European Air War Reborn

[pagsab]

I described in previous threads how my interest in SF2 has been revived over the past year by discovering how to fly as a wingman, how to drop the 3D clouds to a more realistic altitude, and how to model small low-lying areas like the Baltic islands manually, without using the horizontally skewed elevation data provided by DEMs.  My last thread showed how escaping the constraints of automatic terrain generation allowed me to construct a compact but flexible high resolution tileset based on the best of the wonderful artwork which other modders have created.  As shown below, I have now completed the first stage of my associated project of gradually making my own manual tilemap for WW2 NW Europe.  Besides avoiding horizontal distortion, this tilemap squeezes much more real land area into each tile than do other available terrains for the region.  My manual modelling hence does not take impractically long, and I can fly entire wingman missions from takeoff to landing without unduly protracted transits.  I am now ready to expand the modelled area gradually in all directions to allow longer missions than the brief cross-Channel hops possible already, as I build up my graphically far improved echo of the European Air War sim which I enjoyed so much 3 decades ago.

I have made two main improvements since my last report.  First, I decided to change horses again before it was too late by shifting to a new reference map made from a patchwork of screenshots from the online elevation maps at https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/, with the top contour locked at 1000 metres for consistency.  As shown below, this makes it easier to select the base height of each tile, in conjunction with a zoomable live copy of the map alongside to show more precise contours.  I have now standardised on 2 raised points on each tile, to create just the right amount of rolling terrain on all tiles except those showing watercourses, airfields or flat fenland or built-up areas.  The road and rail lines on the reference map allow me to correlate with the live elevation map and with other zoomable live and satellite maps showing towns, airfields and vegetation.

My second improvement has been to make my airfields many times smaller than the multi-tile monsters which dominate most SF2 terrains.  As shown below in my representative selection of the several real airfields crammed behind Cap Gris Nez in 1940 to maximise the reach of the Bf 109, I now confine airfields to just the 4 central squares of their single 16 square tile.  Not only does this make them look much less overscale on my reduced scale terrain, but it also allows the other 12 squares of the tile to slope up or down as shown here.  By tracing runways diagonally rather than orthogonally, I keep them long enough to allow even 4 engine bombers to take off and land successfully if the data file constraint is removed.  Deciding which of the many thousands of  WW2 airfields to include on my terrain is hard (particularly in view of the many changes across this long conflict), but Henry Deng’s research collected at https://www.ww2.dk/lwairfields.html is of invaluable assistance, helping even to choose which side of each airfield to put my generic buildings.  I have now switched my horizon distance setting back to ‘far’ since this makes my mass of small TOD objects look much better, at the cost of visibility on my reduced scale terrain being far greater than it would be in real life.

I am currently using my new arena as a sandbox for a wide range of combat missions like those which I flew over published terrains as shown in my previous threads.  The picture below shows our Whirlwind flight outbound past the radar masts and balloon barrage of Dover for a strafing run on Marquise in spring 1941.  On my reduced scale terrain, the entire sortie from takeoff to landing back at Manston takes just 15 minutes.  I have slashed the accuracy and warhead weight of low level flak so that such missions typically leave one friendly plane damaged, posing the added challenge of nursing the crippled craft back to base.  I love the ability to tailor SF2 and its many mods to my personal preferences in this way, and having complete flexibility to shape my new NW Europe terrain adds greatly to my enjoyment of this classic sim.  Eventually, I hope to return to the Baltic and to modify published artwork into a high resolution seasonal tileset with which to model the equally classic arena around Leningrad, as the kernel of another reduced scale manual terrain for aerial battles between Finland, Germany and the USSR.