Loves maps, ORBATs and history. Working on a tool for recreating historic battles and military scenarios in the browser.
Joined March 2023
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ORBAT Mapper retweeted
All this talk of bread and biscuits to feed Napoleon’s troops made me want to try them myself.
Today I took recipes from 1805 to a local baker. It turned out she was also an archaeologist, so the conversation soon moved beyond baking to how we might recreate something soldiers actually ate.
If the trials go well, I’ll set off from Vienna towards Austerlitz with my own pain de munition and military biscuits. Then comes the real test: eating them on the march.
Pictured: a ship’s biscuit from 1852, preserved in Helsingør, Denmark. Photo: Paul A. Cziko, cropped by Ubcule, Wikimedia Commons
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
In response to popular demand, all of the mapmaking tools on my site have been updated with unit selectors for miles, kilometers and nautical miles.
thinkinginspace.net/tools.ht…
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
So I made this thing where I try to predict the next possible EO satellite capture. It should automatically update every day, but I can’t guarantee that it works.
Please let me know if I got any constellations wrong.
spatialillusions.com/eyes-up…
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
If you want to read our very detailed post on the Battle of the Savio River check it out here: patreon.com/Project1944/post…
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
A few years ago, Norway beckoned. Oslo, Rjukan, Stavanger. The Hardangervidda and Vemork - following in the footsteps of Operation Freshman, Grouse, et al. Life-changing, in the way it made me consider mapped terrain. Never forgotten it, nor the many discoveries along the way. Slightly envious of @nickfshort this week, in country.
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
experiments with a new webgl 3d globe renderer that breaks free of the limits of existing libraries by (1) separating tesselation and LOD of the terrain mesh from XYZ tiles (2) rendering in more 'native' ECEF
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
Re:Earth Terrain - Open terrain tiles for 3D globes, served from the edge. CesiumJS & MapLibre, no auth, no key. terrain.reearth.land/
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
As @FalklandsinUK reminds me, the City of London hosted a victory parade on 12 Oct 1982 for the Falklands Task Force ~ 🇫🇰 ~ so obviously we need a map of the Falkland Islands. Surveyed and drawn by No 2 Topo, 14th (Corps Fd Svy) RE in 1943, published as GSGS 4465 in 1944. Lovely.
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
I know its cliche, but everyone knows Band of Brothers. I wanted to map out Brecourt manor to see what it would look like.
This isnt just an animation, it is a fully interactive web map. Which I think is the best of all worlds.
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
One of the biggest bottlenecks in mapping for Project ‘44 is georeferencing old maps.
Georeferencing means taking a static image of a map and giving it real coordinates in a GIS. That matters because once a map is georeferenced, we can use its grid to plot locations straight from the war diaries, and its hand-drawn annotations make the battle far easier to understand.
The problem is that the traditional way, in ArcGIS or the slightly faster QGIS, is still slow. Either way you’re working through a long chain of steps:
1. Place the control points
2. Check them against the map
3. Run the transformation
4. Mask the raster to strip out the white and dead space
5. Export the raster
6. Convert it to MBTiles
7. Convert that to PMTiles
Yes, you can script most of that in Python, or build a model that takes the inputs and produces the outputs. It’s still a huge PITA every time.
This tool cuts that workflow by 90%. I build all the metadata I need as a JSON sidecar, export straight to my S3 server, and boom: it’s live in Project ‘44 or Project Athena and ready for the public.
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
Learn how to rig and fly your After Effects camera over a map! I absolutely LOVE this technique and use it often. youtu.be/1UBK3mHIrZ4
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
Greek rifle company, 1940 - my TO&E drawing.
Infantry battalion (3 in Infantry regiment) had battalion HQ, 3 Rifle companies, 1 MG company.
#ORBATBoys
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
It's a work in progress, for sure, but as time goes on you'll find more and more WW2 mapping history over on Substack. Maps too, of course, and more stories about the mapmakers. Like - as they say - and subscribe.
merrynwalters.uk/
ALT ORTONA MAPPING - long form deepdive into Italy's mapping
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
Just added another map from the GSGS4250 series to the archive, this time 8G/3 - Mortagne
normandywarguide.com/archive…
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
MARKET GARDEN Day 1 – 17 September 1944
The first day of Operation Market Garden saw initial success for the Allied airborne forces. In the south, the U.S. 101st Airborne Division met little resistance and captured four out of five assigned bridges, with the Son bridge being destroyed by the Germans.
Elements of the 101st moved towards Eindhoven, making contact with German forces and receiving assistance from the 44th Royal Tank Regiment of VIII Corps.
ORBAT Mapper retweeted
Image Georeferencing Using GeoLibre in the Browser
Learn how to georeference images, scanned maps, and historical maps directly in your web browser using GeoLibre, with no desktop GIS software required.
Video tutorial: youtu.be/lbioujkDSG0
In this tutorial, I demonstrate how to georeference a campus map by selecting ground control points, choosing a transformation method, evaluating residual errors, and aligning the image with a basemap. You'll also learn how to export the georeferenced result as a GeoTIFF, reload it into GeoLibre, compare it with the basemap, and share the finished map online.
GeoLibre is a free and open-source, cloud-native GIS platform that runs in the browser, on desktop and mobile devices, and in Jupyter notebooks.
Try it out:
- Web App: share.geolibre.app/giswqs/ge…
- GitHub: github.com/opengeos/GeoLibre
#opensource #geospatial #GeoLibre