Question ANSWERED / WITH EXAMPLE: in which gtp / config file are the latitudes of the IL-2GB maps defined?

[kraut1]

Hi All,

Happy New Year 2025!

Purpose for this question:

For Kuban Map Mod = Papua New Guinea I would like to try to modify the latitude of the map (origin?) because Papua New Guinea is very close to the equator and the lighting conditions (vertical angle of the sun) shall be similar regardless if it is summer or winter.

Many thanks in advance!

 

ADDED LATER:

Example for modification see below

Edited January 2 by kraut1

[Juri_JS]

If I remember correctly, map coordinates can be found in "height.hini" file.

[kraut1]

1 hour ago, Juri_JS said:

If I remember correctly, map coordinates can be found in "height.hini" file.

Thanks very much, in which gtp is this file located?

[Juri_JS]

2 minutes ago, kraut1 said:

Thanks very much, in which gtp is this file located?

Probably in one of the Map.gtp, no idea in which one.

[kraut1]

Correct, for each map in the gtp where the map data is, thanks!

[kraut1]

Questions answered (by Juri_JS) / Example for information:

 

Hi @JSOflyer69, maybe interesting for you too

 

To simulate the sun rediation like it is in Papua New Guinea:

-Papua New Guinea is much more closer to the equator than the Kuban Map area.

The global position is defined in the height.hini

I have checked some positions of towns:

-I did not considered that Papua New Guinea is south of the equator, because I did not want to confuse the IL-2 engine with negative coordinates

-In Maps03/04/05.gtp I found the kuban_s, ..._sp, ...a graphic folders with the height.hini files.

-I selected for the southern limit Latitude 4.150000degree and added the delta n 3.216234 for the northern Latitude 7.366234

 

I checked (only) the summer Kuban Map, old papua ng modification by JSOflyer69, plane oriented to south, view looking to west:

21. June 12:00

with modified height.hini                                                                                                                             

 

without modified height.hini

(In the summer visible but not so significant difference)

 

21. December 12:00

with modified height.hini    

without modified height.hini

 

 

21. December 9:00

with modified height.hini                                                                                                                             

without modified height.hini

 

 

Edited January 2 by kraut1

[Stonehouse]

Negatives for south and west longitude and latitude is fairly standard nomenclature so likely the engine would interpret it correctly. Probably worth a try anyway, worst case something weird will happen and you can revert the ini values. It'd be interesting to see what happened to the time of sunrise and sunset if you change the east/west value.

[kraut1]

52 minutes ago, Stonehouse said:

Negatives for south and west longitude and latitude is fairly standard nomenclature so likely the engine would interpret it correctly. Probably worth a try anyway, worst case something weird will happen and you can revert the ini values. It'd be interesting to see what happened to the time of sunrise and sunset if you change the east/west value.

Thanks for your reply!

Interesting! From my work in Industrial plant / piping engineering with 3D CAD software I know that S means = -N.

But I supposed that in the case of the height.hini file this means only S = southern limit, N = northern limit.

But I will try, with negative values. I will not change the slightly different E/W values.

Result: IL-2 accepts in general the negative latitudes and there is a small difference visible (we are close to the equator).

But I am now a bit too tired for the interpretation of the results.

What do you think? (the orientation of the P40 is 180°). And the screenshots are from Adler /PortMoresby in the south of the map!

 

The adaption of the east/ west values is from my point of view not urgently required, and I don't want to consider the individual time zones in detail. A bit too much work for me currently.

Edited January 2 by kraut1

[Stonehouse]

7 hours ago, kraut1 said:

What do you think? (the orientation of the P40 is 180°). And the screenshots are from Adler /PortMoresby in the south of the map!

Hmm to me the -ve ones look a bit brighter, harsher light which is correct. 21 June is almost midwinter for us UTC + 10 people but on a sunny winter's day the light is still very bright and is probably closer to a European summer lighting. In fact, my wife's eye specialist made the comment a few months back that everyone here eventually gets cataracts due to the harsher light we live under. The east/west values may also impact the lighting more than you think as the -ve longitude 21 Dec shot for 0900hrs looks too dim. To me that looks like what I see outside the window at about 0600-0630 in summer and by 0900 it is essentially full sun and hot already. It starts to get light around 0430 hrs with sunrise at around 0530-0545 here in December. Port Moresby is roughly the same latitude as me although it is about 2700km north of me so it's hotter and wetter at this time of year due to monsoons. They have pretty much the same weather as Darwin so in summer that's 30 plus deg C, 70-100% humidity and likely pouring rain and a very good chance of a thunderstorm early every evening.

Edited January 3 by Stonehouse

[kraut1]

3 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

Hmm to me the -ve ones look a bit brighter, harsher light which is correct. 21 June is almost midwinter for us UTC + 10 people but on a sunny winter's day the light is still very bright and is probably closer to a European summer lighting. In fact, my wife's eye specialist made the comment a few months back that everyone here eventually gets cataracts due to the harsher light we live under. The east/west values may also impact the lighting more than you think as the -ve longitude 21 Dec shot for 0900hrs looks too dim. To me that looks like what I see outside the window at about 0600-0630 in summer and by 0900 it is essentially full sun and hot already. It starts to get light around 0430 hrs with sunrise at around 0530-0545 here in December. Port Moresby is roughly the same latitude as me although it is about 2700km north of me so it's hotter and wetter at this time of year due to monsoons. They have pretty much the same weather as Darwin so in summer that's 30 plus deg C, 70-100% humidity and likely pouring rain and a very good chance of a thunderstorm early every evening.

Hi Stonehouse, thanks for you reply.

With the current changed North Values, regardless if they are positive or negativ, we have at least a significant improvement: due to the now closer equator the differences in the lighting conditions between summer / winter are very small and I think this is in general realistic. And the colours are much more bright and intense in winter.

I don't know if I will find the time but for further tests for the longitude I would have to compare sunset / sunrise data from the Internet with IL-2.

 

 

 

[kraut1]

3 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

Hmm to me the -ve ones look a bit brighter, harsher light which is correct. 21 June is almost midwinter for us UTC + 10 people but on a sunny winter's day the light is still very bright and is probably closer to a European summer lighting. In fact, my wife's eye specialist made the comment a few months back that everyone here eventually gets cataracts due to the harsher light we live under. The east/west values may also impact the lighting more than you think as the -ve longitude 21 Dec shot for 0900hrs looks too dim. To me that looks like what I see outside the window at about 0600-0630 in summer and by 0900 it is essentially full sun and hot already. It starts to get light around 0430 hrs with sunrise at around 0530-0545 here in December. Port Moresby is roughly the same latitude as me although it is about 2700km north of me so it's hotter and wetter at this time of year due to monsoons. They have pretty much the same weather as Darwin so in summer that's 30 plus deg C, 70-100% humidity and likely pouring rain and a very good chance of a thunderstorm early every evening.

Added later: And I have created an updated height.hini (only northern coordinates changed) file for the Kuban Tunisia Mod:

If you have ideas for better longitude east / west coordinates please let me know.

 

 

[kraut1]

10 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

Hmm to me the -ve ones look a bit brighter, harsher light which is correct. 21 June is almost midwinter for us UTC + 10 people but on a sunny winter's day the light is still very bright and is probably closer to a European summer lighting. In fact, my wife's eye specialist made the comment a few months back that everyone here eventually gets cataracts due to the harsher light we live under. The east/west values may also impact the lighting more than you think as the -ve longitude 21 Dec shot for 0900hrs looks too dim. To me that looks like what I see outside the window at about 0600-0630 in summer and by 0900 it is essentially full sun and hot already. It starts to get light around 0430 hrs with sunrise at around 0530-0545 here in December. Port Moresby is roughly the same latitude as me although it is about 2700km north of me so it's hotter and wetter at this time of year due to monsoons. They have pretty much the same weather as Darwin so in summer that's 30 plus deg C, 70-100% humidity and likely pouring rain and a very good chance of a thunderstorm early every evening.

Hi @Stonehouse,

I did some checks / comparisons between the deviations between noon (12:00) and solar noon (per location / date) for 21th June for Adler (without mod) and Port Moresby (with mod):

 

For both unmodified Adler and modified Port Moresby there is a small deviation of ca. 5-10°.

This means for me that the deviation of not correct longitude of the modded version is "similar correct" asa the one of the not modded game.

For me this is acceptable.

 

Deviation from Solar noon in unmodified Adler:

 

Similar Deviation from Solar noon in modified Port Moresby:

(Maybe I use the brighter colours of JSOflyer69's new mod)

 

 

 

[Stonehouse]

Just remembered there is a sunrise and sunset config file. This may impact what you are doing and negate the need to worry at all about latitude. I believe the main one is in scg\29 in daytime.cfg but there is another in scg\25 of the same name that only covers a single day. I think the file lives in locations7.gtp as I recall. Note there are also weather config files all through the scg folder structure and most I think are found in scg.gtp and locations.gtp, locations4.gtp, locations6.gtp and locations7.gtp. Possibly there are more in maps11 and maps12.gtp.

 

Generally, I believe certain folders in the scg file structure are relating to certain maps so perhaps if you could figure out which related to Kuban you might be able to tweak weather as well to avoid things like snow (I think this is mod of Kuban autumn like Rob's?) although you may not be worried about going down to this level for a map repaint mod whereas getting the light more correct is worthwhile.

 

Lacking any certainty, I assume that the file daytime.cfg in scg\25 is an override for what I believe is the main file in scg\29 and was created for a particular situation the dev's wanted to deal with. 

[kraut1]

11 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

Just remembered there is a sunrise and sunset config file. This may impact what you are doing and negate the need to worry at all about latitude. I believe the main one is in scg\29 in daytime.cfg but there is another in scg\25 of the same name that only covers a single day. I think the file lives in locations7.gtp as I recall. Note there are also weather config files all through the scg folder structure and most I think are found in scg.gtp and locations.gtp, locations4.gtp, locations6.gtp and locations7.gtp. Possibly there are more in maps11 and maps12.gtp.

 

Generally, I believe certain folders in the scg file structure are relating to certain maps so perhaps if you could figure out which related to Kuban you might be able to tweak weather as well to avoid things like snow (I think this is mod of Kuban autumn like Rob's?) although you may not be worried about going down to this level for a map repaint mod whereas getting the light more correct is worthwhile.

 

Lacking any certainty, I assume that the file daytime.cfg in scg\25 is an override for what I believe is the main file in scg\29 and was created for a particular situation the dev's wanted to deal with. 

Thanks for this information!

I suppose, that more or less all files  in the sgt folder are related to Quick Mission Builder, Advanced Quick Mission Builder and Pilot Careers.

Because I have now defined the P39, P40, A20 for default english voices (for Quick Missions) I could maybe change the sun settings for Kuban Summer Quick Missions.

 

And I have thought about the longitude values in the heigh.hini files:

The longitude angles for delta east (e.g. 416km for Kuban) are depending on the latitude:

Because for Papua NG near the equator the circumference of the earth is bigger than at the latititude of Kuban, I will calculate at least the (smaller) delta angle.

red to be recalculated: