New Road System

[luki 53]

I looked at the new road system of ArmA 3, and it works well in custom maps too.

You need to create your own shp and add it to the map config.

Still need to adjust the terrain in Visitor.

newRoadsShape = "\tut\tut_testmap\data\roads\roads.shp";

Stratis is located somewhere in the sea infront of the african coast, when you open the *.shp, check the coordinates in the .*prj, or check the map config

mapZone = [color="#FF0000"]35[/color];
longitude = [color="#FF0000"]17.352;[/color]
latitude = [color="#FF0000"]-48.964;[/color]

Im not exactly sure about the projection file and how this works in detail.

PROJCS["UTM destination coordinate system.",GEOGCS["WGS 84",DATUM["WGS_1984",SPHEROID["WGS 84",[color="#FF0000"]6378137,298.257223563[/color],AUTHORITY["EPSG","7030"]],TOWGS84[0,0,0,0,0,0,0],AUTHORITY["EPSG","6326"]],PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,AUTHORITY["EPSG","8901"]],UNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433,AUTHORITY["EPSG","9108"]],AUTHORITY["EPSG","4326"]],PROJECTION["Transverse_Mercator"],PARAMETER["latitude_of_origin",0],PARAMETER["central_meridian",3],PARAMETER["scale_factor",0.9996],PARAMETER["false_easting",500000],PARAMETER["false_northing",0],UNIT["Meter",1]]

I just can guess and took this coordinates as my lower left map corner.

It would be great to get some simple example or description of this.

At least the prj coordinates do not interfere with the actual mapconfig.

GlobalMapper always saved my shp, prj and dbf table wrong so i searched for some other tools and stumbled over QuantumGis what gave me better results. You just need to be sure you use the correct attributes in you shape file.

Edited March 11, 2013 by Atsche

[ZeroG 23]

Great! No doubt that as soon we figure it out more precisely, road painting for a 400km² map can be done in no time....

[Bushbeater 0]

nice work thank you !!!!!

[Red15 0]

It seems fairly logical you could just go on http://openstreetmap.org and extract portions of road networks that would go straight in your map.

It seems this would be a project I can put some weight in, chime in if you think this would be a "Good Thing" :P

[m1lkm8n 411]

Thanks! Gonna mess around with this tonight

Edit- zero did you see the 1000km2 afghan map?

Edited March 11, 2013 by M1lkm8n

[soldier2390 0]

I am going to have to keep my eye on this!

[m1lkm8n 411]

@atsche

Can you tell me how you setup quantum gis?

I can get it done in global mapper and export the shape file but I think it's giving me the same issue you were having , so I downloaded quantum gis. However I can't seem to get it to allow me to start drawing my roads.

[lecholas 2]

@M1lkm8n

You need to create a new vector line layer (shapefile) with a correct CRS and start an edit session. It's roughly described here:

http://geo.nls.uk/urbhist/guides_vectorlayerqgis.html

I can't test it with Arma3 yet, but its interesting, what kind of projections are supported (I guess UTM only).

[jakerod 254]

When you guys were using Globalmapper, did you set your Projection and zone before you imported anything? Ex. Tools > Configuration > Projection (If Lecholas is right, UTM) & Zone (depends on location).

[m1lkm8n 411]

When you guys were using Globalmapper, did you set your Projection and zone before you imported anything? Ex. Tools > Configuration > Projection (If Lecholas is right, UTM) & Zone (depends on location).

You know that may be my problem. I may have forgotten that. I'll check on that tonight. Thanks guys.

[ZeroG 23]

Stratis roads.prj info says "TM" and not UTM...it may be close but aint the same I guess ? Problem is that when you normally work with GM, you use UTM for exporting heightmaps and raster maps...

After all, if we discover the mode to paint roads easily, we still need some script that smoothes our roads afterwards...

[m1lkm8n 411]

Thing is what if you are making a fictional map. What would you use then?

[bushlurker 46]

Stratis roads.prj info says "TM" and not UTM

TM = Transverse Mercator

UTM = Universal Transverse Mercator

B

[lecholas 2]

Stratis roads.prj info says "TM" and not UTM...it may be close but aint the same I guess ? Problem is that when you normally work with GM, you use UTM for exporting heightmaps and raster maps...

After all, if we discover the mode to paint roads easily, we still need some script that smoothes our roads afterwards...

To be honest, I've never worked with GM, but QGIS for example lets you reproject rasters/vectors to any possible coordinate system (if you know the right parameters you can also define your own one I think). And I guess that when you have heightmap and shapefile in the same crs, smoothing of the raster DEM could be performed in some third party GIS application or even 2D graphics editing application directly into the heightmap. I can think of several possible workflows. The question is: would it look good ingame?

[luki 53]

When you guys were using Globalmapper, did you set your Projection and zone before you imported anything? Ex. Tools > Configuration > Projection (If Lecholas is right, UTM) & Zone (depends on location).

The prj file sets the projection automatic afaik.

My prj file looks different for example after export from qg and is in utm format when loading to gm.

Ingame it works withouth the prj.

[gunny1987 0]

I was waiting for this news since I started map making. FANTASTIC!

[ThePhill 1]

Nice Work!

[m1lkm8n 411]

ok so I have been able to use global mapper to start mapping the roads and have exported them out in a shapefile and have got them in to the game.

Is there a way to shrink the size of the shapefile being exported because once on the map it's like twice the size it should be? the island in game is about 12miles long but in real life it's about 30.

Edit- if I understand correctly I can shrink the size of the polygons just by editing the proj file?

Edited March 20, 2013 by M1lkm8n

[ZeroG 23]

Hm, nice!!! Maybe you can write a small tut how to do it with GM as soon as you figure out the size issue?! Im not to keen on QGIS because I just got used to GM....

[m1lkm8n 411]

Hm, nice!!! Maybe you can write a small tut how to do it with GM as soon as you figure out the size issue?! Im not to keen on QGIS because I just got used to GM....

its funny because I have been using a combination of the two programs. its seems when I export the shapefile in GM even though I have only the four attributes for each road _LAYER, ID, ORDER, and _ID it tags them with an additional NAME, BEARING, and LENGTH.

So I open the shapefile up in QGIS and delete the three extra columns and it works great...well except that its like twice the size it should be but ill figure it out soon enough

edit- figured out :)

so I needed to rectify the actual roads shapefiles I created from the real island to my scaled down island. now it works great! just need to figure out what roads are what.

Edited March 22, 2013 by M1lkm8n