Svět Virtuálních Křídel (IL-2 Sturmovik 1946, Cliffs of Dover, Rise of Flight)

South Atlantic Map early access release note

Hello fellow rotary and fixed wing aircraft enthusiasts. With the imminent early access release of the South Atlantic map, we, the team, wanted to give everyone a heads-up about what you can expect from the initial early access release so you can make an informed purchase.
We believe it’s important to be open and transparent regarding the current state of the project in early access and to share our goals moving towards full release and beyond.

Scope of the map

Since it would be our very first terrain module, the initial scope of the map was to represent the Falklands/Malvinas islands at the time of the Falklands conflict to have an interesting but small scale map for the team to work on. We soon realized it would be very restrictive for current aircraft in DCS to limit the map to what was available in 1982. For example the 80’s era runway at Mount Pleasant is too short to land an F16 on but we do hope to add era-specific options for the map in future for those who wish to create historically accurate scenarios.

After listening to the community, the team decided to also include part of the South American content, to greatly increase the possibilities offered by the map. This scale change increased our workload by a factor of 75, which resulted in the map releasing in 2022 instead of 2020. We hope that you will agree that this decision was for the best.

Including part of the South American continent really pushes the bounds of DCS maps in terms of size as this map will be the biggest yet with 3.1 Million km² total size.

Technology

In order to make this map as realistic as possible we decided at the early stages of the project to use satellite imagery as a base for the ground textures, providing the user with the most realistic depiction of that part of the world that we possibly could. This has provided the unique challenge of having to hand “clean” every part of the landmass to remove clouds, buildings, seasonal stitching and discoloration. This single task has taken thousands of man hours to accomplish and we’re still working on it through early access.

For all Airfields and cities we have used the highest custom texture technology available within DCS currently, which is known as splatmap technology and makes use of high quality custom designed textures.

In order for the map to look good at low altitude, the team needs to work on improving the mesh and textures by hand as well as adding objects like rocks, debris, additional trees and bushes. This work is very time consuming which, combined with the size of the map means we do ask for a little patience while we work on this throughout early access.

Current state of the map

Over the past few months we have concentrated mostly on the Falklands/Malvinas islands by, for example, refining the technology for cliff generation. We still have more work to do on the mainland, while the major cities are pretty much done with regards to placement like Rio Gallegos, Rio Grande, Ushuaia and a few others, there is still more work to be done. As you can imagine the map is absolutely massive.

At this stage of the project the team feel that the map is good enough to be enjoyed by the public under EA. However, due to the fact that the mainland low altitude level of detail is still not up to the high standard we aim, more work will be done to it in a steady and timely manner during EA.

The current size of the map is around 70 GB, if we had taken the decision to render all land masses using the highest quality textures, the map would have been around 250 GB. So there is a happy balance to be had with size compared to texture quality for the areas between the populated airfields, towns and cities.

The team will be moving their focus from the Falkland/Malvinas Islands over to the mainland to address the issues and enhance the areas mentioned above.

Assets pack

Due to the requirement for further testing, we are not able to ship the assets pack with the map at this current time. The full assets pack which includes the ships will be pushed by ED at the next update.

Our original thought was to delay the initial release of the map so that the assets could be included, however we feel that these are not the main focus of the map but are an enhancement. In addition to this we have decided to allow the first wave of the assets to be included into the core game, so this means everyone will get them for free whether they purchase the map or not.

Conclusion

We hope this early access release note has given everyone in the community enough information to make a well informed purchase and has explained the scope of our project.

We are really proud of the work that has been done so far, everyone on the team has worked incredibly hard on this and we are committed to go as far as possible with the current software and hardware limitations to bring you the best depiction we can of this beautiful part of the world to enjoy in DCS.