Power stations

[Northstar98]

Hi everyone,

 

Another thing I've noticed (though is again, minor) the power stations as depicted on Guam are inaccurate - they're in exactly the right places and typically have buildings in approximately the correct places - but right now said buildings (apart from the single unit fuel tanks) don't look like their real life counterparts.

 

Namely, the real buildings are larger, and have tall smoke stacks - currently we have smaller buildings and no smokestacks.

 

Cabras:

 

Here's a bird's eye view of the power-plant taken in Google Earth:

 

And here's essentially the same shot in DCS (-camera -2.269997 0.852945 -11.925828 -cameradir -0.008628 -0.999963 0.000044):

 

Hopefully the discrepancy between the buildings is noticeable.

 

Also of note:

• The fuel tanks have a bit of a discrepancy in their sizes, the smaller fuel tanks should have a smaller diameter, and the large fuel tank in the bottom of the image should be something like half the height but twice the diameter.
• The road on the north-west edge is too narrow.
• There are 2 piers/jetties where there aren't any IRL
• The textures are a little on the light side (though unsure of the lighting in satellite view).

 

Here's a RL shot of the north-western area, taken from the road, in between the 2 sites, in Google Earth street-view:

 

And here's essentially the same shot in DCS (-camera -2.198106 0.010638 -11.860715 -cameradir 0.232457 0.028375 -0.972193):

 

• The buildings are completely wrong
• The road is too narrow
• There aren't any fences or electrical transmission lines present, nor is there a crash barrier on the right side of the road.
• There are no trees ahead, but there should be more foliage to the left

 

Here's a shot at the same position but looking at the south-western area:

 

And here's the same shot in DCS - again, the difference should be obvious (camera position: -camera -2.198106 0.010638 -11.860715 -cameradir -0.869677 -0.019078 0.493253):

 

• Buildings are completely incorrect
• There's no electrical transmission lines
• The area seems a lot more claustrophobic compared to real life, though the camera FOV might be playing a part in that.
• There seems to be a small platform with a fence sat over the waterway - here it's a sharp incline that's completely straight.
• The road is too narrow (missing the 2 sidewalk(?) areas on either side)
• There's no fences on the right side of the road.
• The foliage is much less dense to the left of the image, and there's also a tree blocking the road. There should be more foliage on the right however.

Here's a shot taken from the road tracking south-west - north-east, that is to the north west of north-western site, looking to the south-east:

 

And here's essentially the same area in DCS, though I've moved the camera back to better represent the FOV of the RL shot (camera position: -camera -2.004637 0.011863 -12.167113 -cameradir -0.870835 -0.079396 0.485121):

 

The difference should be immediately obvious.

 

Finally, here's a shot taken from this YouTube video over Emerald Valley, looking to the south-west:

 

And here's essentially the same shot in DCS (camera position: -camera -1.969404 0.011659 -12.165576 -cameradir -0.731663 0.028375 0.681076):

 

• Buildings are completely wrong
• There seems to be some funny business going on with the mesh around this area, in the RL shot the road seems to be less high up.
• The road going over the Emerald Valley looks like more of a dam - in DCS it's like someone plonked a hill there with a brick bottom.
• There's quite a bit of disparity with the Emerald Valley - here it should be wider, should be more turquoise and should have natural banks instead of brick walls.

 

Dededo:

 

Here's the Google Earth satellite view of the site:

 

And here's the same shot in DCS:

 

The buildings fair a little better this time around, but there are still some fairly significant discrepencies.

 

In particular, there are 2 long buildings orientated north - to south, IRL these buildings aren't as long, but are twice as wide, and taller on the western side, as well as having smoke stacks. There's also an electrical sub-station immediately to the south of the southern building.

 

There's a group of 5 fuel tanks, mounted on an elevated platform to the north of the northern building - IRL there are 2 larger fuel tanks without the platform. There's another set of 5 on the right of the image - again, there are only 2, and they're not on a platform.

 

Here's a street-view shot from the road, looking at the eastern half:

 

And here's the same shot in DCS (-camera 3.241653 0.108627 5.878788 -cameradir 0.879961 0.041310 0.473245):

 

The difference should be immediately obvious.

• Buildings are completely wrong.
• No electrical transmission lines on the side closer to the power-plant.
• No electrical substation.
• There's a set of 6 fuel tanks where there are only 2 IRL (and would be hidden behind the buildings with smokestacks).

 

Here's an image of taken from the same position, but looking at the western-half:

 

And here's the same shot in DCS (-camera 3.254574 0.108444 5.917141 -cameradir 0.565836 -0.033454 -0.823839

 

Again, buildings are very different, there looks to be a steeper incline compared to IRL, and note the absence of electrical transmission lines.

 

Tanguisson:

 

Here's a satellite view of the site, the power plant is in the bottom left, and there's a small ground station to the right (what I thought was a fuel tank is actually a satellite communications antenna).

 

And the same shot in DCS (-camera 6.371159 0.737370 1.342947 -cameradir -0.000000 -1.000000 -0.000000):

 

As you can see the structures are almost completely wrong.

• The eastern site IRL is a fuel tank and 2 medium sized buildings, in DCS it's a much more complex industrial area, with a number of buildings, and a load of containers. There should only be 4-5 objects here, but in DCS there's like 19.
• The power-plant is completely wrong - the buildings are all completely different, the fuel tanks are in the wrong place and are there should only be 2 of them (and they should be a little smaller).
• Both sites also looks like they're placed on concrete - IRL it's pretty much all grass, apart from a small area around the buildings on the eastern site.
• There are more trees immediately to the north-east of the western site.
• There's a missing dirt path off of the road.
• The whole area looks a little lighter compared to IRL.

 

Here's a detailed bird's eye shot from Google Earth of just the power plant (western site):

 

And the same taken from DCS (-camera 6.257688 0.376281 1.185517 -cameradir -0.048853 -0.998805 0.001499):

 

The difference should be immediately obvious.

• The power plant buildings (and their smoke stacks) are completely absent.
• The fuel tanks are in the wrong place, and there should only be 2 of them (plus they should be smaller)
• There's no electrical sub-station.

 

Here's a picture, taken from the beach, looking towards the power plant:

 

Ditto, from DCS (-camera 6.480614 0.003431 1.244936 -cameradir -0.825251 -0.043513 -0.563088):

 

Again, difference should be immediately obvious.

 

There are a few things of note though.

 

• Is there something off with the elevation mesh here? IRL the cliffs behind the site look a lot taller and are more vertical, compared to DCS.
• For some reason the beach has this sudden, sharp incline just before the water - it shouldn't be nearly as sharp, it should just continue going (though the elevation looks off - this could be tidal though).
• There's small amounts of foliage closer to the shore.
• The street lamps/light-poles are absent, as is the mound (?)

 

Here's another shot, looking more-or-less directly at the main buildings:

 

And again, from DCS (-camera 6.305373 0.004579 1.096555 -cameradir -0.283791 0.029812 0.958423):

 

And once again, the difference should be more than obvious.

Edited July 3, 2021 by Northstar98

[NineLine]

We dont have a system in place for doing one to one buildings, its not possible right now, that said, we do some unique buildings, and I can pass these along for consideration.

[Northstar98]

6 minutes ago, NineLine said:

We dont have a system in place for doing one to one buildings, its not possible right now, that said, we do some unique buildings, and I can pass these along for consideration.

 

I'm not expecting one to one by any means - I'm mostly interested in the buildings with the smoke stacks.

 

But in some cases it would actually reduce the object count around these areas.

[NineLine]

I'll pass these on to the team, we can look at areas like this down the road and tweak maybe, just won't be a huge priority in most cases.

[Northstar98]

20 minutes ago, NineLine said:

I'll pass these on to the team, we can look at areas like this down the road and tweak maybe, just won't be a huge priority in most cases.

 

That's absolutely fine - I wouldn't expect it to have a huge priority.

[Magot]

9 hours ago, NineLine said:

We dont have a system in place for doing one to one buildings, its not possible right now, that said, we do some unique buildings, and I can pass these along for consideration.

Yes, that is understandable.

But power plant is the most strategic building/ place for combat missions.

[draconus]

3 hours ago, Magot said:

Yes, that is understandable.

But power plant is the most strategic building/ place for combat missions.

And we already have some powerplant models in DCS.

[Northstar98]

Funnily enough there are power plant related objects located at Saipan's NDB, where there are no such thing IRL.

 

 

[skywalker22]

16 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

Hi everyone,

 

Another thing I've noticed (though is again, minor) the power stations as depicted on Guam are inaccurate - they're in exactly the right places and typically have buildings in approximately the correct places - but right now said buildings (apart from the single unit fuel tanks) don't look like their real life counterparts.

 

Namely, the real buildings are larger, and have tall smoke stacks - currently we have smaller buildings and no smokestacks.

 

Cabras:

 

Here's a bird's eye view of the power-plant taken in Google Earth:

 

And here's essentially the same shot in DCS (-camera -2.269997 0.852945 -11.925828 -cameradir -0.008628 -0.999963 0.000044):

 

Hopefully the discrepancy between the buildings is noticeable.

 

Also of note:

• The fuel tanks have a bit of a discrepancy in their sizes, the smaller fuel tanks should have a smaller diameter, and the large fuel tank in the bottom of the image should be something like half the height but twice the diameter.
• The road on the north-west edge is too narrow.
• There are 2 piers/jetties where there aren't any IRL
• The textures are a little on the light side (though unsure of the lighting in satellite view).

 

Here's a RL shot of the north-western area, taken from the road, in between the 2 sites, in Google Earth street-view:

 

And here's essentially the same shot in DCS (-camera -2.198106 0.010638 -11.860715 -cameradir 0.232457 0.028375 -0.972193):

 

• The buildings are completely wrong
• The road is too narrow
• There aren't any fences or electrical transmission lines present, nor is there a crash barrier on the right side of the road.
• There are no trees ahead, but there should be more foliage to the left

 

Here's a shot at the same position but looking at the south-western area:

 

And here's the same shot in DCS - again, the difference should be obvious (camera position: -camera -2.198106 0.010638 -11.860715 -cameradir -0.869677 -0.019078 0.493253):

 

• Buildings are completely incorrect
• There's no electrical transmission lines
• The area seems a lot more claustrophobic compared to real life, though the camera FOV might be playing a part in that.
• There seems to be a small platform with a fence sat over the waterway - here it's a sharp incline that's completely straight.
• The road is too narrow (missing the 2 sidewalk(?) areas on either side)
• There's no fences on the right side of the road.
• The foliage is much less dense to the left of the image, and there's also a tree blocking the road. There should be more foliage on the right however.

Here's a shot taken from the road tracking south-west - north-east, that is to the north west of north-western site, looking to the south-east:

 

And here's essentially the same area in DCS, though I've moved the camera back to better represent the FOV of the RL shot (camera position: -camera -2.004637 0.011863 -12.167113 -cameradir -0.870835 -0.079396 0.485121):

 

The difference should be immediately obvious.

 

Finally, here's a shot taken from this YouTube video over Emerald Valley, looking to the south-west:

 

And here's essentially the same shot in DCS (camera position: -camera -1.969404 0.011659 -12.165576 -cameradir -0.731663 0.028375 0.681076):

 

• Buildings are completely wrong
• There seems to be some funny business going on with the mesh around this area, in the RL shot the road seems to be less high up.
• The road going over the Emerald Valley looks like more of a dam - in DCS it's like someone plonked a hill there with a brick bottom.
• There's quite a bit of disparity with the Emerald Valley - here it should be wider, should be more turquoise and should have natural banks instead of brick walls.

 

Dededo:

 

Here's the Google Earth satellite view of the site:

 

And here's the same shot in DCS:

 

The buildings fair a little better this time around, but there are still some fairly significant discrepencies.

 

In particular, there are 2 long buildings orientated north - to south, IRL these buildings aren't as long, but are twice as wide, and taller on the western side, as well as having smoke stacks. There's also an electrical sub-station immediately to the south of the southern building.

 

There's a group of 5 fuel tanks, mounted on an elevated platform to the north of the northern building - IRL there are 2 larger fuel tanks without the platform. There's another set of 5 on the right of the image - again, there are only 2, and they're not on a platform.

 

Here's a street-view shot from the road, looking at the eastern half:

 

And here's the same shot in DCS (-camera 3.241653 0.108627 5.878788 -cameradir 0.879961 0.041310 0.473245):

 

The difference should be immediately obvious.

• Buildings are completely wrong.
• No electrical transmission lines on the side closer to the power-plant.
• No electrical substation.
• There's a set of 6 fuel tanks where there are only 2 IRL (and would be hidden behind the buildings with smokestacks).

 

Here's an image of taken from the same position, but looking at the western-half:

 

And here's the same shot in DCS (-camera 3.254574 0.108444 5.917141 -cameradir 0.565836 -0.033454 -0.823839

 

Again, buildings are very different, there looks to be a steeper incline compared to IRL, and note the absence of electrical transmission lines.

 

Tanguisson:

 

Here's a satellite view of the site, the power plant is in the bottom left, and there's a large fuel tank to the right:

 

And the same shot in DCS (-camera 6.371159 0.737370 1.342947 -cameradir -0.000000 -1.000000 -0.000000):

 

As you can see the structures are almost completely wrong.

• The eastern site IRL is a fuel tank and 2 medium sized buildings, in DCS it's a much more complex industrial area, with a number of buildings, and a load of containers. There should only be 4-5 objects here, but in DCS there's like 19.
• The power-plant is completely wrong - the buildings are all completely different, the fuel tanks are in the wrong place and are there should only be 2 of them (and they should be a little smaller).
• Both sites also looks like they're placed on concrete - IRL it's pretty much all grass, apart from a small area around the buildings on the eastern site.
• There are more trees immediately to the north-east of the western site.
• There's a missing dirt path off of the road.
• The whole area looks a little lighter compared to IRL.

 

Here's a detailed bird's eye shot from Google Earth of just the power plant (western site):

 

And the same taken from DCS (-camera 6.257688 0.376281 1.185517 -cameradir -0.048853 -0.998805 0.001499):

 

The difference should be immediately obvious.

• The power plant buildings (and their smoke stacks) are completely absent.
• The fuel tanks are in the wrong place, and there should only be 2 of them (plus they should be smaller)
• There's no electrical sub-station.

 

Here's a picture, taken from the beach, looking towards the power plant:

 

Ditto, from DCS (-camera 6.480614 0.003431 1.244936 -cameradir -0.825251 -0.043513 -0.563088):

 

Again, difference should be immediately obvious.

 

There are a few things of note though.

 

• Is there something off with the elevation mesh here? IRL the cliffs behind the site look a lot taller and are more vertical, compared to DCS.
• For some reason the beach has this sudden, sharp incline just before the water - it shouldn't be nearly as sharp, it should just continue going (though the elevation looks off - this could be tidal though).
• There's small amounts of foliage closer to the shore.
• The street lamps/light-poles are absent, as is the mound (?)

 

Here's another shot, looking more-or-less directly at the main buildings:

 

And again, from DCS (-camera 6.305373 0.004579 1.096555 -cameradir -0.283791 0.029812 0.958423):

 

And once again, the difference should be more than obvious.

 

Everyone is complaining having 30 or  < fps, with all your ideas we would have to wait another decade to fly Marianas in DCS

And btw, this is SIM for jetfighters and helicopters in case if you didn`t notice. Who f* cares about details, you don`t even see them when flying those jets.

Edited July 1, 2021 by skywalker22

[Northstar98]

On 7/1/2021 at 5:13 PM, skywalker22 said:

Everyone is complaining having 30 or  < fps, with all your ideas we would have to wait another decade to fly Marianas in DCS

 

How many FPS do you think I get? What with my mobile GTX 1050Ti Max-Q?

 

And in some cases, fixing it so it's more accurate would actually reduce the object count, not increase it.

 

It probably took more effort handplacing a tonne of objects that shouldn't even be there, than to just do the larger, mostly featureless buildings, that are actually there. And the smaller stuff that isn't (such as electrical sub-stations) already exists on other maps.

 

And a decade? Come on. They added these super detailed and beautiful churches all over the Channel map in a few months after release. Which almost certainly would've taken much more work than any of the things I'm mentioning. I think we can manage 3 or 4 mostly featureless buildings with a smoke stack.

 

In the case of the PACBAR III RADAR in my other thread - the RADAR itself is probably the most complicated structure I'm asking for, but correcting the other 2 buildings should be fairly easy - the current, incorrect, buildings are much more complex than the real ones (which are mostly featureless).

 

It is probably a few days worth of work at most for the buildings, the RADAR might be a little trickier - main difficulty will be correcting the geometry of the area.

 

Quote

And btw, this is SIM for jetfighters and helicopters in case if you didn`t notice. Who f* cares about details, you don`t even see them when flying those jets.

 

Yeah no, I'm definitely going to notice a big smoke stack not being there - especially when the correct layout is marked in the included chart, and when it couldn't be more obvious IRL.

 

If you fly at less than 10k feet (y'know like a helicopter in 90% of missions), you'll notice the difference - and I'm playing on a laptop with a 15" screen.

 

Look what Ugra did at Haifa - there were 2 cooling towers that are super obvious IRL, but weren't present on the map - a few months down the line they were added, and the place looked more like how it does IRL.

 

And I'm not asking for more detail - the detail as is, is absolutely fine - what I'm after is more accuracy. And in this case, as I said, in some areas this would actually reduce the object count - the current set-up is actually more complex and is overpopulated with more objects than there needs to be, while being incorrect.

 

Not only that, these are power plants - a strategic target. And these are typically, big noticeable buildings. Given that the infrastructure on Guam and the other islands isn't nearly as complex, perhaps we could see a system in the future, where destroying these powerplants could lead to blackouts - something that would definitely enhance say, a dynamic campaign.

Edited July 3, 2021 by Northstar98

[Exorcet]

1 hour ago, skywalker22 said:

Everyone is complaining having 30 or  < fps, with all your ideas we would have to wait another decade to fly Marianas in DCS

And btw, this is SIM for jetfighters and helicopters in case if you didn`t notice. Who f* cares about details, you don`t even see them when flying those jets.

 

The map is flyable as is for me, though I certainly disagree with you on the importance of details like this.

 

Powerstations and other infrastructure are extremely important in a combat sim, whether you see them or not, and you should be seeing them visually, in briefing images, or through a TGP. The PG map while good focused a bit too much on Dubai and there are lot of interesting buildings missing in Iran that I'd rather have (steel mill by Bandar Abbas, Quarry by Sirjan, numerous factories near Kerman, etc). Creating these unique land marks makes the maps more interesting visually, provide more targets us for to strike/defend, and aid navigation and combat by serving as visual references. They really are quite important.

[Northstar98]

4 minutes ago, Exorcet said:

The map is flyable as is for me, though I certainly disagree with you on the importance of details like this.

 

Powerstations and other infrastructure are extremely important in a combat sim, whether you see them or not, and you should be seeing them visually, in briefing images, or through a TGP. The PG map while good focused a bit too much on Dubai and there are lot of interesting buildings missing in Iran that I'd rather have (steel mill by Bandar Abbas, Quarry by Sirjan, numerous factories near Kerman, etc). Creating these unique land marks makes the maps more interesting visually, provide more targets us for to strike/defend, and aid navigation and combat by serving as visual references. They really are quite important.

 

I think the best example is Syria - where you have these facilities present. It's obviously not 1-1, it would be great if it was, but you'll run into workload issues. But the main buildings are there, and they are much more in line with reality.

[Exorcet]

13 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

 

I think the best example is Syria - where you have these facilities present. It's obviously not 1-1, it would be great if it was, but you'll run into workload issues. But the main buildings are there, and they are much more in line with reality.

Yeah Syria is a really well done map. Large, detailed, and even well labeled in the ME. Ugra really took the time to work out what was important to model. Marianas with its much smaller land area should easily rival it.

[draconus]

16 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

the RADAR itself is probably the most complicated structure I'm asking for

I've seen some radar model on Nevada map. Is it good enough for the abandoned station?

 

@skywalker22 It's LOMAC thinking - we've moved on since then. Helicopters, CA and yes, even jets - we all need and can definitely see the details. LODs and smart coding should take care of performance issues.

Edited July 2, 2021 by draconus

[Northstar98]

On 7/2/2021 at 11:04 AM, draconus said:

I've seen some radar model on Nevada map. Is it good enough for the abandoned station?

 

 

I mean, it doesn't really look like it (might be on the big side), but this would be much more suitable as a stand-in than a generic house.

 

EDIT: One of these would actually be a pretty good stand in for the small ground station just to the east of Tanguisson power plant.

Edited July 3, 2021 by Northstar98

[aztec01]

Can a few power stations be added.  They would make great strategic targets.  I've cobbled a few together in the past from pieces/parts of the static menu, but it would be a worthy addition to make a couple of dedicated stations, substations et al.

[Northstar98]

51 minutes ago, aztec01 said:

Can a few power stations be added.  They would make great strategic targets.  I've cobbled a few together in the past from pieces/parts of the static menu, but it would be a worthy addition to make a couple of dedicated stations, substations et al.

 

I did a fairly big post about them here.

 

The sites are there, but they aren't very accurate with RL at all, and if you didn't know before hand, you might confuse them for a building site or a tank farm.

[aztec01]

That's a wonderful post and perfectly encapsulates what I meant.  Thank you, it's very well done.  On the Persian Gulf map with one, maybe two exceptions I had to "build" a list of targets, cobbling together the in game structures to vaguely resemble an electrical generation system (including the nuke at Bushehr)  It's particularly nice that the PG/Iran map is blissfully full of high tension wires!  I don't expect ED to specifically model the details of each power plant, but it would be nice to have a selection of generic plants and substations so that we could add them as strategic targets.  

I truly, TRULY appreciate the work the devs have put into making these highly detailed maps.  I have spent hours "driving" through Beirut, Damascus, Guam, and Normandy et al, marveling at how much effort went into these maps. The detail is amazing, but you also begin to appreciate there are warts too.  I love the added details in map upgrades with really cool castles, and  other points of interest....but what I would really like to see more of is strategic targets.     Granted, we don't have a Ruhr/Essen map, but surely their are some larger factory complexes , storehouses, depots and all that could be simulated also.

Your post was excellent and I've bookmarked it for further study.  Thank you, again.

[NineLine]

I am working on adding these requests, thanks for the work and suggestions (I should note its possible they were already planned to be improved, but adding them wont hurt.)