What Maps do you guys use?

[Ian_Gere]

Yeah, that works. As an exercise, try making the white label font pastel blue (Red 200, Green 200, Blue 240) and the orange font pale violet (Red 220, Green 200, Blue 240). I think it will make them more intelligible. Switching to a serif font will also help (the feet at the bottom of the letters make a line which the eye follows more easily than sans serif fonts in titles, or floating text, where there isn't a series of lines of text).

 

[Hudson]

I haven't bothered marking any areas or POI yet, but I've got as far as the bare-bones map.

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l276/Hudsonuk/Airsoft/redevelopedgridsnumberedandscaledoriented_zpsc9eb3624.jpg


**Edit: Now marked up the areas and tried the colours suggested.

Map

 

[Ian_Gere]

I think that those labels are easier to read than the white and orange of your original, for different reasons. What do you think?

To me the pale blue has much less tendency to create optical illusions against the greens of the background than the stark white; the kind of thing that can make letters difficult to distinguish unless you have excellent young persons' eyesight (which, sadly, I no longer do), like capital C & G, lower case m & rn, even f & t.

I think that the pale violet is just a damn sight easier to resolve against the greens than the orange. One thing I'm not convinced by is that there's enough difference between the 2 pastels to notice it in a glance. If that's important, I'd try experimenting with slightly more hue (reduce the Green or increase the Blue & Red while leaving the green alone).

The serif font is self evidently better than sans, I reckon, but I'm not sure that one suits the style. What is it, Times New Roman? Have you tried Courier New or Fixedsys?

If you're interested, it may be worth experimenting with different colours for fonts and other features, but as a rule of thumb pastels and light greys work better against mid intensity colours and variable backgrounds than white, black, or strong bright colours. Such bright colours work best against dark backgrounds, so much so that if you use, say, crimson red against varied green for marker symbols, sorta like this, ¶ ‰ ¤ ® it can be good to closely surround it with a transparent thin black circle.

 

[Liam1992]

Thats an excellent Map actually, really like how you have highlighted key areas in the blue polygons.

Its all really legible and I can imagine the font size, even on say A5 paper, would be more than sufficient.

I hadn't checked this thread in a couple of days, I am going to change mine and make it more user friendly (ie: Make those grid lines a lot, lot thinner)

I like how this has sparked a bit of interest. Can't fight without knowing where your going right?

Cheers,

Liam

 

[Hudson]

I'll be honest and say I find the new coloured font a fair bit harder to read, personally; but otherwise It seems a lot better for the changes, ta.
As to the font type; it's Deja Vu Serif.
I'll play around with some other colours and fonts.

 

[Ian_Gere]

I'll be honest and say I find the new coloured font a fair bit harder to read, personally; but otherwise It seems a lot better for the changes, ta.

As to the font type; it's Deja Vu Serif.

I'll play around with some other colours and fonts.

Well, everyone is different and that doesn't exclude how our eyes respond to different colours. So yeah, experimentation will find what works best for you.

 

[two_zero]

I've always wanted to use a map, but my two locals are far too small to need one.

I've seen lads try to use one (just a screenshot of the site off google earth) to very little success as no one seems to be willing to follow a plan

I'm going to venture out to some Milsim weekenders when I can, should imagine they'd be very handy then.

I disagree. I have very hard to keep count on the amount of rooms on each side of the "sticking out part" / rooms on each side of the courtyard @ twa urban. Sadly ofcourse you cant get this of an exsisting map since its under roof. think I did make a map, but not quite sure as to where it is.

 

[fivezerothree]

Marking doors and windows is definitely something I'll look at. It is difficult using vert imagery however, but its possible.

Military imagery is only as recent as the satellite that captured it. Go onto Google and see how many Satellites we control. Our imagery is as current as our NATO allies allows it to be. Fortunately Afghanistan is imaged daily at an incredible resolution, but I think you will find that OpenSource Imagery (Bing, Google etc) are actually very good.

Bing in particular. Windows 8 uses it, its the imagery I have used for this. I can't say for sure what resolution it is at, I would estimate around 25 cm (For reference, Afghanistan has been imaged as single digit resolution), so it is not bad at all.

Google doesn't update its Imagery as often because it isn't economically viable for them to do so anymore, hence why it is wildly out of date in some cases.

OpenSource imagery doesn't require ISTAR assets to capture information.

Cheers,

Liam

Have you this version in PDF glory I can haz?

Wouldn't mind properly printing that and using it. I'm terrible getting my bearings right especially as Anzio's buildings are all the bloody same!

 

[Liam1992]

fivezerothree, on 06 Aug 2013 - 13:49, said:

Have you this version in PDF glory I can haz?

Wouldn't mind properly printing that and using it. I'm terrible getting my bearings right especially as Anzio's buildings are all the bloody same!

Yeh mate. I've made the Grid lines a little clearer and added a slight transparency to them. I haven't printed one out myself yet (I am about to try it in a minute)

The file is less than 3mb so shouldn't cause any problems.

EDIT: Attached it to a PM message.

EDIT II - Attached PDF to this Post so anyone can scrutinise/view!

Cheers,

Liam

Anzio_Complete.pdf

 

[fivezerothree]

Yeh mate. I've made the Grid lines a little clearer and added a slight transparency to them. I haven't printed one out myself yet (I am about to try it in a minute)

The file is less than 3mb so shouldn't cause any problems.

EDIT: Attached it to a PM message.

EDIT II - Attached PDF to this Post so anyone can scrutinise/view!

Cheers,

Liam

Thanks ever so much!

 

[hprentice]

I often use my garmin foretrex and set in the waypoints