Coupled with new exterior gun sounds:

http://youtu.be/mWrKcjIomKs?hd=1

Watch in HD.

NICE... thx for sharing.

There are still no 3D interiors for the Challenger 2? Just checking as I didn't see them when I tried. Are they in the works?

Unfortunately no 3D interior for the Challenger 2. It seems that the UK MoD does not want any high res pictures of the interior taken by anyone for some reason. Untill then no 3D interior.

Great soundpack Daskal! Thanks for sharing.

Ah right, ok thanks.

The MoD does not want our top secret BV design falling into enemy hands.
Without the tea the British soldier is at a severe disadvantage

Hi All,

The MoD are a bunch of paranoid, tightfisted, penny-pinching, unhelpful f@$%wits.

I know - I used to work for them.

Regards

MTB

I have also jumped into Chally-2 for a recon mission.

It does not have 3D interior, indeed. As for now I decided to play armored vehicles with 3D interiors only because I feel very uncomfortable sitting in..."empty" interior. However I must say Chally-2 has great exterior model and beautiful sound-pack. Its FCS is interesting but not fully modeled (lack of capability to track two stationary targets simultaneously).

Yet what actually shocked me is its crappy APFSDS ammunition! I have seen in Mission Editor that Chally-2 can use two such rounds: L27 (1999)- 500 mm muzzle penetration and L23A1 (1985) - 360 mm muzzle penetration. It must be a mistake because at 2 km distance (typical for most comparisons) those rounds have idiotic performance. I guess L27 can penetrate 400 mm and L23A1 - 250 mm. That's crazy - in Steel Beasts Pro PE Chally-2 has APFSDS ammo comparable to thirty years old 120 mm rounds fired from German smoothbore Rh-120 gun. So in practice Chally-2 can destroy T-55, T-62 and maybe T-72M1 but only firing L27 round. Why the hell would the British Army have fielded such ineffective L27 round in 2000s? After all Chally-2 has L30A1 120 mm L/55 rifled gun and this L27 round has DU penetrator made from alloy imported from the US and possibly identical to this used in M829A2 round. I know L27 is not fixed round which limits its L/D ratio but no way to a such degree of degradation of penetration. I agree L27 can be worse than M829A2, M829A3 and DM53 fired from L/55 gun but I think its penetration at 2 km is about 600 mm. I would credit it as equal to in-game KEW-A1 round.

So is this some SBPro PE bug or so???

You want to read this about the Challenger: Discussion Challenger 2

I have read first two pages - some flame war started then.

I don't want to speak much about Chally-2 armor protection and mobility. I think real Chally-2 armor is very good except its well known weakened zones - you know Chobham and Dorchester are English towns. In SBPro Chally-2 armor protection should be good but I have not tested this aspect so far.
Of course Chally-2 is not daemon of speed. Its engine is rated 1200 HP - a bit weaker than Abrams and Leo-2 engines. Yet Chally-2 is stable firing platform on the move.

What I haver found strange in this linked thread is:

- "the Refleks B is tandem warhead which should only be used against enemy vehicles that have ERA on them, otherwise until ERA/Tandem warheads are improved in SB, there is a huge imbalance" - Is that mean Soviet ERA protection is not modeled in SB Pro in relation to Western multilayer laminated armor while tandem ATGMs are present on both sides? If so, "tactical armor simulator" is not what SBPro is now...very sad!

- "The terminal ballistic model in SB Pro, while good, does not claim to reveal "the truth". It is an approximation, based on publicly available information and "educated guesses"." - I think any logical and educated guess should tell you that Britons would have been crazy if they had introduced in 2000s APFSDS round being equal to German DM23 oldie.

I won't be playing Chally-2 much due to aforementioned reason but please don't make this tank a bozo of SBPro PE. Now it looks like British 1950s vintage 105 mm L7 gun is more powerful than also British 1990s vintage 120 mm L30A1 gun so Britons really got crazy in this game. That's crazy...

Sorry to hear you are disappointed. I love the C2. Its different yes but I like it.

Nothing would be easier than to appease the public by upping the APFSDS ammo performance by 150...200mm. It is not our intent to make the Challenger look worse than it is. But we stand by our estimate. Our model isn't based on popular opinion, but a serious and informed estimation; needless to say that the real figures are a secret, and that our estimates are based on what can be found in more or less obscure public sources.
We have strong hints that the performance is anything but spectacular. Anyone who wants to see it changed should come forth with factual data that is suitable to convince our two independent consultants that the current estimate must be revised. We're not pulling our figures from thin air (or out of a much darker place). Citing some website with a different performance claim which doesn't explain how it came to this published figure is insufficient; likewise we cannot follow arguments that are based on mere opinion, even if they appear rather plausible.

The figures are what they are, like them or not. SB Pro is not a fantasy game but a serious simulation. We try to be as faithful as we can in all our work, to the extent that is economically feasible and still in the realm of legality, and we try to eliminate bias in our work to the best of our abilities. That includes defending highly unpopular numbers like these.


That being said, as engineers we won't stubbornly cling to certain figures if there is evidence that they are wrong; not even if we vigorously defended them in the past before we recognized that we were in error. We are human, and we make mistakes, and hopefully we will always be ready to recognize, admit, and correct our failings. We try to be as forthcoming as we can by documenting the principles and sources of our data (hence the big appendices in the user manual, the SB Wiki, and other forms of electronic documentation). But the onus is on our critics to show that there's more than opinion behind their arguments. I kindly ask to be just as thorough as we are in our work - no more, no less.

I don't buy your explanations - all modern APFSDS performance data are kept secret: British, German, American and so on. In sum all done publicly in this area is a "factual guessing" so other people can tell you that for instance German APFSDS penetration values in SBPro PE are overestimated because many other factual estimations suggest so. As a bottom line if you don't have access to top secret data (or even if you had, you obviously could not disclose them) the only remaining solution is fresh, logical thinking in historical context. Such way of thinking immediately would tell you that 105 mm gun from 1950s firing rounds from early 1980s cannot be better than 120 mm gun from 1990s firing rounds from early 2000s - especially if both guns were made in the same country. That is madness and I'd like to underline it to you. However if you think that's OK, then keep this pure oddity in SBPro. I can only tell if this had been a point Britons would have fitted L7 gun into Chally-2 and purchased M900 rounds technology from the US which obviously is not a case. Yet in SBPro PE still rules your story: "Britons introduced in 1998 new tank capable of fighting T-55, T-62 and early T-72 models only." No way...

I am not affected by your funny vision of Chally-2 with T-62 gun because I do not play it. But I think Chally-2 fans are very disappointed as I have read in this flame thread. They waited long time for playable Chally-2 and got a bozo so I agree with them especially if ERA armor and tandem HEAT warheads modeling in SBPro PE is not top notch, either and ruins advanced Western armor performance by the way.

Let's discuss your problem here.

You really sound like this other joker who made a lot of noise over at the Steel Beasts site recently under the handle Sky Hunter or something who didn't actually own a copy, but contributed a lot of noise. Just came off rather ignorant and then left.

Given: The invitation, the challenge, if you like, to give better data than what Steel Beasts uses has already been laid down to you.

Given: You haven't done this. Nothing empirical has come from you- nothing you can quantify with figures has been offered by you.

Inference: You have none, or you would have done this by now. Further: you won't.

If simply comparing bore diameter and expecting better performance with a larger gun is all you have, your argument fails. There simply isn't a direct one to one correspondence there without taking into account whether made out of different or same materials, the length / diameter ratio of the projectile, the flight characteristics.

Use your brain:

The primary market isn't the consumer market but national armies. Does it make sense that eSim would suppress or obscure the performance of the vehicles they want to sell to potential clients- such as the CR2?

If they are going off the best data available to them, it is implied that you have better. Where is it? Help them out.

The dimensions of most APFSDS penetrators are reasonably well known, e.g. by looking at photos and establishing the rod diameter and projectile length from the surrounding sabot which usually is the only known dimension (=120mm). Of course you're still limited to the pixel resolution of the image (or the grain of the wet film), eventual camera lens distortions, and digital manipulation of the image (e.g. by stretching it subtly).

Still, with these figures at had you can usually establish an upper and lower margin of the perforation performance if you enter the figures at Willi Odermatt's perforation calculator.

For that however you need suitable image material. Care to check how much one can find on the interwebs that allows to make a decent estimation of the various dimensions? I'm not saying that you are wrong, but your argument is based on plausibility alone and doesn't present anything verifiable. The UK MoD is decidedly fuzzy and restrictive with the information that is made public. We have to live with that, and one of the consequences is this debate about our estimate. Again: I welcome any verifiable new information that sheds more light on the issue.



Ah, so we're now casting majority votes about the truth?


You are right - I cannot disclose the basis of our estimate. This is very unfortunate since it obviously undermines the credibility of my arguments. I wish I could tell more. Even then however, there are still alternatives to "fresh, logical thinking in historical context" (not that there's anything inherently wrong with it - except that logic, if not rooted solidly in a factual basis, can easily suspend itself from reality). The alternative is to keep digging for information in archives and other places for more facts that help to establish a solid base for estimations. They can then lead to reviews of the current estimate. I'm all for it.


Again: Our work is not a popularity contest. We try to be as diligent as the surrounding conditions allow us to be. I also don't understand the referenced thread as a flame war. It was a spirited, lively debate where a few users expressed dissatisfaction with various aspects of our model. Most of these cognitive dissonances could be resolved on the pages that you didn't bother to read (per your own statement). One player didn't like the mobility, but we're just using the same mass and engine power output formula that we're using for all other tanks as well, with well established parameters that nobody disputed. Some thought that the Challenger was fragile when in fact it is the by far best protected combat vehicle in SB Pro. One user brought up a Discovery channel clip to refute our model. I tried to analyze the the clip and demonstrated, convincingly I hope, that the model in SB Pro conforms with every single factual statement in the film, and where the film presented mere opinions as facts.

At the end of the day the question is: Is there any better model of the Challenger 2 available in virtual simulations?

Our model may have its weaknesses, but show me where else you can play one without having to make other serious concessions to the overall fidelity. I'm not here to tell you that everything is roses with SB Pro, and that we have reached a state of perfection that elevates us above the criticism of you mere mortals. What I'm telling you is that we keep digging for a better factual grounding, and that we will honestly and critically review our work in the light of new facts. Give me something to work with, and if it casts a new light on the situation, we will adapt. I don't think that anyone who is serious about fidelity in modeling and simulation can offer a better deal.

Charlie 2 is how it is in SBPro Spearfish and I am glad to just be able to 'play' around with one in a sim. Only wish MOD would let you in one for the interiors.

@Kontakt5: Calm down, boy.

@Ssnake:

- so dimensions taken from photos are not any argument because as you pointed out himself there are many optical and graphical problems involved.

- Odermatt and Anderson equations exactly prove that German APFSDS penetration in SBPro PE is overestimated. On the other hand various L27A1 performance estimations are not as low as you believe they are. So no "majority voters truth" is a problem here but your attitude toward German and British APFSDS estimations. On the same ground you believe German ammo is better and British is much worse than equations and other knowledgeable peoples suggest.

- in case you cannot understand what I mean I repeat it last time: If you don't have any hard data about APFSDS ammo performance - which you don't have anyway and your explanations about being unable to disclose some "basis" is a bad excuse at best because reportedly foundation of SBPro PE are open-source data - first thing you should do is to check historical context in a logical manner. That should immediately tell you than L31+L27 combo must be better than L7+DM33 mix. If you think the opposite is a case that's funny and that's all.

- in fact there is no better Chally-2 simulation on the market because there is no other Chally-2 simulation except yours. However that fact does not mean your imagination of Chally-2 is good because many people are very astonished with its ridiculous firepower which is fully understandable, because Chally-2 is not T-62 tank.

That's all what I and possibly other players can tell about current state of Chally-2 made by eSim. Now the only viable solution is to avoid playing it as baseless wasting of time and jangling our nerves until eSim understands they are not right and that's not funny. Fortunately I am not affected by Chally-2 and ERA armor modeling flaws myself not playing vehicles without 3D interiors and enjoying Leo-1A5, Leo-2A4 and Abrams interiors.

Source?


Source?


Mostly open source. But even then not every source is of the same quality.


...you're still resting your entire argument on something that is plausible, but which doesn't jive with our information. I am presented with the challenge to judge whether your admittedly plausible opinion should carry more weight than the facts that we know which however I cannot disclose. There's two possible conclusions that you can draw from it,
a) I'm a biased liar who pulls figures out of thin air just to make the Challenger look bad
b) I'm actually someone who takes pride in his work, who tries to diligently separate wheat from the chaff, and use those arguments that carry the biggest weight as a basis for all estimations.

If you think that option a) is the answer for you - well, I guess there isn't much else that I can say to change your impression. On the other hand, if you have good sources at hand and you're willing to share them with me, you'll see if we are willing to adjust our parameters. Please put me to the test, if you can.


Guess what, we all were astonished, and couldn't believe it at first. Yet the numbers are what they are. As soon as there is a really strong argument (other than "I can't believe this!"), I'll be more than happy to revise the parameters and rid myself of this debate.

Spearfish- you make the assertion over and over again that the model is not correct, and it probably won't be 100 %- there's much to be interpolated from best estimates. The problem you bring to the forum is not only someone who obviously has no better clue, but much worse, since you don't have any data to back it up, but someone on top of it who just comes off obnoxious, you're practically saying that Ssnake can't even logically deduce anything here, and on top of that, is full of bad intentions. Ssnake has a solid reputation, I'm afraid that you don't. The community will give far greater credence to even his assumptions and best guesses in good faith than your blah blah and generalizations. There's nothing I've seen you contribute here that would make me think you have any idea- it just appears that the model doesn't coincide with your expectations, but there's nothing here you've explained to show you have better insights here.

Tanknet, Excel spreadsheets and calculator if you cannot make basic calculations yourself.



Tank Protection Levels



There is no room for "mostly" here - you disclose your source or that's rubbish source because such sources are worthless. Everybody can tell he has super-duper "source" giving fantasy weapon performance but he cannot disclose it unfortunately. Move to publicly available data only or stop selling us unverifiable arguments.



I am afraid now you don't have any facts (aside of "undisclosed facts") but only a strange believing British rounds are so weak. Again, all you way of thinking is false: closed-source data equals no data in game founded on open-source data philosophy because of being sold on civilian market.

Yet I agree this is very comfortable strategy because nobody can challenge your data - they cannot be disclosed after all.



Here you are your own data fitted into SBPro PE:

- German DM53 round fired from L/55 gun - muzzle penetration: 920 mm
- British L27A1 round fired from L/55 gun - muzzle penetration: 500 mm

I am sure everyone can judge this properly.



So believe in your numbers and live in your fantasy world where German APFSDS rounds are the best and British APFSDS rounds are the worst. We can only laugh at this.

Besides fix this ridiculous ERA armor and tandem HEAT warheads modeling still unfinished after more than ten years of SB development and also fix funny rounds dispersion bug introduced lately instead of defending so hard "undisclosed theories" about L27A1 round.


I am sure now every forum reader knows enough about "Chally-2 made by eSim" story and there is not much to add. So EOT.

Tanknet. Well, I'm convinced now. Who at Tanknet? Excel spreadsheets and a calculator? Let's see your sources and methods. You're suggesting you created a spreadsheet. Where is it?

See, I wouldn't know a tank from a school bus, so I need someone to walk me through it here. You're not doing it- you're dodging.




Completely irrelevant to the question you purport to answer.

Something you probably didn't really consider, perhaps the results aren't so surprising after all in light of the following information. As I recall, trials were conducted with the Rheinmetall 120mm L55 smoothbore gun fitted to the Challenger 2 as a possible replacement to the British BAE rifled gun did actually show the German DM-53 non-depleted uranium round to have superior performance over Charm 3 depleted uranium rod, although results aren't published to give exact figures.

Charm 3 was developed Operation Desert Storm era, I don't think there as been any improvements since- the reason why is that physically it can't in order to be adaptable to the gun system, there hasn't been any updates. It is a two piece ammunition consisting of the projectile and separate charge, just like the Soviet 125mm system, if the dimensions of the ammunition were changed, it wouldn't be compatible with the system.

Wonderful. I'm not asking for your source of a widely published formula, but at the source of the parameters that were used to calculate these figures. So far, I have heard none from you.


That's an unscrutinized collection of other internet pages' estimations. These aren't original sources, nor is there a critical review of those other web pages' methodology ... what's next, Wikipedia?

I'm not saying that these estimates are all wrong, but that isn't the point at all. They can't be verified, and therefore are only suitable as a first orientation.


Pot, meet kettle.

I already admitted that I am uncomfortable with the situation, but that I am unable to change it. At least I know the basis of our current estimate, and I can't ignore what I know just because you don't like the result. Likewise we sometimes get to work with firing tables and other materials from our army customers under the condition that we must not disclose them to the public. Would you, if you were in my place, advocate to ignore the original sources just because you can't publicize them as a part of your documentation? Speaking of which, how many other commercially available simulations do you know that provide a similarly broad disclosure of sources and methodology as we do?
How do you know that the performance parameters of the DCS A-10 or the F-16 in Falcon 4 are actually correct?

We don't evade this discussion, but our work must also conform to the limits of practicality. I will not uphold a principle of total disclosure just so I emerge as the victor in an internet forum discussion, even if that jeopardizes the relationship with our army customers, the very fundament of our business. It would be great if we could put all the specifications from our development contracts into the public domain. But there are restrictions that muddy the waters.
Yes, our work may lack scientific rigor. But I have yet to see a single substantial contribution from your end, other than opinionated ridicule. Unless you come forward with something that allows me to reassess parameters like frustrum length, tip diameter, working length of the penetrator rod and similar things for the L-27, we have reached the end of a sensible debate. But I can guarantee you - if you do bring me sources that allow the development of these parameters, and if the result of these new parameters is a reassessment of the terminal ballistic performance of any given round in SB Pro, we will update our estimate.

There is a discussion here about Challenger 2 being fitted with the 120 Rheinmetall L/55 gun to upgrade the lethality of the CR2. That suggests that the British even recognize some shortcoming here. It wouldn't make sense after all to look for a replacement otherwise. In other words, there appears to be real world events tied to eSim's figures.

http://www.army-technology.com/projects/challenger2

Well, that project was canceled a while ago. There would have been too much redesign of the entire turret layout necessary, switching from the current separate stowage of rounds and propellant to a one-piece cartridge system. I arranged a TankNet visit to the Rheinmetall ammo factory this summer, and we could see that it is them who are now manufacturing the sabot rounds for the Challenger. Naturally, measure tape and photo cameras weren't welcome during the tour - perfectly understandable, but a pity nevertheless.

I find it amazing that people still believe that all military equipment is a step FORWARD in design and performance. Off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen heavily fielded weapon systems and vehicles that were a complete shambles on the NATO side.

-Jenrick

Well a tank is many steps forward from a trebuchet

Thanks for the video Daskal... but...everyone has had their say. Enough, lets move on.