Was bored today...

[Specter]

So I created this ...

I was tired of flying towards an airbase, setting up for a landing, then at the last moment realize I'm comming in perpendicular to the field.

Its a gimp plugin (free photoshop), that reads a text file and places all the icons on the map. This is really just a proof of concept, all the values are made up. Solid circle represents concrete base, open would be grass field. Firstline is the airbases name, second is the elevation and the second is right pattern runways (taken from FAA Sectional Charts).

The map was a grid map someone else made that I picked up at airwarfare.com. The red parts are mine. This could would work for any sim or map for that matter. All the others I fly (lomac, falcon 4:AF) are much better documented than IL-2 though.

Is this something anyone else would be interested in? I could email the maps and plugin when finished.

[Stecher]

Yeah, absolutely. Whenever we're in a campaign, it's good to become familiar with your typical home base, but there are times when you have to make an emergency landing at an unfamiliar field. It's times like that, when you're running on fumes or your engine is dying, that you can't spend another couple minutes circling around because you lined up wrong initially. This would come in handy. Thanks Specter.

[Klaue]

Specter if you have time i would like to know more about these,and other maps you have would help from going to mini map during flight ? THX. ;D

[Specter]

Hey Klaue,

This is something I been messing around with over the past few months. I'm chasing a memory leak right now and it looks kind of ugly, but I can get it to read il-2's native mission files and then an additional text file that has name, altitude and runway headings.

I've been working on it in my spare time and its been pretty slow around school and work/finding work. I've made quite a bit of progress since that shot, but its all behind the scenes stuff. I'll keep you posted as more develops.

[Specter]

I was avoiding studying big time today and picked up this project again. The program is still a bit twitchy, but it did produce a nice result. I have a bigger one that will print on a full sheet of paper at 300 dpi, but have no way to host it (its ~1.6 MB zipped)

I think it covers all the areas of interest, these more geography up top. I think most of fs is down south though if i remember correctly.

[Stecher]

Very nice job on the Italy map. When the file gets finalized for download, I definitely recommend downloading and printing it. Great job Specter, thanks.

Question. The last number, most of them 20, that is airfield altitude in meters?

[Specter]

Yes, I took the FAA sectional charts as a template.

(Name of Airfield)
RP 7,25 --> Right hand pattern - Primary Direction is 70, Secondary is 250 (opposite direction)
Altitude (taken from the speed bar)

Legend for the airfields shows single or double runways in the same direction as the airfield in game. Solid is concrete, empty is grass or sand.

I saw you made the map for forgotten skies, how did you capture greater area than I can get to display in the FMB? Also I sent you an email with a zipped full-size TGA couple days ago.

[Stecher]

Yeah, I was looking at that. Are you going to make it a bmp or jpg, or leave it as tga? I made the Italy war map background by taking 2 screenshots in FMB, cropping out the FMB border on each, and then overlapping them to make the full map as one file.

[Specter]

Ahh ha, that makes sense. I'm using gimp (free image program similar to photoshop) and can save it as any file format. I left it as a tga only because that's what I started with (screenprint).

[Specter]

Just in case you guys didn't see, I posted the most complete version of the fullsize maps over at FS.

Italy Map

[Stecher]

Yep, downloaded it. Excellent. Thanks Specter

[Stachl]

Yea thanks Specter! I'll download it tonight.