How about 2.2M sq km's of terrain?

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Author	Topic: How about 2.2M sq km's of terrain?
Bryan Russell Pilot	posted 11-23- 08:06 AM This is the chunk of europe I'm gonna try and turn into EAW style terrain. Works out to be about 2.2M kms^2 worth! It's probably a little optimistic but I'll have a crack anyway... I can always make it smaller. Its probably worth noting that the whole of the UK thats showing doesn't get any higher than 2M above sea level according to the DEM, so its going to be realistically flat. I haven't seen them in person before but I sort of fiqured that he white cliffs of dover were higher than that. IP: Logged
Bryan Russell Pilot	posted 11-23- 08:39 AM Whoops, I just worked out that it might need over 100M of memory to hold the mesh. If anyone sees a bright flash over the Australian eastern seaboard tommorrow night, it will probably just be my PC exploding! IP: Logged
Yardstick Pilot	posted 11-23- 08:46 AM Brian great idea, I fully in favour of this. One point on the SE coast of England though. Yes it is relatively flat but only relatively. The south downs rise to about 1000 ft and where they reach the cost the chalk cliffs rise sheer to about 300 ft or more. I've cycled from London to Brighton on the south coast and I can assure you that it ain't flat. IP: Logged
Sp@nky Pilot	posted 11-23- 10:03 AM finally someone agrees that it ain't flat IP: Logged
Whirlwind Pilot	posted 11-23- 10:30 AM I saw some definite flaws (well, juzz did, I just reaffirmed) with flat 2 triangle squares at 2x map sizes, but that was aone big, 2 triangle square. You only need to spawn the individual squares and verify the model later. IP: Logged
Yardstick Pilot	posted 11-23- 11:07 AM That said, from the air the SE of England is pretty flat. I fly out of London City Airport to Brussels on a regular basis (taking the old Luftwaffe routes across Kent or down the Thames). A 1000ft range of hills from 20,000 ft would look pancake flat if it wasn't for the shadows that give them definition. EAW has the correct elevation data (White Cliffs apart) but because of the lack of dynamic lighting (or for that matter any environmental light-sourcing) the hills have no definition. If it were possible to model correctly SE England then SDOE's environmental light-sourcing would pick out the definition in the topography. IP: Logged
kopper JAG	posted 11-23- 11:10 AM Does that map include the Yorkshire area? I can't tell. That was where the bases for 6 Group were located during the Big One. I would love to fly missions from East Moor and Leeming to Happy Valley or the Big City! ------------------ Kopper Fortunae Nihil (Nothing to Chance) OPPs Making SDOE a Dangerous place. One plane at a time. IP: Logged
Sp@nky Pilot	posted 11-23- 12:56 PM ah ok i miss read that size earlier i thought u just said 2.2 square kilos hehe man that is huge cool IP: Logged
Bryan Russell Pilot	posted 11-23- 03:34 PM Its 2M high according to the DEM data. I think that becuase the resolution of the DEM grid is about 1km^2 it might miss any hills that are smaller than 1 km^2 in size. It does state that any islands that are smaller than 1km^2 wont show up. I think the thing to do is get the falt version automatically generated from the DEM, and then add some topology features by replacing some of the squares. This would be the way to do for the Dover Cliffs. IP: Logged
Werner Molders Pilot	posted 11-23- 05:00 PM Dear lord in heaven! That map would be sweet, but how long will it take you?! Any projections even? Best of luck!! Werner (Where's the 'in awe' smilie?) ------------------ Do you support SDOE online? Email Werner to be listed in SDOE's online phonebook today! IP: Logged
Spyder Pilot	posted 11-23- 06:02 PM yeah EAW has the terrain down pat because if you land someplace you can see some gentle slopes and hills in quite a few places, pity about the cliffs though. MScfs did a great job on that part of it. Kopper, Yorkshire is not in the picture, still a bit further up north. I vote for a bigger slice of the UK to even it up. We need bombers going as far as Liverpool for some great luftwaffe historical missions. [This message has been edited by Spyder (edited 11-23-1999).] IP: Logged
Elric Pilot	posted 11-24- 02:32 PM kopper : Yorkshire is on this map at the top, I used to live beside Pocklington airfield east of York, there where lots of airfields in the Vale of York during the war. Bryan : where did you get this? can you get higher resolution DEM data for europe? This map is hopelessly out of proportion as well... France is way bigger than the UK... Elric IP: Logged
Bryan Russell Pilot	posted 11-24- 06:35 PM The scale is probably due to the fact that the dimensions of the DEM X/Y wise use arc seconds rather than meters etc. I'll be figuring out some way to convert the arc seconds to meters/feet later without messing up the nice grid of tile I have now, but for now I'm just going to keep it simple for the first part. The DEM data is 10 arc seconds resolution which translates to around 1km per square. There might be some slightly higher resulution stuff out there, but I was actually thinking of decreasing the resolution a bit becuase the number of tiles for a 500x500 km map (the one above was 1500x1500km) would come to 250000! As a comparison, the current Dover map uses about 1500 tiles. When I think about those numbers I get a little pessimistic about whether a really large terrain is possible but I will continue anyway. The thing I'm doing will scale fairly well to make really small or really large terrains out of the DEM stuff, its just a matter of if SDOE can handle it or not. Currently I'm up to the point where I have got all of the DEM stuff under control and am in the process of ripping some classes out of OPS to write out the SM file. The first itteration will have no texturing, and probably simple colouring of tiles to represent Sea, Ground and maybe height. I'm not actually proposing to make a terrain without textures, I just like to do things in little steps so I can't screw up so much at a time. IP: Logged
Sp@nky Pilot	posted 11-24- 07:09 PM k am i to understand that when u say it has a 1km resolution that it will have 1 km squares that are at the hight it is in real life? not to put anyone down and i do think u should keep working on it bryan but isn't that going to look like crap? i know we can't have a map that big with the ground like it is now but man that sounds horrible no flames i just want to make sure i'm understanding what that 1km resolution thing means IP: Logged
Poodle EAF322 Pilot	posted 11-25- 12:39 PM Spanky, the terrain won't get blocky or anyhting if I'm right. That in the mountains you would have a lot of 1km squares next to eachother. Cause it won't be squares, the surface isn't flat. I don't actually know any consequences of it myself but it can't be so bad I think. And most of Holland is slightly below sea level. Will this show in the map too? ------------------ Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a Flying Poodle ! IP: Logged
Falck Pilot	posted 11-25- 10:09 PM IMO if you put a point right in the middle of that map you showed up above, and only included the area from the upper-lefthand corner to that point, it would be plenty big. I know it wont cover enough area for long bombing missions but for short cross-channel hops it would be perfect. It would also be much smaller in size and take a lot less time to complete. My main objection to map size in the current version is that not only are the maps small but the scale is small. If the maps were slightly bigger but the scale were accurate they'd be more fun to fly over imo IP: Logged
Hawker Pilot	posted 11-26- 02:37 AM I wanna do a bomb run on berlin etc from a real roughly geogrphically correct airbase. Look how fast we zoom over the maps as they are with the fms changing.The ones we currently have are great for dogfights,would be nicer to have bigger runs for those of us who like missions that last over 10 minutes it adds to the feel,and the immersion. IP: Logged
Poodle EAF322 Pilot	posted 11-26- 08:22 PM I think we shouldn't make the map 1/4th of the size you showed up. Cause now you still have some big german cities to bomb like K�ln and other big Ruhr area cities. Also you would miss out on Holland... ------------------ Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a Flying Poodle ! IP: Logged
Poodle EAF322 Pilot	posted 11-26- 08:24 PM And we even got Hamburg too. IP: Logged
Fenris Cadet	posted 11-28- 05:58 PM If anyone's thinking of modelling areas elsewhere in Britain they could do alot worse than the Firth of Forth, in Scotland.This is the river estuary North of Edinburgh crossed by the Forth Rail bridge.During the war it was the location for the first confirmed 'Kill' by the R.A.F(a Ju88 shot down by a spitfire of 602,City of Glasgow Squadron)and the first major air raid on Britain (Rosyth naval dockyard). The area became known as 'suicide corner' by German aircrews due to the level of air and ground defences.It might be interesting to model due to the number of islands with gun batteries, the distinctive bridge, a large naval base and the surrounding Pentland hills.....Of course I am biased -Fenris IP: Logged

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