Can we have a Germany map Forum section, please?

[Rongor]

16 minutes ago, Art-J said:

These two tenement houses on Alexanderplatz opposite of Rotes Rathaus aren't there today either (albeit I've no idea when they were demolished).

These houses shouldn't be there at all, not even in the 70s. I think after WW2 rubble had been removed, no houses have ever been there.

Btw (common misconception), Alexanderplatz is on the other (east) side of the railroad, the area north of the Rotes Rathaus which includes the TV-tower is west of the railroad and not the Alexanderplatz.

[Swiso]

6 hours ago, Cunctator said:

My guess would be that Berlin is in the north eastern part of the map, Fulda close to the center and the Frankfurt / Rhein-Main area in the south. In the west all the way to the to French and Belgian border to include the concentration of NATO airbases around the Eifel region. 

 

6 hours ago, Silver_Dragon said:

From other post



I think, only missing danube front zone.

Enviado desde mi CPH2197 mediante Tapatalk
 

So that mean Bitburg and Spang "should" be there? 

[G*Man]

This seems to be inconsistent or fictional scenario or different epochs.

A LEO2 „KFOR“ Tank (1999 and beyond) … btw in front of the „Todesstreifen“(Death Zone) of the inner German border (last until 1989)

Special Painting of a German Mig29 (from 2003)

EuFis of the Lufwaffe (late 90s)

Tempelhof looks quite 80s Style (or earlier)

I am quite new to DCS, but I am old  enough to have seen all above in Reality, so the video confuses me a little bit.

[Punkmonkey22]

So, having a quick play around in www.thetruesize.com to see how the map would compare.. I took the main areas covered in Ugra's Syria map, and overlaid them on Germany to get an idea of how much of Germany the map could cover. Pretty much all of it fits within the same area covered by the Syria map! I know there will be more objects with the more dense town and the forest and such though, so may not be anywhere near this size. Interesting to think about though.. (yes I know I didn't include Turkey, but such a small area of Turkey is flyable)

[Rongor]

3 minutes ago, G*Man said:

This seems to be inconsistent or fictional scenario or different epochs.

A LEO2 „KFOR“ Tank (1999 and beyond) … btw in front of the „Todesstreifen“(Death Zone) of the inner German border (last until 1989)

Special Painting of a German Mig29 (from 2003)

EuFis of the Lufwaffe (late 90s)

Tempelhof looks quite 80s Style (or earlier)

I am quite new to DCS, but I am old  enough to have seen all above in Reality, so the video confuses me a little bit.

These videos are regularly mixing any DCS assets and are not intended to focus on modules supporting only a specific timeframe.
Since map modules are separate from aircraft modules, its really up to the players and server hosts to decide what to mix and what not.

[Art-J]

1 hour ago, Rongor said:

These houses shouldn't be there at all, not even in the 70s. I think after WW2 rubble had been removed, no houses have ever been there.

Btw (common misconception), Alexanderplatz is on the other (east) side of the railroad, the area north of the Rotes Rathaus which includes the TV-tower is west of the railroad and not the Alexanderplatz.

Rgr that, thanks for the info. I only have a basic "tourist-level" knowledge of Berlin, so I'll gladly read more of your input on this subject.

I guess it shapes up to be one more "Ugra map" then, like Normandy 2, i.e. - with a rather very loose approach to layout- and historic accuracy. Still a welcomed addition though! 

[Cunctator]

It will be interesting to see how they model such a huge high density area in an era decades past. I fully expect a loose approach to layout- and historic accuracy, that they will use freely available vector data as a base, such as from Open Streetmap, to auto generate the towns and villages and then manually change critical areas, such as the inner German border, to their Cold War state. 

Although period highly detailed topographic maps for Germany are freely availalble (link below for the state of Hesse with Fulda for example), Germany as a whole has over 10.000 municipalities and make them all look like they did 40 years ago should be prohibitive for a map of this size. At least if they don't have means to automatisize large parts of their workflow.

https://www.lagis-hessen.de/maps/topografische-karten/

[Peterik]

4 hours ago, Swiso said:

So that mean Bitburg and Spang "should" be there?

And Rammstein aswell.

[Swiso]

2 hours ago, Peterik said:

And Rammstein aswell.

Nah... I much prefer the Rolling Stones !

Ramstein on the other end would be great !  

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

18 hours ago, Punkmonkey22 said:

So, having a quick play around in www.thetruesize.com to see how the map would compare.. I took the main areas covered in Ugra's Syria map, and overlaid them on Germany to get an idea of how much of Germany the map could cover. Pretty much all of it fits within the same area covered by the Syria map! I know there will be more objects with the more dense town and the forest and such though, so may not be anywhere near this size. Interesting to think about though.. (yes I know I didn't include Turkey, but such a small area of Turkey is flyable)

That scale seems off. Israel for example is a tiny country, much smaller than Belgium actually (about 2/3 the size).

[Cunctator]

It's correct. Just did the measurement myself with Google Earth. Israel is about 420 km from north to south, same distance as from central Switzerland to the north of Frankfurt.

Edited January 18 by Cunctator

[Rongor]

Edited January 18 by Rongor

[Bremspropeller]

21 hours ago, Rongor said:

These houses shouldn't be there at all, not even in the 70s. I think after WW2 rubble had been removed, no houses have ever been there.

That area was re-strucured with the Fernsehturm project, which touched the entire place.

In 68, there were no houses around Neptunbrunnen, but some old houses were still in the area, which were razed during the project:

https://www.luftbildsuche.de/info/luftbilder/rohbau-berliner-fernsehturm-alexanderplatz-berlin-mitte-222901.html

As Erichs Lampenladen (Palast der Republik, finished 1976) is in place, this helps us to narrow down the fimeframe to between 1976 and 1990 - nonwithstanding other architetural clues there might be.

Kind of hoping for the Schwangere Auster and L'Habitation, Olympiastadion and other things to virtually visit in Berlin ^^

[Rongor]

The houses seem to be gone in this build which provided the background for Wags' AMA YT video thumbnail.

 

Of course the forested area should rather be a park

[Rick Mave]

16 minutes ago, Rongor said:

The houses seem to be gone in this build which provided the background for Wags' AMA YT video thumbnail.

 

Of course the forested area should rather be a park

Wags also states that it is a "Germany Cold War Map" around time stamp 13:30

 

[rcjonessnp175]

super stoked for a real cold war map, although be nice to have a ww2 version....

[Rick Mave]

[Northstar98]

Definitely very excited for this one and yes, we definitely could do with its own subforum.

 

One thing I will say (and something I'll no doubt be repeating) is please include empty SAM and EWR sites - if they can be something akin to this, then that would be basically perfect, but even a generic layout of each type placed correctly would suffice (which was sort-of-ish done with Syria, but only with the SA-2, and only in some locations and even then the generic site wasn't that accurate).

I've attached 2 .kmz files from SAM Site Overview.kmz by Sean O'Connor, showing the positions of SAM and EWR sites in the FRG and DDR (though this doesn't include British Bloodhound and Rapier sites, though as I understand it, the former was usually stationed somewhere on or adjacent to some of the RAF airbases). Many sites are still extant with their layouts clearly visible in present-day imagery, but even examples that aren't usually are in historical imagery (the main exception being Nike Hercules IFC sites).

Just for some examples:
 

Spoiler

Here's a HAWK/I-HAWK site near Fulda. In present day imagery it appears to be some POL facility + solar farm, but in 2009 imagery, it's layout is clearly visible (including things like the positions of launchers, radars, support equipment etc - if this would appear in DCS as it is here - that would be perfect).

Here's a Nike Hercules LA (launcher area) site and here (at least according to the .kmz) it's associated IFC (integrated fire control) site - both near Bremen.

Over in the DDR:

Here's an SA-2 site near Schlotheim - it's very overgrown but you can see the launch site, you can just make out the position of revetments (S-75 sites are pretty generic regardless)

Here's an SA-3 site near Möckern, this one appears to be protecting an SA-5 site in the forest to its east

Here's an SA-5 site near Rostock (note that there's an I-HAWK battery in residence immediately to east of the guidance area) - the configuration is clear as day.

Here's an SA-6 site near Erfurt, not too much to this one, but you can see the positions of where the main battery components would go

DDR.kmz FRG.kmz

[Cunctator]

6 hours ago, Rick Mave said:

I hope the highway strips will be modelled. A lot of them would still be useable today.

[Rick Mave]

23 minutes ago, Cunctator said:

I hope the highway strips will be modelled. A lot of them would still be useable today.

Wags stated in the QA video that it will be a cold war map set in the 80s, which is when the Classix video is from, so I sure hope we get a load of highway runways.
Ideally, we can turn them on and off in the mission editor. I am totally happy with them just being permanently prepared for use however.

What I am really hoping for is that we get some core game assets that lets us actually depict a cold war Fulda Gap scenario accurately.

[Northstar98]

11 hours ago, Cunctator said:

I hope the highway strips will be modelled. A lot of them would still be useable today.

So long as the road network is accurate (and accurately depicted) I don't see why not - even if they aren't configured as airbases (like Kola for instance) - we already have invisible FARPs, it's fairly trivial to set them up. The only problem is the AI though as they need dedicated aerodromes.

[ggrewe]

Hopefully they add a WWII version. I would pay extra for that. Also add a template for Cold War with Berlin War & Iron Curtain. Could use a template rather than a new map, or another added paid on layer?

Would be nice to max the good maps we have?

Edited January 19 by ggrewe

[twistking]

2 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

So long as the road network is accurate (and accurately depicted) I don't see why not - even if they aren't configured as airbases (like Kola for instance) - we already have invisible FARPs, it's fairly trivial to set them up. The only problem is the AI though as they need dedicated aerodromes.

They would need to exclude civilian road traffic from those highway sections, so it would make sense to have them preconfigured as airbases. Ideally ED would improve editor tools for mission designers to have more control over airbase status, civilian traffic and other needed aspects to make those changes per scenario...

[twistking]

On 1/17/2025 at 4:53 PM, Punkmonkey22 said:

So, having a quick play around in www.thetruesize.com to see how the map would compare.. I took the main areas covered in Ugra's Syria map, and overlaid them on Germany to get an idea of how much of Germany the map could cover. Pretty much all of it fits within the same area covered by the Syria map! I know there will be more objects with the more dense town and the forest and such though, so may not be anywhere near this size. Interesting to think about though.. (yes I know I didn't include Turkey, but such a small area of Turkey is flyable)

I would be o.k.with Ugra omitting the "deep" West. Rhein/Ruhr is a ridiculously dense metropolitan area and for DCS it would only be needed for some airbases. It's also relatively flat, so not very interesting for flying. I'd suggest to make the cut somewhere west of an imagined line through Bremen and Bielefeld, with a bit outgrowth to cover Eifel area and airbases west of Frankfurt. I'd rather have more area to the north (Baltic cost), south (Bavaria and Alps) and east (Communism).
Having the map cover Benelux even in parts seems way out of scope.

[twistking]

20 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

[...] One thing I will say (and something I'll no doubt be repeating) is please include empty SAM and EWR sites[...]

Yes! Absolutely important feature. Also please label those sites in ME. It would be a huge QOL improvement for mission designers.