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[Riptide_One]

agracier,

First of all, I love the screen shots of your Formosa Map. I am looking forward to its release.

You have raised an interesting idea regarding whether or not to populate this map fully. I delayed responding to your post to give myself some time to think about it first. Considering your proposal prompted me to ask myself why do I still like to play this game after over 10 years. The reasons were easy for me to find and I can summarize them in just a few sentences:

1) It's 'friendly' to a wide range of users. The complexity of play is at least somewhat adjustable. Its not so much one size fits all.
2) Modders, like yourself, keep renewing the game with new maps, aircraft and other features.
3) With the full mission builder, I can built my own stories about historical engagements and engagements that never were.
4) The game provides a visually immersive environment. It is easy to get a sense of 'I am there in the thick of it'.

Point #4 relates to the current discussion. From the very beginning, IL-2 maps have been populated and that's one of the features that attracted me this game. The early flight simulations provided worlds with minimal features. IL-2, with its detail cities, mountains and even clouds is the simulation I always wanted. 

Yes, if you are dog fighting at 6,000 meters, you would not be able to tell whether you are flying over a 'textured' city or one populated with IL-2 objects. However, if you are flying an air strike against a power station or factory in the middle of a city, the experience is, to me, much less satisfying if everything around the target is flat.

Of course, I realize that the core of what I am talking about is personal preference. There are probably some IL-2 players who only dogfight and couldn't care less about populated cities. Others may not mind bombing a target in an otherwise flat city. Also, I cannot tell you whether or not my position on populating maps puts me with the majority of the IL-2 players.  I can only say that I prefer populated maps.

However, I would agree with the position that a map builder clearly has the right to issue his map un-populated if that is his or her wish. I would also agree that if a map was issued un-populated, it would be perfectly alright for someone else to populate it and issue a populated version. Re-texturing and re-populating maps is already a common practice.

Cheers,

Riptide

[agracier]

Good points about the game itself. It is so old - in modern day terms at any rate ... ha ha - and yet it is really the only game I play at all, and that since some 8 or 9 years.  I think it has a lot to do with the ability to mod and add planes and maps and objects. Open modding is so gratifying and takes up much more time for me than actual play.

I guess I brought up the populating question mainly because I have so little patience for doing it well. Everything has evolved so much over the years, from the first simple maps to the latest 2048x2048 versions with a multitude of new textures and color palettes and terrain types, that it seems populating the map should also keep pace and become better and more lifelike ...

Luckily there is autopopping - but I think I'm gonna have to relearn it all over again after 2 years. But to do placing objects really well, nothing beats hands-on work. But so time consuming ...

Anyway, we'll populate the map. There are 4 textures to autopop, not a hardship. It's only urban areas that give the problems. To do them well the density and variety of objects really cause frs to take a hit ...

[fatty_finn]

Greetings to agracier
The Formosa map looks really superb - cant wait to fly it
you raise an interesting point:-
 "I sometimes wonder if a map like this might not look better without objects altogether, airfields excepted."
Food for thought indeed.
F_F

[Plowshare]

Just my nickel's worth:

As a mission builder one of the things that has bothered me from the early days are those objects that are temporary but affixed permanently to a map. For instance: Barrels, vehicles, flags, and windsocks. Ahh, those windsocks! I went so far as to add these text lines to all six default windsocks back in 4.10 DBW and have brought them up to 4.12.2:

AddHeightLive   -9.40
AddHeightDead   -9.40

This is so all the default windsocks are below ground and I renamed a set of windsocks adding adding the letter "N" to their name. Since the moving windsocks have come out I've changed most of my missions to use those - set it down and forget what direction the wind blows! Too bad you couldn't add those to your map when you make it.

I've accepted flags as they aren't as obtrusive.

There is a very fine line I think mapmakers have to walk - too much detail for die-hard mission makers and not enough detail for those who just want to set down some aircraft and fly. I don't envy the path you map makers have chosen to walk.

Bob

[agracier]

When I fly missions and make my own, I mainly pay attention to aircraft obviously, then maybe ships, vehicles, artillery and then some of the more interesting objects like smoke, fire, barrages, sirens. I doubt I've ever placed houses or buildings as part of a mission. I simply have no patience, especially not to wade through the thousands of possible choices ... it's maddening ... ha ha.

So I really like my maps populated. Unless it's possible to find/make textures that give the impression of there being some type of buildings on them when viewed from a height. Sometimes this works fairly well, especially for textures that are meant to represent small villages or clusters of buildings in fields or wherever. It's also very useful for urban areas, thereby avoiding all the multitude of necessary objects. Redko did this on some of his retexed maps and it wasn't a bad solution if you stayed high enough above ground.

But it does jar with airfields and other things like docks or harbors.

[agracier]

Just a few more screenshots. First one with airfield in the near distance.



Here are a few try-outs for coastal textures using modified textures from Fatty Finn's beautiful Norfolk Island map. I'm very doubtful that there were such shoals on the Formosa coast, but it does look very nice.

[max_thehitman]

It looks FANTASTIC !    Great map!

[agracier]

Here are a few more screenshots from the eastern plain area ... this is also where the mountains come down fairly close to the coast.

This is another thing that I have trouble deciding on: to use 3D woods or to make use of textures that look like forests. The game generated 3D woods are fine, but when placed on large areas they do tend to look uniform and tiled. And the mountainous areas of Formosa are heavily forested. Any ideas or thoughts on the use of 3D woods are certainly appreciated.

[agracier]

Here are a few final screenshots done after autopopping the map. I'll probably post a first version in a day or so, since come the weekend I'll be out of country for quite some time, 3 or more months at least, with no guarantee of any kind of steady internet connection. So might as well post now. Who knows what all else might happen in the meantime?

[kaxII]

Absolutely beautiful!

Great work on it so far!

[agracier]

It should be up for posting sometime soon, say in a month or a bit more. I'm still away from home and there are a few things that have to be changed and corrected on the map. I have a laptop with me of course, but it's not a good machine to use to work on maps. The graphics card on my laptop gives very odd colors for some textures, especially water and coastlines. But mainly it's just  not powerful enough and i can't test the results on changes ... so, that means waiting till I'm back at my mainframe ...