DCS World 2.5 Persian Gulf Map Accuracy

On a whim, I decided to check the accuracy of the DCS World 2.5 Persian Gulf map. I've often wondered just how accurate those real time coordinate updates are in the TAD display. Maybe I'm easily amazed, but holy crap folks... You are pretty much exactly where the coordinates say you are.

I started the Persian Gulf Free Flight mission in the A-10C and flew a little ways until I was getting close to town (Fujairah) and paused the mission. I took a screen shot from the cockpit view and edited it by marking a couple of easily recognizable spots on the ground, "1." on the left and "2." on the right both in red.

Next I created an image of the TAD display with the coordinates highlighted showing my location.

I took those TAD coordinates and plugged them into Google Earth, saved the map image and then marked the same two spots, 1 and 2, and showed their position relative to the marker pinpointing the aircraft position I had plugged in from the TAD coordinates.

Damn... I figured the coordinates were probably close enough to keep track of where you were in the sim, but I had no idea they were THIS accurate when compared to the real world. They appear to be spot frikken dead on! I almost wonder if people on the ground in Fujairah looked up and saw an A-10C hovering motionless in the sky while the mission was paused... LOL!

Maybe this is common knowledge, but it wasn't for me, at least not this degree of accuracy, so I thought I'd share with the rest of the community. Images mentioned above attached for your viewing pleasure.

Nice research GD.

Thanks for sharing

Damn... I figured the coordinates were probably close enough to keep track of where you were in the sim, but I had no idea they were THIS accurate when compared to the real world.

Thanks for sharing, maybe this is one of the reasons why the development of new Terrains take such a long time :)

Thanks for sharing, maybe this is one of the reasons why the development of new Terrains take such a long time :)

Agreed! We're very fortunate that the DCS development team takes realism this seriously. Thank you ED!

I’m not surprised because you have to remember that while we see the entertainment version the use most of the same data for their. Commercial version would make sense to have two different maps we just see a less featured aircraft at times

Thanks to GPS, Sattelites, technology and the Internet indeed. But you can add the details to precisiona step further.

I was flying with a friend when map launched, we landed at , as i was in F11 view and moving around i was amazed to see there was a football/soccer field, i then told my friend about it and i found it funny....

The day after, he sent me a picture on Facebook of the soccer field i found, but, from Google Map, and pretty much looked like it and where it stands, exept in DCS, odd trees had grown in the middle of it. :P

A few days after he flew with anotehr frind of us, which had been deployed in the areas, and told him it was so well done, he could spot an hotel he was at (building wasn't wel modeled of course cuz it's limited to building style generating) but the location of the building etc..

Here's a picture i've made to show the samll details of the Map, left Google Map and Right DCS.

You can see entire sam installations on the map, not the actual missile units but their parking spots and all the EWR stations are modelled fairly closely.

Having that kind of realism and accuracy goes a long way to how immersive it is. Ie create a strike on EWR and it's on the same coords as RL.

Almost like ED knew what they were doing, eh?

You can see entire sam installations on the map, not the actual missile units but their parking spots and all the EWR stations are modelled fairly closely.

 

Having that kind of realism and accuracy goes a long way to how immersive it is. Ie create a strike on EWR and it's on the same coords as RL.

That's pretty awesome. I'm hoping that at some point someone has the time & energy to produce a template mission that has a full IADS set up mapped as far as possible to real co-ordinates. That would be an amazing mission creation tool to have!

hopefully people will remember this before they reach for their pitchforks next time

oh who am i kidding