I was looking at Google Earth, totally awesome btw, and I figured I'd take a look at Lenningrad to see how well the ingame map compares. My overall impression is that things seem scaled down in the game.
Here are the coords for anyone interested.
Runway on central Island west of lenningrad in the game:
60â?00'50" N 29â?42'00" E
I think I'll be looking around for other such places in the near future.
Heres a link for anyone who didn't know about it.
http://earth.google.com/
Oh, this is great. I tried to download Google Earth yesterday and it said the beta was closed.
Got it now. Thanks for the heads up.
I don't know why this stuff is so amazing to me. But it is. I bet it won't be too long before these images and maps are updated hourly (or at least with more frequency and greater resolution). You'll get real time traffic conditions, alternate route suggestions... all in 3d.
I've got no idea if those bridges were there, but kind of doubt it. I'm not sure what you mean about finding the maps in-game scaled down. They look surprisingly accurate to me (for a sim).
Here is another Gulf of Finland Island base that has been popular in the coops at HL...
60â?0'12.69"N, 27â?50'43.15"E
Resolution is a little low, but you can make out one of the strips.
Think I'll check out the Crimea now. I'm pretty sure if I ever go there, I won't need a map. I've been virtually flying over Crimea for several years now. Flanker featured it, Lomac featured it and of course IL-2 does too. I wonder what the attraction is for these sim developers?
Some more:
Runway NW of Stalingrad, just south of gumrak is at:
48â?47'00" N 44â?20'35" E
Appears that it's now a decent concrete strip. The concrete strip (in game) just south of the one mentioned appears not to exist anymore.
Center of the Balaton Lake:
46â?50'00" N 17â?40'35" E
Sevastopol' (Crimea):
44â?35'50" N 33â?31'50" E
Krasnodar (Kuban):
45â?00'50" N 38â?58'50" E
Looking at them, I think it's a mixed bag. For example, the waterways east of stalingrad are WAY too wide. They are pretty decent overall though.I'm not sure what you mean about finding the maps in-game scaled down. They look surprisingly accurate to me (for a sim).
Well, enough for now. I need some sleep.
That's because the IL-2 Stalingrad map was made from postwar mapping, and includes many reservoirs on the Volga and elsewhere that didn't exist during WW2Originally posted by ClnlSandersLite:
Looking at them, I think it's a mixed bag. For example, the waterways east of stalingrad are WAY too wide. They are pretty decent overall though.
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Google Earth download suspended again. Hopefully I'll be able to look at some of this stuff soon
Cheers!
The most complaints I've heard about the in-game maps is the elevation information. Mountainous areas seem flatter than in reality. It's most obvious on some of the Pacific maps. I always assumed this had something to do with making gameplay efficient, FPS, etc.
Also, ground textures seem to do strange things on less than horizontal surfaces in a computer 3d environment.
I've been checking out Google Earth's Yalta.
44â?29'59.89"N, 34â?10'11.97"E
It's mountains look reminiscent of IL2's. Just from memory, it looks pretty close. But who knows how accurate Google's elevation data is either?
As far as I can tell, they are using the same satellite images that other internet mapping services are using (ie terra server) but the new thing is that you can tilt the view and see it in 3d. Land forms are modelled like a sim.
Input two locations on the earth and it will zoom you in 3d from one location to the other like flying in a sim at warp speed. Most areas that I've viewed, so far, remind me of flying in FS2004 with the satellite ground textures. Some cities (mostly in USA) have buildings that are represented in 3D. Boston looks pretty cool.
Detailed areas are few and far between even in N. America, but pretty cool when you run across one. Oddly, my humble home of Jackson, Mississippi has a relatively new map (2003, I think) at a higher resolution. I can see my wife's car poking out of the garage and her father's car parked on the street. Can't read the tags though.
The areas I've looked at around Crimea and St. Petersburg are more detailed than I thought they would be. They look good from about 25,000ft eye height. Zoom in closer and they lose resolution. The better maps look great to about 1,000ft
I was just looking at London. It has a fairly high res map. It starts to lose it below 1,000ft. No 3d thoughThere are a ton of information keys there, however.
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