Odainsaker

Some time ago I made an accurately scaled map of the San Francisco bay area using a 16-bit mapmaking process and 1 arc-second (30m) Copernicus DEM data layered over 30m NCEI bathymetry DEM data. I noticed the NCEI bathymetry when rendered using SC4 Mapper colors had a processing artifact: contour lines! I admit, I kinda like the visual effect even if it is a sign of stair-stepping in the underwater portions of the map. Sadly, it would be masked away and lost once these tiles are rendered within SimCity with a proper terrain or water mod.

There indeed does not seem to be many detailed photos out there but instead numerous paintings. It doesn't help that as steam propulsion became more reliable, sails were seen as auxiliaries, continuously reduced and simplified to cut down on crew size until the sails were eliminated entirely. If the sails weren't even being used, there is even less chance of such a ship being photographed with a full spread of sail. I wonder if it might help to pin down on a particular named ship. Best bet might be something like the SS Great Western (1838) or the SS Great Britain (1845), which actually still exists preserved in Bristol and so would have more recent measured drawings and photos. Interestingly, those two Brunel achievements are in the lineage of the goliath SS Great Eastern (1857). The Inman Line had a number of sail-rigged steamships, several of which, such as the SS City of Rome (1881), were acclaimed for their beautiful profiles: ...but, yeah, how much of this is the artist rather than the reality. Interestingly, SS Oceanic (1870), the first of the famous White Star Line and the lead of the popular Oceanic class of six ships, several of which served until 1910. ...of course, again, how much of this is the artist? Should I ever spot an true photograph of any of these actually with sails deployed, I'll be sure to share. __________ I admit, I've also long been looking at fan-made models for the games "Virtual Sailor" and "Vehicle Simulator," particularly those on the wondrous fansite Great Virtual Fleet by Fabricio3d. Amusingly, I was looking specifically for sail-rigged steamships for historic port scenes! Perhaps more usefully here now, though, is that the fansite has a nice catalog of already-made ships which can be skimmed to see how they and their sail patterns may look before embarking on a full, self-made, high-detail BAT recreation of a particular ship. Here is a link and sample to the collection for the White Star Line: ...of course, how much of this is the artist, for did these steamships ever actually deploy this much sail? __________ SMS Hindenburg's mast tophouse is so intimidating! Like Maximillian!

Your Cutty Sark came out amazing! Given the theme and sides of the thoroughly engrossing historic navies collaboration, I have to do a fun shout out for a paired recreation of Preußen, a stunningly 5-masted, full-rigged icon of the windjammer era. Sadly, Preußen was accidentally rammed by a cross-channel steamer and infamously lost off Dover, but I know the perfect artist to bring this historic wonder back to the world!

Are we sure those are not really photos of real scenes?! Amazing! All the wonderful scenes in this thread are keeping me wide awake with SimCity thoughts. I might have mistakenly thought many of the towering downtown scenes were already stitched mosaics with the new camera angles, but perhaps the new viewing angles are trowing off our established sense of the familiar SimCity scale. I too was thinking of also doing something like that when taking the previous image of Stromboli, as the single tile view had cut off the sides of the island volcano. So... Just needs a lava lightshow! __________ At this furthest zoom these landscape side profiles are already huge images, but why stop here? Adjusting my game's vertical resolution to 1200 pixels got me just enough camera view height to fit in the accurately scaled height of Mount Vesuvius: A 4x3 large city mosaic panorama was made with the highlight city tile being the one closest to the viewer. Imgur won't let me upload the full width of the profile view as seen from the Bay of Naples that I made with the settings "CameraYaw 45" and "CameraPitch 0", so here is the 50% reduced image size: But, we can still enjoy a view of the Vesuvius in full-size cropped for Imgur acceptable sizing: Herculaneum is near the center of the panorama facing the coast. Pompeii is further inland to the right-side image edge. I need to pile in @WannGLondon's BATs around the volcano base. (Photo from Mario Coppola) I may need to adjust my background graphics and then have some fun triggering disasters down upon my sims!

Omigosh, like many others I at first though the mod was an April Fool's Day joke, but now I have been playing with it all night! In a Grand Canyon map I showed in another thread, I tried to make a bridge which SimCity instead decided to make into a thrill ride with a down ramp slotting through the canyon walls. I wondered if with the camera mod we could seemingly get inside the canyon: I did indeed try to look upwards with the camera, but there are numerous zoom, scroll, and elevation constraints. Almost...however, amusing as it was, I never expected to be able to actually look down that ramp slot in game... ____________ While I could not look upwards with the camera because of the geometry of the canyon, I did alternatively try to look upwards towards the Matterhorn for a better profile of the sharply pyramidal mountain: However, because it too its prominence already begins so high in elevation, zooming and vertical scrolling constraints kick in. That will probably hold for any great mountain. However, at sea level it is possible to get certain iconic profiles. Gibraltar: Stromboli: Sugarloaf: These max zoom out views of large city tiles use "CameraYaw 45" and "CameraPitch 0". The camera is pointed to the center of the map with those options, and the map center remains at window center regardless of rotation, but it is also not possible in this configuration to further scroll vertically or horizontally at this zoom. For comparison, here is an accurately scaled Sugarloaf Mountain in default SimCity camera angles: ...and here is the same map with "CameraYaw 45" and, more importantly, "CameraPitch 12.5" applied: The profile at this angle looks so much pronounced and recognizable, ready for a SimCity partial recreation of one of Rio de Janeiro's iconic views: (Photo by Jeremy Woodhouse—Digital Vision/Getty Images on Encyclopædia Britannica) Just add city!

I was finally able to resolve the issues I was having with many of @CycleDogg's terrain mods, as I wasn't catching that the multi-mod installer needed me to deliberately select the appropriate default rock textures essentials file as it didn't automatically default to the defaults when the desired terrain mod was selected. Minor technical details...what matters is that I can now apply the Grand Canyon Terrain Mod to my own Grand Canyon map: Naturally, there was a compatibility issue between the seasonal tree settings of the terrain mod and the seasonal tree settings of the used Cascadia Tree mod, causing the trees to not rotate through the seasons, but I was able to resolve those. I still haven't tweaked for snowlines or treelines yet, as I just wanted to see a quick mockup with everything working in a test plugins environment. This map orientation was originally meant to also include Zion National Park: However, I think I instead like the following alternate map orientation: At the top, rightmost corner is the volcanic S P Crater, for which @CycleDogg's Grand Canyon terrain mod also provides a great match before the drier season takes hold: (Inset photo by J8063LRsteves (Steve S) on Tripadvisor) For amusement I tried to see if my Grand Canyon could be bridged in SimCity, attempting a rough bridge near the Toroweap Overlook, but I forgot that my bare-bones test plugins folder didn't have NAM's bridge or slope controllers, and so SimCity decided on an alternative infrastructure strategy: To cross the canyon, daring drivers begin by entering a giant ramp whose thrilling descent cuts a sheer slot through the cliff wall. Gaining downwards acceleration, vehicles will have enough speed when entering a tunnel entrance at the base of the opposing cliff wall to then be propelled upwards through the sharply rising tunnel and ejected at the top of the cliff out though a tunnel exit emptying into another ravine.

Real life once again threw all my best laid plans into a rollercoaster, but I did get a moment to tease out another personal 31x52 large map experiment I call Greater Phoenix: In truth, "greater" Phoenix is more to the bottom left quadrant of this map, but I wanted to also include Sedona and Arcosanti, site of Paolo Soleri's real-wrold attempt at building a small arcology. However, the most interesting feature that decided the overall map cropping for me is in the extreme top right corner: Meteor Crater, Arizona! Overall the map is made on 1 arc-second, or roughly 30-meter resolution Copernicus DEMs. Currently, this is the best that the general public can freely acquired for most of the globe and, for SimCity, it is really good enough, however, it is still less sharp than SimCity's own 16-meter per ground tile can allow, and we can see a bit of the effect of lower resolution along the rim edge of the crater. Fortunately, for a few countries or of select areas the public can freely download DEMs at even tighter resolutions. The USGS offers DEMs at 1/3 arc-second, or roughly 10-meter resolution, of the United States. Other, better SimCity mapmakers than myself had already been using 10-meter DEMs already ten years ago. This resolution creates DEM tile sizes that are perhaps completely unwieldy for 31x52 large SimCity maps such as those I have been tinkering with, but it is easy enough to process and cut-and-paste iconic features like certain mountain summits using this higher resolution map data, and so I did the same with Meteor Crater: Definitely a slight but noticeable improvement over the 30-meter based Copernicus DEM. The greater map is still based on 30-meter DEMs, but where I want signature detail like for the Meteor Crater, a 10-meter DEM section can be used. You can find 3-meter DEMs for the U.S., 5-meter DEMs for France, and even 2-meter and 0.5-meter DEMs of the whose of Switzerland for those willing to tackle the Swiss coordinate system. That's overkill, as SimCity will ultimately reduce the resulting resolution to 16-meters per ground tile. USGS, EarthExplorer, NED, and now 3DEP keep changing the ease of use of their alphabet soup map viewing and downloading portals, but a current direct source for 1/3 arc-second, 10-meter DEM data of the U.S. delivered as 1°x1° tiles in TIFF format is the USGS ScienceBase-Catalog: 1/3rd arc-second Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) - USGS National Map 3DEP Downloadable Data Collection Be aware the filesizes are hefty and the tiles are organized and identified in their filenames by their top left latitude and longitude coordinates in 1°x1° intervals. Also, when DEM merging tiles, the DEMs do employ a 12-pixel overlap. I had used the wonderful Sahara Terrain Mod by @_marsh_ in the crater images above. This is probably not the ideal desert terrain mod to emulate this real-world location, but it helped to see the crater rim edges, and I have not yet been successful getting many of the CPT-essentials-referencing terrain mods to fully cooperate, like the CP Painted Desert or Grand Canyon Terrain Mods by Cycledogg, even though they look to be the perfect fit for this map. I think I have the essential files loading in the right order in a clean test plugins folder, but there may be some special terrain modding tweaks or elevation/slope handling issues I need to resolve. I did alternatively get the CPT-essentials-referencing Socorro Terrain Mod V.2 by @_marsh_ to work, and, amusingly, I did find a relatively similar aerial photograph at just the right perspective angle to compare: (Insert image by Shane.torgerson, CC BY, on The Conversation: "Meteorite impact turns silica into stishovite in a billionth of a second") Another alternate terrain mod quick attempt using the LBT Chihuahua Terrain Mod by @Heblem yielded even more snow because of the high elevation: Move along, Imperial Probe Droid...I haven't developed any Rebel bases there!

Another fine entry with a fascinating warship! I love the image of SMS Von der Tann passing through the roadstead entrance. Although simplified, I was caught up in the cutaway section showing the armor plan, as it explained a separate nagging mystery for me. A friend had made and given me a 1/700 scale model of the battleship Nagato, on which I had noticed a very peculiar bulge to its hull that gave the ship the appearance of what I had been calling a "pregnant guppy fish": This quick photo with my phone somewhat shows it, but physical moving around the model really makes it clear this sexy battleship has some belly fat and thick love handles! Nagato had began construction just under a decade after Von der Tann did and the cross-sections with anti-torpedo bulkheads were not too dissimilar. I had assumed I was just perceiving the general thickness of the armor casing around the vital internals, but I had never thought it was so bulbous from period photos. Wiki tells us that in the immediate naval design fallout after the Battle of Jutland, the Japanese designers apparently rapidly proposed additional, oil-filled anti-torpedo bulges to augment the existing bulkheads, but these were deemed too costly and time-consuming with construction already underway. Instead, these side-swelling blister augmentations were not actually added until Nagato was reconstructed in the mid-1930s, perhaps as torpedo-panic began to set in. I had seen a reconstruction armor section of Nagato, but did not then fully realize I was seeing a girth addition to the hull and not an original double-hull until I saw your simplified diagram with elements I could still trace within the reconstruction section. Interestingly, I can see in a similarly scaled gift model of the WW2-era battleship Bismarck that the bulging anti-torpedo blisters had gone out of favor in preference for optimal speed. ... Oh, naval zeppelins...I wonder if SimCity Cuxhaven will get an Imperial German Navy zeppelin base like the Nordholz Naval Airbase of the real-world Cuxhaven. Don't let the British spot the giant airship sheds!

I get excited to see ancient ruins and the layered remnants of past history in a city journal, and yours never fails to astound me. While I have been focusing on making maps, I get deeply caught up when I discover some region has a long lost city or excavated archaeological site that I just have to recompose and crop the map to incorporate these places. Of course, Greece, Italy, and the rest of the Mediterranean are just festooned with such sites. Recently, in cropping a map of Córdoba in Spain, I found out that just outside the city was the medieval archaeological site Madinat al-Zahra, the fortress city palace of the first caliph of Al-Andalus. Previously, in cropping a region map of Athens, I found out about Sounion with its Temple of Poseidon perched on a promontory with the most amazing views of the Aegean. Nope, I haven't ever been to Greece or the Temple of Poseidon, but I know I've seen it before already, here in Dimland!

There is an old 1974 British miniseries called "Fall of Eagles" that follows the interplay of the major ruling dynasties from the 1848 Revolutions up to World War I, with scene-chewing across several episodes by Bismarck and Wilhelm II. Bismarck had taken control of the conservative education of young Wilhelm in order to pit Wilhelm obstinately as a counterweight against his more liberal parents Frederick III and Victoria, the former Princess Royal. Unexpectedly, Frederick III died early of cancer of the larynx, making Wilhelm II the new Kaiser, and with the original intended target of Wilhelm's pent-up conservative obstinacy now gone, the next remaining father-figure for the new Kaiser to stubbornly oppose turned out to be his old mentor Bismarck himself. Sacked by Wilhelm and faced with the crude dismantling of everything he had build for Germany, Bismarck in desperation turned to and embittered Victoria, and in a melancholy scene, both realize they are now powerless against they monster they had created. With Bismarck sacked, there was still one more larger, higher, paternalistic figure to oppose: Edward VII, from his hated liberal mother's side of the family, and the uncle with the larger empire and navy to jealously covet and despise. What a soap opera! I can see Wilhelm amateurishly sending battleship design sketches to his naval architects, as I must admit that I used my notebook paper in school to draw battleship side profiles, but I didn't have my own imperial naval ministry to send of my doodles to for serious design consideration. Probably for the best! Thanks for another fascinating chapter showing such wonderful ship models!

The more I learn of the Russian Baltic Fleet sent into the Far East the more I am baffled at how the Russians could be so grossly mismanaged. From the choice of fleet admiral because he was popular with the Tsar at the court in St. Petersburg, to sinking British fishing trawlers at the Dogger Bank thinking they were the Japanese. Understandably, the Russians were locked out of the Japanese-allied British network of coaling stations and so had to pack everything on board before even leaving the Baltic Sea, but that was on strongly tumblehome ships that were already top-heavy with Imperial Russian officer quarters outfitted as if they were St. Petersburg palace salons. Actually, I really shouldn't be so surprised, for if Massie's biography Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia is at all accurate, the entire tsarist system was such a teetering house of cards of bad decision-making, where at every turn when a critical choice was faced, tsarist, imperial, orthodox, and autocratic ideologies along with royal palace drama all invariably resulted in the choosing of the worst possible option. ______ Oh, thanks for another great chapter, the detailed drydock especially was wonderful to see. I am reminded of an old newspaper front page I had see in a book covering the history of Pearl Harbor where the 1913 headline was of the collapse of the harbor's first dry dock being attributed by local Hawaiians to the anger of the Pearl Harbor's guardian shark goddess, whose underwater cave home in the waters beneath the dock was damaged by the construction. Later reconstruction of the dry dock was carried out both with re-engineered designs and with appeasement offerings made by Hawaiian priests to the shark goddess. More interesting to me was the newspaper front page spread had an artist's drawing of a giant shark god dramatically thrashing across the front page as if fearsomely swimming through the text and photographs in vengeful fury. It was one of the most beautifully composed newspaper spreads I had seen, and now we don't publish newspapers with front pages quite like that anymore.

Amusingly, @SIM-ple Jack's mock up and @Dreadnought's intentions remind me greatly of a series videos I had watched by Samuel Resin Models on YouTube of creating diorama battle scenes using plastic model kits of 1/700 scale battleships. The most jaw-dropping to me was an exploding and sinking Yamato diorama, and though these are physical plastic kits dioramas, they are not too unlike the digital models and dioramas we all make in SimCity, and in this case especially the marvelous city journal Imperial Dockyards: Cuxhaven. I like how the modeler after some comments in the first video went back to not only add more battle damage in the second video, but went far further and has the decks and water now running red with spilled blood. Like @Dreadnought's current search for shell splashes the plastic kit modeler here too had to devise a means to construct bomb and torpedo splashes, though in this case physically with festooned cotton balls. I have no doubt the non-physical SimCity version will amaze us all. Enjoy, and I hope these were interesting or inspiring!

Some quick renders from prominent spots around a Greater Seville map. They are undeveloped, over-forested, and still have non-Mediterranean terrain textures as I was just looking at rough-drafts and config layouts, but I wasn't expecting the Pillars of Hercules to still be so scenic... The Rock of Gibraltar Jebel Musa Ceuta Cádiz Maybe instead of fortifying these historically strategic locales we're going to make vacation resorts! Then again, the British and Franco-Spanish armadas are just off Cape Trafalgar, so maybe the coastal fortresses are warranted.