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Nov 25, 2008
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It looks like strange map distortion leads to change of area of particular regions. France Germany and Netherlands are much bigger while Russia, Romania and Poland relatively much smaller. Is it fixed already?

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zomo said:
It looks like strange map distortion leads to change of area of particular regions. France Germany and Netherlands are much bigger while Russia, Romania and Poland relatively much smaller. Is it fixed already?
Not quite sure what you mean. But aren't those two maps different projections? Different projections skews the form and size of regions making a map look weird/wrong.
 
Just go look at a globe, and then look at a flat (like in an atlas) map of the same region. They'll look quite different. Converting a spheroid surface into a flat one requires certain distortions.
 
battlecry said:
Just go look at a globe, and then look at a flat (like in an atlas) map of the same region. They'll look quite different. Converting a spheroid surface into a flat one requires certain distortions.
Sure but it seems there are still wrong shapes of borders.
1 Map) I tried to anchor map on a 3 points (Scandinavia, Spain and Greece)
2 Map) I move the map to cover Poland and Czechoslovak Rep. As we can see Poland is much smaller (on favour of Germany, Lithuania and Soviet Union) then it is on the real map while Czechoslovak Rep.is rather bigger then it shoud be.
3 Map) I move the map to cover Yugoslavia. As we can Romania is relatively smaller then it shoud be in Bessarabia.

Netherlands is much too big comparing to Belgium. etc etc..

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IMHO It would be better to use a real satelite map.
 
indeed like in supreme ruler or at least...
to show this problem i will use caucasus from hoi 2 since i see that here is being made the same fault

red borders and shores are those that do look like they look

and i fear that hoi 4 will look like "and here we have splotch nr1 and thats germany and splotch nr2 that is sov etc."
 
keep in mind you have to have provinces that are large enough to depict either sprites or counters and still be able to tell what province they are in.

If you thus want large numbers of provinces on the Western front to improve combat, then you have to have some distortion of size so that the sprites/counters will not completely cover up the provinces.

If you stick to a more "geographically correct" projection then you'll have to have fewer provinces in small nations, which will make it much more difficult to simulate the kind of warfare that HoI3 is going to try and achieve by having so many provinces in the first place.
 
Netherlands is much too big comparing to Belgium. etc etc..
I think it's already been stated by the Devs that the Benelux area is terribly incomplete.

In fact, that generally their main priority is to make the shapes of the provinces interesting to fight on and not to represent the most accurate real life borders. Also what disturbes me on the alpha state map is the east border of Finland. I'm quite sure it'll be fixed as well. :rolleyes:

Maybe there might be differences on the maps too, like is it drawed by the means of distances, angles or size of surface area. Althought I think in this case I has no relevance.
 
Specifically in the "Netherlands" case, it looks like the north-western coast of Germany is too far up north and the part of Germany at the border of Denmark is too short. That would explain why the Netherlands are too big (except if they drained some more of the North Sea ;) )
 
supernova said:
Specifically in the "Netherlands" case, it looks like the north-western coast of Germany is too far up north and the part of Germany at the border of Denmark is too short. That would explain why the Netherlands are too big (except if they drained some more of the North Sea ;) )

I think they will rework that region before the release, at least thats what the developers mentioned!
 
i am not saying that say slovakia has not enough province to do battles there nor i say the borders are wrong

i say geography is wrong
yes it is good to have lot of provinces but it is not good when at expense of something so litle other provinces suffer a major lookin' change
i understand that isles can be a exception
but how do you explain such caucasus? how more provinces in europe cause that caucasus should be so drastically reshaped like a black hole was somewhere around?
 
I would just like to say-this map is just from alpha, and many changes will take place before the end product.
 
Deus Eversor said:
i am not saying that say slovakia has not enough province to do battles there nor i say the borders are wrong

i say geography is wrong
yes it is good to have lot of provinces but it is not good when at expense of something so litle other provinces suffer a major lookin' change
i understand that isles can be a exception
but how do you explain such caucasus? how more provinces in europe cause that caucasus should be so drastically reshaped like a black hole was somewhere around?

The map requires a lot of historical data, I am very very sure that they will be working on it throught out the whole development!
 
THE_SPLIT said:
The map requires a lot of historical data, I am very very sure that they will be working on it throught out the whole development!
Map geography is important. For example:
possessing Norway, when its not closer then Netherlands gives no advantages
in order do bombard Scotland and Scapa.
Scandinavia is shaped very naturally and I hope that whole map will look so.
 
what is important, I guess, is distance between provinces or coherence all over the map, not contour or exact geography. IIRC, distance is calculated with 2 points (x,y) in the province A and B.
 
zomo said:
Sure but it seems there are still wrong shapes of borders.
1 Map) I tried to anchor map on a 3 points (Scandinavia, Spain and Greece)
2 Map) I move the map to cover Poland and Czechoslovak Rep. As we can see Poland is much smaller (on favour of Germany, Lithuania and Soviet Union) then it is on the real map while Czechoslovak Rep.is rather bigger then it shoud be.
3 Map) I move the map to cover Yugoslavia. As we can Romania is relatively smaller then it shoud be in Bessarabia.

Netherlands is much too big comparing to Belgium. etc etc..

IMHO It would be better to use a real satelite map.
You can't just overlay them and compare, because the difference in the projections isn't something that you can scale away at 1:1 on every point.

If the HOI3 map was created using a legitimate projection, then there is no problem.

For example some projections are 1:1 distance proportional on the horizontal axis but on the vertical axis it is only 1:1 at the equator and is enlarged as you go towards the poles.

The point is that you can't just overlay 2 maps of different projections.
 
dermeister said:
You can't just overlay them and compare, because the difference in the projections isn't something that you can scale away at 1:1 on every point.

If the HOI3 map was created using a legitimate projection, then there is no problem.

For example some projections are 1:1 distance proportional on the horizontal axis but on the vertical axis it is only 1:1 at the equator and is enlarged as you go towards the poles.

The point is that you can't just overlay 2 maps of different projections.

yes, you're right, but scandinavia, poland , czechoslovakia, germany and england are too close to each other and 'center' of map in sphere terms (compared to how big the ~'globe' earth is), for 'flattening it' effect be so drastic in misshape-effect. especially britania looks way off the frame leftwise. not to mention ned/bel disproportion. the case shouldnt be if we zoomed earth out entirely, but here we're working on small area.
also if irl its closer to bomb scapa from norway, then it should stay closer in game (never knew about it, thought it was only for iron).
anyway its alfa and easy to correct (unless they made their map the hard way :) )
 
I really think the main issue with the map is:
a) P'Dox wanted to include certain cities, for whatever reasons (historical, strategic, size, hell even personal wish maybe)
b) There is a minimum size that a province can be on these maps, otherwise interface becomes very difficult (for instance, placing an airbase or selecting air units without clicking land units etc). Luxembourg is a good example, it's important that it be there, but it's too small to display it's true size.

So borders/coasts get warped for these reasons.
 
Why not a 3-D globe?

Give us a 3-D map! UFO Enemy Unknown featured a fully 3-D globe which you could rotate and zoom, and that was in 1993, surely all the provinces can be modelled on a 3-D globe? This would allow bombers to fly over the Arctic sea and make the feeling of world-wide conflict much more realistic!

I guess I'll just have to wait for HOI4 . . .
 
Well the alpha map is way off in a lot of stuff and is OBVIOUSLY going to be corrected.

But there's no way to avoid distortion in some way without having a 3D spherical map. It's really just not that important. I prefer the simplistic 2D personally. Looks great so far.