The R-QBAM main thread

[Tanystropheus42]

Will you be adding Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan when you get to the Black Sea-Caucasus area of Russia?

Eventually. The plan is to do All of Russia east of the Urals first (I think it'll all be done in about seven more patches, no idea how long that'll take), then yes, to do Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the unrecognised states all at once as a single patch. Then Turkey, Syria, the Levant ...

Anyway, have more Russia. On the one hand, the Russian federal subjects on the original QBAM are so terrible they're basically unusable as a base. On the other hand, no coastlines, and few lakes, hence why these patches are coming along so quickly (also, I found a treasure trove of good maps and have had a fair amount of free time).



Patch 33 - Russia 3;
- Added Tula
- Added Oryol
- Added Kursk
- Added Belgorod
- Added Lipetsk
- Added Ryazan
- Added Tambov
- Added Voronezh

 

[Tanystropheus42]

Having made good progress so far through Russia, things will probably slow down here for a week or so, for two reasons. Firstly, the next update will feature Archangelsk Oblast, which includes the horrible coastlines and ice sheets of Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land and will take longer to finish as a result. Secondly, I'll be rebooting an old TL of mine over the weekend (see the original thread in my sig if you're interested), so I'll probably be focusing more of my energies on that for the time being. With that out of the way ...

Patch 34 - Russia 4;
- Added Vladimir
- Added Ivanovo
- Added Yaroslavl
- Added Kostroma
- Added Vologda

 

[Spamavalanche]

Having made good progress so far through Russia, things will probably slow down here for a week or so, for two reasons. Firstly, the next update will feature Archangelsk Oblast, which includes the horrible coastlines and ice sheets of Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land and will take longer to finish as a result. Secondly, I'll be rebooting an old TL of mine over the weekend (see the original thread in my sig if you're interested), so I'll probably be focusing more of my energies on that for the time being. With that out of the way ...

Patch 34 - Russia 4;
- Added Vladimir
- Added Ivanovo
- Added Yaroslavl
- Added Kostroma
- Added Vologda

View attachment 748924

Welp, now we can make the 1914 patch for Europe

 

[Rac98]

Well, this took me a while, but just to not let you guys on the dark: here's the .pdn file with all references I had in QGIS re-projected by G.Projector, including part of those sources about Antarctica;
In short:
- Icecap (more detailed) and Bedrock Topographies (source ETOP01, ESRI)
- River Layers (source WWF)
- 1st Administrative Divisions (de jure)
- "Indigenous Lands" or similar from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Canada, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand and US (this layer in particular I know is very incomplete, the LandMark site has a much more complete reference)
- Coast of Antarctica (permanent frozen sea included) and Outcrop of Rocks (both are rendering strangely due to having polygons crossing the edge of the map, I still don't know how to solve this)
- Grid of 1st and 5th degrees of coordinates (this one I got from G.Projector itself)
I believe that it will be of enormous help to everyone who wants to collaborate. The way it is organized with the name of the layers explaining what each thing is, some have legends on the lower left side explaining the color schemes (the river and topography layers are grateful), other layers have some strange renderings and information that I know they are missing.
Overall I think it's a good start; I'll work on the coordinates first and later I'll help with the rivers I guess

 

[Tanystropheus42]

Well, this took me a while, but just to not let you guys on the dark: here's the .pdn file with all references I had in QGIS re-projected by G.Projector, including part of those sources about Antarctica;
In short:
- Icecap (more detailed) and Bedrock Topographies (source ETOP01, ESRI)
- River Layers (source WWF)
- 1st Administrative Divisions (de jure)
- "Indigenous Lands" or similar from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Canada, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand and US (this layer in particular I know is very incomplete, the LandMark site has a much more complete reference)
- Coast of Antarctica (permanent frozen sea included) and Outcrop of Rocks (both are rendering strangely due to having polygons crossing the edge of the map, I still don't know how to solve this)
- Grid of 1st and 5th degrees of coordinates (this one I got from G.Projector itself)
I believe that it will be of enormous help to everyone who wants to collaborate. The way it is organized with the name of the layers explaining what each thing is, some have legends on the lower left side explaining the color schemes (the river and topography layers are grateful), other layers have some strange renderings and information that I know they are missing.
Overall I think it's a good start; I'll work on the coordinates first and later I'll help with the rivers I guess

Well, that's excellent.

A lot of useful stuff there, that I'll definitely be using as work on this grinds on slowly. I already had a topographic/bathymetric map, and a partial rivers map courtesy of work on the 8K-BAM, and a 1-degree coordinate grid because it's such an easy (and useful) overlay to generate in G.Projector, but the rest is new and exceedingly helpful. Many thanks, when this is all done you'll definitely get a credit for helping out alongside Drex and Klime for making the original 8K-BAM.

And don't worry about the buggy layers in Antarctica - I already had layers for coasts/rock outcrops, I wanted a second (better) source to corroborate what I had already. I'll happily make do with the bugged out layer as is, it's better than what I had.

Again, thanks for the help, it's much appreciated.

In other news, I'm not expecting the next patch for at least a week - Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land are giving me a little trouble, but I've started so I'll finish, damnit.

 

[Tanystropheus42]

More progress on Russia. The far northern island groups are proving a right pain in the arse to finish (though I am at least at the half-way mark on Franz-Josef Land), and I haven't posted anything in a week, so decided to polish up what I had and post it today. Yes, the Dvina, the Mezen and particularly the Pechora are that wide that far inland, and yes, I agree it makes things look messy, but screw it, it's done now.

Patch 35 - Russia 5;
- Added Archangelsk (minus Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land)
- Added Nenets Autonomous Okrug (simultaneously a first-level federal subject and an autonomous region of Archangelsk)
- Added the Komi Republic

 

[Rac98]

Just an quick update on how the coordinates clean-up is looking, I think that I'll finish this 5° degree first soon

 

[Tanystropheus42]

A smaller patch today. Next up, finishing Novaya Zemlya (don't expect that to be done for at least a week).

Patch 36 - Russia 6;
- Added Nizhniy Novgorod
- Added Kirov
- Added Perm

 

[Analytical Engine]

Will you be adding the Komi-Permyak Okrug (formerly the Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug) in a future patch?

 

[Tanystropheus42]

Huh. Was not expecting to get this done in three days, but there you go, I've been oddly productive. Next up, more of the Urals, then finishing Franz Josef Land.

Patch 37 - Russia 7;
- Added Novaya Zemlya (part of Archangelsk oblast)

Will you be adding the Komi-Permyak Okrug (formerly the Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug) in a future patch?

As I've said before, I want to get Europe done first before cracking on with historical patches (the 1914 map is coming, just be patient), however that said adding the autonomous okrugs dissolved in the 2000's probably won't be too difficult, so I may get round to doing that soon.

 

[Tanystropheus42]

Oddly enough, this one took longer to finish than Novaya Zemlya, mostly because I also spent ages on another general geographic clean-up, removing dozens of single pixel lakes and patching a few sections of coastline I still wasn't happy with. On another note, I've finally reached a small section of that damned Kazakh border - the end of European Russia is in sight.

Patch 38 - Russia 8 (Idel-Ural);
- Added Udmurtia
- Added Tatarstan
- Added Mari El
- Added Chuvashia
- Added Mordvina
- Added Penza
- Added Ulyanovsk
- Added Samara
- Dozens of minor geographic patches, though most substantially altering Greece, Denmark, Estonia, Turkey (Sea of Marmara) and Finland.

 

[Tanystropheus42]

As I mentioned previously, I already had Franz Josef Land about two thirds done, so finishing it off wasn't too much trouble. Next up, Russia along the southern course of the Volga, then Svalbard (incidentally the last really gnarly section of coast left in Europe), the Northern Caucasus and then a final round of overall polishing up, and I'll be calling Europe done.

After that, I'll get the long-awaited 1914 patch finished, then crack on with the middle east, starting with the Caucasus.

Patch 39 - Russia 9;
- Added Franz Josef Land (finishing Archangelsk Oblast)

 

[Rac98]

So hi, quite a while since I last post here, well thing didn't go smoth as I wished and I didn't finished the 5° coordinate grid yet, but I updated the pdn. file with the separeted layers I working on, + I not sure if I put the current map in the correct position, but it's there;
So the layers: different layers for meridians and pararels separeted in 5°, 10° and 30° degrees, + one layer for the Prime M. and Equator Line and another one for the map border (which by the way the whole image gained 1 pixel at the top because of that);
Only the conner meridians aren't done yet, but the current ones might be enough to help with what is left to do in Europe;

If everything goes fine this clean-up of the coordinates in 5° degrees will end soon (I'm pretty sure I'll not touch 1° degree anytime soon...), in the while here's a preview of how it's looking.

 

[qazse]

I'm feeling in a Cold War mood today, so have a patch for the divided Germany.

 

[Tanystropheus42]

This one took longer than I expected, mainly because there's something odd going on with the Kalmykia-Astrakhan border. There's an annoying discrepancy, with some maps showing a mildly enlarged Astrakhan at the expense of Kalmykia and others showing the classic border dating back to soviet times. Astrakhan is bigger in google maps, google Earth and wikimedia maps, but every other map I can find (wikipedia locator maps, bing maps ect) shows the old border.

What I think happened is that at some point reasonably recently, a chunk of empty desert was transferred from Kalmykia to Astrakhan, but that not everybody got the memo. Hence why reasonably up-to-date map services have updated their basemaps but more static resources haven't. On the other hand, in my admittedly brief search I couldn't find anything even hinting that land had been transferred between the two, which just adds to the confusion. Because I wasn't entirely sure that this was indeed what happened, I made two patches this week; one showing the classic border and one showing what I assume is the new border, although as I said I'm not entirely certain, and if anyone has information to clear up the problem, please let me know.

One final disclaimer - for most of its course I figured the Volga was big enough to be shown as a string of single pixels (leaving aside the reservoirs), however after passing through Volgograd it switches to a mess of individually smaller braided channels, so I decided not to show it after that point.

With all that out of the way ...

Patch 40 - Russia 10;
- Added Saratov
- Added Volgograd
- Added Rostov
- Added Astrakhan
- Added Kalmykia

Variant 1 - old Kalmykia-Astrakhan border;

 

[Tanystropheus42]

Once again, a job I thought would take ages got done in a couple of days. Svalbard is finished, and the only substantial area of Europe left to do is the northern Caucasus, then polish everything up before finishing the 1914 patch. I'm well and truly on the home straight now.

Patch 41 - Svalbard;
- Added Svalbard

 

[Analytical Engine]

Quick question - shouldn't Crimea have lines indicating that it is still claimed by Ukraine?

 

[qazse]

I say the frontiers of the LPR and DPR vs Ukraine should have a red line as they are military frontiers.

 

[Tanystropheus42]

I would put a longer explanation here, but after dodging that bullet for over two years I've finally come down with Covid. Before anyone asks, it's only as bad as a nasty cold, but that's still left me feeling shitty enough that I can't be bothered typing anything long. Replies will come at some point in the next few days when I feel up to it.

Patch 42 - Russia 11 (Northern Caucasus);
- Added Krasnodar
- Added Adygea
- Added Karachay-Cherkessia
- Added Karbardino-Balkaria
- Added Stavropol
- Added North Ossetia
- Added Igushetia
- Added Chechnya
- Added Dagestan

 

[Spamavalanche]

I would put a longer explanation here, but after dodging that bullet for over two years I've finally come down with Covid. Before anyone asks, it's only as bad as a nasty cold, but that's still left me feeling shitty enough that I can't be bothered typing anything long. Replies will come at some point in the next few days when I feel up to it.

Hope you get better soon!