Quote:
Originally Posted by Lagarto
Actually, Ki-44 is a great choice. It came as a shock to Chennault's fighters in China, beating Warhawks at their own game, booming & zooming them at will.
By the way, was there any consideration within DT to make a map of south-east China, roughly the area marked on the map I've attached? Unlike many PTO battlefields, this one was active for at least three years.
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There's a mod version of the Ki-44, with several variants, which is pretty good. I'm not sure it's quite up to DT standards, though.
As for maps of China, there's a modded Hankow and Taiwan/Formosa map which are reasonably good, but still not quite good enough. A few years back, someone did a number of "starter maps" for most of China, but these are nothing more than crude imports of STRM data, with no attempt to correct mistakes or add roads and the like.
The main problems with doing maps of China are very different terrain types and the fact that most areas of China are heavily populated.
The first issue is a massive limitation, because IL2 maps can only have two types of ground textures per map. So, map makers either have to make smaller maps or put up with unrealistic looking terrain on part of the map.
The second issue means that map-makers need to spend lots of time putting in roads, villages and railroads. And, it's a balancing act as to how much "civilization" you add, since lots of buildings reduce frame rates.
Another issue, somewhat unique to China, is that the major rivers in China were historically prone to extensive flooding, meaning that the terrain looked very different at different times of the year. During WW2, the Chinese also deliberately breached levee systems to deny territory to the Japanese, so areas which appear to be protected by levees on maps were actually flooded.
Finally, almost no other part of the world has seen as much change and population growth as China. Modern STRM data of the area will not accurately model the landscape as it was 60 or 70 years ago, and terrain images from Google Earth won't accurately depict the look of the terrain as it was then.
This means it's impossible to make realistic-looking maps of large areas of China, and very hard to create realistic-looking historical maps of specific areas. To do it right, you'd need to have at least 6 different maps of China, and even then that wouldn't cover the entire country!
This isn't to say that I wouldn't be thrilled to have such maps, just that it's not an easy project!