[CzechTexan]

EDIT: Mod version 1.0 is here:
http://allaircraftsimulations.com/forum ... 25&t=30283
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Discussion of the WIP map:

Thanks to Farang65 for giving me a starter map a year ago for this project. The Caucasus map is coming along slowly. Last winter I had computer problems and since then I've worked on other projects but now I'm devoting more time to this map. Much of the repetetive textures are replaced with better and more natural looking ones. There are three city textures, village, small town, and city, and these all have their own templates.

The map itself is a large area from Maykop to Grozny, down to Tbilisi, and it includes part of the Black Sea. My WIP step one is to complete only the area between Mineralnye Vody and Grozny. This area is where most of the heavy fighting took place so it is most important (I'm anxious to start making missions for it). All the towns and villages in this area are mapped and in the process of being populated.

There are airfields completed for both sides. Most use visible runway plates and taxi plates. Some have two runways side-by-side. There are a three small airfields with invisible plates and these are intended for the all-female Night Bomber Regiment known as the Night Witches. which . The Night Witches saw their first combat in this region flying their fPo-2 biplanes.

Roads and railways are also in place. Cultivated fields textures show fields of wheat, corn, and maize, depicting late summer - early fall time period. Looking at Google maps you can see that this is a heavily agriculturalized region. It would have been the same during the German blitz of summer-fall 1942 when the Russians were taken by surprise by the German deep and fast penetration well behind the front line. I've read several accounts of crops still being in the fields and for example, panzers hiding in corn fields. I used the OLD IL2 field texture (with the large yellow fields) to represent this. So don't hate me for using it ~ :lol:

The German offensive was halted by stubborn Russian defense in the Mozdok area on the Terek River. A bold new German offensive was launched against the Russian weak left flank. This took the defense by surprise and it quickly folded under the large panzer force. This screenshot shows where the Germans poured into the valley at the base of the Caucasus Mountains at Chikola with Novy Urukh in the background.


Dur-Dur was one of the next villages taken. (Dur-Dur is one of my favorite town names, DUR!)


Digora in foreground with Karman in background - the next towns to fall.


Ardon on the Ardon River - next in line to fall to the German panzers.


Town of Gizel. Where the Germans were stopped, just in front of Ordzhonikidze (Vladikavkus) - the German main objective.


Over Gizel, looking northeast with Beslan in top left corner.


Looking west. Guarding the gate through the mountains to Tbilisi, Georgia. Ordzhonikidze below plane, Gizel above plane.


Beslan and its airfield. Site of the infamous terrorist attack on a schoolhouse, in more recent times.


Ordzhonikidzevskaya (smaller town to the east) and its airfield.


Asinovskaya airfield (seen below La-5) - one of the Night Witches fields.

[mandrill7]

Looks very, very nice.

[lowfighter]

Looks promissing :!:

[Poltava]

GOOD! We need more new East Front maps!

[Lejo]

Interesting stuff CT! 8)

@Poltava:
I remember that Canonuk worked on several Eastern Front regions as well including Stalingrad. His WIP screenshots looked very promissing with his newly created 3D objects like the grain elevator etc. Those screenies disappeared in cyberspace since AAA went down.
It looks like Canonuk disappeared in cyberspace also... :lol:

[jeanba]

Given czechtexan previous work and because I am always interested in Eastern front maps, it is good news !!!

[Aragorn1963]

Excellent, we need more eastern front-maps.

[Uzin]

Looking forward to this map release, seems very nice. Congratulations, CzechTexan.

[CzechTexan]

Populating with buildings is being done with copy/paste method. The city and village textures are all fragments of the larger texture area when they're all painted together. Copy/paste is time consuming but it allows me to edit and put things where I think they should be. Here are more screenshots...

Mineralnye Vody


Pyatigorsk


Georgievsk

[CzechTexan]

Click on the screenshots to get the larger view which looks much better.

Zheleznovodsk village. The German summer offensive swept across the Kuban plains like wildfire but was finally met with some resistance at Mineralnye Vody. The city couldn't be taken head-on so the Germans made a flanking maneuver around M.V. through the village of Zheleznovodsk. This put pressure on M.V. and Pyatigorsk and forced the Russians to retreat further southward to the mountains.


Argudan - Just a typical small village showing populated buildings.

[CzechTexan]

Emelianenko flies again! Vasily Emelianenko was an IL-2 pilot and he has a book titled Red Star Against the Swastika. His first combat was in the Smolensk region against the Bobr River crossings at the beginning of the war. As the war went on he found himself pushed all the way back to his hometown of Nalchik in the Caucasus.

Emelianenko over his hometown Nalchik.


Mozdok City. After the Germans captured Mineralnye Vody and Pyatigorsk they marched southeast and were halted by strong resistance in the Mozdok area on the Terek River. Here you can see Mozdok across the river and the places where the Germans made river crossings after the city was taken.

[CzechTexan]

The village of Terek, southwest of Mozdok. After the Germans made river crossings at Mozdok and after heavy fighting and tank battles, the Germans eventually made their way to the Terek area, almost to the Elkhotovo Gate.
Terek village...


After Terek the Germans were stopped at the Elkhotovo Gate, a pass with easy access to Ordzhonikidze on the other side. Heavy defense of the Gate forced the Germans to make a flanking maneuver (which I described in the first post of this Caucasus map discussion).
Here you can see the village of Planovskoye under the plane with the Elkhotovo Gate in the background.

[TomFF]

Very impressive AGAIN!
Cheers
Tom

[CzechTexan]

No screenshots this time because this page is too full of them already.
I've been putting finishing touches on the area between Mineralnye Vody and Ordzhonikidze. Populated all the towns and villages. Using only copy/past to populate there are similarities in how things look but every village is unique. That's due to their textures looking different with different sizes too. This way i had to look closely and edit or add buildings. My pet peave is for houses to be on roads and streets. Autopop is bad at doing that. I wanted villages to have a real-look to them using the best of my abilities. I'm always experimenting in the hand-placing of textures to get the right look and feel of a place. It's like painting and it's fun being creative.

Roads, railways, and train stations have also been added. I tried to get them as close as possible to real-life routes but after all this is IL-2 so this map will not be totally realistic.

I'm now working on other cities outside that area. Places to the west and south in Georgia. These areas will not be as well done in terms of details but at least you'll be able to fly over the map. Will post more screenies on next page...if this topic gets more popular.

[mandrill7]

CT,

1 idea I am thinking of for my Army Group Centre map is to have a half-dozen alternative templates for "hamlets" - i.e. small villages of 6 or 8 houses - and to use these to give the map a "populated" feel outside the larger, named rural towns.

Have you tried that idea yourself?