[Guest]

What "real" amount of area can be modeled 1:1 for an IL-2 1946 map ?

What is a 'practical' size for display in the brief / map screen ?

If there are other considerations, please do tell :wink:

thank you in advance

I've read the map tutorial, still downloading files and reading threads .. am trying to find answers "on my own"

[kevinp]

I don't know the absolute answer to this question, all I can give you is my experience. The largest map
I have made 1:1 scale is 595 x 465 miles. All my attempts to make it bigger failed.

I'm not sure what you mean by" practical" size for the brief map. Are you concerned about file size or do you want a brief map that has enough detail in it to be of practical use in finding the target.

Here's my biggest map. I had to move Scotland about 60 miles closer to Norway to get it to load.

[Guest]

"I'm not sure what you mean by" practical" size for the brief map. Are you concerned about file size or do you want a brief map that has enough detail in it to be of practical use in finding the target."

I don't think I have file size concerns .. should I ?

As we have a magnifying feature and the ability to slide the brief map around, would not any 1:1 map / topography have maximum detail ?

what I'm trying to do, is determine the number of maps I will need to cover a very large area, fortunately, even the longest historical mission flights would be no more than 100 miles to targets or areas of action, typically less than 80 miles. So in other words, I'd rarely, if ever, need a map covering more than 160 miles edge to edge, or 80 miles into enemy territory from the ground war front line

[P/O W. 'Moggy' Cattermole]

Back in the '60s, the RAF moved Australia's location on a map 300 miles... I'd say moving the scots 60 miles is acceptable on that basis!

[Guest]

Examining the area I plan to cover and the plans for it:

Individual maps can be less than 140 miles across in any direction, though they would be multiple overlapping maps to place the player near the center of mission area on each map.

It appears then, the smart thing to do would be to build 2 "master" maps each that would work out to about 240 miles by 240 miles, that would cover the entire area put together, then crop out the smaller maps from those.

Does that sound like a reasonable option ?

[kevinp]

Why not just make the two master maps?

The Brief map (ed_m01) can be much bigger with a lot more detail than its normal size. You can make it two or four times the size of Mymap_c but unfortunatley you can't zoom in any closer to have a good look at the detail.

[Guest]

ok , did not realise that about the briefing map

can topography / maps be made in any rectagular proportion, say 100 miles by 500 miles ?

would a larger in game topography take longer to load ? .. that might be an issue(?)

found a scale map of the area I want, and much to my surprise, it's about 320 miles x 380 miles at most, so a single topography can be used

with a single larger in game topography,though, I'd have alot of area I'd probably not want to populate with roads, rails and such, much less the towns and cities that should be there, but outside areas of mission operations.

by the way, what happens when you get to the edge of the in game topography while flying in it ?

[kevinp]

Maps can be in any rectangular proportion, 100x500 miles would be good.

Big maps take ages to load, even if they are not populated.

When you fly to the edge of a map, a mile wide strip along the edge is repeated infinitely, but only the texture & any lake or coast that may be there is repeated. The hills are not repeated, the land will be completely flat.

My own feeling about very large maps is that it's best to build them as a team. I don't know the best way to organize it though. Maybe physically cut he map into four or more smaller sections & send one to each team member. Don't ask me how to do this as I've never tried it.

[agracier]

ok , did not realise that about the briefing map

can topography / maps be made in any rectagular proportion, say 100 miles by 500 miles ?

would a larger in game topography take longer to load ? .. that might be an issue(?)

?

As long as the map size in pixels is a multiple of 32, starting with the smallest sized map, you can make a map in practically any size or proportion - from square to very elongated. But what would be the purpose of making a map with the proportions of a pencil? Far better to let the area you wish to map be the ultimate reference.

I

[Guest]

getting good information here, thank you both.

"multiples of 32 pixels" Q. How much distance does 32 pixels represent ?

allow me to be more specific as to what I'm trying to accomplish, or at least research the possibilites of:



It would seem doing the entire map here, at something close to 350 miles by 300 miles, would be too large to make and load .. correct ?

I only need to use about 50-60 miles on either side from the front line in red.

If I make multiple maps, they need to overlap so that any point along the front line chosen has the 50-60 miles of operational area surrounding that point.

Making 3 rectangles by connecting the purple lines, the center rectangle would be about 200 miles by 160 miles.
Would that size still be large and take a long time to load ?

I could change my gameplay plan and perhaps only need as little as 30 miles distance from the front lines, this constraint would be approximately the blue lines. It would seem then the largest rectangle would be about 110 miles by 70 miles.

Needing to overlap, I figure about 8 maps to keep a radius of 30 miles around any front line point chosen.

[agracier]

Why don

[kevinp]

32 pixels is equal to 1.6 km or almost exactly 1 mile.

I would have no trouble building a map 350x300 miles. Do you have a very old computer?

I recommend doing what agracier says, but set the map pixel size in Microdem to 200 instead of 50. This will save time. When you come to make Mymap_c, you will have to scale it up x4.

[Guest]

ok .. thank you very much

Computer is not "very old" , WinXP and has a 7600 GS graphics card with 512MB memory , system memory needs more, my load times with IL-2 are longer than most people's ( I know this from multiplay, despite my hi-speed connection ), I do use 4.09b1m / UI 1.1.1 without problems

I've been using PaintShopPro 7 on this machine, and I find it can open very large files, or many large files .. much more than PhotoShop 6 (really only use it for filtering web graphics and lettering when needed )

I'm going to download Gimp regardless, so I can follow your tutorial exactly .. ok to get the latest stable version ?
I'd expect Gimp to handle large files well.

Why is it that you can use only 29 textures when there are 32 labels for textures ?

[kevinp]

You can try the latest stable version of Gimp, but some of the features are in different locations & have different names.

You can only use 29 textures because Wood uses 4 greys instead of 1. Each of those 4 greys produces exactly the same result, so I can't see the need for the Wood to have the extra 3 slots. They are redundant.

[GerritJ9]

So far I've found the limit to be 3600 x 3600 pixels for map_H and map_T, which, at 200 m/pix gives dimensions of about 720 x 720 km. Map_C then translates to 14400 x 14400 pixels. I've tried a MUCH larger map for my East Java project, but that was simply too big and wouldn't load at all; it was about 1440 x 680 km!