Simulation of an entire divisionon the move

[coe]

This might be a strange request, but we see in maps represented by military symbols how an entire armoured division might move but has this ever been simulation - as in through computer graphics/special effects so that you actually see the many thousands of vehicles and see how crammed they get or not or the formations they form and perhaps a visual scale sense of it all.

[womble]

I think part of the problem with seeing it 'all' is that if you zoom out that far, you can hardly see the individual elements, so end up seeing less.

[Erwin]

You'd also need a very powerful computer.

[Kingfish]

CM has a limit to the number of units purchased. I know the number is 256, but can't remember if that is max number of vehicles or total units. In any event it falls short of a brigade, let along a division.

You might want to take a look at my scenario 'Dueling Sledgehammers'. Thanks to the help of JonS I was able to depict a fictional meeting engagement between Halpenny Force and Kampfgruppe Wunsche.

The Canadian OOB is as historical as CMAK allows, and although it only features a combined arms force of two reinforced battalions (one each tank & Infantry + AT, ENG, etc) it is one honkin' big resource hog.

You might want to open the scenario in the editor and delete the German units except for one just to keep the game active, then reopen the battle and plot the various groupings across the map just to get a feel for what a taskforce or combat command looks like when moving cross country.

As Erwin says, you may want to try this on a Cray II.

[Sergei]

Cray 2 isn't that powerful compared to home computers of today, actually. I think a Pentium 4 surpasses it in processing power. Cray looks cooler though, so if your evil genius' lair feels like it's missing something (such as big towers with strobing lights), it might be just the element you need!

[coe]

I do guess zooming would be key but it would be interesting also from a distance perspective (seeing how long the line of vehicles are, or if deployed, the dust clouds etc.

and how quickly it might be able to concentrate

[Kingfish]

You would have to increase the scale above the single vehicle representation in CM to something more akin to TacOps or HPS simulation, where platoon and company size units are generally the norm.

Otherwise you would have to zoom out so far that important divisional elements like forward recon screens would get lost in the ground clutter.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

i have never seen videos of such simulations. armored division deployed in a march column can be around 100 km long, so creating such a graphical simulation would not be a trivial task. you could try to look for films shot from passing aircraft to get a sense of scale.