Lukas updated the Marder Model. Seitenteilkreis...an important thingy for TC-gunner communication esp. when fightinh from prepared BP's

Short video, showing Infantry changing formations and improved path finding in urban terrain:

https://youtu.be/OKtwNg3_lIQ

New video showing the fire control of the T-71B1.
Its slightly more sophisticated then the T-72M1 fire control, this is going to be the most effective playable soviet era Tank.
Currently modelled in SB. The T-72 B1 had better turret armour them the T-72 M1/A slightly more powerful engine.
And reactive armour fitted this increases the tanks survivability from heat warheads fitted to ATGM and RPG's


https://youtu.be/HHu9idUEtnU

Well actually Raino (Dejawolf) did..

Testing the M47

Not bad...the only thing missing is the constant pop-pop-pop of the various motors igniting to stabilize and correct the missile's trajectory path moving towards the crosshair's center reticle. I was so glad to see it replaced by the Javelin.

Indeed. I always felt they should have named it 'Rabbit' not 'Dragon'.

4.0 is pushed back a wee bit. This release window was missed, but there is a sliver of possibility to release in the next months if all goes well. More details to be given if this possibility can be exploited.

When/Where was this announced ?

I made a comment in two forums, SteelBeasts.com and a German one.

Some important news for SB players and potential players regarding the new update
the following has been cut and pasted from a post by Ssnake CEO of esim on the SB forum a short time ago.
Its not great news but were still getting most of the new toys promised
Still well worth the price IMO. the upgrade terrain will follow as a free update near the end of the year


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Posted 1 hour ago · Report post



We're working on "Plan B" (which actually is more like "Plan C" because B suggested that we stop working on 4.0 until about October and then mount another effort for a Christmas release). We managed to wrestle a few more weeks of bug fixing and testing time from the work schedule, and I intend to use the full amount to deliver the best possible result under the prevailing circumstances.



What that means is that we probably must cut back some ambition in order to bring at least most of the advertised features in reasonably good condition out in July, and then provide a major update half a year later, approximately. What exactly that means is currently being evaluated and tested by the Beta team. The final decision has not yet been cast, but I'm cautiously optimistic that we can wing it.



The likely outcome is that the high resolution terrain will have to wait until about Christmas. It's not that it doesn't work, it's just that we decided together with our army customers that we need to find a better balance between good performance and retaining user flexibility; previously we had fucused very much on the performance side of things (both as far as frame rate and loading times for maps and scenario files were concerned) at the expense of some loss in flexibility.

For example, with the current terrain engine we modify the height profile at runtime depending on whether a given point in the terrain is covered by water. If that is the case, the surface point is depressed in height by a certain depth. This works well because the number of terrain grid points is reasonably small so it can be done at virtually no waiting time while loading a scenario. It does however NOT work well at all when you do this with a terrain resolution that is more than 500 times as high.



What's more, you also need to offload some computational load to data "preprocessing" to speed up scene rendering and, in particular, line of sight calculations. Preprocessing costs even more time, at least about 20 minutes per map, and up to several hours in extreme cases. Nobody wants to wait that long when you fire up a mission, and you wouldn't want the current 3.0 frame rates cut down by a factor 500 either. But just as well "brute force" is not a viable strategy either.

At the same time however retaining the ability to modify a terrain for a scenario in some places here and there is a legitimate demand, and the original concept would essentially have required to spend all the preprocessing time whenever you wanted to modify a map. In practice this would have meant that maps were to be treated largely as a static thing, and that users would have to give up the ability in Steel Beasts to do quick & dirty map touch-ups.



So we decided that we need to go back to the drawing board as far as the balance between performance and user flexibility is concerned. But it was nothing that we could do on short notice without creating a very grave risk of ruining everything for everybody. Also, we didn't want to publish a new terrain engine where we'd know well in advance that we'd change the file handling half a year laters. So our idea of a workaround is to keep pretty much all the features that we advertised in the 4.0 videos, except that we would provide the the high resolution terrain as a free update later on.





That's where we are and what's happening behind the scenes right now. We don't know for sure yet whether this will work. Right now it looks as if things might work out, so there's reason for cautious optimism. But I wouldn't break out the champagne just yet.



You get the particle effects, all the new vehicles, plus road leveling. And in about half a year, also the new terrain engine as a free update. In addition, we'll come up with better methods to manage minor map modifications than what we had originally in mind, where we admittedly chose the wrong path. All right, we have to back-track a little. It happens. But the proposed solution, if it works out, still allows for a July release rather than waiting for Christmas (or possibly even longer).

Thanks for the update Marko. I am okay with either release schedule and they have my support however they release it.

Will the RTS view still make it into 4.0 Lite?

Yes. We "just" have to rework the file handling of the terrain engine, as explained above. Weather, camera views, particle effects, new vehicles and crew positions - they are all independent of the terrain. Since file handling is one of the things that you need to get right on the first try it is the one thing that we have to cut from the initial release, if that release is still supposed to happen in the coming weeks.

It's not a slam dunk, there's still work ahead of us. But this contingency plan at least retains a chance that we can deliver most of what we advertised in May. If we cannot finish the work in the next two to three weeks the window of opportunity will definitely be closed until about December, so keep your fingers crossed, please.

Fingers well and truly crossed if there's anything I can do
Glad to help.

Sweet! Thanks for the clarification. That's one of the features I'm looking forward to the most. Oh, I've got my fingers crossed for sure!

Some CR 2 improvements.

Finally some progress on the CR2 (small, but something)

A working GAS:


I tested on the different ranges. Of course I wanted to try a 5000m hit too.

1:Tgt at 5000 in day and TIS view



But could not get a good lase :-(
I moved the Tgt forward 800, and let it crest a small hill. Using first return, i was able to get a good lase:






At 1000 and 2000m it was a piece of cake:

Trying to hit a target at 5000 was a bit ambitious in the first place.LoL
But glad to see incremental improvements to the CR-2 I really wish the UK MOD would pay for a fully detailed turret interior
I spoke to a high ranking British army officer once who really liked SB.

Was it ever "revealed" what tank/ifv theese pics is from?

The first one is a tripod mounted MG3, the second a Marder 1A3, the third a Luchs. I'm not sure if the last was positively ID'd.