Detailed Global Mapping (DGM) Project

[Ronin13 0]

Hello All,

Detailed Global Mapping (DGM) Project is an idea I came with by analyzing the possibility of using Google Earth software to make detailed ArmA tactical maps once the ArmA mapping tools are available or SnakeMan release an ArmA version of WRP-Tool. Google Earth is an available technology that can help us develop tactical maps to detail since;

1. It has a ruler in different measurements

2. It has photos and information on the different places

3. It has elevation information

4. It has, in some occasions, 3D buildings.

JUST IMAGINE THE POSIBILITIES IF ALL MAP MAKERS (Gaia, SnakeMan, Q, PhilCommando, CJE, Remo, Narpal, ag_smith, FDF Mod, etc…) , and others who wants to help, get together and start building these maps in cells (cells=square area on Goggle Earth satellite map). Everyone who wants to help can be given a cell to build and an expert map editor, like Gaia, can put them together once the cells are finished.

For example we can have different programs within this project.  One program can be Kabul-Afghanistan, another Bagdad-Iraq, another a town in Darfur, and another Mogadishu-Somalia. The program leaders will be the people in charge of that project (someone with a lot of experience making maps like the above mentioned), and anyone who wants to help can be given an assign cell by that program leader. Once a cell is finished using Goggle Earth satellite map the cell is given to the program leader to put it together with the other cells. Another program leader can be in charge of making buildings for the different programs (like PhilCommando he is good making buildings) by request of the map making program leaders and this person can be helped by volunteers.

IF WE ALL WORK TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE THE DETAILED GLOBAL MAPPING PROJECT A REALITY. Just to show you what I am talking about

The picture above depicts Bagdad International Airport. Enclosed in a squared is the area use by the US. Photo: Goggle Earth

The picture above is a zoom-in of the enclosed squared area. You can notice the choppers and planes. Photo: Goggle Earth

The picture above shows a ZOOM-IN of an area where a C17 Glove Master, a C130, and two UH60s are parked. Photo: Goggle Earth

Kabul-Afghanistan Airport Main Terminal. Notice how Google Earth can show 3D buildings that we can use as models to make our own buildings. Also it has photos of the building too. Photo: Goggle Earth

Downtown Kabul-Afghanistan with 3D buildings. Notice the mountains elevations around the city. Photo: Goggle Earth

Darfur small village. Notice the burned houses in that village. Photo: Goggle Earth

As you can see THE DETAILED GLOBAL MAPPING PROJECT can be done. The technology is there. We just have to put our personal egos and thirst of glory to the side and work as a community, a team, to make this happened. IT IS POSIBLE.

THIS IS AN IDEA AND I CAN HELP MAKING CELLS, AND YOU.

note: I do not want any leadership position. The best and most experience should be the leaders in the different programs. THIS IS JUST AN IDEA.

Edit1: Maps made this way can be branded === DGM Project ===.

Edit2: It is to use Goggle Earth satelite maps as a REFERENCE to make the ArmA tactical maps not to use them to make them.

[Winters1807 0]

This, my friend is a revelation, i think its one of the best ideas i have seen!

Although i cannot map, we must call to others!

Seriously tho, what a great idea!

[Spetz 0]

I remember there was this game called Empire Earth, in it you could import high-quality terrien details off of this site that i forgot,

the site would allow you to make a box around any part of the globe and you can download the terrien detail from it

when i find this site i will inform you, but i think its national geographic or something similiar to it

I think you may be able to convert these into some moddeling software

EDIT:  

I found the site

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin....mdatacd

second version

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/gdas/gd_designagrid.html

[jakerod 254]

Been using DEMs for a while.

DEM Data

There is another site that has them in great detail from all over the world excluding some extreme North and South locations. I can't remember it anymore though and its bookmarked on my old computer so next time I go on that I will try to find it.

[Winters1807 0]

In theory, would it not be possible to make the entire world into one big real sized map, as arma streams data so u wudnt have to load it all at once?

(though it would be a huuuuge file)

[dm 9]

In theory, would it not be possible to make the entire world into one big real sized map, as arma streams data so u wudnt have to load it all at once?

(though it would be a huuuuge file)

In theory, yes it would. But, the filesize you'd generate in the process would be <span style='font-size:9pt;line-height:100%'>ridiculous</span>.

Sahrani has an area of 400km^2, and already requirers approximately 747 Mb worth of data for the terrain alone - not even beginning to consider objects with which to populate it.

Now consider that JUST the land mass of the Earth is approximately 37234 times bigger, at 148,939,100 km^2, you're going to be looking at somewhere around 27,200 Gygabytes of data, and thats ONLY for the plain terrain - NO objects.

Now consider that the objects which populate Sahrani (Buildings, Plants, Roads, Rocks, Signs) are an additional Gigabyte of data, and that most real world locations have a much higher object density and an exponentially larger object variety than Sahrani, its more likely to be at least 10 times the amount of data, at an incredibly conservative guess. so you'll be looking at at least 270 Terabytes, if not more.

[nephilim 0]

theres one question left tho..

download link or will ya send whole cupboard of HD´s?

good luck

[Ronin13 0]

@ Jakerod & Spetz

I think it will be better if we keep US government & private corporations out of this since it can bring problems.

Goggle Earth is a free share an many people around the world, people like you and me, are building it.

@ Winters1807

Quote[/b] ]In theory, would it not be possible to make the entire world into one big real sized map, as arma streams data so u wudnt have to load it all at once?

Yes in theory the file will be too huge for a high end computer to handle it but in the future with better computers this may become a possibility. But with this ArmA stream data a city like Kabul, Bagdad, Mogadishu, etc... could be posible to replicate.

[Winters1807 0]

How long away is the future, i want pcs that can deal with 270 terabytes now!

[Ronin13 0]

More examples,

Mogadishu-Somalia UN HQ During the BlackHawk Down insident.

Mogadishu-Somalia Port

Photo of the Port above taken during the Black Hawk Down insident.

Edit: By the way Goggle Earth has WikiPedia and Photos integrated in the software.

[shinRaiden 0]

1) DM, your numbers indicative of the range, but probably rather on the low end of the scale. Exponentially. Given a 342kb file size for a 512x512 px texture (gives you slightly better than 1m resolution for a 50m2 OFP map cell, I'm rounding to 50 for simplicity), just to cover the 29.2% of the Earth comprising land surface, you're looking at over 18 petabytes of data. (1024x 1 TB).

2) Elevation points would be approximately 150tb.

3) Objects would be an indeterminate amount of more data.

4) Do you want those buildings destructible or enterable?

[sakura_chan 9]

this wouldn't really make a nice map, it would just place one plain texture over the terrain. It might look nice from 2000ft but Arma is a fps so you spend most of the time on the ground. Arma's terrain is made up of tons of textures and shaders that make it look nice up close. You could definetly make an island's textures from Google Earth, but you would be doing it manually and you would have to make all of the non-visible textures yourself. Another point is that most of Google Earth is super low-res and each area of terrain has its own lighting/time of day and has often been patched together from different sattelites. It would also look silly with cars still in the streets, building shadows, clouds, trees and all the junk that would have to be removed to make a decent texture.

[Lor 0]

I love the idea of using Google Maps/Earth to create detailed, realistic maps of real-world areas for ArmA. I am eagerly awaiting the mapping tools so I can begin to work on a version of the city of Tehran, Iran for ArmA - for things like hostage rescue and such.

However, I don't think it's necessary or desirable to create the entire world for ArmA. 97% of the Earth is empty space. Not very interesting at all, and you could create 1,000,000 missions and still not use up even all the urban terrain on the Earth. I doubt very much that it would be practical to do something on this scale, even if you wanted to.

Having said this - I fully support any effort to discover ways of using Google Maps/Earth, and other online resources, to create realistic real-world areas - for example, I never thought that it might be possible to import Google Earth's 3D buildings into ArmA some how. Would there be any point in researching this perhaps?

It would certainly make an island like Manhattan easier to create =D

[ArmaVidz 0]

I remember there was this game called Empire Earth, in it you could import high-quality terrien details off of this site that i forgot,

the site would allow you to make a box around any part of the globe and you can download the terrien detail from it

when i find this site i will inform you, but i think its national geographic or something similiar to it

I think you may be able to convert these into some moddeling software

EDIT:  

I found the site

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin....mdatacd

second version

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/gdas/gd_designagrid.html

This sounds like a really nifty idea. Imagine the tactical overhead info you could have relayed to your company! Real topographical (?) information.

One thing though, I thought Baghdad and the Baghdad airport were completely flat now?

[jakerod 254]

Good Website

That doesn't have satellite images but the height data is good. You can just get images from other sources but I am fairly certain the terrain resolution is better than Google Earth.

[ArmaVidz 0]

In theory, would it not be possible to make the entire world into one big real sized map, as arma streams data so u wudnt have to load it all at once?

(though it would be a huuuuge file)

In theory, yes it would. But, the filesize you'd generate in the process would be <span style='font-size:9pt;line-height:100%'>ridiculous</span>.

Sahrani has an area of 400km^2, and already requirers approximately 747 Mb worth of data for the terrain alone - not even beginning to consider objects with which to populate it.

Now consider that JUST the land mass of the Earth is approximately 37234 times bigger, at 148,939,100 km^2, you're going to be looking at somewhere around 27,200 Gygabytes of data, and thats ONLY for the plain terrain - NO objects.

Now consider that the objects which populate Sahrani (Buildings, Plants, Roads, Rocks, Signs) are an additional Gigabyte of data, and that most real world locations have a much higher object density and an exponentially larger object variety than Sahrani, its more likely to be at least 10 times the amount of data, at an incredibly conservative guess. so you'll be looking at at least 270 Terabytes, if not more.

It would make sense then to reuse terrain that is geographically identical, in which parcels of land are branding or scored for their foliage, ground texturing and height. New areas are loaded by assigning a grid a score which then loads the appropriate texture/population.

[fasad 1]

I think google maps should not be considered a cut and paste resource for satellite maps, it is only suitable as a reference. At the end of the day, it makes far more sense to make/paint the satellite map (as was done for Sahrani).

Reasons :

- Many available satellite photos are low resolution. ArmA uses ~1 pixel per meter.

- Many satellite photos use unnatural colours, needing modification before use in ArmA.

- Real world uses infinite terrain types and colours, ArmA uses ~16, maximum of 4 in any one segment (~500x500m). You would need to re-colour/simplify natural colours of satellite map.

- Real world uses infinite unique man made objects, ArmA uses less than 1000?. You would need to remove/modify/simplify almost every man made entity on the satellite photo to suit ArmA object pallete, or create thousands/millions of new unique objects!

- Satellite photos contain clouds and shadows/shading from sun. ArmA creates it's own. You would need to remove all clouds and shadows from the satellite map.

- Satellite photos contain mobile objects such are cars, planes, people etc. These would all need to be removed to be used in ArmA.

- Real world contains object density far greater than ArmA can support. Many objects could not be portrayed in game, so they would need to be removed from the satellite map.

- Placing objects to re-create a real world location to suit a satellite photo would take longer than creating fictional or "inspired" locations. In my experience, creating an OFP island already takes about 5 hours per square km. ArmA supports higher object density, so expect this to increase. How much time have you got?

- The satellite map does take time to create, but represents less than 1/4 of the total work (estimated). You will still need to manually create a terrain mask of equal dimensions to the satellite photo, which will be easier with a hand made photoshop satellite map source (using photoshop layer masks, you are effectively making both ArmA terrain masks at the same time).

- Satellite photos contain ocean, ArmA renders underwater terrain. All coastlines would need to be modified to display sand/rock.

- Satellite photos are not always taken from directly above, making them unsuitable for use in ArmA, especially in mountainous terrain.

- The joined patchwork of satellite photos on google does not match seamlessly, I've seen many "seems" that contain errors or duplicate terrain of at least 50m.

- Copyright.

As for the group project - definitely a good idea, so long as people actually do the work. I don't think working in cells is the best idea for continuity reasons, I think getting 1 person/team to do textures, another to place man-made objects, and another to do place natural objects. Terrain/Island creation is a lot of tedious work, it's very easy to talk about but hard to do.

As for the scale - obviously forget about the whole world idea. Thinking big is easy, but based upon my experience creating an OFP map, I estimate it would take over 400,000 man-years to create an ArmA terrain of the entire world (that's only the land). Projection and ArmA's number precision are other obvious problems. Trust me, a miniature real world in 400km^2 terrain would be more than enough work.

[dm 9]

It would make sense then to reuse terrain that is geographically identical, in which parcels of land are branding or scored for their foliage, ground texturing and height. New areas are loaded by assigning a grid a score which then loads the appropriate texture/population.

Even by doing that (I'm not sure how, since its not supported by the engine) you're still not going to get the amount of data required down to a manageable level - I have a LOT of HDD space, at 1.5 TB, and I still have NO hope of getting remotely close to even having 0.0001% of the data needed onto my system. (Arbitrary percentage chosen for effect - may not actually represent the amount of data my system is capable of containing)

Good post Fasad.

[LtCmdrBoon 0]

This would work. What you need is the guys who know far more than I, but here is an educated guess.

1) Pick a city/area to do that has Hi-Res pictures on googleearth (eg London)

2) split the area into elements, so willing and able volunteers can work on this "cell"

3) A programmer must make a app that can get the elevation data from google earth (or wherever) and produce an empty map that has hills and valleys (potentially these are rivers/lakes)

4) the dedicated person for this cell "traces" the sat photo onto this blank (but elevated) map with major stuff, such as roads, lakes and marks areas for the leader of his area to pass onto the pro's, such as forrests / buildings etc.

5) Once the map has major items in place physically, people with experience mark areas within this cell in a code that another app can understand. Eg a tracing of the outline of a forrest in the cell is marked as T1

6) This application renders (to an extent random) Trees of Low density in that selected area. Had the code have been B9 for example, it would render (again randomly) Bushes of super high density.

7) now with everything in place on the map, texture designers make 100 or so textures that cover snow to sand and everything in betweem, and again experienced guys put these textures into the map so the whole cell contains textures.

8) then I guess, an WYSIWYG editor to view and adjust placement of certain objects.

People doing the map tracing (like the original post says) would request in an upwards "chain of command" (big project) that a modeller creates a structure resembling a skyscraper for example.

EXCELLENT IDEA! I remember making a terrain of my small town for flightsim years back, and it's very hard work. There needs to be a lot of work into the programs that can automate a lot of stuff, otherwise if left to different people, the terrain would be "different" in style from cell to cell.

[Spetz 0]

The site i have posted is just terrien detail, like Empire Earth was a RTS game that had the ability to import real world terrian info into a map, so you can have a realistic map of UK, but you may not have it to scale(like a unit would be the size of a city in real-life), also the site doesn't give any texiture info

[Ronin13 0]

@fasad

Quote[/b] ]I think google maps should not be considered a cut and paste resource for satellite maps, it is only suitable as a reference. At the end of the day, it makes far more sense to make/paint the satellite map (as was done for Sahrani).

Yes that is what I meant. It is to use the map as a reference to build ArmA tactical maps not to use the textures or the 3D buildings. It is up to the program leader to find the best way to design the textures etc...

It does not have to be identically too. If what we have are 1000 objects in ArmA that is what we should use the best way we can.

I think the important things are the roads, distances from places, buildings positioning, mountain heights, trees, etc... That is what makes the terrain in real combat.

This could be a brand DETAILED GLOBAL MAPPING (DGM) in which maps that are very similar to reality can be certified by a group of people.

Is it going to be harder to make? Well yes but I think it will be worth it.

[frederf 0]

As far as I know getting height map data is a snap and I bet Sahrani is made with a few DEMs, or maybe by hand, I dunno.

The real difficulty is populating the map with objects such as buildings, roads, and vegetation in a believable manner. I think most of that is done by hand for Sahrani.

Larger lands would be cool in the gameplay aspect that travel times would be increased and transportation would be even more valuable. Also long cross country treks, longer flight times, and being-out-of-155mm rangeness would be factors in the game.

Right now the world is big enough without:

1. Support for more players

2. More advanced AI

3. Artillery

4. A good persistence system

5. Single-tier command system

[Ronin13 0]

Playing around with Goggle Earth last night I found a few interesting things that I will like to share with you people. Here it goes

Manta Ecuador US AWACS. Electronic warfare in Ecuador supposedly for the war on drugs.

Diego Garcia Pacific Ocean. This is one of the most strategically important Air force & Navy base in the Pacific. From here many Bombers leave to Afghanistan and Iraq. Diego Garcia most be a relatively easy base to replicate in ArmA once the tools are available.

Diego Garcia Airport. You can see the B52s and Tankers parked and near those B2 Hangars (they use GBU-28 bunker buster 5,000 pounds bombs). The place is beautiful.

Guantanamo Bay Cuba. AG Cruiser ducked in port. You can see a chopper on the back. The place is very ugly not like Diego Garcia. Tomahawks anyone...

We leave in Planet Empire.

[maddogx 13]

I think the idea is great, if we use the Google Earth maps only as a reference.

It would be cool to see some real world locations realistically modelled into ArmA.

[Romolus 0]

Has anyone who's throwing around wild propositions in this thread ever just tried to create an OFP-sized map with a decent object density?

Even if you could use a tool like Google Earth to get the ground textures, then you just have that: Ground textures. And even those need to get some massive cleanup to look good.

But then you still have to create a ton of objects from scratch and place them.

Anyone who thinks this is remotely possible, just try to create a simple OFP island once (the tools for those are out already). You'll instantly see how much work that really is.

And everyone who's suggesting that someone should just create a tool for this or that: Please just go to your local library and grab a book about programming.

Just because other people seem to be able to do it, doesn't mean it's easy or doesn't take much time to do.