when you have HESH ammunition indexed, the gun sight actually DOES elevate to the point that you cannot see anything. The problem though, from SB's perspective, is that we need to model proper long range HESH engagement procedure, and this involves modelling ADD/DROP button.

Straight from the horse's mouth, what happens on the real tank (this is summarized) is the target is lased and the gun raises. Target and reticle drops off the bottom of the screen (at long range) and a special message is displayed "LONG RANGE HESH - FIRE". The gunner fires (not seeing the target mind you) and the gun drops after firing so that he can see the fall of the shot. The shot will be off target, just like it is in game currently, due to parallax mostly I imagine (so this is also correct in SB also) and he presses ADD/DROP to adjust to where the actual impact was, then he repeats this procedure again, and again as required. Apparently the fire control system compensates for the ADD/DROP button presses, so that HESH engagements are more like indirect artillery fire, so to speak (walk the fire onto target).

So what SB lacks, is this ADD/DROP button / long range HESH behavior. You can bypass this currently by engaging targets in daysight with HESH (no sight parallax and no dealing with sight elevating).

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By far CR2 main gun firing sound is most... um... aesthetically appealing of the bunch.

Thanks. Actually the sound was reproduced by ear, mostly. I have an old VHS to DVD converted video that was recorded on the Challenger 2 gunnery range, and the maingun sound was reproduced as faithfully as possible from that video. I took some elements from the video and mixed the rest (for sweeteners as they say), editing it until it sounded "about right". All new internal maingun sounds are coming though -- high quality recordings with very nice condenser mics. ;)

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Wow. That's pretty fascinating info re the TIS. Any idea as to why they placed the TIS where it is? It just seems like an inferior solution for a modern tank. I can think of at least a couple of occasions where we felt it necessary to lase a different part of the terrain than the target itself to get a solid reading - I suppose that is not practically possible with the TIS in the Challenger?

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it's probably done to reduce parralax. on most western tanks, there's a fairly large parallax between the main gun/coax and gunners primary sight.

on the challengers Thermal there's zero horizontal parallax between main gun and sight, and negligible horizontal parallax between coax and Thermal.

this makes it easier to aim the rounds horizontally since the rounds go where you point.

try shooting the coax in the leopard 2A4, going from close range (>200m) to medium range and then the challenger, and you'll see what i mean.

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I'm not convinced that those issues can't be corrected by the computer, I've never experienced parallax as a major issue as long as the GPS was working. I'd be more worried about losing view of the target. I get the idea about shorter range engagements, but I've never experienced that as a real issue unless we were talking about excessively short ranges. Besides, the parallax benefits will only apply to the TIS, AFAIK - the issue would still be there in the day channel.

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I'm not convinced that those issues can't be corrected by the computer, I've never experienced parallax as a major issue as long as the GPS was working. I'd be more worried about losing view of the target. I get the idea about shorter range engagements, but I've never experienced that as a real issue unless we were talking about excessively short ranges. Besides, the parallax benefits will only apply to the TIS, AFAIK - the issue would still be there in the day channel.

i'm not making an argument that it can't be corrected by a computer, or that it's superior to

a more standard configuration, i'm making a deduction on the thought process that could have lead to the current configuration of the challengers optics.

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Any idea as to why they placed the TIS where it is?

...or maybe they wanted to maximize armor protection and decided to keep the thermal sight in an exterior housing. Why they didn't move it into a doghouse like on the Abrams however escapes me. Maybe the TIS wasn't supposed to be part of the tank in the original concept, and was added only later, and they wanted to avoid the costs and delays that an integrated sight would have caused, so they tacked it onto the mantlet where, most of the time, it would be useful. Maybe they thought that the crews wouldn't do these long range HESH engagements in the first place, or maybe they though that the TIS was used mostly for target detection but not for gunnery.

Who knows. None of these reasons sounds utterly convincing, but I'm running out of explanations that are at least remotely reasonable.

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it's probably done to reduce parralax. on most western tanks, there's a fairly large parallax between the main gun/coax and gunners primary sight.

on the challengers Thermal there's zero horizontal parallax between main gun and sight, and negligible horizontal parallax between coax and Thermal.

this makes it easier to aim the rounds horizontally since the rounds go where you point.

try shooting the coax in the leopard 2A4, going from close range (>200m) to medium range and then the challenger, and you'll see what i mean.

Hmm, well, the mistake might be to assume that there was actually any thought process behind where the TI was mounted. I don't think it can be for reasons of parallax, because it causes parallax with the LRF (mounted in the GPS housing) and the TIS (mounted above the gun) which is what generates *at least some* of the error in the long range HESH engagements. So yes, it does reduce parallax with the gun but increases it with the LRF, which is much worse IMO because if the LOS and LRF doesn't line up exactly then you will get error in long range a long range lase.

Personally I think they just bolted it on where it could fit, and apparently bolting it on the side of the turret of the CR1 wasn't such a great idea, I suppose. I am sure modern advances in technology can allow it to be placed inside now since TI imagers are quite small now (think of the TI sights added to the Warrior and Scimitar now), but they probably will never spend the $$$ to do it.

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I am sure modern advances in technology can allow it to be placed inside now since TI imagers are quite small now (think of the TI sights added to the Warrior and Scimitar now), but they probably will never spend the $$$ to do it.

Well the MOD (I read on here) buy the "Base Model" of vehicle.

So the army probably specified the TIS system as a requirement after the vehicle was designed, and the sensor placement over the barrel is probably more protected from being taken out by a passing German lorry than as on the Challenger 1. (The MOD works in weird ways.)

In reference to your question V man, the sensor is about the same size as the TIS on the TOW, Milan, Bill etc. missiles.

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