With the recent forum activity around Panzer Elite Ostrapak Redux 2 I thought I'd take a dip. Like BOB2 what it gives up to more modern iterations in graphics it MORE THAN MAKES UP FOR in the gameplay stakes.
Now I am enjoying regularly getting killed (with my wingmen) in Shermans. I understand that it's best as a newbie to start playing the Nazi hordes but I can't ...for religious reasons :duh. Anyway I am reading some advice on better playing the yanks but what I can't find is how to use the Shermans maingun sight. It maybe , like the panzer tank opponents, I am missing something obvious. The reticle markings on the vertical scale I presume are elevations for range but I can't see any obvious quick way of calculating the approx range of the target similar to the triangle/tank height ratio used in the german sight.
Any help gratefully received.

Tim

A little light reading: http://www.theshermantank.com/tag/aiming-guns/

I am not sure how accurate I was with the Mils of the Allied sights. Also, the real optic was 3x magnification, while PE is 2.5. The center cross was 10 Mils on the real thing. My reticle scans are on an old computer, I can try to find them if you need.

I found the M6 on the web: https://ia902303.us.archive.org/Boo...9-1578_0005.jp2&scale=4&rotate=0

The Mils formula is explained here: https://www.targettamers.com/guides/mil-dot-explained/

109 pages of everything you need to know: https://archive.org/details/Fm17-12

Thanks Brrit44 for the wealth of information !!
Paramount of which was "109 pages of everything you need to know". Initial skimming ended with me focusing on pages 50-60 "laying down direct fire". My reading , quite possibly wrong , was that they didn't have a means of roughly calculating range to target (similar to the German sight) and basically used educated guesses initially; refining as they saw how the shells fell.
The in game sight doesnt seem to have a milliradian vertical scale to extrapolate range based on the known height of the target. The marks getting more widely spaced as you progress down.
Back to the range to start educating my guesses.

Tim

Both assumptions are not true.

The lines on all Allied, WW2 optics use the Mil scale. When they are not true to Mil scale (vertical range), they are labeled for the range of the predominant shell.
Only the spacing between lines vertical is not Mil scale. The lines drawn lines are to Mil scale in the original optic. Look at the original blueprints

The Tiger Fibel is famous for better explaining how the lines of the optic can be used to ESTIMATE range. The center cross of American optics is 10 Mils. The horizontal spacing of the dashed lines is to Mil scale, making it useful for estimating lead.

Zeiss used a triangle and a complicated, rotating cam. The Allies used a drawn line, of given length, and expected you to learn. Please look at late war Allied optics, they show range for given shells AND drift for the primary shell. The Zeiss optics do not show drift, but explain how to calculate it in the training manual.

Yes, I did a crap job of making the PEx optics. There are many reasons why you can not count the rivets for both the German and Allied Optics of PEx.

.
The early Sherman optic used a circle. I gave you a link showing the Mils.
The later optics have a cross (+) in the center of the scale. The real one is 10 Mils. It can be used exactly the same as Zeiss's triangle. I guess the Allies just expect you to think a bit more.

Hi Brit 44,
Thanks for the info.
No problem with " thinking more".
Comfortable with milliradians ranging concept from simulations fixed aircraft bomb sights and WW2 sub sims periscopes (what I wouldn't give for a stadiometer.)
I have ostrapak Redux 2 and also found your updated CSV files (? PEDG posting January this year.)
Just to clarify the cross positioned center scale is 10mil across ?

Thanks for your help...Tim

This may confuse you a bit. Skip to the bold for your question. I am going overboard with explanations. Remember that PE had no time of flight for the shells in the original version. Chuck, Blake and myself wrote the TOF code from scratch. We are not mathematicians or physicists. Trying to sync it in MP was even more fun. That was more then 10 years ago.

Check the gun CSVs to verify there is a 24th column. You can view the file as plain text if you use any standard text editing program and tun word wrapping off. I use CSVed, version 1.4.3 to view and edit the CSV files of PE.
The American 75mm looks like this in Brit44x:

Each line must have a minimum of 23 semi-colons. The code does not require a 24th to end the line. After 23 semi-colons, the game code will use any floating point value it finds. If it does not find a value, 1.0 is assumed.

If there is, then they include data for code work I did to allow each shell to be tweaked so the vertical arc of each shell type can be adjusted. Prior to this, I could never get the trajectory to mach the data and optical drawings that I have. For the optics that had each ammo type listed, this was not a problem in the past. I simply tweaked the optics. I was never happy with the Sherman 75mm until this change. When I finished the guns I needed at that time for Brit44x, I gave my data to Daskal and gave him permission to use it for Redux.

If you got the gun CSVs from Daskal, you should be good to go. If you got them from one of my posts, they are for Brit44x. The gun's data names are not all the same between Ostpak and Brit44. You can not use Brit44 CSVs in Ostpac. The data names are not the same.

If you did not receive the gun CSV files form Daskel, you can use my coefficient of drag floating point IF you also use the same shell velocity and weight as I did. If not, you will have to go the gunnery range and spend hours in debug mode finding the best value for your Vo and Weight. Note: The default optic scale of the guns should also be updated. This value does not affect the trajectory of the shell.

The original optics used by all later 75mm American guns had a 10 Mils cross as a reference point. This cross is 5 Mils in each direction, or a 10Mils cross.

When I made the Allied optics I had no clue what the Mil scale was. I simply looked at the blue print and tried to match it for the shell travel and visual images I had for the optic. I do have drawings, so the proportions of the lines should be close. But, I do not know if my optics are 7 Mils, 9 Mils, 12 Mils or 200 Mils.

If you want to test it's accuracy, you would need to go to the gunnery range and check it. When debug mode is active, all impact data is displayed. This includes the traveled distance of the shell. Note: All impacts are displayed, so tell your wingmen to cease fire. Once you know the true range to an object, you can make a judgment on the accuracy. If it grossly inaccurate, let me know and I will remake the one you need. I am more the librarian of PE then the modder these days. Maybe some day I will redo all of them, but I'm not going to redo every optic request for the next 400 posters.

Al

:P your going to make me see if the old Win98 computer still fires up. All my Strich plates are on that HDD

Thanks Al.

I skipped to the bold...then reversed back to read the rest.
Monumental amount of work done by you modders. The CSV files were from Daskal.
Really enjoying...errhh not the right word.....really impressed with how the game captures the brutality of it all. It makes me extremely respectful of the young men (and in the Russian case young women) who climbed into these things to fight.

Thanks again...Tim