Holy crap, so as somebody who has written multiple tank controllers I was so curious to see this one. It's a lot simpler than it looks (this is a good thing), but also really immersive by virtue of the "clunky" controls and having to do every command of consequence other than driving through the restrictive interior view. There's a lot of polish to smooth out bugs with going between all the different modes and views, but fundamentally this feels really solid as a lite tank sim. Below are my notes as I was playing the game:
- Holy crap what an interior - Yeah the furry crew members are not for me, also you can look down and see your neck hole - Not sure what I did, but after firing (I was looking into the sight, but then left the sight) I got the camera on the gunners position stuck and couldn't rotate it anymore after watching the reload mechanism. Switching the crew positions didn't restore the gunner camera control. Had to restart scene with Tab. - Clicking to look at different optics is insanely cool, but some of the optics have a really obvious "render target" look to them. Some of that is going to come down to raw resolution, but there are some neat things you can do with shaders to make it look less "render targety". E.g. when not aligned, it gets blanked out and looks black. - Hide body mesh only kinda works. Some characters become floating heads, others don't disappear at all - The sounds are awesome. - No way to turn out of the hatches? - Movement with the tank always feels like my input is being interrupted. It might be all my different controllers conflicting? Re-ran the game with HIDHide. Seems better, but still juddery movement. Not sure what's causing that or if it's intentional (gear changes?), because turning in a tank is hard - There's a big delay between WASD input and something happening, again not sure if intended or not, or what's causing it - I mentioned this before, but there's something very wonky with how the wheel suspension looks. The wheels move backwards and forwards in a way that doesn't look natural. - Movement of the track itself is great - Visuals aside, the physics of the suspension feel great - Antenna has motion! This is very good! Very important! - Voices should default to on, unless I accidentally turned it off without noticing? - Oh, so that's where the delay in movements was coming from. That was issuing move orders from the TC. - Okay this explains a lot. I switched to the drivers position and driving is now much faster. It's also really cool seeing the animations of the brakes and pedals, this is explaining a lot about the movement to me. - Still sad I can't seem to turn out - Oh wow the War Thunder X-Ray camera, that must have been a lot of work - Not sure what's happening but I keep putting the camera in a weird way where it won't rotate - Ordering turret rotations and fire commands from the TC position seems the most reliable way to move the turret. In the gunners seat the turret doesn't seem to move vertically anymore? - Thinking about it, there's actually very few controls in here, which I like a lot. It looks a lot more complicated than it is, and instead the mechanics of ordering things around as the TC with kind of awkward equipment goes a long way in making this feel very simmy and immersive - No coax gun? - The hit effects on the Abrams are so cool, with the engine burning and then the ammo cooking off through the blowout door - Definitely looks like some kind of "compression" going on with the rounds with regards to their speeds and drop. Not a problem, it keeps tank combat shorter ranged and more interesting, just a note. - God damn the animation for the shell reloading - I don't know if there's actually an ammo count, since there's no display I could find for one. - I keep wanting to point at something as the TC and then tell the driver to move to that position - Third person rotation controls interfere with the TC pointing command - The little caps getting thrown out the back when firing is so fun