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[Whacker]

Summary:  Create a method whereby maps are standardized, and created from freely available online sources.

Details:  This started as a little mind tickle that grew to an itch over the past few months, as I got back into IL2 again with the most current HSFX and UP/DBW mods.  Some of the maps, while great and full of detail, just aren't to scale at all.  For example, one of the Mediterranean maps in DBW 1.71 has Rome as a little blotch of a city.  Another has Malta just a few minutes away from the N African coast.  I realize that this is probably for the sake of not having online matches take 8 real time hours of flight, but some of us like lil' ol me would like geographically accurate and proportionate places to fly over, a la FSX/Xplane9. 

So, I was thinking about what would be a potential easy, relatively quick and dirty way to do this?  What if we could import data from something like Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Mapquest, or one of the myriad other freely available online sources?  It certainly wouldn't have to be exact, precise, and of course it wouldn't account for 70-80+ years of post-war reconstruction, but I still say it'd be viable.  Some kind of tool that could scrape the data, dump it into the proper IL-2 map format that applies the "roads", "cities", "forests", "ground height", etc, and be done with it.  That said, clean up or correcting things to WWII-era status would be outstanding, but again my main gist is to keep this as relatively simple and straightforward as possible.

Lastly, I would put forth a plea as a simple gamer for an effort to standardize on maps (names, sizes, areas covered, etc)  This goes out to the HSFX/SEOW, Ultrapack, DBW, and any other 'camp' out there that I'm simply not aware of...  it would be wonderful for if we could come to some accord on at least this aspect of the game we all love.  I realize there are long standing politics and other things I'm certainly not aware of, but my plea stands.

Unknowns/Potential Issues:  Probably quite a few I'm not aware of, as I'm not a level 40 mod wizard.     First, I have no idea what size limitations are in place for map files, and if this correlates to potential high memory usage in-game for large map spaces.  I don't think we'd run into any copyright issues because we wouldn't be using this for any kind of profit gain, nor would we be taking any of the actual satellite imagery.  Lastly I keep saying this should be "simple" but it's certainly anything but, however there's some really amazing, massive talent out there amongst the il2 modding community that I bet could pull this off.

[sputnikshock]

"roads", "cities", "forests", "ground height", etc, and be done with it.

 

If it would work like this we would have the whole globe in maps already.
See, what you propose is what map makers are already doing whenever possible. All the height maps - or I should say all height maps you start with - come from SRTM data. Rivers/lakes are a bit more troublesome already. Then there are towns/cites, surface textures, finally the nastiest of all roads and rails...
There is no way you would get this from Google Earth. Remember a photograph of a certain area is a template at best...
I won't go into details of mapmaking here, but I tried to exploit the procedure to the max when making the Nachtjagd map (https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,16630.0.html). For example town areas were mostly just grabbed from GIS data. And even though the map is probably as quick&dirty as it gets, it still involved countless hours of Photoshop and FMB work. And it doesn't even have rails or roads. Plus no buildings at all apart from airfields. Not to mention bridges...
I assure you, 'the easy way' does not exist. Not even for maps as sketchy as the one I am talking about.
Sorry. 

In terms of size this map is also approaching maximums, at least from what I heard.