What Maps do you guys use?

[Liam1992]

Or don't you tend to bother? I ask because I have had a stab at making one myself, using none other than Open Office's version of Microsoft Powerpoint.

 

I have used First and Only's Anzio Camp for it, on there forum there is a pre-existing map, but its rather bland and doesn't use any aerial imagery or anything of the sort. Aerial Imagery is widely available these days (Google, Bing) and truth be told, I make a living out of producing maps for the Military (make of that what you will).

 

So, I am just looking for a bit of feedback with this, on Maps and Nav in general and my personal OpenOffice attempt. I should make it known that I don't use OpenOffice at work, we have software designed for Map production.

 

Instead of a standard BNG Grid (OS Map style) or MGRS or what have you, I have gone for a much more simplistic Grid system, so that literally anyone can give a "coordinate". The grid squares are 30m by 30m (Using the Scale Bar off the bottom right of Bing Maps to measure 30m. I appreciate I could have done 10's, or 50's, or any other rounder number, but by the time I had realised and sorted it all out I wasn't going to change it, not for a test run at least.

 

Anyway, feedback definitely appreciated. I should also mention it has been produced at Page Size A5, so ideal for a leg pocket or Nirex Folder, or wherever you might choose to keep it. I also haven't printed one of these off yet, so I can't say what a hard copy might look like, and of course it depends on Colour printer availability!

 

Cheers all,

Liam

[Liam1992]

Apologies for the double Post.

 

.PDF Format Map attached. Its only 2mb so it won't ruin anyone's laptop/PC.

 

Cheers,

Liam

 

EDIT: Having an IT Mong moment...Wait out on Attachment!

[AirsoftTed]

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.

[Liam1992]

 

Okay it worked this time! I'll delete my middle post!

 

Cheers,

Liam

Anzio01.pdf

[Nickona]

I think a mix of aerial and draw would be useful, as in higlighting paths obstructed by trees etc

 

Maybe also pointing out highground and bunkers etc not visible from the google maps image

[Baz JJ]

Great map.

 

I think some of the woodland sites could do with their paths mapping as its very easy to get disorientated.

 

In some cases, its which direction is the respawn, again ? lol

 

Carrying a small button compass can often help with orientation.

 

You can tag tracks for night games with tiny IR reflectors on tree trunks that only NVG will see. Costs pence and a bit of preparation time.

[Sam_G]

Never really seen the point. Maybe for a Milsim but normal day skirmish not really.

 

I guess if you are in a team then it may be of use but like they say a plan is great untill the first bullet (or bb in our case) flies!

[Liam1992]

Points taken. I am going to mark the roads on and tracks on it in solid red and dashed red lines respectively. Fortunately for Anzio there are no underground bunkers (That I know of?!), however pointing out High ground or decent FSG Locations (As far as FSG exists in Airsoft) is certainly a good point. It would require input from regular players to point them out to me as well. I've only played there once!

 

Maybe marked on the regen points if they are fixed for every game day?

 

Baz, carrying a Compass is a great idea on an area your not familiar with definitely.

 

I can see why you wouldn't see the point if you were working independently I agree, especially if you have a prior knowledge of the area, but as a team I can definitely see the point. The Map is orientated (ie: North is North on the Map), so you could always say over the radio that you have, for example, "3 enemy just outside of D1" OR "3 Enemy, North of D1 in grid Lima-8". Its just a bit more definitive if your not entirely sure of your surroundings.

 

As for Plans not surviving contact, its a load of codswallop. If your plan doesn't take into account A; Contact with the enemy and B; Friendly Casualties then whoever made the plans needs shooting themselves. Allowing for room to manoeuvre in any plan is essential surely.

 

Cheers,

Liam

[UIVenger]

Good map, although I have to admit the "boring" site map that F&O have for Anzio does seem a lot clearer and less cluttered IMHO.

[Liam1992]

Fair comment. I agree to an extent. It does put across the information really well. In fact it is more than good enough for a day out, admittedly.

 

The only reason I had a go because, speaking from experience, aerial imagery (particular at much larger scales - <1:5,000) is generally what is used nowadays in the military (not necessarily Airsoft) and for those of you who crave that ultimate realism, this is the kind of thing that gets produced for modern battlefield commanders.

 

I'm not saying its better. Hell, actually the pre-existing effort on F&O is excellent, I'm just saying that Imagery is what is being used these days.

 

And, to add a small point, if your going to use quotation marks, quote the correct words. I said "bland" not "boring".

 

Cheers,

Liam

[remus]

would be nice but think my regular site is too small, and probably more importantly they keep moving stuff to keep the games changing so you want to come back(removed my tyre walls that i used to hide behind:() cause when a regular finds a good position they usually aim to reuse it... also the sites style of play changes seasonally, id the 'ditches,trench' is avoided in winter when they are full of water but are brilliant at this time of year, tall grases making some areas better etc... (ie if yo're useing one make sure its up to date...

 

also as a suggestion for what else you can do, if you use photoshop or whatever, fade the picture and use whatever tools to highlight the walls leaving doors visible and boundary lines too.... maby even windows ?

[UIVenger]

I wasnt quoting you, I was adding my own emphasis to my own choice of word. I agree that aerial photography does add, but in the military, their imagery is recent and not from whenever Google Maps took their images from.

[Liam1992]

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

[Tariq]

The only things you really need to know are regen points, main areas and the safe zone. I just remember where things are.

[Ian_Gere]

I've just recently done an edit of an aerial image map of Ground Zero Woodland. The file is so huge that I can't upload it onto free hosting to show you however! That was the problem with the original though - once it was reduced to a useful 'tactical' size, the labels where too small for easy reading. I redid all the labels with either a solid or translucent black background and recoloured paths and tracks so they can still be seen under text boxes. I made the regen's (Dead Zones in GZ parlance) more obvious also and added red dots as specific markers for where the labelled points are.

 

I've had 10 printed by Vistaprint in their large glossy postcard format, so they'll shed water if it rains. It's not quite A5, but similar in size, and about as small as it can be without labels obscuring data too much, or being too small. They're for the National Airsoft Event later this month, because last time I did get lost. I'm also having a go at making a google map layer, but it's not easy because there are discrepancies between their satellite image, this other aerial image, and various line drawing maps of the place.

 

This is the map I worked from for the prints.

 

Re: button compasses

 

I used to have one attached to my tobacco pouch - somehow its polarity has got almost reversed, ie North now points to about 140° South East-ish, which is weird... anyway, it can point where it likes now because it'll be the same in all directions: landfill I've recently bought one of these instead:

Russian Wrist Worn Marching Compass

It's great!

I don't know Anzio, so I can't comment, but I will say that I think your grid lines are too prominent. They make it difficult to resolve shapes beneath, as well as making it difficult to read the yellow font where they cross. To me the whole point of using a photo is so that you can compare it to what you see in front of you, so in this case to be able to tell which buildings you were looking at and what was in areas you couldn't see behind them.

 

I recommend finer solid lines in a darker colour, grey, or blue-grey, but maybe have them change to white over the greyed out areas to aid the eye in following the more subdued lines.

[Hudson]

This is the standard version that I use at Centurion Airsoft, just a basic map; I took the imagery off Googlemaps and just made my own grids to suit.
It's not glamorous, but it does the job.

Adding some details of the areas and Points of interest on the site, I ended up with:

 

But it's maybe a bit too cluttered now, I think.

[Mack]

awesome work guys, What software are you using to make these?

[Ian_Gere]

I think that works really well full size, Hudson. The grid squares are quite large though, considering the size of the site and the degree of magnification you can use and still have a practical sized, one hand held, map. With finer grid lines you could easily have double the number, so each square would be about 35m² (a practical AEG shot) - much better for reporting positions over radio.

 

I did the edits I needed in Paint, Mack.

[Hudson]

I think that works really well full size, Hudson. The grid squares are quite large though, considering the size of the site and the degree of magnification you can use and still have a practical sized, one hand held, map. With finer grid lines you could easily have double the number, so each square would be about 35m² (a practical AEG shot) - much better for reporting positions over radio.

 

I did the edits I needed in Paint, Mack.

I'll give it a try when I can motivate myself enough to sit down and do it; see how it turns out.

[Hudson]

Right; due to my obviously excitement packed life, It didn't take long to actually sit down and have another go.
Preliminary version, Grid squares are now 50x50 pixels.

Opinions?

[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.