Map Accuracy

[Serza]

Hello.

 

I come here to debate the accuracy and detail of the maps.

First, I would give a DISCLAIMER: While I'm about to argue increased accuracy and faithfulness of an existing map, and the same efforts be given to an upcoming map, I do realize this is not practical on a map-wide scale. I wish to advocate such increased standards for locations of great historical importance to the major operations that take place in the areas depicted by the Rhineland map, and eventually the Normandy map, should I feel such a course of action of benefit.

 

On to the topic at large:

 

Currently, many areas important to Operation Market-Garden are missing completely, the bridges lay on empty ground when they should be surrounded by towns and villages, and in some cases, even the bridges themselves are missing, despite being major objectives. What I would like to see is the addition of these locations, despite their small size, as I believe their size is overridden by their importance in historical events. Currently, I have a somewhat fair list of areas relevant to Market-Garden. I have not done any tangible research that would give comparable knowledge of the Battle of the Bulge areas, however I would not deny the possibility of such happening in the future. Furthermore, I would debate the importance of many of these to the battles, and add what other recommendations the community may have to my list.

 

Without further ado, let's see my list - or wishlist, as it may be.

 

Market-Garden:

Valkenswaard (currently, three bridges in the immediate area are present, the town itself is not)

Best (the railway bridge and road bridge are both present, but the village is missing)

Son (alt. I found it referenced in historical maps as Zon - neither the bridge nor the village are actually in the game. The bridge could be portrayed as destroyed.)

Grave (once again, bridges are present, but there is no sign of the nearby settlement)

Driel (village is missing - important for the Polish paratrooper involvement in the battle)

Wolfheze (Directly surrounded by the 1st Airborne's drop and landing zones - not present on the current map)

Oosterbeek (The site of the defensive perimeter of the 1st Airborne after efforts to break out into Arnhem have failed)

Heelsum (directly on the southern edge of the landing zones - great accuracy is not required, but could be used for navigation in the area)

Renkum (same as Heelsum, though a smidge further away from the zones)

Heveadorp (small village at the time resting in a valley next to the Westerbouving heights, which are portrayed, Driel-Heveadorp ferry)

Doorwerth/Kasteel Doorwerth (extremely low importance, basically just a navigation aid in the area and may be completely generic)

- as you can tell, a particular care was given to the British sector at this time, and I admit this is due to a personal bias of mine

 

Battle of the Bulge:

- as mentioned prior, I have not done research to give any reasonable feedback on these areas, and this section shall be a placeholder for suggestions

 

Overlord:

Merville battery (one of the vital targets of the British Airborne during the battle - Operation Tonga)

Ranville and Benouville (villages immediately neighbouring the bridges over the Caen canal and river Orne - Operation Deadstick)

Sainte-Mere-Eglise (widely recognized as the first French village liberated during Operation Overlord)

Pointe du Hoc (US Ranger's landing site, known for steep cliffs and the placement of an artillery battery capable of threatening both Omaha and Utah)

Immediate vicinities of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword (I'd say this needs no explanation)

- the Overlord locations are included as concerns more than feedback, since the map is not released as of yet

 

 

As I said, in many places my research may be found lacking, and so I wouldn't be opposed to other people's opinions on the matter.

[Angry_Kitten]

As nice as it would be to have more accurate towns... the ability of the game engine to do so is well,,, LIMITED...  

 

perhaps once they solve the issues of floating trains... they may care about accurate towns and cities.  But have no fear,  Dover Blitz has some excelent town design.

[Serza]

If what I'm advocating will result in huge dips in stability, then there are worse problems altogether.

 

As for "accurate towns"... I would classify that as something else from what I have actually brought up. You can tell, because I did not mention the fact that Arnhem looks nothing like it did beyond the most basic shapes.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

On 2/4/2022 at 10:34 AM, pocketshaver said:

As nice as it would be to have more accurate towns... the ability of the game engine to do so is well,,, LIMITED... 

Complete bollocks. Please don't make unfounded claims about the game engine if you don't know what you're talking about. The only reason there aren't more and/or more accurate towns is that it takes a lot of time and money to create them. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the game engine being unable to show them.

 

In fact, @Hamaha15 has a little project of his to bring much more detail to several locations in IL2. Have a look at the post I linked below for the Ardennes. I believe he also recreated some of the Market Garden-related villages mentioned above. As for myself, I'm creating a P-47 campaign that I expect to release in a couple of weeks, that features the Hürtgenwald with most if not all of its villages, hamlets and other scenery.

EDIT:

22 hours ago, Serza said:

As for "accurate towns"... I would classify that as something else from what I have actually brought up. You can tell, because I did not mention the fact that Arnhem looks nothing like it did beyond the most basic shapes.

Actually, I think the Devs have done a nice job for most of the cities. Of course, its street pattern is generic and doesn't match the real streat pattern of Arnhem, but if you compare it with real maps from the era (see e.g. https://www.topotijdreis.nl/kaart/1945/@190867,443475,8.83), you'll find that its outline isn't too bad

Edited February 5, 2022 by AEthelraedUnraed

[Angry_Kitten]

Dover blitz has primitive towns, that for the time the game was released were rather good.. yet i will admit dover blitz towns beat anything in great battles...

Could you explain why in some situations, mobile rocket launchers do not appear on screen UNTIL they fire? despite flying over that field 3 times and it being empty, but moment rockets fly, the whole mobile launcher setup is suddenly visible?

 

even with truck mounted artilery 

 

when flying

[AEthelraedUnraed]

36 minutes ago, pocketshaver said:

Could you explain why in some situations, mobile rocket launchers do not appear on screen UNTIL they fire? despite flying over that field 3 times and it being empty, but moment rockets fly, the whole mobile launcher setup is suddenly visible?

What in the Nine Worlds does this have to do with map accuracy?

 

And yes, I can explain. Mission scripting. There's an excellent guide that tells you exacly how you can show or hide mobile rocket launchers or any other vehicles.

[Angry_Kitten]

6 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

What in the Nine Worlds does this have to do with map accuracy?

 

And yes, I can explain. Mission scripting. There's an excellent guide that tells you exacly how you can show or hide mobile rocket launchers or any other vehicles.

i dont make my own missions.. 

 

its more important for the game to accurately show where things are..    if for example the QMB shows two artillery units in map grid g19,, they SHOULD  BE  IN MAP GRID G19,   NOT in say G21

[LukeFF]

1 hour ago, pocketshaver said:

i dont make my own missions.. 

 

its more important for the game to accurately show where things are..    if for example the QMB shows two artillery units in map grid g19,, they SHOULD  BE  IN MAP GRID G19,   NOT in say G21

 

Please show us a mission where this is happening. 

[Angry_Kitten]

1 hour ago, LukeFF said:

 

Please show us a mission where this is happening. 

I have only flown some of the premade missions that came with each game purchase.. everything else is the single player mission builder. 

 

I even had a tank ride that took me 20 minutes at full speed on my watch to get to a spot on a road mind you, that was posted as an artillery unit, that was nothing but a clump of trees. and yes i shelled it and nothing resulted, drove through and around it, never a sign of anything except trees. 

  Drove back to the town, and the truck convoy i had killed was now maybe 2 kilometers next to what was supposedly a second truck convoy ON THE MAP ICON,, but in real life was sandbags and artilery.

[BraveSirRobin]

Alex, I'll take "things that never happened" for $500.

[Hamaha15]

18 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

In fact, @Hamaha15 has a little project of his to bring much more detail to several locations in IL2. Have a look at the post I linked below for the Ardennes. I believe he also recreated some of the Market Garden-related villages mentioned above. A

 

It's correct: currently I'm working on adding details to the Netherlands. Aim is to support the Battle of the Scheldt and Market-Garden scenarios provided by SYN-Vanders Easy Mission Generator and an update/extension of my own Operation Oyster mission. A good portion of the scenery work - blocks only without surface details, however - has already been integrated into the EMG and is available with its missions.

 

The intention is to share the whole NL scenic updates at once like the Bastogne details - buildings and surface details together - soon after the release of the Mosquito in Il-2, related to its participation in the Operation Oyster raid on Eindhoven.

 

AEthel... is right: adding details is time consuming and tedious. Detailing the Southwestern part of the Netherlands and the Belgian neighbour areas will have taken two years to complete. We have to acknowledge that such an endeavour must be commercially unattractive unless poeple are willing to pay its price. We can be happy that the devs gave the community the tools to contribute their share beyond commercial interest. First of all: the map is accurate in its layout - although empty and despite the many 'nasty' woods planted where housing areas, industries or marshalling yards are supposed to be. To fill in the voids on the map we have the Surface Editor tool in the Mission Editor. And there's always a way to work around the 'nasty' woods.

 

Pocketshaver's concerns about game performance are justified as far as adding many scenery details (the 'blocks') will definitely affect game loading time. Blocks also seem to affect the fps rate. Mission builders can countermeasure both effects by an old principle shared in the early days of BoS and BOM: delete any scenery outside a radius of 50 km around your target.

 

WIP pictures:

Please note that surface shapes and colours are not final.

 

Middelburg and Vlissingen, Walcheren

 

Oosterbeek and Wolfheze, Arnheim, Gelderland

 

Edited February 6, 2022 by Hamaha15

[Serza]

These are wonderful!

 

It took me a moment (mostly because I was staring but not looking) but I could easily recognise both Oosterbeek and Wolfheze. The others, I can't judge, I haven't seen any of them on the maps that I've found.

 

How would this be put in the game, would it be a mod, or a mission file of some sort?

 

They most definitely correspond to both the maps, and the aerial photography that I have found.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

3 hours ago, Hamaha15 said:

although empty and despite the many 'nasty' woods planted where housing areas, industries or marshalling yards are supposed to be

The woods do however remarkably accurately correspond to forests marked on map services such as Google Maps or OpenStreetmaps. I suspect the Devs took their tree data straight from one of those. Of course, modern forests are not always on the same place as they were 78 years ago, and online maps may have small mistakes of their own.

 

3 hours ago, Hamaha15 said:

Pocketshaver's concerns about game performance are justified as far as adding many scenery details (the 'blocks') will definitely affect game loading time. Blocks also seem to affect the fps rate. Mission builders can countermeasure both effects by an old principle shared in the early days of BoS and BOM: delete any scenery outside a radius of 50 km around your target.

Make that 50km around the planned flightpath .

 

The FPS hit isn't that bad, really. Let's take Brussels (I believe it's the largest city on the Rheinland map) as the limit of what the game can render at an acceptable FPS. There's a lot of Oosterbeeks and Wolfhezes you can add to the game before you reach the amount of objects in Brussels . I certainly haven't noticed a reduced FPS above my Hürtgenwald scenery (and I play VR with a mediocre GPU).

 

32 minutes ago, Serza said:

How would this be put in the game, would it be a mod, or a mission file of some sort?

I can only speak for myself, but my Hürtgen scenery (comparable to Hamaha's except for a slightly different design philosophy) will be released packed with the P-47 campaign I mentioned above. It's standalone, so no reason to install any mods. Although I suppose it's easy enough to extract the surface files and use them for your own missions.

[Hamaha15]

On 2/6/2022 at 2:23 PM, AEthelraedUnraed said:

The woods do however remarkably accurately correspond to forests marked on map services such as Google Maps or OpenStreetmaps.

There are different types of woods: the first one, the large forests, are near 100% accurate according to the landscape of today. They're accurate enough to allow for defining reference points to localise other missing landmarks you want to add. The same applies to many of the wood patches dispersed over the countryside. It is rather amazing to see, when comparing Google maps with historical topographical maps, how little woods have changed during the last century - unlike the urban areas in many European regions...

 

However, a third type of woods, larger and smaller patches are concerned equally, appear to have been placed on purpose to fill in a void where a town or village or a marshalling yard  is supposed to be. Helas...

 

On 2/6/2022 at 1:41 PM, Serza said:

How would this be put in the game, would it be a mod, or a mission file of some sort?

 

Like the Bastogne scenery there will be three options: scenery (blocks) alone, a specific map with all surface detail alone for which the MOD ON option will be required (e.g. for users of SYN-Vander's EMG or those who want to edit their own missions) and finally, the surface and scenery updates will be part of the updated/extended Operation Oyster missions inside a specific subdirectory for which no mods are required, as described by AEthel...

 

Cheers

Edited February 19, 2022 by Hamaha15

[IckyATLAS]

On 2/6/2022 at 10:54 AM, Hamaha15 said:

 

 

Pocketshaver's concerns about game performance are justified as far as adding many scenery details (the 'blocks') will definitely affect game loading time. Blocks also seem to affect the fps rate. Mission builders can countermeasure both effects by an old principle shared in the early days of BoS and BOM: delete any scenery outside a radius of 50 km around your target.

 

 

 

I have thousands of objects (Blocks) in addition to those coming with the map by default on the Kuban map. I can say that objects do extend the load time yes but it is acceptable. On the other hand if you have a good system the hit in FPS is very small compared to what active objects like tanks planes ships etc can do.

This means that using  Blocks whenever possible is the best way to go. 

 

This being said a very efficient way would be to manage all the blocks according to the player actions.

AEthelraedUnraed sait to clean everything outside a 50knm radius along the flightpath. This makes sense if you consider that flying along a path is the only way to do the mission.  In reality we could do much better if we had two functions applicable to Blocks and Groups of Blocks: Spawn and Delete as well as Activate and Deactivate

To be able to do this we must make the object or group linkable and then just Delete or Spawn. It may add some additional data to manage but the gain could be enormous because there would be nearly no limit to the richness of a map. 

I cannot find a reason why this has not been implemented in the editor from the beginning. You would be able to manage your map according to the position of the player but for him he will always have the full complete map everywhere he goes and as far as he can see. This would also open the door to much larger maps.

The evolution of the CPU/GPU hardware anyways allows to handle more and more data at high FPS. 

 

[Serza]

Right.

 

Allow me to say how I feel about this whole thing.

This thread was moved from General Discussion into Complaints. That is reasonable.

Then, the only response for anyone who isn't a "Member" - exactly like I - was a "tester" who replied to an attempted hijack of the thread.

 

Further more, the "About" page on the main site claims that Il-2 BoX is, to paraphrase, "the only project where one can see what cities in WWII looked like from above."

I'm actually including a snippet of that nugget of supposed wisdom with this post.

 

The combination of all these factors make me feel like the treatment I received from the moderation team and 777/1C at large is that of "Shut up and crawl into a hole" when trying to point out what may be considered a serious flaw, especially due to the tall claims made by marketing.

 

In other words, *EDIT*, you tried to sweep me under the rug and pretend everything is fine.

 

Should you feel so gracious as to pardon my French, the reaction this is likely to provoke can be summed up by the words *EDIT* - not necessarily in that order, I'm afraid.

[MisterSmith]

The quoted section states "thousands of kilometers." It does not state "every single kilometer." There are limitations to every simulation.

 

Three day ban issued per Rule 6. Questions about staff are to be handled by PM only.