Would you buy fictional maps?

Cool!

I forgot... My answer is absolutely YES

Me too.

:smilewink:

one word: KOREA

NO

There are plenty of Real life locations that should get priority for obvious reasons, instead of an entirely made up Fictional Locations in SCI verse on other made up planets with Futuristic Modules.

This is DCS, Not star Citizen or Elite Dangerous. :doh:

A lot of people seem adamantly against the idea of fictional maps for the sake of realism. Personally, nevada and caucasus might as well be fictional to me, since i've never been there and probably won't.

Also, fictional locations can possibly create a lot more interesting tactical situations that simply don't exist in reality. Just because a location is fictional, doesn't mean it has to look like some retarded dreamland that could never possibly exist. A fictional location could consist of canyon networks or seaside bluffs that could provide natural cover to ground units and limit approaches. You could also have smaller, interconnected internal bodies of water, which would make the landscape more interesting than a massive endless sea on one side of the map, creating interesting naval scenarios as well. It doesn't have to mean flying mountains with purple skies.

100% yes... especially an island one

NO for me. I’d rather focus on great theatres we still miss (but are in development from what Wags stated) - Afghanistan, Syria, perhaps Balkans...

I voted no. Even with those few theatres we have now, I would prefer wait longer but for a real terrain/environment.

BTW, a fast and real theatre can be made choosing a portion of the sea that includes small islands, like this proposal:

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=190099

IMO Opinion the editor should allow you to create maps ... as in Il2 ... a good map is a good map regardless of it being real or not.

But since ED hasn't bothered improving the, what is laughingly called an editor, since the original ... I don't suppose they ever intend to let the prima-ballerina dance on a proper stage as opposed to a wall-mart car park that this editor creates for her.

This question is harder than I first thought, because depending on the quality, I would. Arma3 developed islands based on real places but with the names changed. It makes sense there, there was a convincing story, and the maps currently on offer are very limiting.

I'll be honest if I say I would prefer a way to change place names and editor features first, because a coastline is a coastline, put names and towns in and it becomes a place. I've re-used the Georgian area for so many different storyline places, Ethiopia, Balkans, but when it comes to the town names, you want to scrub them out and write, Sarajevo or somesuch.

For the price, the level of effort should be vastly reduced, and as such if the map tools reach a level of maturity and ED so wished it, making terrain could be much easier in some years.

I think the answers will also get hung up on replacing any current "pipeline" maps with fake maps which will make people say no. But ultimately, I think if it was there, if it was done by third party and it was convincing enough, there must be a market. Not everyone says no in the poll either. I'm realistic with myself, there is a large untapped market here so cheaper maps than what we already have might be a thing one day.

I think perhaps "fictional" maps should be more "representative" maps. A section of jungle with a few airfields and some villages could be anything from Burma, Malaya to Vietnam and similarly for desert areas or Pacific island chains. If you had the ability to alter location names and perhaps change buildings styles via the date of the mission to suit a particular era I think "representative" maps that were well done could be very useful to the community. I think Caucasus has been rebadged as many things over the years or else people have invented a fictional conflict to suit the region so there is a degree of "representative" maps already in play.

Spin it around, if someone presented you with a satellite picture of desert terrain with some town names marked by hand with names of towns in North Africa and another one that looked similar with town names from say Afghanistan - not talking major cities here just small towns out in the open country side. Would you easily be able to say they were not what they seemed unless you were very familiar with the areas? Ditto Pacific Island chains.

Of course the main premise is that these representational maps would be easier for ED to produce and so would give us new maps sooner and without significant delay to the accurate real world maps. If there is no difference in effort then the question is moot. It still would be nice to change building styles to suit era via the editor though and be able to change location names. If nothing else it means that suddenly the same real world map might be able to service several eras.

real maps can get game developers arrested on spying charges.

bohemia interactive and a small Greek island that shall remain nameless.

it was going to have a fictional name in the game..

but the developers still got arrested photographing military ports..

real maps can get game developers arrested on spying charges.

 

bohemia interactive and a small Greek island that shall remain nameless.

 

it was going to have a fictional name in the game..

but the developers still got arrested photographing military ports..

Then don't photograph military ports......

Ed obviously didn't photograph are 51. Even that's visible on Google erth. As such can be substituted with open source data. This is a poor excuse to not make realistic non fiction maps

A lot of people seem adamantly against the idea of fictional maps for the sake of realism. Personally, nevada and caucasus might as well be fictional to me, since i've never been there and probably won't.

Maybe just a small thing to point out, since I am one of the people who responded with a definite "NO!". The question was not whether ED should develop fictional maps or whether users should be allowed to develop fictional maps. The question was whether you, personally, would buy a fictional map. And, in my case, there is no doubt at all - I have absolutely no interest in fictional maps and therefore I would under no circumstance put money down to buy such a fictional map.

Yes, other people may have various reason to be interested in such maps, but to me there is zero interest.

I would also like to respond to the second part of the quoted post, which came up a few times in this thread, namely that maps may as well be fictional if you haven't personally been to a certain area. This is a slightly strange argument for me - a great part of the attraction for me is the very fact that I can "explore" places that I haven't actually been to myself, but that I find interesting for various reasons related to the real-world location. Without that real-world connection, regardless of whether I have actually been there myself, I lose interest immediately. I completely understand that other people enjoy sims in a different way, but the topic of this thread is a rather specific question to the individual.

As I said, this has no bearing on whether ED should or should not develop fictional scenery, but my answer on whether "I" would buy any such scenery is a pretty firm and inflexible "no".

There is one thing representative maps would address. The real scenery maps are locked quite tightly to a specific era. For example the new Gulf map can really only be used for missions based on the era from the early 2000s onwards if you want any suspension of disbelief and creation of immersion because of the accurately depicted buildings. So DCS is now a lot of things to a lot of people and covers everything from WW2, the 1950s and 60s to roughly current. So for the people interested in say desert theatre missions for WW2 or some of the 1950,60,70s conflicts they pretty much won't be able to use this new map or even NTTR for similar reasons. Caucasus if you were careful about where you placed the action you could perhaps get away with it.....just. Modern missions on Normandy have the same problem and its really only suitable for missions up to about the late 1950s. Maybe there are sections of the map far enough from major towns to make it work - I'm not sure.

Places like Nevada and Abu Dhabi however look radically different in these early eras and that makes them very hard to use outside the era the DCS map depicts.

eg Abu Dhabi in the 1960s http://looklex.com/e.o/slides/abu_dhabi03.jpg

Abu Dhabi city in the 1970s and ordinary houses in the 1970s https://i.pinimg.com/736x/35/65/04/3565049f0e85412a823dbfcf2b3b01bf--abu-dhabi-uae.jpg

http://uaehistory.com/en/%d8%b5%d9%88%d8%b1%d8%a9-2/?tag=30

Everyone I am sure knows what the current image of Abu Dhabi looks like. It's not just the big buildings either. The airfields have changed in the way they look (not talking about number of runways etc but how the buildings look) and also just the normal everyday house looks very different in areas like the Persian Gulf across the era's. European towns while modernising over the years do tend to keep old buildings around. Other areas of the world tend to totally reinvent themselves.

Representative maps would help address this issue and allow believable missions to be built regardless of era if the maps were designed carefully.

The problem is the word selected to open the post, matador wanted to say GENERIC map, or a map that can work for several places in the world. A first step can be to have the chance to erase the town names in current maps, and have the hability to write the names you want, so you can have as other member said "Sarajevo, Monrovia or Dili" the Vietnam repaint on Mods forum combined with that hability would have been great, but not sure we can have any of those two things in DCS.

For example, would you play in this area?

Where is that? Africa? South America? a the Philippines? Create something like that without names or "era specific" buildings and it will e a interesting place to fly for sure! Is fictional? No, cause does not have floating islands, but is "generic", can be anywhere in the Tropics/Equatorial area.

It doesn't matter, ED would never allow it.

You could easily whip up a map based on procedurally-generate heightmap and biome data. Boom, arctic map, desert map, coastal map, forest map, etc, all done. Suddenly a lot harder to sell the real-life location maps.

It doesn't matter, ED would never allow it.

 

You could easily whip up a map based on procedurally-generate heightmap and biome data. Boom, arctic map, desert map, coastal map, forest map, etc, all done. Suddenly a lot harder to sell the real-life location maps.

Yes, I agree with you. ED will never allow it.

Voted No,

Because I'm tired of the DCS community part asking to pay for anything everytime.

You could easily whip up a map based on procedurally-generate heightmap and biome data. Boom, arctic map, desert map, coastal map, forest map, etc, all done. Suddenly a lot harder to sell the real-life location maps.

:lol: Yeah, so easy to make. I guess your magic tool also makes high quality ground textures, local 3D models (houses and other buildings, trees...), AI pathfinding... Map building is a hell of a job.

Anyway, the question is not "would ED allow it?". It's "would YOU want it?".

The nai sayers for teh sake of "realism" are deluted... in no freaking way an A 10, F 18, Saab, or any western aircraft flying over Georgia is REALISTIC. So yes I woudl love to have generic pices of land to fly a realistic CONFLICT, with realistic assets tactics and strategies. So Far DCS has wonderfull planes that dont fit ANy of ist maps. The esence of campaigns are maps, the Succes of Il2 was apletora of maps and YES generic maps. Not science fiction maps, but generic maps taht culd represent several contries areas or conflcits or even era. now you have Mig 15 ,s flying over skycraoper areas and modenr bases, or wow Normandy? give me a brake you realistic freaks.-

The nai sayers for teh sake of "realism" are deluted...

There are different aspects of realism to consider. Wrong (realistic) aircraft in the wrong (realistic) scenery might not be realistic in one aspect, but perfectly so in others.

I admit, generic realistic(-ich) maps has its benefits, but as I mentioned in the beginning of this thread, for me it's important to have realistic geographic scenery when it comes to navigation. I want to be able to lock at real life maps of all kinds and recognize myself in DCS. And I would prefer if the maps/world in DCS was consistent with WGS84 so we could export our location to let say our phones and use them as moving maps, as can be done in X-Plane/Prepar3d/FSX. I haven't been in Georgia IRL yet, but flying there in DCS has definitely made me qurious to go there some day (I actually may, since my wife are interested in the region too), feelings a generic map never can give.

I know real life maps VS DCS maps might differ due to representing different historical periods (like Normandy), but geographically they can be the same.

Another reason is the fear that generic maps potentially can be much more profitable for ED, reducing or entirely stop future development of real sceneries. For that reason the "just don't by it" argument isn't enough.

Other "nai sayers" might have other perfectly valid reasons for being "nai sayers". Like the ability to read up on real life conflicts in the area, or play through potential real life scenarios.

I'm actually surprised we haven't seen experimental and "inspired-by" lines of aircraft in the sim yet. I would buy both generic earth maps, as well as more sci-fi/fantasy maps.

Though, if I had to focus on 1 map and 1 craft, it would be one of the planes from Macross, which were mostly modeled on the F-14 anyway, and an arctic map. Barring that, let's start with introducing a weird flying saucer that is maybe unarmed but can outspeed any craft we have. if we spot it and try to fight it just zips off across the map.

The nai sayers for teh sake of "realism" are deluted... in no freaking way an A 10, F 18, Saab, or any western aircraft flying over Georgia is REALISTIC. So yes I woudl love to have generic pices of land to fly a realistic CONFLICT, with realistic assets tactics and strategies. So Far DCS has wonderfull planes that dont fit ANy of ist maps. The esence of campaigns are maps, the Succes of Il2 was apletora of maps and YES generic maps. Not science fiction maps, but generic maps taht culd represent several contries areas or conflcits or even era. now you have Mig 15 ,s flying over skycraoper areas and modenr bases, or wow Normandy? give me a brake you realistic freaks.-

Il2s maps weren't particularly generic, they were based on specific regions.

Also your comment about Georgia is fundamentally wrong. Mpst the aircraft here would plausibly operate in Georgia. DCS is primarily set around the 2008 Georgian War originally. It has branched into other time periods, but ALL the Russian aircraft, and most the Western ones are appropriate for the region, especially in the event of a NATO/RF conflict, though obviously Sweden wouldn'tbe there.

As for maps in general, there's no reason to go with ''generic'' fantasy terrain when RL terrain will suffice. There's literally zero reason to even bother with it.

I voted yes, because sometimes (not all the time!) I'd like a map that was:

- Optimized for performance

- Offered improved visibility / ground contrast in VR

- Provide different topographies for the WWII units (its somewhat challenging to design concise WWII MP missions in the hills/mountainous region of Caucaus due to airfield placement).

This, of course, assumes that the creation of a fictional map would be significantly less work than realistic counterparts.