News about version 4.1

One of our beta testers made this; shows some new stuff, so it might be of interest here...

...he's on a roll:

Thanks Ssnake, looking good indeed

Here's his next one, engineers, and IEDs:

This video is slightly older, but still a good illustration of what the new terrain engine is capable of (has still the old lighting, and the terrain that is shown here, sadly, won't be part of SB Pro PE 4.1):

This one is slightly newer; I think the lighting of the terrain is a substantial improvement, the texture of the ground looks less artificial now.

Another one from our beta tester; probably not the terrain theme settings that I would have chose for off-road driving (the off-road velocities mildly stretch my willing suspension of disbelief):

Last week our beta tester created this summary of the new model for high explosive/fragmentation effects with emphasis on air defense:






...and here's a short one about a new vehicle, and a quick impression of lighting changes and frame rates to expect. I'm using a GTX980 with an aging i7-4770K processor; probably not too far from the average user's system specs:

When? Later this year?

Eugene

Yes.
A hint is given at the end of each video, and with every thumbnail of the official videos (the ones with logo, and version number).
In other words, it's hiding in plain sight.

Looking great! Might be time again to buy a 1 year license!

Definitely so!

The story continues:

AS IF!

Maybe you missed last Friday's update, it's the second half of this page.
That said, a new video is in preparation.

It's uploading. In a few hours...

Shameless GoT plug:

The web shop is now ready to take your preorders, for which we offer a nice discount, and a pre-order exclusive surprise item.

is that Surprise item also available with the upgrade from 4.0, or just in the bundle with the printed manual and 32GB USB map stick?

Only in the bundle, since it requires physical shipment. It makes sense to send it out only if there are other items that need to be shipped anyway.

So the big reveal is over? Could you post release notes so we know what we are buying? Or confirm what the new playables are? Or are the available amount of NEW playables going to be dependent on pre-orders?

Hey Ssnake, I suppose the preorder bundle upgrade will only upgrade from 4.0 to 4.1, right?

To be more clear, I'm currently with a 2.5 codemeter license and was going to get back to the game in 4.0 (life didn't let me play in the last 8 years lol), but waited for 4.1 (to avoid paying twice for the upgrade), so I didn't purchase the 4.0 upgrade (then USD 40), but now I see that 2.5 to 4.1 is USD 89. So, in the end, I could yesterday had purchased the USD 40 upgrade to 4.0, and then the USD 25 to 4.1, so I missed playing 4.0 and now I have to pay more ...

Is there an way around it or I'm OOL? Thank you.

One or two more videos will be made and uploaded to YouTube, possibly also the one or other preparatory tutorial.
The only thing that depends on the preorders is the production batch size for the physical items - printed manuals, the installation USB stick, the preorder surprise item.

We will quit the preorder phase as soon as there is a noticeable reduction in new orders, suggesting that we have collected the peak demand, and have enough know-how to set the production lot size. So, please make your decision soon if you want any of the physical items. We will of course create more manuals and USB sticks than to barely satisfy the preorder demand, so you can always order both the installation stick and/or the user manual at a later point. But prices will go up.


The release notes will be prepared in the coming days, and be made available before the actual release day. But I can't promise that the preorder phase will last that long.

I'm sorry, but it seems like you're out of luck in this case. Version 2.5 was made in 2009, version 2.6 came out in 2011. That we're offering a seven year-long upgrade period including the skipping of major version numbers is, I think, rather generous. At some point we have to draw a line. The last 10 years have seen constant investment on our part to make everything better, with considerable expense. Upgrade fees are at least a symbolic price to have PE players a skin in the game and to contribute to that effort, even if it could never even remotely cover the actual expense.

Now, if you want the items from the preorder bundle, I could fully understand that, and I'm willing to help out; you could order both the $53 bundle and the $89 upgrade, and then contact me (my forum name here (at) eSimGames.com). I would cancel the 4.0 to 4.1 license upgrade ticket, and we would refund $25 to your credit card account. That would amount to $117 in total, compared to $149 for a completely new purchase, still a substantial savings. A possible alternative are time-based licenses. At $39.50 for a year you could play Steel Beasts for two years straight and still have money left compared to the $89 upgrade option.

No offence, but no major version upgrade, i.e. from 4.0 to 4.1 for US$53.00 seems too much. You must admit that your expenses were/are well paid by Steel Beasts Professional customers - by military professionals that are your main targeting group. Personal edition is just for general audience and not main scope of your business.
For the value of 4.1 upgrade we can buy full versions of other sim/games, e.g. IL-2 Tank Crew, Steel Fury, Panzer Elite, etc. etc.
Of course, that is just my personal opinion. IMHO, changing your marketing strategy lowering selling price of PE would significantly increase the quantity of sales leading to increased profit.

Most of the $53.- are the costs of shipping, handling, printing the manual, and having the USB stick manufactured. As a 4.0 license owner you may simply go for the "pure download" option for $25.-

4.1 is a major upgrade from a functional point of view. The version number after the decimal point is irrelevant. When we released SB Pro PE, the first version was 2.251, the first major upgrade was then 2.419, followed by 2.538, 2.640, etc.; at the end of the day, these are nothing but sequential version number incremented by each compiler run. There is nothing else to it.

As to whether the expenses have been paid for by army customers - this is only partially true, and even then it's a logical fallacy to accept any price other than zero if one would take the argument seriously. In which case you could just as well argue that no company should make a single cent of profit as soon as all the expenses have been covered. Which is a serious economic theory, called Socialism. Measured by the amount of profit (less the amount of customer support cases) that it generates, the Personal Edition receives a disproportionately large fraction of our development time. We still do it because the Personal Edition is a good yardstick to juge ease of use/accessibility, and PE users are quicker and more vocal to report bugs.


All that being said, nobody is forcing anyone to buy anything. Here's our offer. I think it's very much worth it. But value is a highly subjective thing that depends on personal preferences and the general situation. A glass of water may be worth thousands if you're lost in the desert, or worth nothing if you're caught in a rainstorm. I think that for 4.0 users, asking for $25.- for three years of the team's really hard work is seriously underpriced. But we promised the new terrain engine for version 4.0 and it took us three years longer, so I at least honor that promise with the implicit $15.- discount.

We at least are paying for usage by the ADF.

We acknowledge that there are some flow on effects to civilian customers, but there is certainly no expectation that say only 80% (random % for the sake of argument) of what we pay for goes to the Military version and 20% is re-directed to something other than we paid for.

Suggesting that implies that we, and other countries, are doing our respective tax payers a dis-service.

Oh, sorry, I have overlooked the update from 4.0 to 4.1 is for 25 USD only. My apologies - that is reasonable price.
I think, however, you misunderstand my point and you advocate, from my point of view, bad marketing strategy: is it better to sell 10 copies of PE for 153 USD each than 100 copies for 60 USD each?

Thanks for your advice on marketing strategy (which actually is advice on sales policy). Free business consultancy, what's not to love.
We're selling Steel Beasts for 20 years now. Let's assume that I know what we're doing, and that I have good reason to do so, because I have more information than you do. Which is privileged however, so please excuse me if I don't disclose our business secrets in a public forum. I can however summarize that your suggestion is like 99% of all other helpful but unsolicited suggestions. We tried it, and the underlying conventional wisdom does not apply to our product and market.

A viable alternative strategy - for someone else - might be to run a freemium Ponzi scheme with pay to win salami sales tactics, and then to fleece the whales as long as they are willing to pay money to substitute grind. But that's neither the type of game that I want to make nor could we adopt such a strategy without losing 90% of our current audience, starting from scratch marketing wise, and we've already seen how well those WoT clones are doing. Plus, it would be a huge distraction from our actual business.

What eSim Games offers and always has is brutal honesty:

• Honest prices - you pay for the marginal costs of what it costs to support the Personal Edition, less the cross-subsidied part where we see the utility value of having the Personal Edition in the first place.
• Honest gameplay - no DLCs to pay extra for, no hidden costs, no freemium BS, no unlocking of levels, equipment, skills or whatever; your own skill and your own luck decides the outcome. Also, we give a d4mn about scenario balance. Some scenarios are much harder to win than others, some may even be impossible to win.
• Honest results - we play no favorites in our modeling and simulation to make player groups with a frail collective ego feel better about their (or eSim's) favorite country's tanks.
• Honest feature reduction - in order to avoid export control issues, we only keep those features out that might otherwise cross the line, compare to the classroom version.

Yes, that is good you are sure about your sales policy, but that (the sales policy) is the reason I have never bought upgrade from 3.0 to 4.0 and I am not going to buy upgrade from 3.0 to 4.1 either. And this time I am sure I am not the only one. However, you know better than me you can live without general audience customers .

Look, if you're looking for a cheap option, we have time-based licenses for that. $24.50 for four months, $39.50 for a full year. This is an excellent deal for anyone who has only a passing interest in tank simulations and knows that he's going to play with it only for a limited time. And it's not like you couldn't come back any any given point, for one month, a few, or a year. You can keep telling me that Steel Beasts is too expensive, but in the light of this offer your credibility suffers a bit.

If you have a CM stick with a 3.0 license on it like your post suggests, we're offering an upgrade for a six year-old version at $59.- which is $6.- less than the combination of a 4.0 upgrade and a subsequent version 4.1 update would have cost you. And that license will be good for another three years until the next update comes along, which you can probably skip again, so we're talking about $59.- compensating for the last six years, that's less than $10.- per year. Don't tell me that it's a problem of the price. Maybe the changes from 3.0 to 4.1 don't convince you of the value of the whole package, but then please be so honest and tell me what you're missing. Because the 4.0 upgrade was massive, and 4.1 brings a lot of new elements that make it a much better simulation overall. It's perfectly fine if you would rather see other elements being worked on, but then let's not pretend that it's about pricing when you really would like to see a different direction in our development.

So no new playable tanks??....kinda under whelming for three years of not having any upgrades and not getting a terrain patch.Yes there are some nice things,and the price IS equal to the task,but I really expected /hoped for more.At the very least a thermal equipped OPFOR tank or finished ones we already have(ie chally 2).I bought the upgrade regardless but I'm unimpressed so far.Just seems kinda lean compared to previous upgrades which were on a yearly basis(they were yearly right???haven't checked that for sure.) I think I would have preferred to pay the full 40$ upgrade for more playable tanks TBH,but that's your call.

EDIT: Thinking about it a bit more I realize that a counter argument might be made regarding the new non playable content BUT as someone who has made game content in other sim's "without any prior knowledge" of modeling and has produced content in a matter of days/weeks (tanks for arma for example) is the reason I made the comments that I did.

This is confusing as well...it says where NOT getting the terrain in 4.1??? I thought the 4.1 was all about the terrain ?? why is this not included??

This upgrade isn't about new playable vehicles specifically even though it has a number of them, most notably the DF90 and the DF30 (just in case you missed them, although the way you phrased your post sounds as if you're deliberately omitting them to prove your point). But if your definition of "tank" is narrowly focused on MBTs or tracked armored vehicles, then No, there aren't any with crew positions.


Yeah... terrain "patch"...
That task ... ballooned slightly. Which I thought was kinda obvious given the fact that it took us three years, but maybe we integrated everything so well that it betrays the unsuspecting eye what effort went into all this.

• High-res terrain means, the grid resolution was increased by a factor of 512, the render resolution even by factor 2048.
  At the same time the map file sizes increased only by a factor of maybe 10...15, and we could shrink the typical scenario file size by a factor of 20.
  And we maintained the ability to edit and modify maps for mission designers with only minimal restrictions. That alone cost one programmer almost six years of work.
• We rewrote the whole lighting code for the render engine, and had to replace every single piece of vegetation artwork in the terrain, and then add a fair bit of new models. This allows representing a far wider range of climate zones/landscape types - like sub-saharan Africa. It looks a lot better. We increased the frame rates, SB Pro PE is very playable now with visibilty set to 7...10 kilometers.
  Hint: Typically frame rates develop in the opposite direction with version updates.
• High-res terrain required an entirely different approach to vehicles; we had to add a suspension model that not only works for the player's tanks, or 20...30 tanks as you would typically see in a racing game. It had to be made to work for several ten thousand vehicle entities to accommodate the needs of some of our military customers. When we shopped around at a simulation-centric exhibition for 3rd party solutions boasting "high performance suspension code" that was supposedly "suitable for large number of entities" -- they meant "up to 100". When we told them "we need it for several 10,000" they visibly paled and became very quiet.
  But we did it anyway. It may not look like much, and yes, the benefit for you is maybe not very high, but our work is dictated by far wider ranging needs. Our team is less than a tenth of that of Bohemia Interactive (since you brought up ArmA III as an example) and still we get things done where others fail miserably.
• A suitable suspension model for all vehicles was only part of the ripple effect that a change in the terrain engine caused. We also had to replace the driving code for all vehicles, which was a bloody nightmare because it was 20 years old and touched everything. Which means that when you rewrite it, you introduce "refactoring bugs" everywhere that must be found and killed quickly before your changes destroy the entire product. But we took that risk because it was the prerequisite for better pathfinding and better AI behavior. Units are no longer water-shy, but they don't drown themselves as often anymore either. And it works down to a framerate of about eight, because we have customers with scenarios so large ... well, see above.
• Right, the terrain isn't just high-res now, it's also deformable at runtime. So engineer vehicles can now dig vehicle emplacements. We can crater the landscape. This opens the path for a lot of nice feature improvements in the future.
• Next up, the new model for high explosive and fragmentation effects. Which tracks up to 20,000 individual fragments per explosion, in real-time, and puts everything on a solid engineering foundation (which it was not, up to now). This will improve the quality of simulation results enormously in the coming years as we refine the parameterization, and further boost the performance in subsequent development steps.

I know of no other simulation even in the professional military field that combines the capabilities of Steel Beasts in a remotely comparable way. There may be specialized applications that can do individual things somewhat better, but none that can do everything, and do it on a single PC, let alone at a comparable price point. And I'm not alone in that assessment. We've worked with research labs that used Steel Beasts for experimentation purposes because there was no other tool that offered both the breadth of scope and the high degree of fidelity in simulation results. None.

Yes. No playable new MBT. I'm sorry. We were kinda busy the last years.

As far as the confusion about the terrain is concerned, the "DTED is dead" video was meant to illustrate the capabilities of our new terrain engine. But the terrain data on which this was based is not available for public distribution, so we can't include it in the coming release. Sorry, no Danish sand dunes for you, we don't have the rights for it. But you will get one or two maps from Finland that are based on LIDAR scans; slightly less in resolution but still much better than anything that was available in the past. And one from BAOR's Sennelager area, Germany.

Well I wouldn't necessarily claim that the tanks in ARMA hold a candle to the tanks in Steel Beast Pro PE.

Even the ones in VBS are poor comparisons to the ones on Steel Beasts Pro PE.

Ok ...I'll play your game...

Well I wouldn't necessarily claim that the Planes,helicopters,infantry,weapons,trucks,OPRFOR ARMOR(with exception of the T-72 and BMP),cars,ships,terrain,buildings,flora,animals,waters or editor, in Steel Beast Pro PE hold a candle to the Planes,helicopters,infantry,weapons,trucks,OPRFOR ARMOR(with exception of the T-72 and BMP),cars,ships,artillery,terrain,buildings,flora,animals,waters,or editor, in ARMA.

But in any case my point was in terms of time it takes to create assets.

Just goes to show that different priorities yield different products.

Yes yes...sadly...I have to agree totally in your defense since Bohemia did the ridiculously stupid idea of introducing Aliens into the arma world(and to that I say "#%&*$# them")...100 points to you.

Well its not my "game".

You said basically that a novice can make models in no time at all.

I'm saying that compared to Steel Beasts it shows.

If the AFVs in VBS / ARMA were any good, the ADF might use it more for vehicle orientated operations than we currently do. As it is, we use VBS for Infantry centric training and SB for vehicle centric trg, in part due to those differences in fidelity.

So, we can finally expect engine stalling, gear shifting, individual tracks clutching/braking in SB Pro PE 4.1?

Alot of those 3rd party novice asset builders blow most of the assets in steelbeasts out of the water,I can think of one off the top of my head (RHS which they updated 4 times in 6 months) but that's a matter of opinion.As for VBS An American friend of mine I used to fly with works on radar systems for patriot and now on Apaches, once told me they use VBS to teach truck driving in another division, probably because they don't have to wait 1-3 years for something to get fixed.Here's a thought...hire RHS...they probably work for cheap considering they do a hell of a lot of work for FREE.

BTW..looks pretty good to me...and ohhh wait for it....YOU CAN SHOOT #%&*$# WITH IT.

.

Uh - no.
Steel Beasts has never been a driving simulation. While I admit that driving tanks is a bit of an art of its own, it's mostly older tanks that are really hard to drive well. The more modern examples are made to resemble the car driving experience that young soldiers might be most familiar with, aside from sheer size and the distinct lack of surround visibility. Most of tank driving concentrates on "not being a hazard in public traffic", to give the noivice driver an idea of his vehicle's dimensions so you don't run over traffic signs, parked cars, or people.

In any case, tank driving simulation requires an actual simulator on a motion platform with at least three (better six) degrees of freedom, and a lot more attention to detail as far as the vehicle's electrical system etc. are concerned, nothing that translates to "fun" on a desktop PC, as far as I am concerned.

While some might be proud of there assets and/or of BIS (BISim/VBS), the fact is that ARMA 3 has a bunch of bugs that never got fixed, that´s since 2013! While on the subject of land vehicles, the friction/traction to ground physics in ARMA 3 is more like riding a skateboard! In other words it plain sucks!

But hey, that´s just MY opinion!

The aliens idea was weird.

But I have to say, I recently played on a Zeus server where we had been playing normal missions all day and were getting a bit bored. Zeus apparently had the aliens DLC installed and he started using it.

Suddenly we show up at the LZ and an enormous god ray comes to earth. The smarter of the platoon got the hell out of there as fast as we could on a Little Bird then parachuted to safety behind some mountains where we watched from a distance.

Our other platoon mates who stayed near the primary target were soon making frantic radio calls as the entire world started spinning. The weather changed from a calm evening night to a raging cyclone with insane winds. The god ray then sent a massive energy pulse through the entire map, killing everyone near by, and sending shockwaves everywhere that knocked out helicopters and anything else not behind some terrain. Us mountain boys managed to survive it.

Totally ridiculous experience, but it was pretty neat for Zeus to have the tools to enable that, it really mixed up the game and made for a crazy and interesting hour or so of gameplay. When you consider the weirdness of parts of the original campaign, some parts of the aliens dlc aren't so far fetched. At least, if the mission creator uses the new tools carefully, they can be implemented very well to create a highly interesting and original style of gameplay.

And when you really think about it, there never really has been a realistic simulation of what humans should do if first contact ever were made.


Anyway, getting off topic. Glad to see this update Ssnake, and I think your base upgrade price was fair given the huge amount of new content. I am glad to see that eSim hasn't gone the DLC route. It seems like you guys have found a fair balance between timing of major upgrades and pricing them to fund additional content in the future.

It is a tricky thing to be able to keep upgrading an engine which has its roots based in 20+ year old code. IMO eSim's strategy ought to be a case study in careful marketing and good planning for the software and gaming industry. So often people want free upgrades because the updates are being made to software that has the same name as something the customer bought 2 - 4 years ago. It's very clear in the case of SB that each major update brings huge changes that are not only worth the upgrade money but obviously necessitate payment in order to keep the development pace as it is going into the future.

I TOTALLY agree,I will never understand how a software company(Bohemia) in that genre can get sooo much right....but get the obvious wrong. If they paid more attention to FCS's and physics they would rule .Esim is a one trick pony....they got their "trick" right.Most people that bought into Steelbeasts bought it for the FCS's on armor.Period.My issue with this upgrade is that we didn't get more of the very thing that they're known for.

I have to agree here also...kudos to Bohemia for Pro-actively going for dollars to create new content(but they could have done it in a different way...one that was conducive to their user base,ie a military theme not a SI-FI one)And I`m sue your aware that this IS a controversy in the arma world.
And yes it IS a tricky thing to upgrade 20 year old code...which is why they should have done it 15 years ago.
As for the DLC thing...mmmm...I dunno...If I could buy a new tank today ,I would.And I'd pay just what I do in DCS.

...because sometimes everything has to change, so everything can stay the same. This is one of those moments. You can run headlong into a dead end, which is unfortunate at best - and plain stupid if you know that it's a dead end. I'd rather be anything but.


A code base as old as Steel Beasts needs to be modernized. Inevitably all energy devoted to such modernization will be subtracted from work on "marketable feature upgrades". But focusing on what's marketable is a certain path into a dead end. As much as I don't want eSim's innovation culture not be technology-dominated, but driven by training requirements, it is no secret that you must adopt new technology without hesitation if the necessity is identified. Companies that shy the risks that are involved with such a strategy - and those risks are very real - will eventually stagnate and die. The true art of managing a software company without being a software guy yourself is to reign in the technological risks in a way that it doesn't block technological progress. Needless to say, all such decisions are made under uncertainty. Ideally you find a way that identifies errors as early as possible so you still have time to correct your course. That we learned about the problem with the first iteration of the new terrain engine only in May 2016 was unfortunately much later than ideal.

Sorry, but this is the part where we will disagree because you don't know enough about eSim Games and the Steel Beasts code base to form an informed opinion. 2004 we did upgrade old code - we've been constantly doing so - by replacing the old software based renderer of Steel Beasts 1.0 with a hardware accelerated engine. We switched from DirectX 7 to DirectX8, then DirectX 9 before the Personal Edition was released. If that wasn't a major code base upgrade I don't know what would count for one. With version 2.5 we introduced daylight changes, for version 3.0 we rewrote the OpenGL based Viper Engine for use with Steel Beasts, and with version 4.1 we rewrote the whole lighting code (as can be seen most dramatically with all the trees). The idea that we're using the same render engine since 1999 is demonstrably false.

We have just refused to let our innovation process be technology-driven. Rather we have looked at things that were essential to improve the utility value of Steel Beasts in training, and then chosen the necessary steps in the tech field to enable such changes. Apparently some people still haven't realized that when I told the public since 2005 that Steel Beasts Pro is no longer a game, I actually meant it. Don't let the name betray you, eSim Games is a training company.

DUDE ...you got 2 products...one military one civilian....build a tank ...sell the tank... to us,the civilians, to pay for the others development. It`s not rocket science.

The problem with ArmA and the Arma mods is, that i have yet to find one mod that even comes clsoe to the quality that steelbeasts delivers.
That I mean in the sense of replication of the FCS , damage and ammunition effects model. Also ArmA is not able to handle the units sizes that SB can bring to a map...and will not even start about AI movement and engagement routines.

As for the DLC idea: that will bring a lot of issues with multi-player games. You'd have to make sure that who want to play together, have bought the same vehicle models. I'm no fan of that.

Careful not to confuse the argument...I'm not comparing the FCS's ...there's no contest.But the play-ability of most assets IS the argument. Simply put there should be more.Especially for OPFOR.Also if we compare TYPES of assets...arma wins hands down,ie a helicopter or AAA,or infantry etc etc.Its a long list.
As for the other issue of multiplayer\dlc there are two ways to address it.One way is like Bohemia did it ,or in DCS case,simply include an asset that most people own.In steelbeasts we already have an established set of assets.In DCS for example there's almost always a plane in a mission to fly on a server.Almost everyone owns Flaming Cliffs or they can buy one cheap(a FC plane costs what...5$ now?).Never really a problem...and when there is It's addressed pretty quick.I can't think of a time when I couldn't fly a mission on a public server due to not having a plane.And I've used DCS since day one. If you play with yer buddies,then I'm sure they can plop in a tank that you have.

In conclusion in my participation to this thread,I've said my piece...I'm not alone in my thinking that I can assure you as I've played and discussed this with many a veteran player.Now if there is a final video that ssnake is keeping under wraps for the release date that address my issues...then I will eat my words...but I think that is a pipe dream.

And here we differ again: I rather have a well done playable vehicle, then a sloppy model(and yes, that requires a model of the FCS) like in ArmA. Because, where is the point to have those?

And the model question: In these games, you don't jump between units in game time, as it is often required and done in SB. You could not use realistic unit setups, but would have to make "rag tag mix" stuff of vehicles that people own.

They already committed that sacrilege with the chally .And lets face it...even a fully playable asset's fidelity isn't 100 percent in anyway shape or form(not compared to DCS anyway).But I see it as I do in DCS...A FC version of a Mig-29 is 100 times better than not having a Mig to fly.If I had a choice...of course I'd pick an A10C level version...but not always.Most times I fly an A10A because I have to relearn aircraft due to not flying one for a long period of time.Its an issue that's getting addresed by ED with a new Lock on modern aircraft product.And in DCS you can (and I do) jump from asset to asset in game play.I'd really like to see the day when DCS does armor modules....

The FCS of the CR2 is quiete up to standart, thats what counts for me.
A generic Weapon system just to gun, even if it has the outside apperance of another tank does nothing for me...nah thanks.

And in I assume in DCS you can not jump from asset to asset, if you do not own the model for it....

Make no mistake...I'm not comparing tank to tank with DCS..I am comparing the "fidelity" of its assets though...say the blackshark,A10C or the hornet ,to an Esim leopard or Abrams.NO contest there.They are waaayyy different standards.
As for jumping ...yes and no...depends.Example...I can jump from tank to tank to APC etc....but i own combined arms.But I can't jump to a Mig-19...Don't own it.

On one side you seem to say ArmA level tank models are good enough, then you bring on DCS level of model fidelity...what is it the?

Helicopter are a bit more complex the tanks, so I'm not sure what you are comparing here. What do you think is missing in SB's M1 and Leo models?

I thought it was obvious...You have to keep track of context of the whole conversation

I say arma models are just as good as esim in non playable realm yet are playable in arma. IE the new armata. New game asset...big whoop, its not playable.
I say arma has a huge jump on gaming assets in terms of type...thus the helo reference (and others)
I say in the context of fidelity...DCS is superior. ie the leopard,abrams vs A10 blah blah comment.
Keep the context of a continuing discussion...in context.

So, what do you think is missing in the Leopard and M1 models?

As for ArmA model style: Again, I rather have esim not wast resources in pointless "fake" vehicle functions, but model working ones. The non playables are there as targets.

Off the top of my head???...comparing fidelity to DCS?? A driver position,a loader position.

Better to have a 75%(since remaining 25% would be guess work I would imagine) realistic T-XX to man then shooting from a 3rd person AI position....hands down.But I also think there is enough info out there to get it better than 75%.Hell,I just saw a news article that suggested that Pro Russian T-72's in Ukraine are using french thermals by THALES....why not model that system for OPFOR.(addressing my wish for a thermal OPFOR tank)
Ideally...OPFOR should be HUMAN and with THERMALS...same as BLUEFOR in a NATO vs Soviet/RUSSIAN FEDERATION scenario.
As for the pointless "fake" vehicle functions"comment...what about leo's vs abrams filling in for Russia???which is what usually happens in our multi-player games.Most of the time...not all. Now that's FAKE.

I take that back...depends on the mission creator ,so maybe not most or maybe most depending (disclaimer)hell its all over the place depending who your playing with.

See the difference there, neither driver nor loader position would have a training value...so not a real reason to model them.

On the rest we can just disagree here (apart from the point that these % are rather arbitrary)
Having a Thales TIS, does not realy tell you much about the FCS, the TIS resolution not even the stadia lines...again, I rather not see the limited resoucre that is coding time invested in "fake" stuff when there is other things that need attention.

If this wasn't the case, I'd agree with NATO/Rus scenario. Good thing is that this is just one of the plenty scenarios that you can set up with steelbeasts.

Worst of all, they wouldn't be much fun.
As a loader, either you're pulling rounds from a rack and then shove them into a hole where they disappear with a bang. Or you'd swap coax barrels and ammo belts. All of that are distinctly physical activities where a mouse/3D interface are utterly pointless. Or, if you're not doing the physical thing, you could observe out of the hatch like the commander, without being able to influence much (unlike the commander's position), except that you have the AA MG and can get whacked by some unseen sniper while you look all badass.

The driver's position might be slightly more fun, but it's largely in there, better in some vehicles than in others, but again the main point of the driver's position in SB Pro is to support the training of the commander, not to train the driver himself. For that, you have dedicated driving simulators with a substantially higher complexity. Last but not least, the driver's position is also more physical than the Gunner's or commander's, which is why motion platforms add so much immersion to any driving simulation. But the typical player doesn't have a motion platform at home, and in any case SB Pro isn't a racing game. Spintires is probably the best driving simulation for military/offroad vehicles there is, and I admit that it has its own appeal, but then the maps are just like 5x5km² where we need to be able to simulate 150x150km², so the technology in Spintires could not possible be adapted 1:1 without running into severe scaling issues in multiple dimensions.

BUT...a loader could fill a man down position...ie a commander or a gunner or a driver in a pinch.Not to mention if your training a tank crew...you train the whole crew.And for the record ,I have no idea if the thales thing is true or not.But if it is,its something of a way out for our opfor scenerios.Alot easier modeling a single system than a whole other tank.

And for that you can use the gunners or TC position that the simulator offers to train the loader on them.
To train the loaders position, you need hardware, nothing a PC based software can offer...

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that SB Pro is "better than ArmA" (just - different), or that it's "perfect" and doesn't need improvement.
We will probably never be done with SB Pro. There's always one more thing that you can do. But the things that we do, I'd rather do right. Yes, yes... "Challenger!". There's a background to that, and maybe one day we'll find an opportunity to work on it again.


But in any case we need to work within a business context that puts serious constraints on us about how much time we can devote on military vehicles in which our military customers have no active interest. Everything that we accomplished in the last 20 years, we did with our own money and our own talent. We have quadrupled the team size and increased the number of programmers sixfold, and we're operating without losses. After 20 years, we're still completely independent.
Other companies have different business models, and that's swell for them. Wouldn't it be boring if everything was just the same?

...aaand how exactly would that change how Steel Beasts works already?
If your argument is that the loader is a spare guy that can fill any of the roles that are already in SB Pro...?!?
If you lose a commander in Steel Beasts, as a human player you can still occupy the commander's position. But then we reduce the loading speed. Lose loader and gunner, you can still shoot the gun once a minute or so. Not that it was a good idea, but... you could. Lose three guys, and you can still drive away the tank and hope for an ambulance to show up. With remarks like this, I'm wondering how familiar you are with Steel Beasts at all.

I dunno...being a loader,loading, on the MG and spotting targets while I mange the other assets instead of the platoon commander doing it (like maybe fuel,ammo etc,while still being part of the crew)would have its place...I would enjoy that even if its not a true role(the asset managing I mean.)I think a loader would have lots to do game play wise in a mission.Same for the driver.And I can't tellyou how many times my tank was out of action because my driver was dead(from a tree no less!!!).With a loader onboard I could drive to the repair area myself.When did steelbeasts come out...thats how long I've played it...pretty familiar.

Did you ever play a SB mission?
IRL (an in game)
95% of the time the loader in under the hatch...and guess what; waiting for the command to load a round., then 4% he is actually loading...then maybe 1% helping with spotting
Not really my idea of fun gameplay

Driver would by 60% looking at a mound of dirt directly to your front, waiting for the TC to yell at you...rest of the time is doing what the TC is yelling, often without seeing where you're going.
(and these are thing that you can not realy simulate to without a motion platform and true 3D ad dept of view emulation)

The asset management largely is, surprise, the commander's/platoon leader's role. The platoon leader is an incredibly overtasked guy. And from a training perspective - remember, that's eSim's primary point of view - you wouldn't want to take away that stress of being overworked. Because the simulation is supposed to prepare him for that level of stress in real life (plus some extra, because then it's for real with all the metal flying through the air).

It's perfectly fine to want, as a consumer/gamer, better immersion and maybe some fun mechanics that aren't entirely realistic. I agree, it would make a better game. But for reasons of reliable cash flow and the absence of publishers with creative accounting practices eSim Games is now in the training market. This has allowed us to stay in business in the first place, over the last 15 years. Otherwise the story of Steel Beasts and eSim Games would have ended in 2003. So everything that has happened ever since is a direct result of that business decision, and given that the alternative would have been economic death you will find me entirely unapologetic.
We have taken up the fight with multiple multi-billion dollar defense contractors, and won often enough to be still there. We have a dozen different armies as customers, on three continents. For a company the size of eSim Games' that's not too shabby. If SB Pro PE isn't exactly the kind of game that you'd be hoping for, well, I certainly regret that. But I'm realist enough to understand that this is the price that we had to pay for the opportunity to have this conversation in the first place.

Pffft...in real life the loader probably does more than the gunner does.(half a joke...half not)...if we were using T-34's that WOULD be the case...but that's being silly isn't it.However having 4 to a tank wouldn't be as boring in game play as you say. Alot of the time we have players doing that from the exterior view...would be cool if they could become part of the tank crew(loader)its been mentioned and discussed more times than you obviously think.

Did you just say that you got lots of money rolling in from dozens of armies ??...and you can't give us a thermal opfor tank over the course of 2 decades??? okie dokie!

Well, we have to work for the money that we get. If you think that it's all free cash, you're seriously mistaken.
And that money influences to a large degree where our development priorities are. It couldn't be any other way.

That we're working for armies is no secret. So I'm not sure what you think that you just discovered.

Though I don't really agree with most of what woofie is saying, I will say this.

Increased multi-crew positions have enormous implications for your ability to market to military customers. Even if they don't recognize the need or you don't see it yet, the need could be manufactured.

CRM in the aviation industry is booming - safe operation of a vehicle, increased crew effectiveness - there's your multicrew angle.

Steve Jobs sold everybody on the ipad - something nobody thought we needed or wanted, using technology he already had available to him. You may be overlooking a need your customers have that you can fill with the tools you already have.

eSim has an opportunity to do the same by increasing the scope of multi-crew operations. That being said, I don't know the full extent of what can be done in the military grade versions so it may be a moot point.

"Manufacturing need" is a strategy that we will follow the day that we have exhausted all our good ideas, maybe in 20 years.
As hinted, the loader's tasks are observation, radio monitoring, providing close security to the vehicle, and physical activities that require strength, agility, and coordination. All this screams for a simulator cabin environment and even where customers have such environments they do not always want the loader present in exercises because there isn't much to learn or to train for them. None of the simulator cabins goes so far as to integrate a fully operational loader's position with mock cartridges that could be loaded into an actual breech.
Such trainers exist, and they are great (if underutilized), but nobody wants the added complexity of the mechanical and electric or hydraulic components involved in a platoon trainer because then you also have to add the Krauss-Maffei mechanic's bill for maintenance every other month. It may be hard to understand, but armies do not have bottomless pockets of cash for everyone to grab. The US Army may come closest to this idea, representing more than 50% of the world's demand for land system silmulators, but even the US Army can afford only three mega simulation facilities (Germany, Korea, USA), and even there many of the vehicles are represented by generic mockups.

Is the Belgian Army happy about their DF30 and DF90? Do they think they can win wars with them?
Hell, no! It's what they can afford. If given the chance they would pick the big tanks without hesitation. But they don't have the money for MBTs, so they sure as hell don't have the money for elaborate cabin trainers, let alone some with loading cycle electro-mechanical setups. Instead, it's desktop trainer stations with control handle replicas and triple touchscreen environment. And while the Belgian Army may be a particularly crass example, they are closer to the typical situation than the US Army's CCTT that aspires to assemble an entire brigade combat team in a single simulator factility. Look up the size of tank fleets in countries like Australia, Denmark - this information can easily be found on Wikipedia, FAS, SIPRI; often enough you don't even reach triple digits, it's eye watering. And we're not even touching the question of recruiting. SOme armies are 25% understrength because they can't get young men to join. That's the prime reason for opening armies for women (an entirely different chapter of its own, let's not go there). Don't pay much attention to the feminist "empowerment" talk - that's just window dressing to put lipstick on the pig of manpower shortage. And even if you have a small tank fleet, decent simulators, and enough people to get trained in them, often enough the soldiers are pulled from their regular duties to help an undermanned police in the anti-terror operations against Islamofascists, or to deal with forest fires, floodings, and other non-military tasks that get thrown at them in addition to actual operations abroad.

It's perfectly fine to tell me that you want loaders' positions in Steel Beasts because you think they would make a great addition; you don't have to worry about the implications for workplans or effort-to-reward ratio, nor should you. But at least trust me when I tell you that the balance is not favorable. We can agree to disagree about the "fun" point; I think it would be a high-effort novelty that everybody would play with for ten minutes and then never go back to it simply because it'd be very boring. But hey, that's just my opinion, and just because I've been a tank officer doesn't mean that I always have the right answer to every possible design decision in Steel Beasts. And even when I do - different people, different preferences. I'm happy to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of such a change.
But please don't use promises of exceptional wealth and business success if only I would add (X) to Steel Beasts, or lower the price, or put it on Steam, or that (X) is actually very easy, or that we should have switched to DirectX 12 in 2009...
I'm honest with you, please be honest with me and the way you argue. Refuting an outlandish claim without violating the NDAs under which I am takes time. I want to take you seriously, so I'm happy to provide background information why we do things the way we do. Still, my average work day only has 14 hours and even if I work on the weekends I'm on a time budget. Whenever I write stuff in a thread like this, I'm not making sh!t up, I don't hide behind "secrets you're not supposed to know" or take other shortcuts (and neither do Ronin, or Gibsonm). But that requires that you keep your side of the deal, no phony arguments.

It's perfectly sufficient to say "I want (X) because I think it would be fun"; and even if you bring up a convincing argument that changes my mind, your expectation should be moderated by the fact that implementing features takes time, and that the weeks before a release are about the worst possible timing. Three months after a release: Perfect timing. You had time to digest the new things, we have received the first wave of bug reports and probably released a patch already. Now we can lean back and see what we can do better in coming versions.

Oh please...its not hard to comprehend what I'm saying...you've come to SHQ to solicit gamers for dollars where all the other simulation competitors get critiqued,and make claims of your success while not being able to deliver simple requests that your user's have been asking for for almost 20 years.Sorry but we hold you as DEV's accountable to OUR dollars not your military contractors. DCS,Bohemia,777...the list goes on ,make a point of asking us what we want,and go out of their way to deliver it.WE are THEIR customers.Can you say the same? Doesn't sound like it to me.We get the table scrapes.A "take what yer given" and be thankful attitude.My prediction is DCS,Bohemia and maybe others are going to wise up and your one trick pony show is going to be obsolete.I wonder where il-2 TANK CREW is going ...Or what wag's has up his sleeve for the future.Hell even warthunder can pull off patches every other day.Bohemia is capable...lots of room to be innovative there.And yeah we let them know what pleases us and what doesn't...and they make more an effort to accommodate us than you ever have.All we get from you is excuses.WE'RE to busy,our main customers don't want that.Its not condusive to the training... blah blah blah.How many bugs got fixed that have lingered for I dunno ...EVER.Trees don't kill tanks by bumping into them.Roads have ditches.Tanks have people in them. Nato tanks have 4 people in them.The enemy tanks in our game need the ability to shoot back.We need to see the enemy like they see us.Your control set up is a convoluted mess.Your terrain looks like something from another era.The list goes on and on and has for almost a decade.If you were DCS,777,il-2,Bohemia we would say exactly the same thing to you.Get over it,fix the #%&*$#,and be happy we even give you 25$.Gee now I sound like YOU.YEAH I SAID IT.I'm out.

What is it with simulations that brings these kinds of folks to the surface. I mean really. There is no software on earth that is accessible to consumers that even comes close to providing the amazing quality of armored warfare simulation that SB does. Some of the features being added with this update are features I've never seen in any other game or sim, such as the new engineering/entrenching stuff.

What is it that makes you feel so entitled?

Can you honestly say you've mastered even one or two of the existing vehicles that are already in SB? Why clamor for more? More is nice but it costs money and takes a lot of work to get access to vehicles to simulate them properly. In the case of Russia I don't think they're going to be all that cooperative if asked to share their ammo, sensor and armor data for their latest and greatest tanks with the general public..

You know, it's not like the copy of the sim you paid for will stop working if you decide not to buy the update.

Its simple really...I pay them...they don't pay me.So I'm gonna let then know what I like and what I don't like,what I want and what I don't want.I paid for it.If thats too much for them to take then they can cut me a check for the amount I've given them the last 15 -20 years.
And if you wanna play with others you do have to upgrade or it doesn't work.

Thinking about it IF they did refund me I'd be able to buy :
DCS F-16
DCS Mig-19
Il-2 Tank Crew
The lastest upcomming DLC for arma3
and maybe still have change left over...I'd do that in a EFFIN heart beat

Well, thats what you like.
I just hope that noone at esim will pick up these ideas. I'd hate to see them implemented, taking resources away from the stuff that makes Sb stand out...and making it a worse game.

It sounds like a milenium generation to me, built on demand, then when they don´t have it there way, they then get all upset!

Yes please, I too hope SB keeps it´s policy, and that´s from someone that´s been simming for +20 years.

Good.

Its interessting. Esim is quite open. They show what you will get, then you can buy or leave it.
Still some start babbling about refunds because....yes, because of what??

I don't think you will get a refund, but if you have a licence on a CM stick, these are possible to sell for a reasonable fraction of the list price. (It used to be around $85 when the current price was $125, but I don't know what the more recent offers have been).

One of the advantages of Esim using the CM stick was the total flexibility of the disposal of your copy of the game. Give it away, sell it, keep it and upgrade licenses at a later date, or update and enjoy the current version.

There are also options to avoid the upfront cost and to use a timed license (locked to the machine it is activated on) at a cost broadly comparable to the ongoing cost of major updates over time. Again you can dip in and out, paying for a year at a discount, or the two single months you can dedicate sufficient time to the simulation according to your need/wants. They provide options to suit the reasonable needs of their customers

Pre order in and now awaiting the release/shipping, and as my son no longer has time for games I'm reducing my licence to just the one this time. it has been fun playing with him at home, now as simming online is not feasible it's back to single player again.

I hope it helped create good memories.

Is the printed manual going to be available for purchase separately?

What will be contained in the printed version - everything in the current docs folder or just the SBProManual.pdf?

a. Yes
b. "just" the manual

Ambulances:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HH...plpw04t1aokgzllvm3t4torbbd4ohkobk0h00410

The Release Date window has been refined:

not before Monday 22nd

probably on Wednesday 24th

no later than Monday 29th

Details: https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12878-when-the-release/?do=findComment&comment=192013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSBx0R_pZu0&feature=youtu.be

...as a quick framerate demonstrator, on an old machine. (To establish some context here.)

One of our beta testers testing the frame rate with one of the larger scenarios in the mission editor:

Is the newest iteration of SB going to be more CPU limited or GPU limited? Or just engine limited?

My PC is getting long in the tooth and I'm planning a full update with excellent SB performance as one of the big factors in what I decide to throw into the machine. DCS and P3D are the other two big ones.

For the bigger scenarios, CPU limitation would be more typical I'd say. I don't know what your budget is; while we're gradually implementing more parallelization in the coming years it's still not something that will happen fast; to that extent it's probably still valid to favor CPUs which, for the same price, offer a bit more single thread performance. But where this might really become noticeable the CPU prices are also pretty high, so this may be an entirely academic debate for you.
Personally I'd be tempted to try out the new AMD CPUs combined with a matching AMD GPU, and be it just to send a message to Intel to get their act together. Their price levels appear to be very attractive.

Release update:

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/1...stuff/?do=findComment&comment=192462

Release Version: 4.156

Release Date: 29 JUL 19 (I don't know if that's European, US or Aust time).

A bunch of screenshots of what is coming in SB Pro PE 4.165:

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/1...stuff/?do=findComment&comment=192612

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/1...stuff/?do=findComment&comment=192613

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/1...stuff/?do=findComment&comment=192614

New smoke, walls, etc.:

https://youtu.be/_JQpCEA9_tU

Embedding videos in this forum software is a pain.

Anyway, this is intended as a sequel to the Vector video (see below) which you may want to watch first.







Working on part 3 now...

Pre Order Phase now closed. No longer mentioned here:

https://www.esimgames.com/?page_id=1530

USB sticks (if you ordered one) likely to ship on/after 04 AUG.

In other news, the Release Notes for version 4.156 are out.

Overview video concerning frame rates and many a unit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coQt47dg-lU

A larger, Rolling Thunder like, mission (shows frame rates):

Listing of most of the new vehicles. Disclaimer: units "NATO target" and "B-412 FLIR" are SB Pro-specific features and are not available in Personal Edition.

...and here's the final installment.
From Monday on, new 4.1 videos are your duty.

Pre-orders are on their way.

Some who live near the distribution point in Texas have received theirs.

Picture of contents: https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/12994-christmas-in-july/?do=findComment&comment=193119

Copy of picture attached.

SB Pro PE 4.156 + patch to 4.157 available now:

https://www.steelbeasts.com/topic/13009-4156-preliminary-download-links/