IL-2 FB Heightmap Creator

Table of Contents

• Synopsis
• Dependencies
• Installation
• Available tools
  • il2fb-heightmap-create
  • il2fb-heightmap-render
• Example of usage

Synopsis

Heightmap Creator is an unitily which creates high-resolution heightmaps of locations of «IL-2 Sturmovik» aviasimulator.

Height maps are created by loading missions to dedicated server. Missions contain meshes of objects with a spacing of 100 meters between objects. After a mission is loaded to server, coordinated of objects in the mission are queried.

There is a limitation on max number of objects which can be placed in a single mission and this limit is around 10'000 objects. Taking into consideration that locations can have areas of thousands of square kilometers, it is not possible to place all needed objects in a single mission. Hence, multiple missions are genereated to query all heights sequentially. Heightmap Creator can use multiple servers to parallelize all load to decrease overall execution time. For example, it's possible to decrease execution time from hours to tens of minutes.

The output of Heightmap Creator is a binary array of heights which are evenly spaced over the whole location with a step of 100 meters.

Such binary data can be used to render height maps (including isohypses) or to locate plains suitable for placing different objects on them, etc.

Heightmap Creator comes with a rendering tool which can visualize height maps using colors which are comfortable for perception by humans.

Dependencies

Heightmap Creator communicated with IL-2 dedicated servers via HTTP API provided by il2fb-ds-airbridge, so servers must run under its control.

Installation

Heightmap Creator is available as a Python package and can be installed via pip:

pip install il2fb-heightmap-creator

Available tools

il2fb-heightmap-creator package comes with a couple of tools for creation of height maps.

il2fb-heightmap-create

Generates binary array of heights by querying points on a given location.

usage: il2fb-heightmap-create [-h] -l LOADER --height HEIGHT --width WIDTH
                              [-o OUTPUT_FILE_PATH] -s SERVER_ADDRESSES
                              [SERVER_ADDRESSES ...]

Create heightmap for a given location of «IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles»

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -l LOADER, --loader LOADER
                        Map loader, e.g. 'Hawaii/load.ini'
  --height HEIGHT       Map height in meters. Must be proportional to 100
  --width WIDTH         Map width in meters. Must be proportional to 100
  -o OUTPUT_FILE_PATH, --out OUTPUT_FILE_PATH
                        Output file path. Default: 'heightmap.raw'
  -s SERVER_ADDRESSES [SERVER_ADDRESSES ...], --servers SERVER_ADDRESSES [SERVER_ADDRESSES ...]
                        Addesses of root HTTP API endpoints of dedicated
                        servers controlled by «il2fb-ds-airbridge»

il2fb-heightmap-render

Renders binary data generated by Heightmap Creator.

usage: il2fb-heightmap-render [-h] --height HEIGHT --width WIDTH
                              [-i INPUT_FILE_PATH] [-o OUTPUT_FILE_PATH]
                              [--isostep ISOSTEP] [-r DPI]

Render heightmap of a given location of «IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles»

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --height HEIGHT       Map height in meters. Must be proportional to 100
  --width WIDTH         Map width in meters. Must be proportional to 100
  -i INPUT_FILE_PATH, --in INPUT_FILE_PATH
                        Input file path. Default: 'heightmap.raw'
  -o OUTPUT_FILE_PATH, --out OUTPUT_FILE_PATH
                        Output file path. Default: 'heightmap.png'
  --isostep ISOSTEP     Step in meters between isohypses. Default: 200
  -r DPI, --dpi DPI     Output resolution in DPI. Default: 48

Example of usage

Here is an example of heightmap creation process for NetMountains location.

That location has size of 51.2 × 51.2 km and its map is shown below.

At least one dedicated server under control of Airbridge is needed to create a heightmap. For this example we will use 8 servers. In this case binary heightmap can be obtained be running the following command:

il2fb-heightmap-create -l NetMountains/load.ini --height 51200 --width 51200 -o heightmap.raw -s \
    http://127.0.0.1:5001 \
    http://127.0.0.1:5002 \
    http://127.0.0.1:5003 \
    http://127.0.0.1:5004 \
    http://127.0.0.1:5005 \
    http://127.0.0.1:5006 \
    http://127.0.0.1:5007 \
    http://127.0.0.1:5008

Creation of heightmap will look as it is shown on the image below. Watch this video to see the whole process.

Heightmap Creator will produce a binary array stored in heightmap.raw file. This file can be used to render a 2D heightmap using il2fb-heightmap-render tool:

il2fb-heightmap-render --height 51200 --width 51200 -i heightmap.raw -o heightmap.png

This will produce a heightmap.png image which is shown below.