[canonuk]

Hi guys,

I took a trip to the National Archives in Kew today and spent many hours looking through some amazing material. My plan was to collect sketches of Luftwaffe airfields in France so that I could accurately populate my Battle of Britain map. I managed to find good aerial photographs of some key airfields in my area, as well as some others in France and east Germany. I also found a document produced by the RAF intelligence service cataloguing the development of Luftwaffe airfields, giving examples of the standard generic patterns used.

Since I found very little useful material on the internet, I've decided to draw up my sketches neatly and clearly and publish them online for people to use. Here's my first one - Beauvais/Tille airfield, 1943. Some of the structures/buildings are generic/approximate in placement since I was going for the overall feel of those parts. Maybe one day I'll do a super accurate version



Anyway, here's a list of the airfields I have details for, and they'll follow in the next few weeks. (The 'generic' airfields aren't made up - they're from actual photos. They were just used in a report as example airfields)

Lille/Vendeville
Beaumont-sur-Oise
Lille-Nord
Vitry-en-Artois
Abbeville/Drucat (dispersal area only)
St Omer (1940 and 1943)
Nancy/Essey 1944
Generic 'Station' style airfield, Germany, 1939
Generic 'Operational Landing Ground' style airfield, Germany, 1939
Generic 'Air Park' style airfield, Germany, 1939
Hesepe 1940/41
Merville, 1940
Generic Fighter airfield, France, 1941
Generic Fighter airfield, France, 1943
Nightfighter airfield, France, 1943

Comments welcome

[fly_zo]

very useful .... thanks a lot


one thing , could you post that in " Information Sources - maps and airfields diagrams" sticky ... or should i make one of this ( if you need clean thread )


thanks again,

Z

[ClockWatcher]

Canon,

Good work, digging around for the info is a huge chunk of the work on these projects. Many thanks for taking the time and effort in posting your findings for the community,

CW

[Ajay]

Great idea Canon,i'm sure everyone knows how long it can take to get enough info just to try and recreate a certain airfield.Well done man

[Bee]

Very clever and a valuable resource. Well done canon.

[asheshouse]

This is great stuff.
I guess I might be doing an airfield next.

Any chance of including an indication of scale and orientation.

--or reference to runway length and direction

I would guess looking at my map that north is not at the top of your diagram.
The main runway is orientated roughly at 300 deg.

[canonuk]

asheshouse: You've made me re-think my little project. Looking through my notes I see I've failed to record scale or orientation - terrible!

It made me think that actually I'm better off doing the project once, really well - instead of once as a rough guide and once in detail. So, I'm going to head back to the archive and take photos of the airfields, and then produce my diagrams from accurate scaled tracing of the photos.

That way I'll have a definitive set of airfield drawings instead of nice sketches of limited use

Joe

[asheshouse]

True dedication

[asheshouse]

I have had an idea

Maraz's airfield textures used in his Tunisia map look really good but we are limited in how many of these we can use.

My thought is to make a temporary texture using canon's drawings, paste it on the map and then use it as an "in map" template to position all of the airfield features. Once the object placing is done the temporary texture can be removed and the next airfield can be substituted. This would make the object placing very accurate and quick.

Not sure what the procedure is for inserting new temporary textures though.

[ClockWatcher]

Asheshouse,

Make a texture of 512 x 512 or 1024 x 1024 and use it in the load ini. Doesn't matter if it appears else where, or alternatively replace one of the airfield textures with it temporarily. Do your placements and remove as you have said. Only issue is how accurate do you want to be in your airfield placement. since a 512 x 512 can only be placed at 1.6km intervals (unless you use the multiplier modifier in the load.ini).

Alternatively use one of the smaller maps, i.e empty 1a, make the texture, make your airfield on it, save the actors.,static and import into your map.

Yet another method: Scan an airfield diagram/photograph, scale to suit the normal texture size of 1600 x 1400 or otherwise (it will be slightly squashed in one axis!), make this into a temp texture, placed the objects on it, save the actors.static and hey presto!

CW

[asheshouse]

Ok. I figured it out.

This is pasted in using the Tile texture Objects/Tiles/Airfield3
in load.ini I set Airfield3= land/summer/beauvais1943.tga

In my maps folder I created a new folder _Tex/land/summer
into which I put the beauvais1943.tga image

The standard image is 512x512 pixels which appears in the game as 1600x1600 metres.
You can also use 1024x1024 images for sharper textures. They work in exactly the same way but presumably have more impact on performance.

I can reduce the size on the map by including a multiplier in the load.ini reference
eg: AirField3= land/summer/beauvais1943.tga,4 (this repeats the texture 4 times)
In other words you get a 4x4 pattern in the 1600x1600 box
You can also use ,-2 to make the pattern twice the size, 3200x3200m. That is presumably why there is a 1024x1024 pixel option for the images.

This is covered in the Central Mediteranean thread where it states that you can use dividers of up to ,8 ( or multipliers of ,-2 ).

Textures like these are used to create the city plan in the Berlin and Leningrad maps.

Now with this texture adjusted to the correct scale and inserted into a temporary map it will be a simple procedure to position runway plates, taxiways, buildings etc, all in the correct position.
Then the completed airfield can be copied and pasted into my NEFrance map as a completed assembly. This could be very useful.

Some images appear "burned out" (white) when imported. I think this is because the game engine overlaps the images on each tile. This can be avoided by reducing the brightness on the imported image. A reduction of -100 brightness in Photoshop seems to correct the problem.

[ClockWatcher]

Asheshouse,

Exactly what I was thinking. Remember that you can use a 1024 x 1024 as well for better resolution/image quality. The slight problem is image scaling due to quirky IL2. If you need to test your scaling draw a box which you intend to look like a square in IL2. Scale it shorter in the 1600m axis, should look like a rectangle. When used as a texture in IL2, the IL2 scale change should make it look like a square!

If my rough calculation is right, scale the 1600m axis by 87.5%.

Does that make sense?

CW

Note: edited, text in italics is incorrect info but retained so to keep the integrity of the post.

[canonuk]

Cool. Glad to see my research being useful

[asheshouse]

I think your wrong about the size CW.

I have used beauvais1943.tga as a test
The image size is 512x512

The size in the game comes out at exactly 1600x1600 metres

The multiplier does not increase the texture size in the display, it reduces it.
So ,2 inserts a 2x2 pattern into the 1600x1600m box
,4 a 4x4 pattern etc.

I will changed my post above to reflect these conclusions.

[ClockWatcher]

Asheshouse,

Just checked and you are right, I got it wrong, a square is a square in IL2 textures. Always good to have someone double check your work, especially when under the influence of Talisker

On the multiplier side, 2 will divide the size by 2, -2 will multiply the size by 2 and so on...... So the negative value is the multiplier, a positive number divides.

CW