Shout out to the map makers!

[Ssnake]

Seems like we somehow missed including that map in the last Steel Beasts updates. I'll see what we can do about it.

[TSe419E]

Looking forward to it.

[Ssnake]

I think the Bergen-Soltau-Munster map is prettier (it definitely is bigger) but at least the Sennelager map is an example for what one can hope to get from LIDAR based source data in the future.

[stormrider_sp]

11 hours ago, DarkAngel said:

I love how this topic started as a thank you to map makers and turned into complaining about the import functions not being in Pro PE 

I'm sorry if you feel that way. We all love your team, so don't get me wrong, otherwise, we wouldn't be here. But I hope that you can at least understand my and other's disappointment as well. It's a feature that we've been asking for over 10 years now and, most of all, the fact that during these more than 10 years, talented members of this community spent enormous amounts of time undertaking map making projects with the provided low tier tools without knowing that their work could have been done in a mere fraction of the time, the frustration and the struggle, with simple importing tools that exists for as long as steel beasts product itself. It's been there all the time.

I'm not gonna talk about this anymore, I don't wanna turn this into a drama, but I only hope that others will have full knowledge of this fact before undertaking such projects.

[DarkAngel]

59 minutes ago, stormrider_sp said:

I'm sorry if you feel that way. We all love your team, so don't get me wrong, otherwise, we wouldn't be here. But I hope that you can at least understand my and other's disappointment as well. It's a feature that we've been asking for over 10 years now and, most of all, the fact that during these more than 10 years, talented members of this community spent enormous amounts of time undertaking map making projects with the provided low tier tools without knowing that their work could have been done in a mere fraction of the time, the frustration and the struggle, with simple importing tools that exists for as long as steel beasts product itself. It's been there all the time.

I'm not gonna talk about this anymore, I don't wanna turn this into a drama, but I only hope that others will have full knowledge of this fact before undertaking such projects.

I really don't know where you get this idea that the work could be done in a "Mere fraction of the time" from. I did try to explain that the Pro editor is exactly the same as the Pro PE editor apart from the import tools. I can assure you the import tools do not open the door to maps in a "Mere fraction of the time". As I previously said the point data for building import does not contain building type or orientation unless someone puts it in there, manually, in a GIS program. On a big map area that could mean manually editing 500,000 point objects. You think this is quicker than the way you do it in the map editor?.  Now maybe some data sets do contain this information, I have certainly not seen such in the public domain!. What about joining all the little road segments up into contiguous lines.. You think that is trivial?. I did a hell of a lot of it (and manual digitizing) before I came up with my own tools to make it easier. Pro import tools certainly won't do that for you either. So you have to manually do that in a GIS program, that does not happen in a "Mere fraction of the time". If you think LIDAR data (from the public domain) is going to fix all your issues think again. You have obviously not seen the amount of noise that is in it, nor how badly it lines up with public domain vector data!.

[stormrider_sp]

1 hour ago, DarkAngel said:

I really don't know where you get this idea that the work could be done in a "Mere fraction of the time" from. I did try to explain that the Pro editor is exactly the same as the Pro PE editor apart from the import tools. I can assure you the import tools do not open the door to maps in a "Mere fraction of the time". As I previously said the point data for building import does not contain building type or orientation unless someone puts it in there, manually, in a GIS program. On a big map area that could mean manually editing 500,000 point objects. You think this is quicker than the way you do it in the map editor?.  Now maybe some data sets do contain this information, I have certainly not seen such in the public domain!. What about joining all the little road segments up into contiguous lines.. You think that is trivial?. I did a hell of a lot of it (and manual digitizing) before I came up with my own tools to make it easier. Pro import tools certainly won't do that for you either. So you have to manually do that in a GIS program, that does not happen in a "Mere fraction of the time". If you think LIDAR data (from the public domain) is going to fix all your issues think again. You have obviously not seen the amount of noise that is in it, nor how badly it lines up with public domain vector data!.

Then please tell me, how long would it take you, such an experienced map maker and programmer, to manually create this map, in game, using at best the semi transparent UI method?

 

By reference, the map on red borders took me about 4 hours to get to this point, which included the time to download and reproject 5m/px spatial resolution DTMs (and export them into a 40km .asc), to note on a paper sheet the SW corner coordinate in LatLog, to download and import the bocage line data (green lines), to download, import, mosaic, automatically semi-supervised classify landsat 8 multi spectral data into 5 types of land cover: water, urban, forests, dark fields and beige fields and then export each feature into their respective area shapefiles, to download, import and join all the road/railway/powerlines sections of the same type and export them into their respective line shapefiles.

 

Let's stop at this point, without yet having worked on buildings and compare how long it would have taken if this all was done in-game. If I may, I'd estimate that it would have taken me, being very optimistic, at least a few months of hard work to get to this point, that is, to draw manually all the bocage, forests, fields, water, dirt and urban areas and to manually draw all the roads, railways and powerlines. It took me less than 4 hours in GIS. That, my friend, is a mere fraction of time.

 

 

Sure, the roads are not perfectly georeferenced.....

 

Edited March 13, 2021 by stormrider_sp

[Ssnake]

Most assuredly however, we're going to improve the Map Editor for everybody, with a focus on productivity.

Maybe it's necessary to put this a bit into historical perspective. When we started with SB Pro, we were, I think, the first commercial (wargame) product that allowed users to import geodata.

We grossly overestimated the capabilities of commercial GIS tools for a good while, and how topographical services in armies would develop and dispense digital maps to the troops. This resulted in our development prioritization of the mission editor. Our map editor was never intended for anything but minor touch-ups, or simplified "sand table quality" terrain.

It took us several years to understand that even our military customers were struggling with map creation, for a whole host of reasons.

Then we hoped for industry partners to develop tools for terrain generation. Over a period of four, five years there were four or five promising candidates, all of which failed as an acceptable substitute for different reasons.

 

Bottom line, we have accepted now that no knight in shining armor will come to our rescue, making the map editor a top priority in our development schedule (AFTER implementing ghe new GUI framework).

[Swordsmandk]

And the new map was used just 14 days ago  in the attack on willingen (can be seen in mirz YouTube channel. 
 

Also mid April we will launch an extended map selection with 4 continuous missions on that map also. 
 

(many thx to Abraxas and Gibson for advice and help making that map selection) 

[DarkAngel]

19 hours ago, stormrider_sp said:

Then please tell me, how long would it take you, such an experienced map maker and programmer, to manually create this map, in game, using at best the semi transparent UI method?

 

By reference, the map on red borders took me about 4 hours to get to this point, which included the time to download and reproject 5m/px spatial resolution DTMs (and export them into a 40km .asc), to note on a paper sheet the SW corner coordinate in LatLog, to download and import the bocage line data (green lines), to download, import, mosaic, automatically semi-supervised classify landsat 8 multi spectral data into 5 types of land cover: water, urban, forests, dark fields and beige fields and then export each feature into their respective area shapefiles, to download, import and join all the road/railway/powerlines sections of the same type and export them into their respective line shapefiles.

 

 

I wouldn't trust an auto join system in any of the GIS programs i've used. Maybe what you are using is better that what i've tried, all of those use a first pass connect system which does a woefully inadequate job of joining lines for roads. Terrain from landsat is ok if you like pixelated edges to everything, not worth bothering with in my estimation which is why I made my own system for doing it. So the only thing you are going to save time on is the bocage and you would want to hope your GIS software has a good join and simplify routine if you want the game to run with that data imported. The real issue with map creation is buildings and there is no easy, quick way to do that with the SB import tools.

[stormrider_sp]

30 minutes ago, DarkAngel said:

I wouldn't trust an auto join system in any of the GIS programs i've used. Maybe what you are using is better that what i've tried, all of those use a first pass connect system which does a woefully inadequate job of joining lines for roads. Terrain from landsat is ok if you like pixelated edges to everything, not worth bothering with in my estimation which is why I made my own system for doing it. So the only thing you are going to save time on is the bocage and you would want to hope your GIS software has a good join and simplify routine if you want the game to run with that data imported. The real issue with map creation is buildings and there is no easy, quick way to do that with the SB import tools.

Although I'm only grasping C# now, I read somewhere about a method to go about with buildings, which I haven't tried myself yet.

1- If every building or object in a db is a rectangle with its 3d façade face always oriented to its 0 azimuth, then all building align with the closest road or perpendicular to the closest path.

2- An object randomizer function with its list of possible objects as shapefile attributes.

[DarkAngel]

23 minutes ago, stormrider_sp said:

Although I'm only grasping C# now, I read somewhere about a method to go about with buildings, which I haven't tried myself yet.

1- If every building or object in a db is a rectangle with its 3d façade face always oriented to its 0 azimuth, then all building align with the closest road or perpendicular to the closest path.

2- An object randomizer function with its list of possible objects as shapefile attributes.

Yeah, that's what i did.. sort of.

[DK-DDAM]

On 3/12/2021 at 8:28 AM, stormrider_sp said:

How do you compare this kind of work against using one of the old low res sb issued heightmaps, and manually map editing it in game, using a software to make steel beasts ui semi transparent so you can see the google maps that you're using as a reference, in the background, while trying to match zoom levels and manually and continuously georeferencing it and placing each feature individually: buildings, fences, trees, fields, roads...? And then hard crashing while road leveling and ending up with an unrecoverable 40Gb+ unpublished map in your limited space ssd.

 

 

no matter of semi transparent satmap will help you with your heightdata that you manually has to alter your self. which is why, when darkangel was talking about that lidar is very noisy and broken, does take a long time to work on. But usually i have either google maps or global mapper running on a second screen while i work.

As you can see on this picture lidar doesnt always translate things proberly.. like with bridges so these you gotta manually go and alter, which on a 50x50 km map will have alot of bridges or crossover.

[stormrider_sp]

6 hours ago, DK-DDAM said:

no matter of semi transparent satmap will help you with your heightdata that you manually has to alter your self. which is why, when darkangel was talking about that lidar is very noisy and broken, does take a long time to work on. But usually i have either google maps or global mapper running on a second screen while i work.

As you can see on this picture lidar doesnt always translate things proberly.. like with bridges so these you gotta manually go and alter, which on a 50x50 km map will have alot of bridges or crossover.

 

What do you mean by noise and broken? I'm not sure we have the same definition of noise. On the other hand, looking at this picture, which without a doubt looks amazing and top top quality on regards to its heightmap resolution, the only obvious "problem" I can spot is the bridge, and that can be easily and quite quickly fixed using, for example, L3DT terrain mesh editor. If you have the sb import tools, I honestly see no reason to edit this map ingame using the semi transparent ui method.

[12Alfa]

"if we don't have the tools or some way to get our maps made made then we don't get any new maps made at all "

 

I fail to see any logic in this statement. The community, you, and I have all received NEW maps, either by a upgrade, or by asking the map developers.

 

We can end this thread, by simply asking for a map after providing some basic data,

 

Now why this is not being done.......well.....there is the real Question...is it not?...:)

 

 

 

And now....a meme to lighten the conversation.....(necessary similes).so there is no doubt this is meant as humor, not directed at any person, raccooon, or anyone offended by human body parts..:)

 

 

 

Edited March 17, 2021 by 12Alfa
Mod request

[Apocalypse 31]

57 minutes ago, 12Alfa said:

We can end this thread, by simply asking for a map after providing some basic data

I think that's a bit extreme-

 

There are significant limitations in data and it's accuracy that can be imported via mapping software, and SB map making still requires a significant amount of time in the map editor.

 

[Scrapper_511]

I've immersed myself in just a handful of maps and all of them, if I'm not mistaken, were created by DarkAngel. So I thank him. One map was the original Fulda map, the other another Fulda map shifted west which a version included forests, water ways, roads and buildings. Falli had a version of the original Fulda map which was a faithful recreation of the actual location and the late Eisenschwein did a realistic version of the Hunfeld area. I thank these fellows for their amazing work too. I've been chipping away at the Suwalki map which was provided by DarkAngel as well. So thanks again to him.

[12Alfa]

1 hour ago, Apocalypse 31 said:

I think that's a bit extreme-

 

There are significant limitations in data and it's accuracy that can be imported via mapping software, and SB map making still requires a significant amount of time in the map editor.

 

 

So your issue is with accuracy, and time                               and not the editor?

[stormrider_sp]

7 hours ago, 12Alfa said:

"if we don't have the tools or some way to get our maps made made then we don't get any new maps made at all "

 

I fail to see any logic in this statement. The community, you, and I have all received NEW maps, either by a upgrade, or by asking the map developers.

 

We can end this thread, by simply asking for a map after providing some basic data,

 

Now why this is not being done.......well.....there is the real Question...is it not?...:)

 

 

 

And now....some provoking deep thinking.....(necessary similes)...:)

 

 

 

You fail to see the logic, perhaps because you miss logic altogether, and the point. And I truly hope that you haven't tried yourself to fit two raccoons up your asshole.

 

Edited March 15, 2021 by stormrider_sp

[Jartsev]

Looks like conversation here develops in a very wrong direction, and I'm really inclined to lock this thread. Please reconsider your wording.

[12Alfa]

 

For those who can provide the data,photo's, etc.Don't become discourage with the comments here.

some have asked, and received their map request.

 

There is few of us are committed to help, ....that's is how all of this started ......with a simple map request.

 

Can't speak for ESim, however if the trend, and with the info provided by Ssnake, I feel the new maps should continue into the future.

 

The digital battlefield looks bright as I look back to the very start, to where we are now.

 

 

[RedWardancer]

We have moderators?!?  😲

 

[Ssnake]

Just because we have largely a hands-off attitude doesn't mean that this is 'Nam. Here are rules.

[IrishHussar]

With the advent of TerraSims world map sever, does Esim have any plans to utilize their services?

 

[Ssnake]

That specific server? No.

Will the classroom version 5.x be capable of utilizing such servers in general? Yes.