Panther height

[TDeacon]

FYI, when looking at the Panther AAMG issues offline, I also noticed that the Panther was sitting a bit low on its suspension, with little ground clearance.  The prototype was actually slightly taller than the Sherman.  Note images below comparing offline AH with photos of 1:76 scale plans.  No idea if you would want to correct this, but I thought you would like to know.  In any case, the AH model overall is very nicely done. 



://home.comcast.net/~mark.hinds/misc_online_storage_dir/Panther_height_plans.jpg

[Dr_Death8]

As far as the settling on the suspension, I have noticed that when playing back in film viewer that several GVs will act as if they have hydralic suspensions and bounce up and down, especially on the M4s. Either way, if you account for the suspension dropping issue, then they are the same height. Also you have to remember that different loadout would affect the overall height, as it would add extra weight to suspensions.

[TDeacon]

Dr_Death8,

We are talking about the appearance of the vehicles at rest; no movement involved; look at the pictures.

BTW, tank ammo and fuel loadout variations will ***not*** cause the ground clearance to vary noticably, and the discrepancy we are discussing here is at least a foot; again look at the pictures. 

[TDeacon]

Here's how it should look.  

All I did was raise the Panther hull and turret assembly, and fill in some extra track.  You can see how much it was raised by the backgroud discontinuity above the Panther, left deliberately uncorrected so you guys could see the delta.

[Dr_Death8]

Dr_Death8,

We are talking about the appearance of the vehicles at rest; no movement involved; look at the pictures.

BTW, tank ammo and fuel loadout variations will ***not*** cause the ground clearance to vary noticably, and the discrepancy we are discussing here is at least a foot; again look at the pictures. 

I understand that and here is what I am talking about. This was an NME tank, sitting stationary, using film viewer. Had to shrink quality down to post. 

[Dr_Death8]

Here's how it should look.  

Upon further investigating the height difference by using Photoshop to compare just the body heights, if your plans are 100% accurate and of the same scale, then your initial idea is valid and the panther is smaller than it should be, giving it a clear advantage in the game 

[TDeacon]

Dr_Death8,

You seem to have identified a distortion issue caused by the film viewer.  However, note that my images above are not from the film viewer, but instead are screen captures taken offline with the 2 tanks parked next to each other.  I then processed them in Photoshop.  The corrected-height image was processed in photoshop by cutting out the hull and turret, raising them by the indicated amount, then filling in extra track and cleaning up the background.  

With respect to the plans, both 1:76 scale plans were placed on the floor, one overlapping the other, and photographed.  Other sources of information confirm the accuracy of these plans.  Actually, to get picky, look at my corrected-height image.  Note how the Panther turret, relative to the hull, looks slightly smaller than in the plan?  The turret would probably benefit from being enlarged 5% in all 3 axes (both width and height in the view above).