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88mm KwK 36 L/56 accuracy test and some ideas


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I think some of the posts here are missing the point about the difference in quality between German & Allied optics. The main advantage the Germans had was that their optics could achieve similar levels of magnification (x2.5) to those of the Allies with much wider fields of view (typically 25 degrees in comparison to between 9 & 12 degrees for the Allied sights) & with better optical clarity. This had two important repercussions: a) it allowed the German gunners to search for & acquire targets & B) the wider field of view/clarity made the estimation of range much easier. In order to estimate range you need as many points of reference as possible – it becomes exponentially harder to judge distance as your field of view is diminished. As an example I’ve asked Jeff to post a picture of the view through a British 17pdr sight .

Best regards,

Conall

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Andrew great post, my problem is, you have to be able to see your target to hit it, knowing range means squat, if you can't see what your aiming at in a tank battle, you also need to be able to see shotfall to correct your fire.

Anectdotaly German sights & and again in the French tests with the Panther in 1947, the 'optics' allowed them to aquire targets precisely out to 3000m, even in bad weather with a larger vision feild, compared to US Sherman sights, that were unfiltered, & had a smaller feild of vision, & needed a clear day for clarity, and bad weather equated a blurred image above 1500 - 2000m. The US improvements on sights, consisted of suplying a package of filters, to be manualy inserted in the sight, color chosen by weather conditions & increasing magnification.

As far as I can tell so far their was no attempt made whatsoever to increase power, or clarity to the level of German sights until after the war.

Regards, John Waters

------------------

"We've got the finest tanks in the world. We just love to see the

German Royal Tiger come up on the field".

Lt.Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. February 1945.

[This message has been edited by PzKpfw 1 (edited 11-22-2000).]

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Paul Lakowski:

Conall. Does PE better simulate optics than CM ? cause my friend whos tried both says theres nothing that comes close to PE!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is difficult - first I want to make it absolutely clear that I'm in no way making any comparisons between PE & CM, they are like apples & oranges.

PE gives German optics a clear advantage over the Allies. This is achieved very simply by giving all German tanks a zoom function (this is ahistorical, see earlier posts). This translates into allowing the German player to see further (from 800m to perhaps 1000m). In addition this zoom incurs no reduction in FOV, which is a major benefit. The triangular moving graticlues in the German sights are modelled very well & really help with the estimation of range. The best method of estimating range with the Allied sights is to use your coax & watch where the tracers fall.

IMHO PE is an excellent game & really good fun to play. I'd hestitate from calling it a simulation though for a number of reasons including those given above. It's biggest failing in my opinion is the absence of a true ballistics model - muzzle velocities have been tweaked & crucially there is no shell flight time (i.e you hit the target the instant you fire). This makes hitting moving targets much easier than it would historically been as there is no requirement for lead. Therefore fire & movement tactics are not easy to implement & there is little advantage to be had from having a faster tank. I would however, recommend it as the best 3D 1st person WW2 tank game around at the moment as it's a real blast to play both in SP & MP (when it works). I certainly wouldn't use it as a benchmark against which to compare how CM models optics, spotting & accuracy.

Best regards,

Conall

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Conall:

I think some of the posts here are missing the point about the difference in quality between German & Allied optics. The main advantage the Germans had was that their optics could achieve similar levels of magnification (x2.5) to those of the Allies with much wider fields of view (typically 25 degrees in comparison to between 9 & 12 degrees for the Allied sights) & with better optical clarity. This had two important repercussions: a) it allowed the German gunners to search for & acquire targets & B) the wider field of view/clarity made the estimation of range much easier. In order to estimate range you need as many points of reference as possible – it becomes exponentially harder to judge distance as your field of view is diminished. As an example I’ve asked Jeff to post a picture of the view through a British 17pdr sight .

Best regards,

Conall<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thats a Great post

Seriously .....

I don't think that point has ever been mentioned before.

I think it is significant because it has hard numbers in it.

If true, (I'm sure that your numbers are verifiable) the German gunners had twice the field of view as the Allied gunners. I think twice the field of view is a BIG difference.

"Germans had was that their optics could achieve similar levels of magnification (x2.5) to those of the Allies with much wider fields of view (typically 25 degrees in comparison to between 9 & 12 degrees for the Allied sights) & with better optical clarity."

This makes (IMHO) one of the most compelling points using actual hard numbers for some slight German Accuracy bonus.

Great Post thanks

-tom w

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Guest Big Time Software

But how much more difficult when all things are considdered? I mean, a sniper's scope on a Springfield or Kar98k has a much more limited field of vision than tank scopes, right? Yet they can hit smaller targets at great distances (1000m with a rifle is probably like 2000-3000m with a tank gun) with one shot in the hands of a very skilled gunner.

This is the problem with anecdotal AAR/stat case building. Here is a highly abstracted, and hopefully humorous smile.gif, example:

Observation - Horses have 4 legs, humans only have 2.

Observation - Horses can run faster than humans.

Conclusion - It is obvious that 4 is better than 2, since a horse can run faster than a human. Therefore, a creature with 4 legs is "better" than 2.

But define "better" and under what circumstances. It might be that the horse is superior to a man, in terms of speed, for a bunch of different reasons, but legs might not be the most important factor. An ostritch, IIRC, can run faster than a human or a horse, and it only has 2 legs. Additionally, a cow has 4 legs and I doubt it can run faster than a human under normal circumstances.

And this doesn't take into consideration that the superior brain of the human allows it to build vehicles that can go faster than any creature alive, by a wide margin.

My point is that simply identifying a quantifiable differnce does NOT directly translate into a quantifiable impact on a particular variable.

The other problem is with picking only one of MANY accuracy variables and trying to peg some sort of "real world" value to it instead of leaving it abstract. This is very dangerous to do from a simulation standpoint. It is also generally creates other questions that need to be answered.

For example, if we are to simulate optical quality, and therefore give a bonus to the Germans, what about the anecdotal quote about Geramn optics having more problems in the winter than the ones used by Soviets? If this is true, we would HAVE to take this into account to realistically counterbalance the bonus with a negative modifier. And perhaps there are other circumstances where the "better" sights were actually "normal" or even "worse". The one that has been mentioned here serveral times is the complex nature of the sightes themselves, which meant longer range calculation times and a higher necessary level of crew training.

Bottom line is that this is a VERY complicated aspect of gunnery and accuracy. Any attempt to paint this as black and white obvious is misguided at best. Therefore, a strong and well researched case needs to be presented that convinces us that these differences between optics had a net positive effect on accuracy AND, even more importantly, establish some guidlines for roughly how much of a bonus should be applied.

500+ messages in this thread, plus about as many in at least 2 other threads, has failed to do this. Not saying it can't/won't happen, but it hasn't happened yet for sure.

Steve

[This message has been edited by Big Time Software (edited 11-22-2000).]

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software:

For example, if we are to simulate optical quality, and therefore give a bonus to the Germans, what about the anecdotal quote about Geramn optics having more problems in the winter than the ones used by Soviets? If this is true, we would HAVE to take this into account to realistically counterbalance the bonus with a negative modifier.

Steve

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Steve I agree, I believe we have established so far, that German sights:

- Were filtered

- had a wider FOV

- Were of better 'overall' quality

- Were penalised vs the Sherman in aquisition at short & medium ranges.

Concerning the German sight's frosting up this was rectified with the later sights just as with the Soviet sights, who had the Same problem which was solved by adding an a heater to the T-34-85 (later versions) sight's object glass, so penalties would apply to all German & Soviet tanks up to the dates, the heaters were installed.

I'm also going to add that their is no quantification, that Soviet optics were inferior, other then anecdotal as well as their seems to be, a general acceptance when discussing WW2 optics that Allied & German optics, were par in most areas to each other, yet Soviet optics are automaticly inferior in most refrences, yet T-34's in 1941 were knocking out PzKpfw III & IV tanks at 1,350m according to German reports etc.

Regards, John Waters

------------------

"We've got the finest tanks in the world. We just love to see the

German Royal Tiger come up on the field".

Lt.Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. February 1945.

[This message has been edited by PzKpfw 1 (edited 11-22-2000).]

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Guest Big Time Software

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>John wrote:

Steve I agree, I believe we have established so far, that German sights:

- Were filtered

- had a wider FOV

- Were of better 'overall' quality

- Were penalised vs the Sherman in aquisition at short & medium ranges.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I agree. This is the short list of what I think we can all agree on.

I would also like people to note the last one above, which is about penalizing German tanks at shorter ranges in terms of range to target aquisition. Currently, there are no penalties in CM for German tanks at short and medium ranges. The reason why not is for the same reason why not a bonus of some sort for the possible positive factors at long range. We simply do not want to mess with the system until we are sure we have our bases correctly covered.

This means figuring out "all" the relevant +/- features for various sights and tank models (the two are independent varaibles) for all nations. Then we would have to qualify these differences, seperate from all other non-optics related variables (like gun stabilization, finite control of turret rotation, etc.) to know get the correct net effect. Personally, I would rather take a bullet to the foot than try and research and quantify all this data since it is a HUGE task that I think would largely be found wanting for sources of information that do not exist.

The discussion we are having here is more about finer points between two systems that were, most likely, adequate for the capabilities of the gun systems they were attached to. However, the differences between Soviet and German optics is most certainly too vast to discount. So we are compelled to do SOMETHING about optics for CM2. And because of that a case like the above must be established, even if it is shakey.

Boy, I know at least 3 of our researchers that are going to have fun with this one smile.gif

Steve

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Just want to make sure that you understand that it is irrelevant that the vehicle in question is Waffen SS. Elite is Elite, no matter what the branch of service is. The SS get no special übermensch bonus.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You must be kidding? This is surely an oversight by BTS. Will there be a patch addressing this problem?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Same as what you see here, plus math and physics (which is over my head, but not Charles').<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I guess I missed any specific references that you may have mentioned other than a brief mention of D. Glantz. Glantz from my readings, tends to focus on operational and strategic level studies of the Russian Front.

Surely there are several accuracy studies or books you relied on heavily for the foundation of the tank gunnery model employed in CM. How did you go about deriving hit to miss ratios, target acquisition functions and effects of bracketing? Surely whatever secret war time studies you relied on are public domain by now. Come-on Steve give us the straight poop…enquiring minds want to know.

Regarding firing HE rounds in a direct fire mode from a tank…I think you missed my point. And at the risk of belaboring this there is no difference in engaging a target with direct fire…be the round: sabot, HE, or HEAT rounds. You determine range, you lay your gun on the center of mass of the target and you fire. The only difference is an adjustment in super-elevation to account for different trajectories of the different munitions.

[This message has been edited by Jeff Duquette (edited 11-22-2000).]

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Guest Big Time Software

Before I take off for a couple of days (Holiday here in the US, for those who don't know smile.gif), I thought I would share something about our future plans.

What we intend to do is build up a list of significant factors relating to sights and optics. We will then assess each of these basic categories on a Fuzzy Scale, with 5 being average and 1 being poor. One real world value will be selected as a baseline, and that will serve to rate how good/bad each system ranks in that particular factor. All factors will be added up and compared to wha the baseline, average sighting system would score. Those systems that score above will get an accuracy and/or aquisition time bonus in relation to how much better they score. Same in reverse for poorer systems. Experience level needed for the operator will also be one of the factors, as well as optimal performance at various ranges.

These numbers will not be entirely accurate, but should yeild a good aproximation of the impact optics has on accuracy and targit aquisition speed. But MOST importantly... they will be internally consistant and logicially (and fairly) assessed in a scientific manner. Therefore, they can be "defended" as "accurate" at least when comparing this model of sights vs. that model.

Conall, thanks for the spreadsheet you emailed me. This is the sort of thing we are going to be requesting when the time comes for this discussion. That time is not now, but when we are ready we will be asking all of you for your input concerning the new model (i.e. the factors) as well as the values for putting into that model.

So I leave you with these thoughts for a few days smile.gif

Steve

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Guest Big Time Software

Jeff,

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>ou must be kidding? This is surely an oversight by BTS. Will there be a patch addressing this problem?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I hope you are being sarcastic here. But without any smilies, I can't tell for sure. If you are serious, I suggest doing a search on this BBS about Experience to see why we did what we did. We will not change this.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Surely there are several accuracy studies or books you relied on heavily for the foundation of the tank gunnery model employed in CM.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nope, none. If you can point us to any, we would be more than happy to find such a source. But since we have found no such wealth of info, we have rellied upon the very same sources that you have.

How did we arrive at our values? Through a mixture of AARs, test range data, physics (important one!!), contemporary results (like your own earlier postings), and a bit of common sense. Looking at selective AARs only, and taking them at face value, is not the way to go.

Steve

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Did Steve Just say they are considering modeling optics bonues or is this a cruel early April fool's Joke smile.gif just before the American Thanksgiving......

"All factors will be added up and compared to what the baseline, average sighting system would score. Those systems that score above will get an accuracy and/or aquisition time bonus in relation to how much better they score. "

If he is serious about modeling optics bonuses, I'm Giving Thanks for Sure.

Thanks!

-tom w

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Another fine 17-pdr gunsight image courtesy of Conall. Apparently an armour exhibition of some sort. I reduced the original to 1/2 do to thread format.

"GUNNER SABOT...MAN ON BIKE...12 O'CLOCK...100"

"IDENTIFIED"

"UP"

"FIRE"

"ON THE WAY"

KA-BOOM

"CEASE FIRE"

17pdr2.jpg

click on the URL if you wish to see the full size version:

http://www.geocities.com/tigervib_2000/Crap/17pdr.jpg

[This message has been edited by Jeff Duquette (edited 11-22-2000).]

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I received this relatively detailed cut away of the Tiger Ie from Machineman. I’m not sure what the original source was.

This is the copula area clearly identifying mounting brackets for both the TC’s range finder and scissors observation periscope (TS1R).

tiger_copula.jpg

The entire image is quite large so I have not posted it here due to the chore of lateral scrolling across the remainder of the thread it would create.

I posted the entire cut-away at:

http://www.geocities.com/tigervib_2000/Crap/tiger_cut.jpg

It’s a large image so give it a few seconds to load.

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Guest machineman

It's from quite an old book, 'The Tiger Tanks', Heinz J. Nowarra, Uwe Feist, and Edward T. Maloney, 1966. Greens 'Tiger Tanks' has a colorized version of the same drawing on page 45. Supposed to have been done by a WWII British army technical team that had examined a number of captured vehicles.

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I think the 5 levels to optics should be a good starting point...RL made the point about 1 x magn = ~ 1km visiblity on a clear sunny day [so 3x = 3km ]. There are visibility comparisons that reduce visibility already worked out for NATO and this could be grafted . Together with Conalls info a credible model can be built. One thing Robert also mentioned was that the Sherman optics were easier to track a target than the German optics...having played SB I can relate to the smoothness being soooooo important. To me its the rate determining step in my time to hit scores.

BTW: we just sold 1040 copies of SB to the USARMY [ West Point Training Acadamy] Yahhoooo smile.gif

Sorry couldn't resist smile.gif

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

Why don't they buy CM as well?

I'm sure it would be more fun.

-tom w<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Heh, could be, but there are no M1A2s in CM and the Army gave up on Shermans a little while back (although with their new light, mobile philosophy maybe they should bring the old Sherman back. Is it any less capable than a LAV III? And it only weighs a little more... smile.gif

------------------

You mean my Java coded Real Time Bar Fight Simulator Madmatt Mission: Beyond BiteMe ISN'T going to be published?!?

Madmatt

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Vanir:

Heh, could be, but there are no M1A2s in CM and the Army gave up on Shermans a little while back (although with their new light, mobile philosophy maybe they should bring the old Sherman back. Is it any less capable than a LAV III? And it only weighs a little more... smile.gif

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Afraid not the LAV-III with 105 has mexas armor [NERA] which means its protection level is on par with Tiger 2 [KE wize] and HEAT resistance is probably all round protection against RPG-7V...except the wheels.

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Guest Big Time Software

Hi Tom,

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>If he is serious about modeling optics bonuses, I'm Giving Thanks for Sure.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

We have always said that we would try and simulate optics for the Eastern Front. While we are all debating about how later war Allied sights stacked up to German ones, we have never disputed that earlier war Allied sights and Soviet sights were more than likely to not be up to snuff compared to German stuff. So somehow, in some way, we need to quantify this difference. Unfortunately, it will be largely guesswork as to the effect on gunnery accuracy, but we have little choice.

We have no idea what the method I outlined above will yield, but it is at least a scientific means of tackling this bugger of a problem. We didn't do it for the Western Front because, obviously, we do not think the differences between the optics were great enough that we should dedicate a good deal of time to this issue. We had PLENTY of issues already for the first go around smile.gif

When we get around to this (probably a couple of months) we will present our model for you guys to comment on. A group effort on this issue is definitely needed. At the very least it helps spread the blame around if the model sucks smile.gif Of course, how would anybody be able to PROVE that we got it wrong biggrin.gif

Steve

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Thanks Steve smile.gif

You should be eating Turkey smile.gif

or at the very least relaxing and sleeping off all that tryptophan.

Didn't think we would hear from any of you Americans until Monday.

Relax...

Enjoy a little, Hope you find time to do other Real Life ™ things besides BTS and CM over your late Nov. four day holiday. (In Canada some of us are a little envious of such nice little LONG weekend at this time of the year.)

Happy ThanksGiving smile.gif

-tom w

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At least the Aberdeen people that received the tanks T-34 and KV-1 were extremely impressed with the optics. The Soviet delegation reported that the optics design was called unsurpassed by any tanks existing or in development in US. (courtesy of Vasiliy Fofanov) http://history.vif2.ru/library/army7.html

As a caveat remember that the US optics (M38 & M40) were of an appalling quality at the time.

Also see the following link for a brief comment on later Soviet sights: http://history.vif2.ru/library/reports19.html

"In practice the 9T-17 telescopic sight was found uncomfortable for shooting and observation because it does not permit 360 traverse through turret roof and could not be used because of difficulties related to his adjustment and fast displacement of aimed lines."

Finally here's some material that Robert Livingston very kindly dug up:

"Purchase of the old Zeiss plant from the Germans (Zeiss used the money to re-tool with modern equipment) helped put the Red Army in a relatively good position as regards optical equipment. . . this optical equipment generally was of high grade." (Garrett Underhill, The Story of Soviet Armor, Armored Cavalry Journal/ARMOR magazine, 1950). Please note that Underhill had access to the Aberdeen reports on the KV and T34 sent over from Russia during the war, and his judgement of "high grade" probably reflects what the report said.

KV 1:

Periscopic dial sight PT-47: 2.5x, AP, HE & MG range scales. Rotatable head. Coaxial telescope TMFD: HE, MG range scales only; NO AP scale. (Norman, AFV Profile 17, based on inspection of another sample KV 1 '42 given to England during the war).

Driver's view slit: "protected by layers of laminated glass block that were often contaminated by air bubbles and difficult to see through." (Zaloga and Grandsen, Soviet Heavy Tanks, Osprey Vanguard 24, 1981)

PT-4-7 periscope: illuminated ballistic reticle, 360deg traverse,

2.5x, 26deg field, stadiametric range finding lines. "Adjustments provided for one HE and two AP rounds." (Zaloga, 1981)

"The telescopic sight [TMFD] was usually used when firing the main gun

since it had better light transmission while the PT-4-7 was used for

general target acquisition and observation since it could be traversed

and had a wider field of view." (Zaloga & Kinnear, KV-1 & 2 Heavy

Tanks, New Vanguard 17, 1995). No mention of missing AP scale in TMFD,

as referenced by Norman, above.

T-34/76:

"[Driver's] vision was poor when closed down, partly because of poor

quality optical glass." (Brereton, Russian T-34, AFV Weapons Profile 47,

1972)

Coaxial telescope TMFD, periscopic PT-4-7. As KV 1.

T-34/85:

Coaxial telescope TSh-16, periscopic sight: none. Simple observation

periscope (MK-4) only. (Zaloga & Kinnear, T-34-85, New Vanguard 20,

1996)

"Later versions [of the T-34/85 coaxial sight] incorporated a heater for the object glass to forestall frosting and condensation." Norman, T-34/85, AFV Weapons Profile 47, 1972)

Hope you find this interesting. Bottom line is that the idea that Soviet optics were uniformly bad shouldn't be accepted as face value & a lot more research needs to be done.

regards,

Conall

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Guest Big Time Software

Conall, thanks for the interesting read above. You wrote:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Hope you find this interesting. Bottom line is that the idea that Soviet optics were uniformly bad shouldn't be accepted as face value & a lot more research needs to be done.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yup, which is why we are proposing to do a more or less scientific look at this issue. Instead of ASSUMING that the Soviet optics were uniformly crappy, and then pulling some negative modifier out of our butts, we want to really take a look at this and figure out (as best we can) what is fact and what is fiction. German accounts of the quality of Soviet anything needs to be taken with a grain of salt on the whole. There are plenty of things that the Germans wrote down as "fact" in order to support the notion that the Soviets were a bunch of savages. Obviously, much of what they had to say was either true, or contained some truth, but they were far from objective overall. And therefore, the hat of scepticism needs to be worn at all times smile.gif

So... for the same reasons we did not assume that German optics are universally (i.e. in all combat situations for all vehicles) better than later war US sights, we are not going to assume that all Soviet optics were crap. Even if I start out holding that opinion, like I did that German optics were vastly superior in combat vs. US/GB sights, that doesn't mean the conclusions of our future study are already determined wink.gif

Steve

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