I hate the fact that when I am flying over large water features (excellent reference marks for navigation) there is bugger all on the map to indicate they are there...
You might be able to use this map to make a new briefing map as well. Here are some notes I made a while back when trying to mod maps in WOFF:
The original WOFF inflight map is 4096x4096 pixels.
The briefing maps are found at: WOFF\WOFFScenery\Period\(PERIOD)\map\alt_low.bmp
These bmp's are 3752x3688, so not the same size as the in flight map (close, but smaller) If you drop the inflight map in 'as is' as a bmp the size difference results in the map not matching in-game locations in the briefing. If you resize the inflight Map to 3752x3688 then things seem to line up pretty good (only looked at Flanders so far).
You might be able to use this map to make a new briefing map as well. Here are some notes I made a while back when trying to mod maps in WOFF:
The original WOFF inflight map is 4096x4096 pixels.
The briefing maps are found at: WOFF\WOFFScenery\Period\(PERIOD)\map\alt_low.bmp
These bmp's are 3752x3688, so not the same size as the in flight map (close, but smaller) If you drop the inflight map in 'as is' as a bmp the size difference results in the map not matching in-game locations in the briefing. If you resize the inflight Map to 3752x3688 then things seem to line up pretty good (only looked at Flanders so far).
Hi, thanks, yes, I found that last night and tried it, but it was being rejected, all I did was open the default one ,scribble on it (to test where it was displayed in the game), extract and save it, then run the game. It gave a map error and the briefing map was blank. I hadn't actually changed anything on the size, unless Gimp2 had forced a change in image size?!
Have you actually managed to get a different map to show in the briefing page of WoTR? Edit: Re-reading your post I see you mean those are notes from WoFF
Edit: There are three locations too, \battlemap, or 1939\Map, or 1040\Map, all of these show the same 3840 x 3840 alt_low map. I messed about wit all of them last night but couldn't get it to work.
Interesting that the map is that large yet on a 4k monitor running 3840x2160 it zooms in and looks terrible. I know, I know, CFS limitations right?
For me when I was messing about with it, the possibilities didn't seem so bad, I was actually having to thicken my lines and make them less distinct to try and fit in with fatter default lines. I'm sure an improved, better resolution map is very much possible, certainly for viewing in-flight, where it matters.
Excellent, I've figured out my issue with getting the campaign maps to not throw an error, so now I can get the same map into briefing maps and the inflight one.
I just flew over the isle of sheppy and er, it's a bit too long, so I will revisit the map details. This might take some time but I'll look to include as much navigational detal as I can. My plan is to build a whole new map from the original one up but wth as many corrections as I can do put in it.
Excellent Chief..looking forward to what you can come up with. Thanks
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.
Interesting that the map is that large yet on a 4k monitor running 3840x2160 it zooms in and looks terrible. I know, I know, CFS limitations right?
For me when I was messing about with it, the possibilities didn't seem so bad, I was actually having to thicken my lines and make them less distinct to try and fit in with fatter default lines. I'm sure an improved, better resolution map is very much possible, certainly for viewing in-flight, where it matters.
Glad you got it working in the debrief. I really hope you carry on with this project.
I doubt that the resolution can be improved. The actual map is huge (all of Europe) but we only see a small portion "zoomed in" (a part of England), hence it will always look blocky. Hope I am wrong.
Maybe you're both right there, but it is possible to make things look a bit better just by usin a 1 pix border between land and water for example, or none at all and just let colour do it. (Just noticed you have a big resolution display so yep, maybe nothing woudl help )
Unfortunately though I really am stuck. The current map is straight from CS3 by the looks of it, I thought it had been created from scratch more recently. It doesn't seem to align with 'real life' no matter what I do, I think because the original CFS map was blurred in creation by the addition of borders, and possible even skewed/stretched. In comparrison I assume the map we fly over, is based on real terrain .
So without knowing what section of map I'm trying to create, and what the projection/coordinates of it are, I'm a bit screwed.
Some of the game files refer to the position of things by coordinates, if the map we fly over has a coordinate system , if anyone knows what the 4 corners are, then maybe I could work from that?
Unfortunately the task seems to be just far too big and complicated.
I've used the coords and taken that shape from GIS and put it in as the map file with a few of the airfields also GIS mapped, they were misaligned by about 80km or more. I then spent hours lining up one of the airfields in an area I know well, and a couple of others that had physical coast landmarks nearby, these were all in the southern band of the UK. I got these pretty much lined up, but a check on the NE English coast showed it was still 10s of km out up there, rediculously so, Humberside was a mess for example. I didn't dare check France.
I don't know if the game terrain is perhaps not aligned with reality then, thing is, it looks good for areas I know; so I just don't get it, if the terrain is fine in game, it must be a conflicting projection issue (the game terrain is a flat earth I presume?).
So the only solution is to manually fly around visually updating the map file, which is what I did for my first attempt to give the Isle of Wight some accuracy. But I don't have the time for this, especially if you consider towns or large rivers, the task has to be automated somehow. I hope the devs can extract a map from the game terrain and give us that, otherwise we are stuck with what we have, and, that will mean navigation is never part of the game (I'd hoped we could have a map without the aircraft like in other games one day).
Maybe a paper map on your lap is the solution... does anyone have a 1940 map of NW Europe by any chance?.. (I jest).
So sorry, but I give up on this, its much too frustrating, I'm just going to use the stock map and ignore the Isle of Wight the best I can.
In WOFF, a few years ago, Nibbio was able to extract a map from the terrain files, so it can be done. He isn't around anymore ... I wonder if anyone else has this knowledge? I am sure the developers do but probably far too busy.
I have played with the briefing map and think I have it working. There is a link below to a beta mod. Put into your MODS folder and install with JSGME (or install by hand if desired).
I think part of my frustrations is due to my own artefacts made when messing about with stuff, I think I caused some of the misalignment I was seeing in my files.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.
Well I may have got a bit carried away with all this, I have indeed started to build my own map from scratch.
It is still a WIP at the moment but I have the coast of England and Wales completed and it all seems to line up pretty well, not perfect of course but a lot better than the stock map.
So You are pretty much showing over water on the map when you are over water, and over land when over land!
I've drawn this by a rather, er, intensive method, of flying the whole coastline in game taking screenshots.
The attached images show where I'm at so far, note Ireland/Eire and France are not improved in any way and I'm in the process of marking urban areas and not sure yet if I will perhaps just use point references for most of them instead of shading, also there are no forests marked and only minmal inland water bodies.
Case: Cooler Master Storm Trooper PSU: Ultra X3,1000-Watt MB: Asus Maximus VI Extreme Mem: Corsair Vengeance (2x 8GB), PC3-12800, DDR3-1600MHz, Unbuffered CPU: Intel i7-4770K, OC to 4.427Ghz CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 240M Liquid CPU Cooler Vid Card: ASUS GTX 980Ti STRIX 6GB OS and Games on separate: Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD Monitor: Primary ASUS PG27AQ 4k; Secondary Samsung SyncMaster BX2450L Periphs: MS Sidewinder FFB2 Pro, TrackIR 4
Starting to add some cities, also inland water bodies, and have done most of the French coast from Normandy to Belgium
I'm keeping an eye out to see if a new map affects game performance, seems ok so far, but detail is low at the moment. Hopefully this won't scupper the whole exercise later.
I'm also trying a different map size and zoom levels for the inflight view.
Here (attached) is the latest map in the briefing view and also in flight.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.
I'm not sure it is ...to be honest I'm not that clear in understanding resolutions, pixels and the like. It currently is larger in pixel dimensions at the moment, but, my main aim is to get navigational features lined up with the in game experience. This is definitely working enough from using my WIP map when playing the game. When I've also set the zoom to 52000 or 64000 and removed the own aircraft icon it means even though the map is centred on the player it can ' force' me to successfully navigate using outside features.
I've also played around with colour schemes and seen that this can soften the apparent pixelated appearance by having shades that blend more, but for now am just focusing on layout.
This may end up a waste of my time, but it seems to be creating something useful in my experience so far.
Having flown over so much of the map it has dawned on me just how huge, and impressive it is. The details may be repeated but I've seen few glitches and it is quite charming sometimes, the position of remote houses and churches etc.
If it works better it will be something others will find useful so shouldn't be a waste of time. I am sure now you see the challenge involved in getting a good map as we do not have the map chopped into bits you fly in a bubble with "boundaries" as you do in most other sims. It pretty much covers the England to the Swiss border - and with enough fuel you could fly most of the way in 1 go.
After trying a few things and a bit of consideration, I am going to move over to doing it in a higher resolution straight away, rather than do a low res one first.
Yep the strip of map at the top I don't believe exists in the game... for example if I select either the Isle of man airbase or the most Northernly one in England in QMB, or try to fly up there in game my game crashes, is that not the same for everyone? I was considering adding some text or something on there to make it look like a real map but not until the end of mapping.
And my plan was to list countries and main cities like the default map does, (and real maps of course), more for flavour than use... although if you reularly see a place in games on a map it is nice to get used to it, especially when you may fly over in future. But yes, I'll look at versions with and without labels in future it si very easy to leave them off when genereating the file.
Yep the strip of map at the top I don't believe exists in the game... for example if I select either the Isle of man airbase or the most Northernly one in England in QMB, or try to fly up there in game my game crashes, is that not the same for everyone? I was considering adding some text or something on there to make it look like a real map but not until the end of mapping.
Interesting. The area appears to be included in the stock map... I suppose it's included there because you might 'see' past the edge of the world, even if you can't fly there (as in my flight to Cottam). Maybe the missing strip could be filled in crudely, simply by tracing the coastline from the stock map?
Yep the strip of map at the top I don't believe exists in the game... for example if I select either the Isle of man airbase or the most Northernly one in England in QMB, or try to fly up there in game my game crashes, is that not the same for everyone? I was considering adding some text or something on there to make it look like a real map but not until the end of mapping.
Interesting. The area appears to be included in the stock map... I suppose it's included there because you might 'see' past the edge of the world, even if you can't fly there (as in my flight to Cottam). Maybe the missing strip could be filled in crudely, simply by tracing the coastline from the stock map?
Fair point, I'll see how it goes, again, it wouldn't be too much hassle to do alternative versions.
Just be aware the file presented in this thread was a work in progress, is far from finished and has mistakes etc.
I'm working on a brand new high res map that I hope to actually complete and it is going well, although I have been away from home recenty so had a bit of break from it. (Attached example image includes a 'paper map' effect I've been toying with)
Good stuff I'm hoping one day we can have the ability to be able to bring up a map that actually represents what we see on the ground. Coastlines, rivers, lakes, roads, railway lines and built up areas all accurately placed. I used to teach map reading and navigation when I was in the army, so when I was flying for real, I found it was relatively easy to navigate from place to place... (VFR rules). I'd make my way points at prominent road junctions, oddly shaped woods or features, lakes, river junctions etc, you know, things that stood out.
Still, keep at it Chief, you are doing a grand job!
Good stuff I'm hoping one day we can have the ability to be able to bring up a map that actually represents what we see on the ground. Coastlines, rivers, lakes, roads, railway lines and built up areas all accurately placed. I used to teach map reading and navigation when I was in the army, so when I was flying for real, I found it was relatively easy to navigate from place to place... (VFR rules). I'd make my way points at prominent road junctions, oddly shaped woods or features, lakes, river junctions etc, you know, things that stood out.
Still, keep at it Chief, you are doing a grand job!
Until that day I highly recommend RAF_LOUVERT'S maps displayed on a second monitor. They are excellent representations and available on Sandbagger's mod page.
(System_Specs)
Case: Cooler Master Storm Trooper PSU: Ultra X3,1000-Watt MB: Asus Maximus VI Extreme Mem: Corsair Vengeance (2x 8GB), PC3-12800, DDR3-1600MHz, Unbuffered CPU: Intel i7-4770K, OC to 4.427Ghz CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 240M Liquid CPU Cooler Vid Card: ASUS GTX 980Ti STRIX 6GB OS and Games on separate: Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD Monitor: Primary ASUS PG27AQ 4k; Secondary Samsung SyncMaster BX2450L Periphs: MS Sidewinder FFB2 Pro, TrackIR 4
Until that day I highly recommend RAF_LOUVERT'S maps displayed on a second monitor. They are excellent representations and available on Sandbagger's mod page.
I can't find that, I may not be looking in the right place though, could you provide a link please?
Good stuff I'm hoping one day we can have the ability to be able to bring up a map that actually represents what we see on the ground. Coastlines, rivers, lakes, roads, railway lines and built up areas all accurately placed. I used to teach map reading and navigation when I was in the army, so when I was flying for real, I found it was relatively easy to navigate from place to place... (VFR rules). I'd make my way points at prominent road junctions, oddly shaped woods or features, lakes, river junctions etc, you know, things that stood out.
Still, keep at it Chief, you are doing a grand job!
That is kind of my aim, I had hoped someone would be able to extract a map from the values used to create the game world. It must define forest tile here, water there, urban tile there, ralway from x to y etc. Surely when the map was made by the original developers they can see a real world view of it? But I don't have the tools or knowledge to do this, and I think the original map actually got distorted when compressed and 'fitted' into the game, hence my manual (and tedious) mapping process.
Anyway, my aim is to define:
Coastline Inlets Rivers/Lakes Cities and very large towns - less than on my first attempt as they are only visible for me when very close, but larger areas you can see by the land colour
then time and will allowing:
Large forests - as these seem to be visible from afar
And maybe
Railways
I'm not actually compressing the map file but have done some tests and didn't find this a problem, it may become one though of course.
Until that day I highly recommend RAF_LOUVERT'S maps displayed on a second monitor. They are excellent representations and available on Sandbagger's mod page.
I can't find that, I may not be looking in the right place though, could you provide a link please?
In case anyone is still interested, here are some more WIP images, this has my 'paper' filter effect on, I'll release both a clean and filtered map when the time comes.
I've nearly completed what I would consider phase 1 for this, and that will generate a 'useable' map. I've mostly only got Normandy and Brittany left to map, mostly.
Bear in mind that I'm not bothering with large areas right now (basically anything south of Paris and East of the Netherlands).
Looking good Chief!. Always interested in anything that will improve maps. My main interest is in a better briefing map for pre-flight use and printable paper maps for in-flight use. There will be many people that do rely on the inflight map that will be happy to see this produced, for sure!.
I managed to get my first map file attempt into the briefing screens, but it wasn't aligning correctly, I didn't investigate why but I'm sure I can sort that out but need to get my outlines finished on the new higher resolution map first.
Very nearly there though on this first useable draft..
)
