Autobahn & Rijksweg – adding the most modern road design to the Rheinland map

[Hamaha15]

Hello all,

 

Motorways added to the Rheinland map to download. The motivation is to add typical landmarks to the existing Rheinland map which are as significant as rivers thus animating the otherwise rather empty map. All aviators worldwide appreciate the guidance provided by the plainly visible motorways on the ground, an effect the sim reproduces to great effect as the attached screen shots prove.

 

The download files are JSGME friendly, however, the surface related files must be renamed after saving to make them work. The mod has been created on the summer map, the “Surface” and “Surface Tex” files for the other seasons have been adapted. To manage the mod this is what I did: I secured the original “LANDSCAPE_Rheinland_xx” folders by copying and adding the suffix “_initial” before adding the mod files. Don’t touch the “ROADS” subfolder. In order to make the modified surface files work with your game the suffix “_Motorways_xx” must be deleted. The risk is that the motorway files will be overwritten by future map releases. That’s why I suggest to keep the downloaded files with their suffices too as a mod backup.

 

Maybe there are better ideas around how to manage the mod files. If so please let us know. Furthermore, I’m really keen to know how to edit the “SURFACE.DAT”-files in order to be able to add the motorways again to future map updates should they become lost by overwriting.

 

The motorway bridges template must be loaded into each mission individually using the “Import-from-file” menu. In most cases existing bridges of the paved roads in the centre need to be removed. Otherwise you’ll see three bridges in parallel for two lanes. Two block elements need to be deleted from Siegburg (square 2226) where the houses would stand on the motorway lanes.

 

The update is based on historical topographic maps of Germany issued by the US Army in the early fifties. Wikipedia articles contributed the opening dates of the Autobahn sections by 1941 when the construction work was definitely stopped. I didn’t find equally comprehensive sources about the motorways in the Netherlands who started building Rijkswegen in the late 1930’s too. No information found about the layout nor the exact locations of the endpoints nor their shape. The presentation of the Dutch motorways remains uncompleted and an educated guess with this mod. Maybe Dutch members of the community can share more details, especially historical topographic maps for a future update.

 

Given the possibilities of the sim the modification doesn’t claim to be 100% accurate. It’s an approximation based on the current Rheinland map. As a rule, only intersections already provided by the released map have been detailed to match the prototype of 1941 as closely as possible. With a few exceptions in the vicinity of some of the airfields, no junctions or interchanges have been added. In some cases, country roads have been added or extended in order to explain the presence of an interchange at a given location. In general, the mod doesn’t interfere with the priorities and artistic simplifications set by the map designers. Bear in mind that the networks remained unfinished in 1941. Motorways often ended in the middle of nowhere.

 

The released Rheinland map contains all necessary routes as paved country roads in Germany, unfortunately not in the Netherlands. However, no additional roads have been created for this update. The paved roads integrate well as a credible centreline between the two concrete lanes which, in reality, were grassy strips. However, the map designers have systematically added alley trees to the paved roads which interfere with the lanes. The motorway mod looks good only from high altitude. At low altitude the alley trees spoil the visual effect.

 

If you wonder how to animate the motorways in the sim and make them look busy – don’t worry. Motorways in the 1930/40s were empty. Contemporary photographs give evidence of little traffic if any, scenes of overtaking cars are staged and traffic jams were unknown. Only few people owned cars and freight was mainly hauled by rail. There was so little traffic indeed that the motorways in Germany were opened to the public in 1943. Even animal drawn carts and bicycles were allowed to circulate on them. At the time they were built the motorways were of no practical use. They were a vision, an utopia. And they took home flyers of all nations…

 

A brief history: Motorways are no German invention. The first motorway proper was built in Italy in 1924 between the city of Milano and Lake Garda. Plans to build a road link in Germany reserved for motor traffic running through the whole country between the ports in the North, the city of Frankfurt am Main and Basel in Switzerland go back to 1926 and the first stretch of German motorway was laid between the cities of Cologne and Bonn along the river Rhine starting in 1929. After their raise to power the Nazi government took over the plans and modified them according to their taste e.g. by altering the course and by adding new monumental ferro-concrete bridges. The building program started in large scale in September 1933 firstly with the motorway link between Frankfurt am Main and Mannheim, still based on the old plans, which was opened on May 19^th, 1935. The work continued even after the outbreak of WW 2 and finally ceased in 1941. By then 3.900 km of Autobahn had been completed. The Netherlands started building motorways in 1937. Three sections appear to have been completed by 1942, when all work was cancelled: from Den Haag to Utrecht, from Rotterdam to Delft and from Amsterdam to Sassenheim, halfway to Den Haag. Like in Germany the Dutch motorways of today still follow the same initial routes. I read a comment that at least one section of Rijksweg was fitted with emergency lanes on either side. That is to say they were advanced in design over their German equivalents which didn’t have that feature.

 

Back in the 1920s the German military opposed the plans to create a motorway network. They were afraid that in case of a war the large double lanes would provide hostile aviators with highly visible landmarks for easier navigation and offer enemy ground forces express lanes to quickly advance through Germany. At the end they should be right…

 

Enjoy

 

NWE_Motorway-MOD_su_wi.zip

 

References:

https://www.landkartenarchiv.de/deutschland_messtischblaetter.php

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/reichs.cfm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...and spring and autumn version

 

NWE_Motorway-MOD_au_sp.zip

Edited September 18, 2020 by Hamaha15

[AWC]

4 hours ago, Hamaha15 said:

Hello all,

 

Motorways added to the Rheinland map to download

 

Hi, I really like your ideas (motorways, dams, etc), please keep making more! Could you please make a thread where all of your mods are easily found to download, it is hard to find all your work as it is in different places at the moment. 

 

Lemsip

[Hamaha15]

Hello Lemsip,

 

Thank you very much for your support. I'm reluctant to open a specific thread for my personal work. I post updates and missions where they belong to subjectwise - missions at the mission sharing corner, groups at the groups sharing corner, mods in the mods-thread etc. I systematically post a link in the more general thread that is related to the downloads e.g. Rheinland map thread for the dam group, the motorways group etc. to notify members interested in the topic.

 

Cheers

[J2_Oelmann]

Simpyl great!

[AWC]

2 hours ago, Hamaha15 said:

Hello Lemsip,

 

No problem mate, keep it up

[Pea_Shooter]

Fantastic! Thank you!!

 

One thing that I really didn't think about until recently but stands out now like a sore thumb is that in all the maps I haven't seen a football (soccer) field. 

[Hamaha15]

WIP:

 

Ruesselsheim soccer field next to the river Main, home of the Opel passenger car factory.

 

Cheers

 

 

[blue_max]

I think the rheinland map really needs a kind of super/compilation mod that bundles all the amazing additions made by the community. I read the forums fairly often but I really don't know what's out there and how to combine it...

[jollyjack]

What frustrates me most is that you cannot edit wrongly placed trees on especially the Rheinland map. I gave up editing it's scenery because of that. 

[blue_max]

3 hours ago, jollyjack said:

What frustrates me most is that you cannot edit wrongly placed trees on especially the Rheinland map. I gave up editing it's scenery because of that. 

yeah that sucks. Would be cool if there is a bit more flexibility with regards to modding the maps.

[Hamaha15]

Hello landscape shapers,

 

please don't get frustrated because of the many wrongly placed trees and woods and carry on. With a little tweaking and patience you'll - litterally - find a work around in most cases with a satisfaying result. 100% accuracy can't be achieved anyway because of the object library's limitations. For the sake of a flight simulator a credible 50% approximation may already be a good thing to increase immersion. For example I took the topographical maps of 1910 as the reference for the current Rhine-Main detailing work to achieve a certain abstraction and simplification to manage the task in the first place - see pictures. Major cities and places of interest like the I.G. Farben plant at Hoechst or the cities of Aschaffenburg and Hanau have received additional detail to better match the 1940s map. And I think it works. We all may combine our efforts later to allow for detailing the Rheinland map wherever an individual mission would require to do so.

 

Of course I'd be happy if the Rheinland map could be updated removing the omnipresent alley trees from the roads where actually Motorways should be located and from the railway lines at least at places where stations and marshalling yards exist in reality. However, you hardly notice the spoiling effect of these tree lines when flying over the landscape.

 

I intended to share more results by the end of this year but as you might see from the GUI map there's still a lot of work left to do...

 

Cheers

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 18, 2020 by Hamaha15