Hello everyone,

Storm published first pictures of the IS-3 tank in HD. For some reason, the IS-3 is possibly the most requested HD tank on RU forums, that’s why it’s sort of “big news” for them. It still has no textures, it’s just the first model version.

The vehicle model was made using special method called “photogrammetry”, where the vehicle is photographed from all sides and then, using special software, these photographs are assembled and turned into a 3D model. These photos were taken in the Stalin line museum in Belarus, there are several IS-3 tanks in various state of disrepair.

Source: http://siliconrus.com/2015/01/2014-stats/

Hello everyone,

here’s a random piece of information, but it illustrates well the popularity of World of Tanks in Russia. In Russia, two Wargaming sites (worldoftanks.ru and wargaming.net) made it to the top 100 visited sites in Russia in 2014.

They are on 54th and 87th place. The most popular Russian site is – unsurprisingly – Vkontakte social network (aka “Russian facebook”).

Thanks to Goat722 for this one.

Hello everyone,

Brazil is an interesting country – when cops make a raid looking for stolen property for example, they find the most unusual things, like they did yesterday in the Sacoma district of Sao Paulo. Inside a warehous amongst other – usual – things like TV sets, they found two M41 Walker Bulldog tanks.

These tanks were actually auctioned off by the Brazilian armor manufacturer Engesa without functional guns and engines, which was the state they were found in. Brazilian police has taken the warehouse overseer into custody and is now investigating, how did two tanks get into criminal hands.

Hue hue hue! :)

Source: http://worldoftanks.ru/ru/news/pc-browser/12/chronicles_the_siege_of_leningrad/

Hello everyone,

World of Tanks RU portal published an interesting article about the siege of Leningrad. The siege itself was an attempt of the German forces to literally starve the city of three million people to death, because they did not want to get heavily involved in city fighting – that city fighting almost always turns into a meatgrinder was a lesson they knew about, but would nevertheless experience by themselves through the horrors of Stalingrad.

The city on river Neva was under siege for 872 days, the encirclement was only broken on 27.1.1944. To commemorate the event, Wargaming posted series of photos from Leningrad on their portal – here they are:

Leningrad until the war: a normal peaceful city

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Author: Gojonnogo

The History of Auschwitz

27th January 1945, Oświęcim, Poland. Red Army troops make their way through the Lesser Poland province of southern Poland, situated 50 kilometres west of Kraków. The SS began evacuating Auschwitz and nearly 60,000 prisoners were forced to march west towards Germany. Thousands had been killed in the days prior to the start of these death marches. If you were to stop, unable to walk any further, then SS officers would shoot you on the spot. However, it wasn’t just fatigue that would kill you; it was starvation and exposure to the cold weather. More than 15,000 died during these death marches. When the Soviet army entered into Auschwitz they were able to liberate more than 7,000 remaining prisoners who were mostly ill and dying. It is estimated that at minimum 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945; of these, at least 1.1 million were murdered, 90% of whom were Jewish.

Voices from Auschwitz

Bart Stern:

“So I was hiding out in the heap of dead bodies because in the last week when the crematoria didn’t function at all, the bodies were just building up higher and higher. So there I was at night-time, in the daytime I was roaming around in the camp, and this is where I actually survived”

Soviet Experience

“It was the silence, the smell of ashes and the boundless surrounding expanse that struck Soviet soldier Ivan Martynushkin when his unit arrived.

As they entered the camp for the first time, the full horror of the Nazis’ crimes there were yet to emerge.
“Only the highest-ranking officers of the General Staff had perhaps heard of the camp,” recalled Martynushkin of his arrival to the site. “We knew nothing.”
But Martynushkin and his comrades soon learned.
After scouring the camp in search of a potential Nazi ambush, Martynushkin and his fellow soldiers “noticed people behind barbed wire.”

“It was hard to watch them. I remember their faces, especially their eyes which betrayed their ordeal,” he said.
Among items discovered by Martynushkin and other Soviet troops were 370,000 men’s suits, 837,000 women’s garments, and 7.7 tons of human hair.” – source

My Experience of Auschwitz-Birkenau

I was lucky enough to go to Auschwitz-Birkenau a couple of months ago thanks to the Holocaust Educational Trust (http://www.het.org.uk/) and their project, Lessons from Auschwitz. Before I actually went on the trip to Poland I met with a Holocaust survivor, her name is Susan Pollack and she has to be one of the most amazing people I have ever had the fortune to meet. She was around 14 when she was sent to Auschwitz with the rest of her family and was lucky to survive as normally children would be sent to the gas chambers upon arrival, as were most women. Susan was fairly understanding of what happened to her and stated she felt “no need for retribution”.

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Hello everyone,

as I informed you already, there’s one hot candidate for EU/Czechoslovak premium tank and that is the TVP Concept (previously, I referred to it as TVP Model 1946). Well, as it turns out, it’s not so easy and there are some things that need to be addressed before this is given a green light, so a need for an alternative design for the premium vehicle rose as well, much to my… displeasure (let’s face it, the Concept is pretty much ideal).

The demands for the vehicle are as such:

- it has to be Czechoslovak, very preferrably original
- it has to be a medium tank
- can’t be lowtier, has to be roughly tier 5 or higher

So, here’s what I came up with as an alternative for the worst case:

After the war, the newly restored Czechoslovak army actually used some modded/kitbashed Panzer IV’s under the designation of T-40/75 (or T-40/75N, both were used). I wrote about that actually a long time ago, here – have a look, if you are interested in the history of their service.

For game purposes, it means the following:

- it’s a Panzer IV Ausf.J with modded Ausf.D turret (with additional spaced armor)
- the gun is 75mm L/43 or 75mm L/48
- the engine is either original (300hp HL-120TRM) or modified truck engine Tatra T-928 (180hp or 192hp
- Czechoslovak radio and internal modifications
- ČKD steering system (more reliable, local production)

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Hello everyone,

Wargaming RU posted a video, in which they explain, what the PC hardware does when it comes to World of Tanks and how to increase your FPS. Unfortunately, it’s only in Russian (no FPS for you, capitalists!) – but, let’s face it… they need it more :) In any case, here are a few points said in the video, that you might find interesting or helpful.

- regarding the GPU, the minimum detail requirement is 256 MB VRAM, but for maximum details the requirement is 2GB VRAM
- GPU calculates the scene graphics, while the CPU (processor) is responsible for various calculations, like physical model, shell trajectory, client-server communication, sound, HD model track movement etc.
- regarding RAM, you need at least 2GB, but if you want to play comfortably, you need 4 GB and more
- technically it’s possible to play even with 1GB, but then you’ll get freezes, caused by loading of data from the HDD

There is a “recommended settings” button in the setting. It launches two tests: one is testing the processing speed of geometry (CPU), the other the processing speed of textures (GPU). As a result one of five profiles will be selected automatically based on the data recieved.

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Source: http://kris-reid.livejournal.com/715795.html

Hello everyone,

Wargaming representatives recently visited the Arsenalen museum in Sweden to start cooperation with the museum and to measure and take pictures of some of the vehicles there. Here’s what one of the WG guys there photographed. As far as I know, WG representatives were pleased with the how pleasant, forthcoming and understanding the Swedish museum staff was, including the director of the museum – well, that’s Sweden for you I guess!

And yes, if you are wondering, they are working on putting together a Swedish branch. As far as I know, it’s a backup branch just in case the Czechoslovaks don’t work out, it might appear in 2016 though.

Much to my surprise, I could name only like half of these without googling – how many can you recognize? Some are easy, but some…

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Hello everyone,

I have to admit, this is something that actually slipped through my net, because I simply did not believe that after the “M53/M55 flying turret” fiasco, Wargaming would screw around with model/collision model inconsistency again. But… check this out.

This is the AMX-50B HD model – a comparison between the visual and collision model. Look at the turret cradle (the part below the turret).

As you can see, a significant part of the cradle is missing from the turret in the collision model, creating an exposed “strip” of armor. There’s one other mistake on the HD model, the hatches – the upper part of the hatches on the roof is missing from the collision model.

Also notice the frontal plate shape difference between collision and visual model. Yes, there is a hole on the side of the armor.

Why am I posting this – after all, it’s still 9.6 test, right? To catch the bugs and all that? Well, last time this happened, it went live with such a bug (again, the “flying turret”) and the results you probably know.

Well, I guess I’ll have to go over models again to check for this kind of pitfalls.

Hello everyone,

let’s have a quick look at how the “friends” mechanism was reworked in 0.9.6 as a part of the contact list overhaul, because there’s a MAJOR change in the mechanism. As I am sure you all know, in current World of Tanks, having someone in “friends” list is simply done by looking for that person and adding him to your contact list. That is no longer possible – in 0.9.6, this was changed to work as it usually does in social networks. Basically, before someone adds you, you have to approve him – a system message will pop up on the right side of the list with a confirmation, whether you want that person to add you as a friend, or not.

You can press either “accept” or “decline” (in this case, I “declined” for test purposes)

If you press “accept”, you will appear in their friend’s list and he in yours. I am not quite sure how this will work with your existing contacts, presumably (as can be seen on test) your friend list will just somehow import, as it is on the test. But what if a lot of people have you as their “friend” while you don’t have them? I assume that only contacts that are in both friend lists will somehow merge into new “friendship”.

This system has one advantage though – people, who are not in your friend list, will not be able to send you any messages:

What this means is that no longer will you get hateful messages (for example when you kill someone with artillery :P) after the battle. What is however NOT solved is that there’s no option to not allow any people to add you, so I am sure that various WoT “celebrities” will have to deal with constant spam of friend invites in system messages.