Why IL2 maps cannot be accurate - Printable Version

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+--- Thread: Why IL2 maps cannot be accurate (/showthread.php?tid=51868)

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Why IL2 maps cannot be accurate - ClockWatcher - 01.01.2008

The image below uses a modified greyscale in MicroDEM to get as linear a slope as possible. Each white square = 1 pixel in IL2's terrain maps. I want to point out the following:



IL2 cannot give you a vertical slope, a cliff. This is because at ALL heights, a drop to the next height level results in a slope drawn over 2 pixels, 400m, as shown in the picture. This is because terrain maps (map_h) are drawn at a resolution of 1 pixel = 200m in IL2's terrain rendering engine. So those hoping for the White Cliffs of Dover and similar features will be disappointed. These cliffs are around 315ft, 100m, tall at their highest point, but IL2 will show them as a slope because of the way the terrain engine works making it look like a gentle hill. There is also the limitation that IL2's maximum height appears to be 4000m.

Please think about why maps are not accurate before you post, it is not because map makers are being sloppy, it is because it is the best they can do with the rendering engine we have in IL2.

Could this be improved in IL2? Yes. Water features are drawn in map_c at a resolution of 50m, if someone could figure out how to get terrain drawn at this resolution we could have more accurate scenery. But this would make the game more sluggish.

Why? Because at the moment each terrain square covers 200m per side = 4 height points, one at each corner. If we now did it at 50m per terrain square we would need 25 points to describe the height for a 200m x 200m square now (there are 16 50m squares in a square 200m x 200m). So 6.25 times more data to be plotted and rendered makes it a slower game! The picture below gives a better explanation, the red dots being where the height data points are.



Thanks for listening.

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- Skunkmeister - 01.01.2008

Awesome work CW. I love this highly scientific and analytic approach you have to maps and map making.

Its a darn shame though. The earth has so many different and odd shapes and such interesting terrain, it sucks we cant replicate it all. Like the real Pointe-du-Hoc:



:wink:

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- Guest - 01.01.2008

If I understand that correctly, even if there is a way to make terrain in resolution of (already) existing and in game water, we would need very powerful machines to drive it? :roll:

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- Neil Lowe - 01.01.2008

Nicely researched and documented CW

Cheers, Neil

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THis Might be a dumb comment but... - Kopfdorfer - 25.04.2009

I have been reading this thread - knowing it's quite old. I don't know how far past this problem the map makers have got - has anyone been able to assign a more effective (50m per pixel) assignment to a map reference point? If this has been or is achieved, perhaps it would be possible to have a different scale assigned in the engine just for the cliff areas as a compromise to loading all the extra info in areas where it is unnecessary. I am no map maker, and I apologize if this was dealt with eons ago, or is impossible, but it seemed a logical continuance to the problem solving you have all been going through on this thread.

Kopfdorfer

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- Blumax - 27.04.2009

I tried a little experiment by taking a line of water tiles along the coast and raising them to the height of the cliffs i wanted, then i went to map c and used a RGB scale of 240 to turn the raised areas to land, went back to fmb and shaped and textured them. I got steeper cliffs than can usually be made by just raising the land but to then align the land behind and the waterline in front was very tricky and i put the project down...... but worth a thought

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- Blumax - 27.04.2009

this is the result of that method mentioned in the previous post, might work for the cliffs on the south coast of England

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- JAMF - 27.04.2009

hock:

Yup, that's cliff material. Well done.

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