Accurate map for DCS 2.5 Caucasus theatre

[davidp57]

Thank you Flappie, you're the best !
I vote for Syria being your next map

[Mike_Romeo]

There seems to be small offsets here and there but other than that, I ..... love it !!!!

[Flappie]

Thanks for your feedback, @Mike_Romeo. I'll see what I can do.

[Flappie]

8 hours ago, davidp57 said:

I vote for Syria being your next map

I asked my flight buddies and they all voted the same. Syria it is, then! I'll soon open a new thread.

[buur]

@Flappietoday first time installed your mod. Much better. Thank you very much.

[Floyd1212]

Thanks for this great mod!

I do have a question, though:  When flying the Apache, zooming in and out will change the charts to different a different scale, which reverts back to the standard charts.  Is there a way to prevent this from happening, or maybe rename/copy your charts into all the other folders?

[Flappie]

That's simply because I got lazy: I haven't done all raster charts layers yet. I though that maybe they wouldn't be needed at all. I believe you're the first one to tell me about it. I guess I'll do the missing layers at some point.

[Floyd1212]

2 hours ago, Flappie said:

That's simply because I got lazy: I haven't done all raster charts layers yet. I though that maybe they wouldn't be needed at all. I believe you're the first one to tell me about it. I guess I'll do the missing layers at some point.

Is that a lot of work, or just re-saving what you have done differently in some way? 

It works fine to manually change the scale back to one of the two you have done already.  If there was an easy way to force all the zoom levels to use one of your two versions, that would work.

[Mike_Romeo]

Rastercarts seem to break IC now. Got kicked for that right when someone fire a missile at me and now I look like a reslotter

[Flappie]

On 2/1/2023 at 3:37 AM, Floyd1212 said:

Is that a lot of work, or just re-saving what you have done differently in some way? 

It works fine to manually change the scale back to one of the two you have done already.  If there was an easy way to force all the zoom levels to use one of your two versions, that would work.

For each layer, I need to find the nearly-exact position of the edges (minX, minY, maxX, MaxY) of the original raster chart layer. This means:

1. Assembling original DCS layer tiles to form up two corners (jigsaw time, yay!)
2. Merging tiles into two big PNG files
3. Reprojecting these two PNG files (so they fall into the right place when I add them to QuantumGIS).
4. Figuring out how many tiles I need, and their combined height and width
5. Make an Excel sheet with the name of the original tiles I need to replace
6. Finding the right export position based on the edges of these two reprojected pictures (a little to the left, nah , a little to the right, nah... a little upward, a little downward, not the good scale...)
7. Exporting the map into a HUGE PNG (even 4 PNGs for the most precise layer because otherwise QuantumGIS crashes)
8. Cut these PNGs into tiles (I use a custom PHP script which calls ImageMagick executable to do the dirty work)
9. Rename these tiles to fit DCS tiles naming (I feed my custom PHP script with the Excel sheet)
10. Put these into separate folder (PHP script again)
11. Add these tiles into original DCS zip files (I haven't done ALL tiles - my mod is a combination of mine and DCS tiles)
12. Then test!

The last time I worked on the mod, it was in order to fix the offset issue @Mike_Romeo spotted in the 0.5M layer. I spent several hours redoing steps 6 to 12 over and over, to no avail. I need to refine my technique on step 6.

 

16 hours ago, Mike_Romeo said:

Rastercarts seem to break IC now. Got kicked for that right when someone fire a missile at me and now I look like a reslotter

Thanks for informing me. I'll ask for the custom RasterCharts folder in DCS "Saved Games" folder, then.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Flappie
typos

[Floyd1212]

That sounds like a lot of work.

I can change the scale manually after zooming in and out.

[[BSD] Solex]

Dank je wel

[TasDozer]

Phenomenal work Flappie! I'd appreciated the dcsmaps.com map and the TacView map without realising it's your genius that delivers this.

I spent ages yesterday, taking F10 screenshots, pasting into Inkscape, adding a 5km grid and marking up with locations from the Spring Tensions campaign... the grid lets you use the Mi-8's Doppler nav system as a poorman's RNAV (Area Navigation System), using LATERAL DEVIATION KM (/ "DRIFT ANGLE KM") and DISTANCE KM (/ "FLIGHT PATH KM") as your east/west and north/south positions relative to an arbitrary datum - I chose the Shpora FARP:

I'd have saved a lot of effort if I'd understood the 10km grid system already in existence, and already marked on your maps... MM17, MM27, MM37 etc

null

But that's all good - I can use your GeoTIFF file (from 2019... it's still up-to-date, right?) and nice GIS software to make adjunct maps for campaigns etc and have a much happier time of it!

[Flappie]

Thank you for the kind words. That grid you're mentioning is the MGRS.

I don't think the Caucasus terrain evolved much since 2019, so it should still be pretty accurate. If you see any error, please notify me.

[Hip Hind]

Hello @Flappie Nice work. Question - at a small scale the map is displayed in full, but when I zoom in and make a larger scale on the map appear "holes". Is this just my problem or not? I didn't see similar posts here.

The mod is connected via JSGME.

Edited April 6, 2023 by by Robert Weide

[Flappie]

Hello. These holes are from vanilla raster chart, which means I cannot complete them. The missing tiles are ready on my end, they just can't fit the game for now.

I reported the missing tiles internally, and the report was bumped some days ago. Wait and see.

[davidp57]

I'll use this opportunity to say that your map has changed the way we live our Caucaus missions, both in A10s and Apaches!

Merci !

[FalcoGer]

Does this work with multiplayer? changing core files seems iffy.

On 6/28/2019 at 11:55 PM, Flappie said:

Here's the webmap : http://dcsmaps.com/caucasus/openlayers

Are you hosting this? If so you should probably look into using SSL to serve your websites. You get free certificates easily with let's encrypt. It takes only 5 minutes to set up.

Edited May 15, 2023 by FalcoGer

[FalcoGer]

well, no it doesn't.

[Flappie]

Some good news about the Hind moving map: 0.25M and 1M raster charts are now superimposed ingame! That's because raster charts transparecy is now used by DCS. So, no more holes in the Hind moving map, only low detail tiles. That's better.

[admiki]

Is this what I should be seeing?

[Flappie]

Yes. That is correct. As explained here, the Mi-24 has no access to the most precise layer, "0.25M".

Also, you're seeing DCS vanilla raster chart on first picture because I haven't modded the 1.0M layer yet. I thought it would not be useful. If you think it would be useful, please explain why and I'll reconsider.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Flappie

[admiki]

1 minute ago, Flappie said:

Yes. That is correct. As explained here, the Mi-24 has no access to the most precise layer, "0.25M".

Also, you're seeing DCS vanilla raster chart on first picture because I haven't modded the 1.0M layer yet. I thought it would not be useful. If you think it would be useful, please explain why and I'll reconsider.

 

Thanks, I was just trying to figure out if I messed up something when creating OvGME compatible file.

[Extranajero]

Have you had any comments about the visibility of lines connecting waypoints on the F10 map ?
They are barely visible on my setup - but that could very easily be because I run Reshade ( which also affects the GUI ) and my gamma settings
The zoomed map in cockpit - in the Hind - looks washed out as well, but then under some lighting conditions it was like that before I installed your chart.

[Flappie]

White on white, you mean? You're the first user to mention it.