World Background Maps

[BenganJ]

@3rik

You'll get an answer later as everyone else!

[3rik]

@benganj
i know, i was just answering to everyone who has responded since :)

[Arayas]

I see a lot of people saying that the middle east on the SCS map is incorrect. How would you know that? There are alignment issues EVERYWHERE, not just in the middle east. clearly there are some parameter differences.

I've just posted that ME add-on is NOT wrongly placed. I was strongly convinced about their bad placement but for some reason i dont know why i didnt tested the SCS original background for the first time.
So, i was wrong.
But not about Promods in general, because they still have to cheat to fix UK, Island, Spain and other parts. Also i was wrong thinking the Eurasia background is perfect. Is not.
The problem is not Promods, is the fact many maps are now in the position dictated by Eurasia. What will we do with those, because in my opinion now we dont have any viable background.
And i KNOW Promods is not gonna provide one, so...all eyes on out friend Bengan.

For the note, if that matters, i will have to redo the RC with ME in the corect position.

[3rik]

I see a lot of people saying that the middle east on the SCS map is incorrect. How would you know that? There are alignment issues EVERYWHERE, not just in the middle east. clearly there are some parameter differences.

I've just posted that ME add-on is NOT wrongly placed. I was strongly convinced about their bad placement but for some reason i dont know why i didnt tested the SCS original background for the first time.
So, i was wrong.
But not about Promods in general, because they still have to cheat to fix UK, Island, Spain and other parts. Also i was wrong thinking the Eurasia background is perfect. Is not.
The problem is not Promods, is the fact many maps are now in the position dictated by Eurasia. What will we do with those, because in my opinion now we dont have any viable background.
And i KNOW Promods is not gonna provide one, so...all eyes on out friend Bengan.

For the note, if that matters, i will have to redo the RC with ME in the corect position.

I didnt mean the ME addon, i meant the background map.
paeokkekir, for example, said "The scs ui map that now goes to middle east is by no means correct, it is just there for us to see something when we scroll further away from the game map."
I was saying that this is false.

But i also agree with everything you said, promods has some issues but ultimately this isnt their fault.

[paokkerkir]

This is not false, as defined by the parameters. The parameters suggest it is like this. It had happend in the past that they shifted the UI map when they added content, not by much, but the differences in central areas are not that big to begin with.
But, if/when SCS expands there, it might be the case they will continue the UI map like this, we can not know for sure, only speculate.

[3rik]

ive discussed this on the wombat discord but for those who arent in there ill say it here too.
paokkekir is implying that SCS is wrong, and that we all need to follow whatever bengan comes up with. if SCS and bengan used the exact same parameters, there would be absolutely no differences, not even in central europe. you cannot expect mappers to follow bengan over scs.
maybe scs is wrong, ok, but we dont know that and that dosent make bengan right.
your only argument is that if we follow scs we will have to change everything once scs reach this area. to that i say, firstly we dont know that, secondly, even if scs do reach the middle east one day, that will take years and no one knows what will have happened by then. why should we wait around with a messed up background map for the next 5 years, just so that incase scs change something in 2026 we wont need to adjust to that

[paokkerkir]

Man, really....If this is what you get for my comments, then I have to seriously look into my english skills.

[BenganJ]

I will try to keep this as non technical as possible, but it is hard when the differences we
are talking about is of the technical kind! I'll do my best!

Monday, December 12, 2016 ATS World Rescale is released in Update 1.5 is the event when
SCS changed to their new map projection, Lambert Conical. At the release of ETS2 v1.30
they also changed to that projection too, almost a year later. All this is confirmed in a
single post on the SCS forum, where Max from SCS says this.

Gazer75 wrote: ?15 Nov 2017 16:11
I believe SCS changed the projection for the in game map a while back.

indeed.
rescale was opportunity to fix more things. before we had USA map in
mercator projection (north border was line) and washington state has
similar size as texas. now we have lambert conical projection (most
used projection in north american atlases) - it preserves distances,
areas, good enough shapes and locally angles. the only thing is that
east-west direction is curved, but you cannot see it in game, and on
map you may expect it as USA are depicted like this commonly.

disadvantage is that map is heavily distorted in bigger distances
from USA.

btw, ets2 map is also conical projection just with different params.

Here you can see that from december 2017 BOTH ATS AND ETS2 had changed to Lambert
Conical projection. You can also see there why I have guessed SCS still uses a Mercator
projection for their present UI map in ETS2. It was their previous one and it looks like
that. Maybe it's as simple as, SCS is lazy and as long as the old UI BG works, why change
it! I don't give a damn, nobody except SCS knows the truth there and they won't tell us.
Sadly that don't stop Promods from basing their UI BG on that, in spite of the fact that
they are now starting to enter area with distortion. Expanation further down.

I will now try to visualize what this Lambert Conic projection looks like. You have a cone,
with its top straight above the North Pole, cutting into the globe at a certain latitude,
for ETS2 at the 65th one, producing a circle around the globe. It then returns to the outside
at another latitude, the 37th. It looks like what you see to the left in the following picture.

Lambert_conformal_conic.jpg

Click on image to get a bigger one!

In the case of ETS2 the map origin is located slightly to the east of Prague and in an area
around and in between those circles, the map is pretty correct. But moving above the upper
circle and below the lower one, the higher the distortion will be. moving east or west will
get you pretty good correctness but the map will be more and more rotated. That's how SCS's
ONLY map projection works. You can see the flat map representation to the right in the above
picture.

I have to use that map projection as my BGs are so large as to cover all the way east to Japan
and down including Madagascar. SCS don't have to do that and Promods ought to do it. I'll stop
here now, as I'm damned tired of having to explain these things over and over again. At least
try to take it in and understand the problems with this. I don't "ddemand" ANYTHING from Promods
or SCS, they can do, and will do, whatever they see fit, I have only suggested things.

@paokkerkir

Thanks mate, you seem to have grasped what it's all about. You try to understand. But, as I said
to you and also up above, Mercator is just a guess, ONLY SCS knows.

@MG Mike

You too try hard to understand, but have a harder time, but keep reading and be curious.

@Arayas & 3rik

You two sadly do the same mistake as Promods, comparing with the SCS UI BG, which we know NOTHING
about. They might change to the official Lambert Conic projection at any time, we probably won't
be notified about it either.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As a concluding statement, I will NOT do any covering up for any maps. PERIOD! The last update
though of the three ETS2 universal BGs to v1.3, was not a success, so I will do some small one
adjustments soon. It will NOT fix the ME problem.

Feel free to comment as much as you like, but I will now take a rest from this damn chaos, I'm
tired! And folks, I'm in NO way forcing you to use any of my stuff, it's your choice all the way.

[Sansemiano]

@BenganJ: Man, just adapt your map and get over it. All this stubborn theoretical user-unfriendly behaviour leads to nothing.

[3rik]

If its that hard to decide, i think we should just have another poll. ask people, do they want this background map to follow SCS's image, therefore also following promods
or do they want this map to continue using whatever it currently is.