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Geoscape is Mercator projection but radar ranges are not?


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14 hours ago, Posca said:

Suggestion: Make radar ranges and Geoscape use the same map projection. I get annoyed seeing that I'll need and entire base just to cover the useless bits of Siberia. Minor quibble, I know

I don't think the current map is Mercator, it looks way more like Equirectangular which doesn't suffer the projection issues as much.

EDIT: also AFAIK your vehicles and UFOs treat the map as a flat 2D space without taking projection into account, so they would also need to tweak navigation on top of the radar ranges and that would probably make a mess for most players trying to understand the map and non-uniform unit movements.

Equirectangular:

Equirectangular_projection_SW.jpg

Mercator:

Mercator_projection_Square.JPG

Edited by bifohe6676
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Yeah, I mentioned the same thing, and also that the shadow "shape" showing day and night ought to change as we move through the seasons (and the subsolar point moves from tropic to tropic with some slight east-west differences associated with the ellipticity of Earth's orbit).  Correcting this would add some complexity, and I'm not sure the devs think it would be worth the effort given the returns.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 8/7/2023 at 1:21 PM, bifohe6676 said:

I don't think the current map is Mercator, it looks way more like Equirectangular which doesn't suffer the projection issues as much.

Yes, it's a modified equirectangular projection which removes Antarctica and also goes a bit further north than the north pole.

I'm trying to make a mod that corrects flight paths and hopefully also other things like day/night and radar range, but trying to calculate predicted interception points is really hard in spherical coordinates

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Speaking of this, exactly why didn't they make the map a globe?  Don't tell me the technology isn't there...  they made it work in the 90's, certainly we could have a 3d sphere map in this game?  Do some people not like it?  I actually prefer the globe map as it is more realistic.

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Guessing it would detract from all the notifications of events showing up on the map if half of them are on the other side of a globe, but yes, even if we don't get a globe as a map, make the radar projections distort correctly, and have everyone fly great circle routes over the poles

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For a globe, to see both sides of the planet at once, you could have two circular shaped maps side by side, locked so that when you “rotate” one, the other turns as well by the same amount. That way it can bypass any potential issues with the engine not being able to display a 3d sphere for an actual globe. 

Edited by Jorlem
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4 minutes ago, Jorlem said:

For a globe, to see both sides of the planet at once, you could have two globe maps side by side, locked so that when you rotate one, the other turns as well by the same amount. 

Or make the globe slightly transparent? Changing the geoscape is probably out of the question at this point, but maybe a paid DLC might be a possibility?

Edited by Skitso
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31 minutes ago, aat said:

Honestly, it is my biggest frustration. I don't mind the flight paths being straight lines, but at least the radar covering area should be projected correctly, rather than being uniform discs everywhere on the map

For simplicity, I propose to assume that the Earth is flat.

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