Addition of 'Pyrenees' map to [Enduring Confrontation] Air Simulator Battles

[S3b5]

I actually have a bunch of minor complaints/pet peeves about the map that I’d like to see addressed if it were to ever be made into a sim map.

Here’s a rough outline of where the map in War Thunder is situated in real life.

I think the real world:map scale is pretty good, it’s almost 1:1 (and probably is 1:1, I just made a mistake in my cartography). So my issues aren’t scale related, just like minor grievances that I have with it lol

For starters,

There’s no names on anything! Personally, I think that maps are a lot cooler when they have names on locations in the map, like

Afghanistan

or

Vietnam

No real reason, or requirement, I just think they’re cool and make the map feel more realistic.

Additionally,

All of the little areas that you can tell were intentionally flattened to have a spot for an airfield. I personally think that these should be removed/reworked to better fit into the natural topography of the map. Some of these are particularly egregious, and make the map look really jagged and unreal.

For airports, should they want to model on the ground airports similar to Bagram Airbase or Kabul Airport on the Afghanistan map, there are a few airports close by.
Andorra–La Seu d’Urgell Airport is just south of Andorra and is well within the boundaries of the map. It is the only real commercial airport in a reasonable distance.
La Cerdanya Aerodrome is on the east side of the map just southwest of the Spanish exclave Llívia. It is also within the boundaries of the map currently. In real life it is a small GA airport.
Sainte-Leocadie Airport is just to the southeast of the Spanish exclave Llívia, and within the boundaries of the map. In real life it is a small military heliport with a recreational grass runway.
Mont-Louis - La Quillane Airport is on the far east side of the map, near the map border. In real life it is a small grass airfield for gliders.

While not the most… adequate… airfields for the planes we play in the game, their rough location can maybe inspire where to put airfields for simulator.
As well as that, dynaf (dynamic airfields) that are typically used for sim and RB can “conform” the terrain to my knowledge, at least to some degree, so probably don’t need stretches of flat land.

Those are kind of it.
I like accurate-to-life maps and I feel like recently the game has been somewhat moving away from those kinds of maps. Maybe if they put real place names down they can also add “cities” with some buildings and those could be “flashpoints” where we (the players) need to fight over.

Andorra la Vella, basically in the middle of the map. It’s currently not represented, but if added it could be a centerpiece of the map.

There is also a reddit post overlaying the real life map and the War Thunder map, which could be used as a reference.

Honestly if they do this maybe they should change the name of Pyrenees to Andorra, since the map would be centered around the micro-state.

[Chimpys]

map looks so cool with the cities. the mountains are really tall and valleys are hella deep so im lowkey worried about how ratty people might play it. or even worse how easy someone could run away and hide but its still a cool map and we need more sim maps.

[Mathll]

Of course this map needs to be played in a simulator, besides all the new maps should be playable in simulation

[CorporalApollo]

Nice post! Brought up some stuff I hadn’t thought of like city names not being on the map. There are tons of nice towns in the valleys, would be cool to see them displayed better.
The ‘flat areas’ are definitely not as bad as they look on the minimap in my opinion, in game they blend in with the colours and don’t stand out that much. Aside from maybe 2 of them, they wouldn’t be noticeable for anyone who didn’t know they were there. They could also be used as ground battle locations. dynaf airfields does somewhat conform to the ground, but they still need relatively flat ground below them to work, can’t just put them anywhere

Anyways I really think this map would be a breath of fresh air and it has by far the most potential out of all the large Operation maps. We already have ~15 flat maps in EC, only 1 with proper mountains and ~2-3 with decent terrain. From a gameplay perspective I think it’s perfect and gives much needed variety.

[kitsune_qq]

BTW
i have recorded some videos of my one hour journey to end of map

Spoiler

additional(unused) space is like 30-40km, for synai and only downwards

[pouletbidule]

pookie

[S3b5]

That is a good point about the flat areas actually, I hadn’t thought of it that way. But it seems to me that much of the conflict should center around the flat area in the middle that follows the valley. Since the other areas are impassible for tanks (and most other vehicles to be honest) the fighting would take place around the valley center and/or the towns in it.

Using the picture from my other post, I made this.

• Red lines would be the main axis of advance that would likely be repeated every game, due to the constricting terrain.
• Yellow is terrain that is, realistically, impassable to ground vehicles. Mostly the mountain peaks.
• Orange to Andorra la Vella is like a “side objective” that doesn’t really follow the main axis of advance, however it is important because that city is the capital of Andorra.
• Purple are minor axis of advance that are mostly along very tight canyons/valleys, and so those would probably be limited to a few vehicles or like road convoys.
• The small bits of blue are marking off tunnels that the roads take under the mountains.

It skirts the southern border of Andorra but does go through the Spanish exclave I previously mentioned.
But, since in game some of the areas are taken up by “airfield terrain” that is built into the map, there can’t really be “cities” (towns really) there because of the flat ground.
But, the flat ground like you mentioned would be good for static ground battles, however that is kind of the reason I marked the “axis of advance,” which is where any ground battles should be focused. In my opinion, that area is already flat enough for ground vehicles, such that the other flattened areas probably don’t need to be there.

Honestly more than anything the random flat areas where there should be stuff just bothers me lol

Additionally, I think a map like this can get away with like 2-3 bases per side instead of 6. They might have to face east/west to not mess with terrain too much. Anyone who is trying to get to the bases needs to go over the mountains, where radar will pick them up; or through the valley, where other people are going to be flying.
There could also be static AA emplacements on the top of the mountains that flash when firing at an enemy that tries to pass by; but they should have incredibly low accuracy. If you’ve played Ace Combat 4, the mission Northern Eye is kind of the vibe I’m going with for these emplacements.

[warthogboy09]

Wasn’t it advertised as going to be an EC map in its Dev Blog?

[CorporalApollo]

@S3b5

But it seems to me that much of the conflict should center around the flat area in the middle that follows the valley. Since the other areas are impassible for tanks (and most other vehicles to be honest) the fighting would take place around the valley center and/or the towns in it.

Yep, I’ve heard that convoys replenish and drive to ground battles, but I’ve almost never seen it happen so I’m not sure if it’s a requirement since convoys can also spawn without any ground battle present.

I’m actually working on making a custom mission for Pyrenees and have spent a ton of time flying around looking for good base spots, and scouting out road-bases. I think there’s 2 large ‘main’ areas where ground battles could spawn, with roads passing through.

These marked in the red circle/triangle

Those 3-4 valleys on the left are super scenic and definitely wide enough (one of them is located by that castle picture in my original post)
I love your idea of having a battle in Andorra la Vella

@S3b5

Additionally, I think a map like this can get away with like 2-3 bases per side instead of 6.

Yeah sure, bases don’t need as much flat terrain, and can likely fit in a lot of the valleys around the map like Afghanistan, but there’s plenty of good spots near the center too

@S3b5

There could also be static AA emplacements on the top of the mountains that flash when firing at an enemy that tries to pass by; but they should have incredibly low accuracy. If you’ve played Ace Combat 4, the mission Northern Eye is kind of the vibe I’m going with for these emplacements.

I love this! This is actually how I plan on using AA for my custom mission

[S3b5]

@CorporalApollo

Yeah sure, bases don’t need as much flat terrain, and can likely fit in a lot of the valleys around the map like Afghanistan, but there’s plenty of good spots near the center too

Rereading this, I meant bases as in airbases. Like runways, not the bomb targets.
Due to the terrain difficulty I think that fewer airbases would be better for this map.

[Code_649]

I wouldn’t mind seeing a ‘reworked’ Pyreness map in Air Sim Battles with everything added in. +1

[TankerDman]

Pyrenees is too sexy of a map to not get put in sim 😤😤

[Dahggg]

+1. We need new, bigger maps. Also bumpy, cover rich maps.

[Aerocraft_44]

I´ve been an advocate to bring this to SB ever since it got added, it would really be nice addition (even an upgrade imo) both visually and gameplay wise for 10.0+ and even below that with some tweaks!

Huge thumbs up!

[0minutes]

This is exactly why they wont add it

[0minutes]

someone shame this man

[CorporalApollo]

Pretty sure I know who it is lol

[pouletbidule]

squishy would neverrr

[MythicPi]

You can make votes public so everyone can see who votes no on objectively good ideas. 99% of the time the people who vote no don’t raise any actual arguments against something, much less a good argument, and tend to do so because it would either directly or indirectly harm their fav nation/vehicle, or just don’t like the poster and as such wanna spoil anything they do/suggest no matter what.

Kind like throwing themselves under the bus to make sure someone they don’t like also gets hit, which is embarrassing and childish.

[S3b5]

@CorporalApollo

however I’m not exactly sure if 128x128 is a limit with the engine right now

Late reply, but, as far as I can tell it is a limit with the engine. I watched the “custom map” tutorial for the cdk and tried to “make” one to verify it lol.

The engine currently uses a pixel heightmap image as basis for maps with information about topography baked in with (basically imperceptibly) different shades of black. The heightmap has to be a 2048x2048px image. It uses cell size (meters) * resolution (constant 2048) which = the size of the location (also meters). So a 128x128km map has a cell size of ~62.5m, meaning between every “point” the game uses to calculate elevation, there is 62.5m of space.
But, since the game can only use a 2048x2048px image to determine this, any larger and the spaces between points will get too big. For example, a suggestion of mine,

Pearl River Delta Map

poll poll Pearl River Delta [image] The rough map borders of a potential Pearl River Delta map. TLDR: A large map of approximately ~555km (N/S) x ~740km (E/W), with total area of ~410,700sq km, stretches between the 26°N and 21°N latitude lines, and 109.75°E and 117°E longitude lines. Features numerous cities and pre-made airfields. With the increasing range of high end weaponry, and the imminent arrival of active radar homing missiles, it is starting to become apparent that some air maps a…

was approximately ~555x~740km. But since the game can’t do maps that aren’t perfect squares because of the way the imaging works, to fit the whole thing it would need to be ~740x~740km. Dividing 740,000(m)/2048 (resolution) means that there has to be a cell size of approximately 363m. I did try to render that just for fun and the editor crashed, lol, so I think it might be out of the question for now.
I think the current limit for map rendering/creation using the current engine would probably be about 100m/cell, giving a map of 204.8x204.8km. But even then it would be stretching it, and the map would probably look really jank.
So unless they figure out how to either up the resolution, fit more data into a smaller picture, or reconfigure the engine, these maps are probably as big as we’re going to get.

I do hope they do something about it though, DCS sized maps for EC would be awesome.