[mandrill7]

These are some of the screenshots that I have been posting on Aviaskins re my WiP Army Group Centre Map. The map will be suitable for 1941, 1943 and 1944 fighting.

I have populated the cities and airfields and am now working on the large villages. I will probably release it as a "lite" map when the large villages are completed. This is likely a couple of weeks away.

The small villages, hamlets and isolated objects will have to come later on a second version of the map.

I hope you like the screenies.

This is the village of Krichev on the Sozh River, north of the large city of Gomel'.

[mandrill7]

Here, I am flying north on the Sozh River at the junction of the Sozh and the Iput', over the city of Gomel'. The shot features some experiments with autumn tiles, but this is only apparent with the forest in the far distance.

[mandrill7]

This is the village of Krugloye, west of the Dnepr at Orsha.

[mandrill7]

This is the small town of Besnkovichi, between Polotsk and Vitebsk on the Dvina River.

[mandrill7]

Here I am flying north on the Desna River, over the southern part of Bryansk.

[mandrill7]

Here I am flying north over the northern part of Smolensk.

[mandrill7]

This is the 2D map.

[CzechTexan]

I see you've done much work over the past year or so. Glad to see so much of the populating that's already finished.
I like that this map covers such a large area. For me it's easier to see the bigger picture of the campaign as it unfolds. It's harder to see that on the smaller stock IL2 maps of which this is a combination of a few of those mapped areas.

The only problem with a larger map is that it involves much more populating so kudos to you for taking on this project.
The rivers and waterways look very nice as do the populated areas. I'm curious to see what the airfields look like. I'm also curious to see what the Yelnya region look like...this important battlefield was skipped over in the stock IL2 maps...as was the border battlefields. I have always wanted to see a better mapped Rzhev region too. This map will surely help with all that!

My only request is to see more smaller airfields. As you know, there were hundreds of planes used for 1944 Bagration. Most were probably on the smaller grass fields scattered all over.
Nice project!

[mandrill7]

I'll put a couple of airfields up in the next little while. Thanks for the comments.

Yelnya is on the list of stuff to populate. That whole area is basically heavily wooded, small village bush country. Rzhev is far away. Distances get pretty big in Russia.

My impression is that the country as a whole gets pretty rough and sparsely populated north of Smolensk, right up to Leningrad. Essentially just swamp and forest and the occasional town or small city. Doing this map has taught me a lot about Russian history. I can now understand why there were a dozen or so major battles fought at Smolensk and almost as many at Orsha over the last 500 years. This was the only way into Russia until the Twentieth Century. Everybody came through the Dvina-Dnepr watergap - Napoleon, the Poles in the 1600's, Charles XII of Sweden.

Re smaller airfields. I would be happy to put in anything and everything that I can find was in existence at the time. Maybe in the next phase, I'll try and find some better resources. From what I can make out, the LW flew from major bases - Bobruisk, Orsha and Polotsk were their main centres during Bagration. I don't know whether they would have used dispersal and emergency air strips. I suspect that the VVS would have been flying from anywhere that was flat, grassy and more than 200 meters long without bumps or obstacles.

[CzechTexan]

Glantz's book ZHUKOV'S GREATEST DEFEAT is one of my favorites and gives a detailed account of the winter '42 battle. It also has great maps showing villages and important roads. The area is heavily wooded with the usual smaller rivers which made it difficult for the large Russian tank formations.

Will there be airfields west of the Bobr and Berezina rivers for Germans to use for Barbarossa? Maybe some small forward strips that have been captured can be put to use for a campaign in that region.

BTW, it must be really difficult for you to pinpoint exactly where towns and rivers and forests should be with the mostly featureless geography. So good luck with that my friend.

[mandrill7]

I started by drawing the rivers. I superimposed the (then totally blank, white) map_c on top of the map_h. Then I just followed the river valleys and corrected later by referencing with 1:200,000 maps. Since the rivers are everywhere, I could then get the towns. Once I had the towns, I could put in the roads.

The forests I got from the 1:200,000 maps as well. They are almost everywhere on the north and western part of the map. There is far less "clear" area than forest.

Yes, it would be easy to put in a few "emergency" strips on both the western and eastern edges of the map and this would open it up. As it is, the eastern 1/8 of the map in particular is not that usable as it is not serviced by any air strips.

I am going to have to halt populating for a month or so as my old (2005) computer is maxed out and no longer really capable of processing the actors.static. I am awaiting delivery of a brand new rig with 8 GB RAM and this should be good to go to finish.

[mandrill7]

I anticipate having a beta version of this map available for download by the end of February or sooner.

[Planemad]

Sounds good, can't wait to try here as she seems to be getting along nicely :)

Planemad