Google Earth - awesome for mission planning

[Razor18]

Hi Guys,

 

I'm so desperate to finish baltic_dragon's Enemy within campaign, I even looked up the area in Google Earth. I'ts such an awesome tool to reconnaisance the area around the target from various angles and directions, I tought it's worth sharing here.

 

To use in game L/L coordinates, turn on coordinates display in Google Earth (View/Toolbox and View/Status line checked (line #1 and #6 in mine), plus switch Tools/Options/3D/"Latitude-Longitude display" to "Degrees, Minutes in decimal" (3rd from top) radio button (to see the same format as used in game) at the bottom of the Google Earth screen. After that, just place a marker pin practically anywhere (by clicking on the yellow marker pin in the top toolbox), but before finishing, edit the coordinates in the popup window to the ones you want to look at. Then OK it, and you're there in real life, holding LMB you can drag terrain with the mouse, and holding the mouse wheel / middle button down you can tilt or pan whichever way you want. Placing a mouse cursor to any point even gives you an altitude readout (in the bottom status line besides coordinates).

 

Sorry if it was obvious for the DCS crowd, hope the pictures attached are not spoilers. How to set those "Spoiler" pushbuttons anyway?...

Edited February 6, 2016 by Razor18

[bernp]

Cool! I didn't know this, will try it out tonight.. Thanks for sharing.

 

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk

[cichlidfan]

Except our terrain and coordinates don't quite match the real world.

[Razor18]

Except our terrain and coordinates don't quite match the real world.

 

I dunno how they do match for me then. Are you absolutely sure it's not just a wrong format set on your side?... :music_whistling:

 

To prove it I choosed vanilla free flight mission w/ runway start (at Mozdok airfield) to read own position from the CDU (pic 1)

 

Then I placed a marker in Google Earth (after setting Google Earth in the format I mentioned initially!, in the meantime highlighted with red letters) and the marker landed as you can see in Pic 2.

 

Using the blue ruler from the Google Earth top toolbox you can measure the actual distance from marker to the runway treshold: 530 yards - for me it's enough matching... :D

Edited February 6, 2016 by Razor18

[baltic_dragon]

Hi Guys,

 

I'm so desperate to finish baltic_dragon's Enemy within campaign, I even looked up the area in Google Earth. I'ts such an awesome tool to reconnaisance the area around the target from various angles and directions, I tought it's worth sharing here.

 

To use in game L/L coordinates, turn on coordinates display in Google Earth (View/Toolbox and View/Status line checked (line #1 and #6 in mine), plus switch Tools/Options/3D/"Latitude-Longitude display" to "Degrees, Minutes in decimal" (3rd from top) radio button (to see the same format as used in game) at the bottom of the Google Earth screen. After that, just place a marker pin practically anywhere (by clicking on the yellow marker pin in the top toolbox), but before finishing, edit the coordinates in the popup window to the ones you want to look at. Then OK it, and you're there in real life, holding LMB you can drag with the mouse, and holding the mouse wheel / middle button down you can tilt or pan whichever way you want. Placing a mouse cursor to any point even gives you an altitude readout (in the bottom status line besides coordinates).

 

Sorry if it was obvious for the DCS crowd, hope the pictures attached are not spoilers. How to set those "Spoiler" pushbuttons anyway?...

 

+1 :thumbup:

[WildBillKelsoe]

thanks for sharing. I also use tacview for recon and planning. give it a go