Is the DCS world round or flat?

[Aquorys]

I was just wondering how accurately the environment (or the universe, if you will) is modeled in DCS. Purely out of curiosity, here are a whole bunch of questions for any DCS developer who might be bored enough to answer them.

• Are the maps in DCS projected onto a sphere, or is it a simplified projection onto a flat surface?
• If so, is the DCS earth a perfect sphere, or is there a difference in the circumference around the poles compared to around the equator?
• Is there a gravity gradient depending on the distance from the earth's center?
• Does the DCS earth spin?
• Is the coriolis effect simulated?
• Is the position of the sun and the moon somewhat astronomically accurate depending on the date and time?
• Would we ever see a solar eclipse in DCS?

For those who never thought about it, the implications are quite significant.
It's complicated either way:

If you simplify some things by simulating everything on a "flat earth", then the projection of things like coordinates becomes quite complicated. Flying from point A to point B will also give you a distorted flight path as compared to the real world. If you ever want to make a continuous map of the entire world, you would quickly run into some really tricky maths problems.

On the other hand, if you project your maps onto a sphere, the tiling of terrain becomes quite complicated, because you can't just load equally sized rectangles. The numerical value of your simulated aircraft's pitch axis is now relative to your position on earth, and you have to account for that to figure out whether you're climbing or descending. As you fly from point A to point B, straight and level, your aircraft's axes in your simulated universe change constantly, because all movement is now relative to the sphere. Now add in a model where your earth spins, and you'll have some additional fun calculating where artillery projectiles and ballistic missiles go, and so on, you get the general drift.

Is there any chance that someone who knows the internals of the engine could enlighten me as to what the "DCS universe" looks like?

 

[Silver_Dragon]

@Aquorys Actually, all map builded on DCS World has flat. Meanwhile ED has working from some years ago on spherical earth technology to build rounded maps.

Quote

Spherical Earth Map
2022 saw great progress creating the tools and technologies to support a precise spherical Earth map for DCS. Because this map will be based on current day, it will operate independently of the current and future regional maps that allow historic maps such as World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and other scenarios. Spherical Earth efforts will continue in 2023.

 

Edited January 14, 2023 by Silver_Dragon

[Ala13_ManOWar]

They have said time ago current maps are actually flat though mathematically "corrected" to simulate roundness. They said also a fix for that were coming though no words on what that meant. Now, when the whole world map was announced that can be understood as they specifically said as a whole world model it would be truly rounded for the first time and not just adjusted to appear rounded in the coordinates and everything. They mentioned it would be "spherical" though no word on how spherical that would be, since Earth is no sphere but a geoid, would that be taken into account? Hope so since even now in the corrected flat surface of the maps it is mostly taken into account, and we already have effects like precession and all so it would be no point in not taking that into account when you finally have a truly rounded model I guess.