Karelia map discussion

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

18 hours ago, Bars- said:

Some video 

 

This map looks fantastic!!! 

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

Any eta for release?

[LLv44_Kanttori]

11 minutes ago, 356thFS_Drewm3i-VR said:

Any eta for release?

We know that, but Han wants to announce the schedules and some screenshots from Karelia as well, recently he showed some wonderful pictures of Odessa. Han is now on summer vacation until the 22nd of August, and I guess he will tell you the plans right after that, how and when these new maps will be released.

[YoYo]

Nice! Thx for the update! ❤️

[LLv44_Kanttori]

Railway stations under work!

As I promised, I will now update about once a week when we get some new work done on the map. We started making Finland's railway stations last week and there is some military historical facts about The Bombing of the Simola Railway Station. Please keep in mind that all the images I share here and on Patreon are only in the Work In Process (W.I.P.) phase! The picture below shows a typical Finnish railway station in the 1930s. Click on the picture to go to our Patreon page where there are many more pictures and maps to view.



There is our Highway, Railway and Railway stations map from 1939: Finnish road map 1939. The large grid on the map is our 51.2 km working squares that make up the map. From it you can easily see the relative size of the Finnish and Karelian Isthmus side. The Isthmus is actually quite a small area, about 100 x 100 km and water almost everywhere around it... There is now enough work land for four pensioners this fall, but we are still trying to make the map so that the work is fun. 

[Trooper117]

Looking great!... I'm more interested in the early war side of things for the map... what aircraft will fit into that time frame which are in the game already, and will there be new early war aircraft, as there is quite a few we would like to see in the game?

[LLv44_Kanttori]

1 hour ago, Trooper117 said:

Looking great!... I'm more interested in the early war side of things for the map... what aircraft will fit into that time frame which are in the game already, and will there be new early war aircraft, as there is quite a few we would like to see in the game?

The majority of Finnish players want these legendary fighters and bombers of the Finnish Air Force. We probably won't be able to get all of them, so our primary wish at KarttaKomppania is to get at first the Brewster Model 239 and then the Curtiss Hawk 75 A. With them, we could get the Missions and Career mode already done at the beginning of the Continuation War Summer 1941. After all, the opposite Russian side soon has the Polikarpov I-153 Chaika and the ready made Polikarpov I -16 Type 24.

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

3 hours ago, LLv44_Kanttori said:

The majority of Finnish players want these legendary fighters and bombers of the Finnish Air Force. We probably won't be able to get all of them, so our primary wish at KarttaKomppania is to get at first the Brewster Model 239 and then the Curtiss Hawk 75 A. With them, we could get the Missions and Career mode already done at the beginning of the Continuation War Summer 1941. After all, the opposite Russian side soon has the Polikarpov I-153 Chaika and the ready made Polikarpov I -16 Type 24.

Very nice. Keep up the good work 😄

[357th_KW]

4 hours ago, LLv44_Kanttori said:

The majority of Finnish players want these legendary fighters and bombers of the Finnish Air Force. We probably won't be able to get all of them, so our primary wish at KarttaKomppania is to get at first the Brewster Model 239 and then the Curtiss Hawk 75 A. With them, we could get the Missions and Career mode already done at the beginning of the Continuation War Summer 1941. After all, the opposite Russian side soon has the Polikarpov I-153 Chaika and the ready made Polikarpov I -16 Type 24.

Is there anything any of us can do to help you bring these to life?  I’m not a 3d modeler, but I’d love to see all five in IL-2.

[Artfactial]

10 hours ago, LLv44_Kanttori said:

The majority of Finnish players want these legendary fighters and bombers of the Finnish Air Force. We probably won't be able to get all of them, so our primary wish at KarttaKomppania is to get at first the Brewster Model 239 and then the Curtiss Hawk 75 A. With them, we could get the Missions and Career mode already done at the beginning of the Continuation War Summer 1941. After all, the opposite Russian side soon has the Polikarpov I-153 Chaika and the ready made Polikarpov I -16 Type 24.

Man, what I wouldn't give for the Fokker D.XXI! 
Having a Dutch aircraft in IL2 would be incredible.
It was the primary Finnish fighter early in the war too, so very important!^^

[Aapje]

Interestingly, the Fokker factory school started building a replica Fokker D.XXI in 1988, together with the Military Airforce Museum at Soesterberg*. The plane has become certified for flight in 2023, after being extensively tested by a test pilot.

 

So this might actually be a golden opportunity to model this airplane well, based on the replica, the test report and perhaps even testimony of the test pilot, whose memories are still fresh. Perhaps the Fokker factory school would even be willing to share their design documents they made for the replica. And this could be complemented by research into the plane at the Finnish military museum (Suomen ilmailumuseo), which is non-flying, but made from a collection of original parts, sourced from a bunch of original airframes.

 

Aside from use on the Finnish map, the plane would be perfect for a (short) Bodenplatte campaign centered around the invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. This was an extremely interesting air battle and battle in general, and the losses incurred by the Germans had major repercussions for the rest of WW II, as the Germans lost a huge amount of transport aircraft (although more to AA than to fighter aircraft), as well as a very large percentage of their paratroopers, which were taken prisoner and then shipped to the UK before the surrender. Hitler had expected to get them back and he was infuriated at losing these much needed specialist troops.

 

The campaign could thus feature paratroopers operations, defense against bombers, defense against an overwhelming amount of BF109's, very low level flying (the Dutch pilots would fly at tree-top level) and a very interesting back story.

 

* This has since then merged with another museum to become the National Military Museum at Soesterberg.

Edited August 21, 2024 by Aapje

[LLv44_Kanttori]

6 hours ago, Aapje said:

Interestingly, the Fokker factory school started building a replica Fokker D.XXI in 1988, together with the Military Airport Museum at Soesterberg*. The plane has become certified for flight in 2023, after being extensively tested by a test pilot.

 

So this might actually be a golden opportunity to model this airplane well, based on the replica, the test report and perhaps even testimony of the test pilot, whose memories are still fresh. And this could be complemented by research into the plane at the Finnish military museum (Suomen ilmailumuseo), which is non-flying, but made from a collection of original parts, sourced from a bunch of original airframes.

 

Aside from use on the Finnish map, the plane would be perfect for a (short) Bodenplatte campaign centered around the invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. This was an extremely interesting air battle and battle in general, and the losses incurred by the Germans had major repercussions for the rest of WW II, as the Germans lost a huge amount of transport aircraft (although more to AA than to fighter aircraft), as well as a very large percentage of their paratroopers, which were shipped to the UK before the surrender. Hitler had expected to get them back after the surrender.

 

The campaign could thus feature paratroopers operations, defense against bombers, defense against an overwhelming amount of BF109's, very low level flying (the Dutch pilots would fly at tree-top level) and a very interesting back story.

 

* This has since then merged with another museum to become the National Military Museum at Soesterberg.

Good points Aapje!

As a clarification for your good information: the Finnish Air Force Museum (Suomen Ilmavoimamuseo) has the Fokker D.XXI assembled from different parts and there is also the best expertise on this subject. The Finnish Aviation Museum (Suomen Ilmailumuseo), on the other hand, focuses more on civil aviation.

FINNISH AIR FORCE MUSEUM
FOKKER D.XXI
 

 

Spoiler

 

Edited August 20, 2024 by LukeFF
Swastikas

[Aapje]

1 hour ago, LLv44_Kanttori said:

As a clarification for your good information: the Finnish Air Force Museum (Suomen Ilmavoimamuseo) has the Fokker D.XXI assembled from different parts and there is also the best expertise on this subject. The Finnish Aviation Museum (Suomen Ilmailumuseo), on the other hand, focuses more on civil aviation.

 

Thank you for the correction. This was wrong on the Dutch Wikipedia page, but I fixed it now.

[YoYo]

Id like to see Fokker D.XXI too! I hope and fingers crossed for all those models! 👍

[sevenless]

On 8/19/2024 at 9:41 PM, LLv44_Kanttori said:

The majority of Finnish players want these legendary fighters and bombers of the Finnish Air Force. We probably won't be able to get all of them, so our primary wish at KarttaKomppania is to get at first the Brewster Model 239 and then the Curtiss Hawk 75 A. With them, we could get the Missions and Career mode already done at the beginning of the Continuation War Summer 1941. After all, the opposite Russian side soon has the Polikarpov I-153 Chaika and the ready made Polikarpov I -16 Type 24.

 

👍 Fingers crossed! Would be a sure buy for me.

[tattywelshie]

Surely alongside Korea, it would make sense to develop some Finish aircraft? If only to keep people investing in the game? The end of 2025, or whenever Korea is released, is an awfully long time for a company to wait and not have new content to help increase revenue.

[LF_Mark_Krieger]

22 hours ago, tattywelshie said:

Surely alongside Korea, it would make sense to develop some Finish aircraft? If only to keep people investing in the game? The end of 2025, or whenever Korea is released, is an awfully long time for a company to wait and not have new content to help increase revenue.

It would totally make sense, but 1CGS said that these aircraft that are not in the planned roadmap and should be proposed by third party. Most of the team is focusing 90% of the work in Korea, that has quite sense too, because the priority is to have a game with important improvements in the engine.

Edited August 23, 2024 by LF_Mark_Krieger

[kraut1]

5 minutes ago, LF_Mark_Krieger said:

It would totally make sense, but 1CGS said that these aircraft that are not in the planned roadmap should be proposed by third party. Most of the team is focusing 90% of the work in Korea, that has quite sense too, because the priority is to have a game with important improvements in the engine.

Due to the limited resources to create new planes from my point of view the highest priority shall have planes, that are suitable for other already existing IL-2 maps too.

e.g.: if we could get at least one of the Curtis Hawk 75 or the Fokker or the Morane it would be great for Battle of France missions on the existing Rheinland / Normandy map.

I would include them within 10 minutes in my EMG Mod:

 

[R7-S276]

the MS406 was used by the French Air Force during the battle of France, by the Finnish Air Force, some by the RAF and Free French in North Africa, by the Vichy Air Force in Metropolitan France and oversea territories, the German used some as training planes… it could be a good plane for historical and fake maps scenarios…

[ZPA_Malan]

I wonder if it might make most sense to cover the early and late-ish war for both Karelia and Odessa with collector planes/bundles? Both maps have significant overlap with other plane sets (moscow for early war, some normandy and kuban planes for Odessa and Karelia) and each other. Right now we only have the I153, LA7, and Yak3 confirmed IIRC. Sure they could do fully unique plane sets if they get into things like float and recon planes, but not only would that be a departure from their 2 fighters, 1 attack, 1 bomber each module, it would be a lot of resources for potentially limited gameplay when they seem to be focused on korea. And doing a mix of early and late war planes for one map or the other would leave gaps in a way there usually aren't. 

IMO the planes bundled with both maps could look something like this:

 

Early War Bundle

Karelia Map

Odessa Map

Battle of Moscow

IAR80 (for odessa)

+I-153 (for both)

+ Curtiss Hawk 75A (for Karelia - or one of the other 3, but IMO most likely since parts from existing p40 might be reusable saving cost/time)

+Bristol Blenheim (for both - used by Finns and Romanians...though I think a new flyable bomber may be the least likely, only if the rest are successful)

And that's not even getting into the finns repairing wrecks of soviet planes, so they operated like 7 Pe2 or what have you that you could do missions with.

 

1944 Bundle

Karelia Map

Odessa Map

+LA7

+Yak3

+Other variants like Pe3 or P39Q(fixed engine please) could be developed from existing planes with minimal model work.

Bf109G6AS? right time period but i dont fly axis so idk if it was used there

Battle of Normandy? ( i think only Fw190A6, 109G6 Late, and spitfire IXc might be relevant)

 

loads of other planes such as the hurricane II or La5fn could make appearances in missions, but not sure if they are the main players.

Edited August 29, 2024 by ZPA_Malan

[kraut1]

Small historical question for mission design:

Was there a time frame when the Finnish Air Force fought mostly or in first line alone against the Soviet Air Force in the marked area?

I mean between ca. from June41 until ca. Spring44 before Detachment Kuhlmey arrived.

Edited September 6, 2024 by kraut1

[Juri_JS]

55 minutes ago, kraut1 said:

Small historical question for mission design:

Was there a time frame when the Finnish Air Force fought mostly or in first line alone against the Soviet Air Force in the marked area?

I mean between ca. from June41 until ca. Spring44 before Detachment Kuhlmey arrived.

For most of the time the Finnish Air Force fought alone in the marked area. The Luftwaffe send some detachments, but only for short periods. For example parts of I./JG 54 in the summer of 1942 or a detachment of JG 302 at Malmi/Helsinki in early 1944.

[LLv44_Kanttori]

Naval war in the Gulf of Finland

KarttaKomppania has been busy again and part of our map team started populating the western part of Karelia map couple of weeks ago. Just near the western border is Kotka, another large Finnish port city on the map. It is still in the WIP phase, but which we already dare to show with pictures and videos.
 

We have also landscaped the large outer islands of the Gulf of Finland that can be seen on the attached map: Suursaari, Suur-Tytärsaari, Lavansaari, Peninsaari and Seiskari. Two of them had a Red Air Force airfield as shown on the GUI map.
 

These inhabited islands are currently being populated and one picture shows the densely populated Lounatkylä located in Lavansaari. On the same island, during the Continuation War, there was a Russian air base, from which e.g. IL-2 Sturmoviks took off to bomb Kotka or attack German and Finnish naval patrol ships guarding their shared submarine nets. This area of the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland was also very densely mined throughout the continuation war, I will tell you more about it later.

 

I'll be sharing plenty of WIP photos and a Kotka flyby video next week, these were just a taste of what's to come! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[YoYo]

Thx for the update!

[kraut1]

4 hours ago, LLv44_Kanttori said:

Naval war in the Gulf of Finland

KarttaKomppania has been busy again and part of our map team started populating the western part of Karelia map couple of weeks ago. Just near the western border is Kotka, another large Finnish port city on the map. It is still in the WIP phase, but which we already dare to show with pictures and videos.
 

 

 

I'll be sharing plenty of WIP photos and a Kotka flyby video next week, these were just a taste of what's to come! 

Great!

Do we have a small overview picture that shows whole map area? Especially in western direction?

For later autumn 44 - spring 45 missions I made a small workaround Courland mod with mission generator and small mission packs.

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/89214-kurland-kurzeme-194445-mod-v02-released-15092024/

 

[IckyATLAS]

12 hours ago, LLv44_Kanttori said:

KarttaKomppania has been busy again and part of our map team started populating the western part of Karelia map couple of weeks ago. Just near the western border is Kotka, another large Finnish port city on the map. It is still in the WIP phase, but which we already dare to show with pictures and videos.
 

The pictures are awesome. The work done on this map is fantastic.

Because it is very flat land, and islands with little elevation, the challenge is the land sea contact zone to be visually "correct". Here it seems very well done, and the curved berth with the ship is also very nice to have.

 

The sea is absolutely calm (sea state 0). What happens if there is very strong winds and the sea state is say at 5. I know that the way the game engine works it may be difficult to have visually correct interaction between the waves on the shore and whatever is on the shore like the berths or buildings very near to the shore. This may be a challenge when low flying to have a nice visual rendering. I have no idea what is the general meteorological situation in that region of the world. Seas are shallow so it could be that there are never big waves like generated in the open ocean, and only wind waves that maybe not too high as they do not have time to develop too much as all the islands must act as a braking system. 

 

That's a fantastic project to follow. Many thanks to all the team that works on this.

[jollyjack]

Karelia club links dead? https://www.ler3.fi/karttakomppania.html

[A-E-Hartmann]

Hello,

Thanks for the information. excellent work.

[Hanu]

Especially Seiskari has been really pleasing to my eye. And it is also quite easy to compare with modern day satellite photo as it has not changed much since, except the airfield is missing nowadays naturally. But you can still see the old airfield.

https://www.google.com/maps/@60.0204763,28.3833718,6129m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MDkxNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

[LLv44_Kanttori]

20 hours ago, jollyjack said:

Karelia club links dead? https://www.ler3.fi/karttakomppania.html

Lentorykmentti 3 / KarttaKomppania website temporarily closed

I am in the process of switching our site to a new, much cheaper server. Lentorykmentti 3 and my Kanttorinkone websites are now temporarily closed because the contract period with the previous web hotel ended. It came as a surprise to me, so I'm glad you noticed it. I'll fix it tomorrow.
 

My small pension is not enough to always keep everything running, because due to the increased space requirements of the internet servers costs quite a lot. I also pay the monthly fees for Google and Adobe Drive storage space for several hundred Gigabytes of map files. On top of that, there are the monthly fees for Photoshop and the paid version of Discord, which allows me to share my screen with team members in HD quality. Last spring, we acquired 3D-Max for KarttaKomppania and now I have to buy external SSD hard drives of a few terabits for backing up map files... 

Support KarttaKomppania!

If you really want to support the smooth operation of KarttaKompania so that we can work efficiently without worrying about money, join our Patreon crowdfunding campaign.  I also maintain our Patreon website, you can join our support group here:

https://www.patreon.com/KarttaKomppania/

[LLv44_Kanttori]

8 hours ago, kraut1 said:

Great!

Do we have a small overview picture that shows whole map area? Especially in western direction?

For later autumn 44 - spring 45 missions I made a small workaround Courland mod with mission generator and small mission packs.

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/89214-kurland-kurzeme-194445-mod-v02-released-15092024/

 

I proposed to Daniel "Han" Tuseev such a map delineation that could be published as early as next summer, but now we will see how our work goes by the end of this year. The 1CGS map team will start populating the Russian side in January 2025, when we have already done our own part, i.e. the parts on the side of the Karelian Isthmus and Modern Finland in the western part of the map. 
 

If everything goes as planned, KarttaKompania's workers will have time to populate the Aunus Karelian region occupied by Finland in the Continuation War, which is east of Lake Ladoga and north of the Svir (Syväri) River. After that, we will move on to help our Russian colleagues in making Leningrad and Leningrad Oblast.

The shading on the edges of the map is the 30 km no-fly zone. The lighter shaded area of Ladoga Karelia in the north is already half-finished and we will finish and populate it during 2026. Many new airfields and three small Finnish and Karelian cities Mikkeli, Savonlinna and Sortavala will then open in the northern part. 
 

In practice, the delimitation of the eastern part may still change during the winter, because this kind of cooperation with Finnish and Russian map makers is rare. The last time such a thing happened was about 20 years ago when the Finnish Virtual Pilots helped in the development of Forgotten Battles Finland.

Please click on the GUI map below and it will open a larger GUI with half the resolution of the final navigation and GUI map.

P.S. Kraut 1: About twenty years ago, I made my second map (or game terrain) for the American game Aces High II by Hitech Creations and it was called Kurland or Courland (Kuurinmaa in Finnish). At the time, I was part of Aces High Terrain Team with a couple of other Finns, and we made just such completely historical maps there as well. That's when it all started and now we're here!

[Hanu]

 

I cannot recall if this has been discussed earlier, but in old IL-2 there was a very useful smaller dogfight map about this size in Kotka area? I wonder if this sort of has been considered to be published? In my opinion this could be very useful and also exceedingly interesting "pre-tasting" of Karelia and would fit nicely enough to spring '43 - spring '44 scenarios. Only Kotka and Hamina would be the bigger towns on the area, so smaller amount of effort would be needed to get it ready to fly. But still there would be very important airfields in it and compact battle-area for more intensive fights. It would also be a lighter to run on the server.

 

I do understand if you cannot/want to discuss about it, but I was more wondering if others would see this useful also?

 

 

[kraut1]

15 hours ago, LLv44_Kanttori said:

Lentorykmentti 3 / KarttaKomppania website temporarily closed

https://www.patreon.com/KarttaKomppania/

Hi,

Is this PayPal account still valid for a single donation?

[LLv44_Kanttori]

8 hours ago, kraut1 said:

Hi,

Is this PayPal account still valid for a single donation?

Hello Kraut1!

If you want to donate to us, I can give you our PayPal account information. it's simply KarttaKompania's email, which you can use to send us money from your own PayPal account, Here you are:

kartta.komppania&gmail.com 

Replace the & sign with the @ sign and search for us on PayPal by email. You can write e.g. "a gift for a friend" etc. in the message, so it doesn't even cost anything. We don't even cheat anyone, because all of us virtual pilots are friends!  

[LLv44_Kanttori]

12 hours ago, Hanu said:

 

I cannot recall if this has been discussed earlier, but in old IL-2 there was a very useful smaller dogfight map about this size in Kotka area? I wonder if this sort of has been considered to be published? In my opinion this could be very useful and also exceedingly interesting "pre-tasting" of Karelia and would fit nicely enough to spring '43 - spring '44 scenarios. Only Kotka and Hamina would be the bigger towns on the area, so smaller amount of effort would be needed to get it ready to fly. But still there would be very important airfields in it and compact battle-area for more intensive fights. It would also be a lighter to run on the server.

 

I do understand if you cannot/want to discuss about it, but I was more wondering if others would see this useful also?

 

Hanu hello!

We can adjust the area to be flown to, for example, the size you want by widening the no-fly zones in the north, east and south. But even that area is nowhere near ready for publication yet, because we lack the generic blocks of high-rise buildings in cities and much more. In addition, the entire Gulf of Finland is still a lake, i.e. it is a "mirror on a flat surface" and lacks real depth. We are going to make it a real "Ostsea" too, with depth curves just like the height curves on land.
 

A very good proposal, but at this stage many things are still too unfinished. We make use of no-fly zones, especially in the northern part of Karelia, whose approximately 72 km wide (South-North) unfinished strip visible in gray will only be opened later after the publication of the map. There are coming many airfields like Mensuvaara to Junkers 88's and other Finns bombers. and also three towns Mikkeli (HQ), Small Town Savonlinna with it's Olavinlinna fortress and Sortavala, located on the shores of the Ladoga fjords.

[YoYo]

 

 

Edited September 21, 2024 by YoYo

[YoYo]

https://il2sturmovik.com/news/863/dev-blog-365/

 

I would just like to point out that the term Battle of Leningrad was not used here (as it was before), so maybe they withdrew from this project to make the map bigger (with the support of 1CGS Team)?

[actionhank1786]

On 8/20/2024 at 1:09 AM, Artfactial said:

Man, what I wouldn't give for the Fokker D.XXI! 
Having a Dutch aircraft in IL2 would be incredible.
It was the primary Finnish fighter early in the war too, so very important!^^

That thing was one of my favorites in Il-2 Forgotten Battles. For a kid growing up in the US who only ever got the very US-tilted side of WWII history, finding out about the Eastern Front from the original Il-2 and then the Forgotten Battles expansion opening up my world to the Finnish and Soviet battles, it was all so much fun to dive into.

 

The Finnish Air Force planes were always so fun to fly for me. I might have to go fire up the original Il-2 again now.

[LLv44_Kanttori]

On 9/21/2024 at 11:05 AM, YoYo said:

https://il2sturmovik.com/news/863/dev-blog-365/

 

I would just like to point out that the term Battle of Leningrad was not used here (as it was before), so maybe they withdrew from this project to make the map bigger (with the support of 1CGS Team)?

We have used many different terms and names for this beloved map because there have been so many different wars and battles in this area. For example, Winter War, Continuation War, Battle of Tannenberg Line (Estonia), Battle of Tali-Ihantala and finally Siege of Leningrad. The latest of these is now the theme of the becoming Karelia maps career modes, but the map is still simply Karelia because most of the area of the entire map is the old Karelia region after the northern expansion.

The Russian developers will start focusing on it in January by making the southern front of Leningrad against the Germans. We Finnish developers manage our "own" front north of the city, because Finland's old border was only 30 km away from the second most important city in the Soviet Union.

[jollyjack]

FAF & winter. Are there any pictures of a winter disguise for their planes?