Normandy Map Landmark Requests

[MisterSmith]

Please place your discrepancies and requests for modifications here. They will continue to be hidden in the BoN announcement thread.

 

Smith

 

 

[Swing]

Mont Saint-Michel :

 

In game :

[Strat40]

Prison d'Amiens, for the Jericho opération

[lwalter]

Would you it be possible to add at least the Versailles palace large bodies of water, and why not even the gardens and palace itself?

Only the small "pièce d'eau des Suisses" is actually there on the map.

It's even more surprising, that the much smaller castle of Rambouillet a few miles away from Versailles has its gardens and monuments nicely detailed.

[Talisman]

Please put the prominent English coast lighthouses on the map:

 

Lighthouses of the United Kingdom: Southern England (ibiblio.org)

 

The needles lighthouse, Needles, Isle Of Wight, England.

 

Beachy Head Light, Eastbourne,

[616Sqn_Tyggz]

I'd like to see Dieppe given a little more attention. Ideally giving it a broader beach, seawall and some proper high quaysides. I hope to have an Operation Jubilee multiplayer mission up and running soon.

[6./ZG26_Custard]

Bocage in France and hedgerows in England. Oast houses in Kent.  

[RNAS10_Oliver]

Hurst Castle & Light House (50.706412, -1.551157)

 

Fort Albert (50.700311, -1.534379)

 

Horse Sand Fort (50.749887, -1.072664)

 

No Man's Land Fort (50.739874, -1.095226)

 

Spit Bank Fort (50.770508, -1.098918)

 

Saint Helens Fort (50.705025, -1.083983)

 

Old Harry Rocks (50.642322, -1.923550)

 

As well as just being some coastal landmarks in the area around the Isle of Wight the six forts/castles mentioned here were armed (to various degrees) during the war. So I presume might be of use for targets and anti-air defences on scenarios set earlier in the war. And as for Old Harry Rocks it's just another well-known rock formation in the area similar to the needles. The coordinates provided are links to them on google maps.

[von_Tom]

 

Farnborough and the Royal Aircaft Establishment

 

Luftwaffe photo - 28th September 1940

 

 

RAF photo from some time in 1941 or '42.

 

 

Main runway marked in red on all 3. In 1940 it wasn't fully constructed and it is now way longer to cope with commercila traffic.  The top photo is from sme time in 1942.

 

It doesn't show Farnborough town (the area to the right of the runway on picture 2 is North Camp) but I can just make out my parents' house on it.

 

von Tom

 

Edited September 10, 2022 by von_Tom

[AWC]

7 hours ago, Strat40 said:

Prison d'Amiens, for the Jericho opération

 

The Amien Prison

 

[[F.Circus]sith1144]

HMS Victory!

[Bars-]

10 часов назад, 616Sqn_Tyggz сказал:

I'd like to see Dieppe given a little more attention. Ideally giving it a broader beach, seawall and some proper high quaysides. I hope to have an Operation Jubilee multiplayer mission up and running soon.

Great picture comparison. Unrealistic huge buildings in the game are clearly seen. They probably make them huge intentionally to make huge unrealustic ugly trees look better. 

 

[Hamaha15]

Amiens Prison

 

...or at least what comes close to it.

 

 

In order recreate a more authentic environment I mated the sceneries from the Normandy and Arras maps. The dead straight Amiens-Albert road is well reproduced on the Arras map but completely missing in Normandy - and here, its course is intersected by woods and tree lines.

 

Now waiting for the snow to fall and a Culin cutter to clear the path for the Mossies...

Edited September 11, 2022 by Hamaha15

[Chief_Mouser]

River Stour from Sandwich to Canterbury.

Royal Military Canal from Rye to Hythe.

Canterbury Cathedral - not a generic and with a 'realistic' street cityscape around it.

 

@Hamaha15 At least you found a use for Winchester Prison!

Edited September 11, 2022 by 216th_Cat

[BOO]

A little more accuracy around Benouville

 

Add the Barracks, tower and AT Gun to the East Bank

Remove housing to West Bank

Move back housing on West bank

Add hedge and trees to S and E sies of area currently occupied by housing on west bank

(left out walled area and derelict outbuilding as all above could likely be creatred from exisitng objects)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 12, 2022 by BOO

[616Sqn_Tyggz]

On 9/9/2022 at 8:41 PM, 616Sqn_Tyggz said:

I'd like to see Dieppe given a little more attention. Ideally giving it a broader beach, seawall and some proper high quaysides. I hope to have an Operation Jubilee multiplayer mission up and running soon.

With some time in the ME I've managed to get a bunch of things changed with Dieppe.
I've managed to give the town a deeper "chert" shingle beach, a sea wall, castle, cemetery, better dock infrastructure and the semi-demolished casino.
Eventually, I'll get street lights, benches, newsstands, telephone lines and more to populate the town.

Original


Edited

Spoiler

Terrain decal work done with the help of @AEthelraedUnraed's superb comprehensive guide to surface editing in the ME.
In theory, I reckon it would be possible for a server host to have a mission with embedded surface files show the updated decals user side Mods OFF.

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

On 9/16/2022 at 11:07 AM, 616Sqn_Tyggz said:

With some time in the ME I've managed to get a bunch of things changed with Dieppe.
I've managed to give the town a deeper "chert" shingle beach, a sea wall, castle, cemetery, better dock infrastructure and the semi-demolished casino.
Eventually, I'll get street lights, benches, newsstands, telephone lines and more to populate the town.

Original


Edited

  Reveal hidden contents

Terrain decal work done with the help of @AEthelraedUnraed's superb comprehensive guide to surface editing in the ME.
In theory, I reckon it would be possible for a server host to have a mission with embedded surface files show the updated decals user side Mods OFF.

This should be patched into the base game. Great work!

 

And 

 

1. English coastal lighthouses (a few generic models is fine)

2. Correct Canterbury Cathedral 

3. Mont St. Michel

Edited September 20, 2022 by drewm3i-VR

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

Calais also needs its Hotel De Ville

 

 

 

Edited September 23, 2022 by drewm3i-VR

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

Salisbury REALLY needs its amazing cathedral...even a somewhat generic one would do. I would add Old Sarum as well, but that may be a bit too much. This is where modders could really help.

 

 

 

[BOO]

6 minutes ago, drewm3i-VR said:

Salisbury REALLY needs its amazing cathedral...even a somewhat generic one would do. I would add Old Sarum as well, but that may be a bit too much. This is where modders could really help.

 

 

 

Surprising ommision this one given how popular it was with foreign tourists just a few years ago. It has a 123M spire and is famous for its clock y'know. 

[IckyATLAS]

Regarding the beautiful and iconic buildings, like Mount St. Michel, or Hotel de Ville of Calais, and other buildings of this type, they are probably too much time consuming to make. I do not think they will ever come. This is not MSFS that try to reproduce photo-realistically the environment. But who knows.

Maybe 3D files exist already and devs can just get them or buy them and then have them transposed to the format they use in IL2. That would be probably faster to do but still you need to simplify them so that they are "light" in terms of polygon mesh size. That kind of work can also be time consuming. Difficult to say how much because there are many tools that allow you to manipulate those meshes. 

 

Here an example below for the Mount St. Michel 3D model with 3DS Max.

You can see that the mesh has 500k vertices, and 400k polygons.

Clearly you need to lighten this model to have it in IL2, and in Europe there is a large density of iconic buildings, cathedrals etc. Probably too much work here for this sim. I hope to be wrong.

 

Edited September 23, 2022 by IckyATLAS

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

9 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

Regarding the beautiful and iconic buildings, like Mount St. Michel, or Hotel de Ville of Calais, and other buildings of this type, they are probably too much time consuming to make. I do not think they will ever come. This is not MSFS that try to reproduce photo-realistically the environment. But who knows.

Maybe 3D files exist already and devs can just get them or buy them and then have them transposed to the format they use in IL2. That would be probably faster to do but still you need to simplify them so that they are "light" in terms of polygon mesh size. That kind of work can also be time consuming. Difficult to say how much because there are many tools that allow you to manipulate those meshes. 

 

Here an example below for the Mount St. Michel 3D model with 3DS Max.

You can see that the mesh has 500k vertices, and 400k polygons.

Clearly you need to lighten this model to have it in IL2, and in Europe there is a large density of iconic buildings, cathedrals etc. Probably too much work here for this sim. I hope to be wrong.

 

There are a few glaring omissions that greatly take away from immersion and authenticity and these for me are the absence of the Hotel De Ville in Calais, lack of English coastal lighthouses, and a placeholder Canterbury Cathedral. Mont St. Michel, Salisbury Cathedral, and the Folkestone Pier would be the next tier. 

 

We could also use some generic items to populate the map like bales of hay, static livestock, and fences, all of which are ubiquitous in this area of the world.

 

On a brighter note, the stock textures are good as are the airfields, city layouts, and the addition of some scattered farmhouses is awesome. They even got the water right in terms of color and clouds of dark water around inlets and estuaries.

Edited September 23, 2022 by drewm3i-VR

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

After further playing, I'd also like to add that compared to the French side, coastal England needs many more farmhouses. Currently it feels too sparse and desolate.

[PhilthySpud]

On 9/24/2022 at 5:18 AM, drewm3i-VR said:

We could also use some generic items to populate the map like bales of hay, static livestock, and fences, all of which are ubiquitous in this area of the world.

Livestock already available in game.

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

18 minutes ago, PhilthySpud said:

Livestock already available in game.

Should be PERMANENTLY placed on the map, along with hay.

[Regingrave-]

23.09.2022 в 22:18, drewm3i-VR сказал:

We could also use some generic items to populate the map like bales of hay, static livestock, and fences, all of which are ubiquitous in this area of the world.

The issue is not us not willing to add more details, but the performance. We're speaking of tens if not hundreds of thousands of cows and fences to keep them, every single one with a destructible entity — the game simply won't handle this many objects and player's computers won't handle it either. Vast majority of players is not running the game on a supercomputer and thus won't much appreciate three times increase of the number of interactive objects on the map for the sake of cows and fences.

[ST_Catchov]

Well what about just hedges then?

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

1 hour ago, Regingrave said:

The issue is not us not willing to add more details, but the performance. We're speaking of tens if not hundreds of thousands of cows and fences to keep them, every single one with a destructible entity — the game simply won't handle this many objects and player's computers won't handle it either. Vast majority of players is not running the game on a supercomputer and thus won't much appreciate three times increase of the number of interactive objects on the map for the sake of cows and fences.

Thanks for the response..

 

I don't understand why livestock and bales of hay need a collision model? Fences probably should have one, however could there also not be a map density setting for this sort of thing?

[Regingrave-]

10 часов назад, drewm3i-VR сказал:

I don't understand why livestock and bales of hay need a collision model?

It will become obvious when you will drop a 1000 kg bomb on them with no visible effect.

 

10 часов назад, drewm3i-VR сказал:

Fences probably should have one, however could there also not be a map density setting for this sort of thing?

«Increased density» option will be available only for supercomputers, thus there is no sense in adding it, along with bothering to manually place hundreds of thousands of objects all around.

 

11 часов назад, ST_Catchov сказал:

Well what about just hedges then?

If it would be technically possible, we would do that from the start.

[Hamaha15]

Amiens prison revamped - WIP

 

Amiens' northeastern suburb of Rivery looks more like the prototype now. The gardener has dropped by, cut the trees standing in the way and planted new rows of trees around the cemetery and the sports grounds. These trees, however, are taller than their prototypes. Photos taken during the attack on the prison show clearly that these trees were there but didn't exceed the height of the prison wall. Need to be removed again and their presence be suggested by a 2D design...

 

Apart from the missing snow, a true recreation of Operation Jericho is made impossible by the fact that the target lies too close to the battle zone border. It's impossible to line up a formation for attack, or even the player's plane alone, along the Amiens-Albert road (missing on the map btw). To be able to do so the battle zone would need to be extended about 10 km to the East.

 

I'm going to share the Amiens improvements later this year along with a couple of more updates, waiting for what version 5.002 will hold...

 

Cheers

 

 

 

 

Edited October 5, 2022 by Hamaha15

[Bert_Foster]

Middle Wallop airfield, Gatwick Airfield.... both major airfields that are missing.

 

MIDDLE WALLOP

 

 

 

GATWICK

 

 

Edited October 4, 2022 by Bert_Foster

[AWC]

10 hours ago, Hamaha15 said:

Amiens prison revamped - WIP

 

Amiens' northeastern suburb of Rivery looks more like the prototype now. The gardener has dropped by, cut the trees standing in the way and planted new rows of trees around the cemetery and the sports grounds. These trees, however, are taller than their prototypes. Photos taken during the attack on the prison show clearly that these trees were there but didn't exceed the height of the prison wall. Need to be removed again and their presence be suggested by a 2D design...

 

Apart from the missing snow, a true recreation of Operation Jericho is made impossible by the fact that the target lies too close to the battle zone border. It's impossible to line up a formation for attack, or even the player's plane alone, along the Amiens-Albert road (missing on the map btw). To be able to do so the battle zone needed to be extended about 10 km to the East.

 

I'm going to share the Amiens improvements later this year along with a couple of more updates, waiting for what version 5.002 will hold...

 

Cheers

 

 

 

 

 

Your work is amazing Hamaha, Amiens Prison must be added!

[jollyjack]

7 hours ago, Lemsip said:

Your work is amazing Hamaha, Amiens Prison must be added!

 

Yeah, a place lock up Marshal Philippe Pétain ... 

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

I'm going to bump this thread because the new update did not add any of these missing landmarks like the Hotel De Ville, Mont. St. Michel, Amiens Prison, or Canterbury Cathedral.

 

Dover still doesn't even have its iconic harbor and cliffs lights yet! These objects are necessities and other areas on the map have them so why not Dover, literally the most important port in Southern England?

 

 

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

Update 5.003 is out and still no additional landmarks so I am bumping this thread.

[IckyATLAS]

On 10/1/2022 at 12:32 AM, Regingrave said:

Vast majority of players is not running the game on a supercomputer

I am very surprised.

Normally any IL2 hardcore player has at least a workstation with Quad Xeon Platinum 8368 CPUs (with 6TB DDR4) to give enough breath to the IL2 game engine which we know is very CPU bounded. With 152 cores and 304 threads that should be just right to unlock the full potential of the game, played with all settings to the maximum possible, and with bomber waves of at least a hundred each.

This quad CPU solution must then work together with a 4 x Quadro RTX6000 system to have an equilibrated, reliable and performant solution.

VR IL2 players thus can get a clean 288 hertz or 144 hertz per eye in absolute full 4K resolution per eye.

Screen display players will have a system that will still be on the top spot when the full 8K 300Hz displays will be available.

As everybody knows in 8K and 300Hz without any time dilation thanks to the CPUs above, the furballs in the sky will be very realistic: tracers crisscrossing around, planes in flames going down, smoke trails, splashes explosions on the ground, burning tanks and all this at the same time. In short, a real Battle of X