Jets DLC Terrains

[sberla101 50]

16 hours ago, Snake Man said:

If you mean the water that creeps on the land where it should not be, yes I want to fix that. If you mean something else, then please rephrase as I don't understand what real sea you mean.

 

My mistake, I thought there was a blue texture instead of water ... as in the South Asia map.

[Snake Man 407]

Middle eastern sturctures have been released, we are ready to commence object placement for Iraqi, Syrian and Libyan terrains :)

 

Check out PMC Opteryx Objects official PMC Tactical Forum Release Topic for details.

 

I'll try to write up some quick guides how to use these objects with eden editor, map builder and xcam so you guys can place objects, sent the export files to me and then they get added into these real world data terrains.

 

This is exciting, I cant wait! :-)

[hcpookie 3770]

Sounds like Falcon4 RP all over again :D

[ski2060 167]

So Snake, are you saying you'd like community placed objects on the maps to help speed up object placement in release versions?  Using those Opteryx object buildings and such?
 

[Snake Man 407]

I hate duplicated data / overlapping work with a passion, there is no reason to do that and it should be avoided at all costs.

Yesterday when I was working on PMC real world data terrains doing terrain builder keypoints I realized we have some overlapping terrain areas. I then proceeded to make a global mapper project of all the terrain grids and I was shocked to see how bad design decisions I did back in the day when this project started.

Here is current downloadable terrains for Iraq:

image removed

You see all our iraqi terrain grids there and their overlapping areas. It makes me sigh even now when I'm looking at that screenshot, I was way too enthusiastic when choosing locations to those individual terrains that I paid no attention for any overlap.

I want to fix those overlap areas, I want to kill them, with a passion. I don't care how much extra work it causes.

Here is what we might do: resize tikrit, kirkuk, sulaymaniya and nasiriyah from 143km into 81km and move al kut little to the east.

Tikrit, Kirkuk, Sulaymaniyah and Nasiriyah selected:

image removed

Al Kut selected:

image removed

This option would be the least destructive, we would not need to change any file names etc and you guys would not have to change arma3 startup parameters for these addons, it would be just bit recompilation on global mapper and terrain builder on my part.

Also as you can see from the images there is overlap on other terrains too, those small 40km ones of karbala and hillah where karbala overlaps into baghdad too. Honestly I dont know any easy answer for those...

How do you feel about resizing from 143km to 81km, does it take away from the awesome aircraft distances we have gotten used to by now?

Do you like one of the terrains in subject so much that you would not want to make any changes to its location?

Some advice or opinions would be welcome. Speak up guys, please help me make the best choice here.

BTW as I'm now aware of this terrain design decision problem, I have made global mapper project files for all of them so I can keep track of any overlap, in the future designs I wont repeat my past mistakes. As I always said, this terrain project will be a learning experience.

Edited May 8, 2017 by Snake Man
removed images because this post has ran its course.

[ski2060 167]

Quite honestly I'd like at least a portion of the maps to stay at 143 Km to take advantage of the new JETS DLC. 
With multiple mods taking advantage of the new Radar ranges and engagement possibilities I think larger maps present new, unique opportunities for gaming units to exploit those maps for missions.

@Firewill is incorporating extreme long range Radar and weapons, as is @HCPookie for his SAM pack (SA-20 engagement out to 140km!).

Keep some of them large, and if you just have to shrink a few to remove overlap then do that.

[xxgetbuck123 945]

The maps over cities and major towns should be 81km as it would allow for a bit more processing power to load the cities etc.. rather than the extra km^2 of map.

 

The maps over mostly empty land and mountains should be 143km as it would allow that extra processing power to go into loading the extra km^2 that these maps provide. 

[Carnemolida 4]

I think that I leave everything like this, it is not so serious, if you think with another perspective until you could do campaigns with chapters hooked on the continuation of the overlapping grounds, my congratulations for your effort.

[tupolov 520]

Amazing work Snakeman!

 

A few questions:

 

1. How are you doing the surface mask for these terrains? (its been a while since i did terrains :) ) Are you using any sat image analysis tools? SAGA GIS?

2. Any thoughts or work on procedurally placing objects and compositions on the terrains?

3. In ALiVE we're working on an Air Combat module to coincide with the JETS DLC release, are runways configured across all terrains? Any hangars, heliports etc placed?

 

Cheers,

Tup

[Snake Man 407]

Guys this is the last call for opinions, wishes, suggestions for the iraqi terrain re-design. I have not made up my mind yet but what I proposed still is most likely what I would do.

Please share your opinion on the matter, every post counts, like said lets make the right choice together :)

you'd like community placed objects on the maps to help speed up object placement in release versions?  Using those Opteryx object buildings and such?

Sorry forgot to answer this earlier. Yes, would be great if people interested in these terrains placed few (or few hundred heh) buildings on strategic important locations, maybe even the locations they care about the most, we would quite easily populate those spots then. Community effort you know.

I'd like at least a portion of the maps to stay at 143 Km

Of course, I'm the last guy who encourages of doing smaller terrains and it would even go against the scope of this project. I would not want to resize them smaller but seeing how badly they overlap... heh tough choices, tough choices ...

Keep some of them large, and if you just have to shrink a few to remove overlap then do that.

If I resize the mentioned terrains I could do couple of more 143km ones to even out the selection, maybe somewhere bit more remote location. Dunno, just a thought.

1. How are you doing the surface mask for these terrains? (its been a while since i did terrains :) ) Are you using any sat image analysis tools? SAGA GIS?

At the moment the mask is basic mid-dry light "shrubbery", I want to make bit more detailed satellite masks with various texture/clutter types. I have not used SAGA GIS.

2. Any thoughts or work on procedurally placing objects and compositions on the terrains?

Any methods to place objects which is not single house one by one is more than welcome.

3. In ALiVE we're working on an Air Combat module to coincide with the JETS DLC release, are runways configured across all terrains?

Not in the current releases, but yes was just thinking about how to make ILS configuring easier. I want to make landing autopilot working for all airfields.

Any hangars, heliports etc placed?

No objects have been placed yet (except first version of afghanistan ghazni, which was a mere test). I want to place objects to important / military / strategic locations which would obviously include airfields.

[Defunkt 431]

Feel a little like I'm missing this party (still waiting on my PC to arrive after a move abroad). I can well imagine obsessing over every little detail of some small town, village, outpost. Get enough obsessive people and you'll likely end up with a pretty damned fine map.

 

Have you thought about how contributors might be able to submit parts of the surface mask for their own little bits? Don't know a lot about terrain building but there's like a palette of surfaces denoted by different pure/primary colours isn't there? Might you define a basic palette so people can incorporate alternatives to basic mid-dry light "shrubbery" where it suits their composition to do so (perhaps via a masked PNG)?

 

Speaking of being obsessive, I'm sure however you eliminate the overlapping areas will work out fine. There's more than enough huge terrain for anyone's taste.

[Snake Man 407]

Placed some 669,000 objects for afghanistan kunduz from openstreetmap.org shapefiles. No manual work required as everything was automated.

Obviously this is not suitable quality for populated places, the building placement, but considering it was all click a button auto tool pipeline, I'm quite happy with it for air combat use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axbU_AuRnIs

Also placed some PMC Opteryx Objects into iraq ramadi but don't have any footage of that yet.

Things are looking good.

[ski2060 167]

Wow, that is a HUGE number of objects to get placed.  I assume there is a way to manually edit that and carve out areas that are bad placement?
 

[sammael 366]

can someone answer is there a map in this pack with ingame  deep water ?at least 10 m..

[wendyvonbraun 164]

I was checking out the Luhansk and Donetsk maps and I noticed that the images taken near Luhansk airport in 2014 were literally taken *during* the time of the battle... If you fly around and scan the ground you can see flashes of artillery and smoke billowing in the sat images. 

[ski2060 167]

3 hours ago, sammael said:

can someone answer is there a map in this pack with ingame  deep water ?at least 10 m..

I am pretty sure that there is NO water in any form other than a satellite texture on any of these maps yet.

Unless Snake managed to sneak some in somewhere.

[Snake Man 407]

I've made my decision; I will re-design iraq tikrit, kirkuk, sulaymaniyah and nasiriyah as 81km, meaning shrinking their size from 143km down to 81km to avoid the nasty overlap. Also will move al kut just slighly to the east.

Also I'm going to create one pure iraqi desert 143km terrain to keep all jets dlc guys satisfied, although 81km x 81km terrains are larger than any community released terrains (with obvious few exceptions). So saying 81km terrain is too small for jets is... well rather silly :)

There are few other iraqi terrains that overlap, but as of now I'll try to ignore those as they are not so bad.

Thanks for everyone who shared opinions on the matter.

there is a way to manually edit that and carve out areas that are bad placement?

No. But if you are referring to placing your own objects in eden/mapbuilder/xcam and in future cant as there will be existing objects, then don't worry as I'm planning on adding empty terrain version into the pbo. I have not actually done this for arma3, but it worked fine in arma2 so I don't see a reason why it wouldn't work now.

can someone answer is there a map in this pack with ingame  deep water ?at least 10 m

No there isn't, but on my developer versions oceans have already been fixed for several terrains and phase 2 is all about fixing the heightmap elevations including water parts. Oceans will be deep in next release(s).

[andersson 285]

That "nasty" overlap could be used to move a campaign "seamless-ish" from one map to another. You end you mission at far west in one map, next mission starts at the same airport but this time you are far east on the map and the area of operation will be even further to the west over new terrain. I would say keep them as is.

[nikiforos 450]

Hi!

I'm not asking for updates, just wonder if everything proceeds according to plan. So any news regarding the stage of development?

Thanks!

[CyclonicTuna 87]

9 hours ago, nikiforos said:

Hi!

I'm not asking for updates, just wonder if everything proceeds according to plan. So any news regarding the stage of development?

Thanks!

So basically you're asking for updates

[hcpookie 3770]

No, he wants an update on the update!  And the answer is, "BLUE"

[jakers12 14]

Nothing wrong in asking for a update, that's literally the entire point of a forum, to discuss mods, how they grow,etc. Anyways, there is a update on the author's site http://www.pmctactical.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=22660

 

" 05-22-17 Weekly update

All week was spent doing mostly the same as last week, downloading terra incognita ArcGIS world imagery satellites and re-creating those broken terrain builder projects. "

 

 

[Foxone 1044]

12 hours ago, jakers12 said:

Nothing wrong in asking for a update, that's literally the entire point of a forum, to discuss mods, how they grow,etc.

 

 

Oh but it is not, it is stated in the forum rules that asking for an update is against the rules, i suggest you give them another read.

 

[riten 153]

I'd like to use some of these maps for my jets mod, but is there any chance to put there airport/airstrip textures? At least one map with it, would be great.

[ski2060 167]

Maybe read the whole thread?