Larger maps

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Soldier_Fortune

AFAIK, the B-24s were used to close the North Atlantic gap against the U-Boote, and they were equiped with surface radars to spot them. (Not with bombs).

The Atlantic maps I proposed were just examples. The idea is that if you want a large map, it loads quicker and is easier on framerates if it's mostly filled with empty water.

Equally legitimate map choices might maps that includes a bit of Queensland, AUS and parts of the southern coast of New Guinea, Okinawa to the southern tip of Kyushu, or Tunisian coast from Tunis to Sfax then east to Malta and the southern coast of Sicily.

As for anti U-boat operations, the B-24s (and other long-range patrol craft - like the Sunderland and Wellington) were equipped with a combination of depth charges (and/or bombs, sometimes rockets), plus surface radar and occasionally weapons systems light Leigh lights.

Originally Posted by Soldier_Fortune

But the guy who has designed La_Chute, has solved that problem in a smart way: the most of the map is only texture: also cities and towns.

The problem is that, by official IL2 standard, that's "half a map." You can't just create city plates and forest textures and then not include cities and forests. I think that's an artifact of IL2's heritage as a low-altitude "mud moving" flight simulator.

It would require an executive decision on TD's part to allow maps that favor high altitude long-range bomber ops, but at the expense of having "empty" cities and no forests when you go down low.

Personally, I think that such maps would be a good idea, now that we've got planes like the Pe-8 and B-24D to play with.

If we ever get proper night fighter ops in the game, TD is going to have to think pretty hard about this issue, because for night fighter operations the important things are effects (lights, flames, flares, radar ops), loiter time (often over a large area) and traditional "eye candy" scenery just isn't as important.

The only other way around the map size issue would be for the game to somehow recognize when aircraft are moving off one map and automatically load up the map of the adjacent territory. But, that would require huge amounts of development work, plus all new maps of consistent shape and size.