Friday 2010-12-03 Dev. update and Discussion

[Sutts]

You're right Roldophe. The areas depicted on the SoW map look like they're lifted straight from modern day google earth.

Period orndance survey maps for the area can be found here:

http://www.ponies.me.uk/maps/osmap.html

If you compare the period map with the SoW offering you can clearly see how the individual settlements of the time have been merged and spread outwards. Canvey Island (highlighted in blue) did have a small development area but nothing like that presented on the SoW map (which matches modern google almost exactly).

Even more interesting is Basildon which in the 1940s was a collection of a few streets hardly worth mentioning. After the war this area was designated one of the modern "New Towns" and was massively expanded. This expansion is seen on the SoW map.

The sad thing is, if this is true, then the developers have spent hundreds of hours creating huge populated areas which never even existed at the time. I was really hoping to get an experience of flying over wartime Britain. It looks like what we'll be getting is a very modern Britain with all its huge, ugly post war expansion. A real disappointment for me.

With all the attention to detail the team has shown in the aircraft area, I really did expect to see at least a bit of basic research in the map department.

I do hope I'm proven wrong.

[Il2Pongo]

I don't think much of allot off peoples gripes, but what you have shown here is pretty significant.
The whole character of the area is changed if the towns are all 2010 density and sprawl vs 1940 density and sprawl.

Wont stop me for a second from playing or buying, but it is significant to the flavour of the maps and the polygon counts as well.

[Sutts]

Looks like all towns got the same treatment. Here's Slough which sits above Windsor with the Thames running inbetween. I've drawn 2 red lines which pretty accurately box in Slough on the period map. One line is drawn from the right edge of Windsor (which hasn't changed much) and the other is taken from the right edge of the big loop in the Thames before it turns north again briefly.

As you can see, the size of Slough is approx. 3 times what it should be in 1940.

I include the same lines on the SoW map and a modern google earth map for comparison.

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by Sutts

Looks like all towns got the same treatment. Here's Slough which sits above Windsor with the Thames running inbetween. I've drawn 2 red lines which pretty accurately box in Slough on the period map. One line is drawn from the right edge of Windsor (which hasn't changed much) and the other is taken from the right edge of the big loop in the Thames before it turns north again briefly.

As you can see, the size of Slough is approx. 3 times what it should be in 1940.

I include the same lines on the SoW map and a modern google earth map for comparison.

i think you are making an important point, and it shouldnt be dismissed as "map whining" that might slow down the release of BoB ! (partic since an Xmass release is now obviously not going to happen)

the main reason i see this need to be corrected for, is the frame rate problem. having towns and villages that are 70% to large (compared to real size in 1940), means our poor little pc's need to huff and puff to display all those unnecessary buildings and other ground objects. if the maps being used currently for BoB are so significantly wrong as indicated in these recent posts here, shrinking them down to more correct sizes will make quite a difference in performance in the game overall. i am not concerned at all about some coastal elements (like that harbor section) being incorrect since it wont affect frame rates much and can be corrected later. but having 10.000's of houses that shouldn’t be there all eating frame rates is just a total waste of resources.

resizing the main towns and villages to their more correct sizes should not be a big time consuming job for the programmers either, since "all they need to do" is highlight the offending objects around a town/village and press the delete button. "creating" new towns and villages would be MUCH more time consuming and a waste of manpower, because it takes so much longer. but to argue against deleting objects is a bit silly

when i have to crash land my damaged spitfire in the southern english country side, i'd like to be able to aim for a field that existed in the 1940's, and not land on the m25 motorway or amongst buildings in a recently constructed town and city