Will there be a way to choose from different map projections in OR, or perhaps to even use a true 3D earth?
One of my biggest complaints of all with MSTS is that the map projection causes "compass" north to differ by about 15 degrees from "north" as shown by the tile boundaries and placement grid. In the part of the country where I live and model, city streets as well as rural country roads are generally laid out on a square north-south/east-west grid system. If roads are placed using GPS coordinates, the result looks like a series of parallelograms rather than a square grid. So I'm forced to make a choice between following the GPS and laying it out to look right visually. But if you're building a railroad that runs north to south, you're forced to go for the most accurate placement over long distances, which means using the GPS and distorting the road grid.
I'm planning on building an all-new, expanded Conrail Indianapolis Division in Open Rails. But I already see where this map issue is going to bite me right in the rear as I lay out the street grid of Anderson, IN which has tracks running east-west (the Indianapolis Line main) as well as north-south (the Dow Secondary and industrial trackage) across the street grid. I'm going to be forced to either follow the GPS coordinates and distort the square street grid into rhombuses, or go for the best visual effect and have the Dow Secondary be miles off course (and totally out of sync with the surrounding terrain) as it gets farther out from town.
One of my biggest complaints of all with MSTS is that the map projection causes "compass" north to differ by about 15 degrees from "north" as shown by the tile boundaries and placement grid. In the part of the country where I live and model, city streets as well as rural country roads are generally laid out on a square north-south/east-west grid system. If roads are placed using GPS coordinates, the result looks like a series of parallelograms rather than a square grid. So I'm forced to make a choice between following the GPS and laying it out to look right visually. But if you're building a railroad that runs north to south, you're forced to go for the most accurate placement over long distances, which means using the GPS and distorting the road grid.
I'm planning on building an all-new, expanded Conrail Indianapolis Division in Open Rails. But I already see where this map issue is going to bite me right in the rear as I lay out the street grid of Anderson, IN which has tracks running east-west (the Indianapolis Line main) as well as north-south (the Dow Secondary and industrial trackage) across the street grid. I'm going to be forced to either follow the GPS coordinates and distort the square street grid into rhombuses, or go for the best visual effect and have the Dow Secondary be miles off course (and totally out of sync with the surrounding terrain) as it gets farther out from town.
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