ORBAT Mapper

@ThomasHalwax The UI is mostly for testing the library API I'm working on. I should probably make SVGs of the previews if I integrate this into a user facing tool

@orbatmapper Nice!

Sneak peek at the testing UI for my side project. The small previews look so cute.

@WietseBuwalda 👀 that's really cool! I need to check if they have a public API

You can disable the great-circle rendering in mercator mode if you want

I'm busy working on other projects at the moment, but I managed to sneak in a great-circle fix in the measuring tool.

@BloomerJayson @PapaFactBoi Image export is currently very basic. No customization options. I use built in maplibre and openlayers functionality. Setting DPI and resolution should be possible, but not implemented yet

@BloomerJayson @PapaFactBoi He does it outside Orbat mapper. Better arrow and text support is high on my priority list

@orbatmapper @PapaFactBoi Yes please. Also is there a way to add arrows and town name boxes on the map like this guy does it or does he do it outside the mapper?

@PapaFactBoi The old, incorrect visual representation has annoyed me for a long time, so it felt good to finally ship a fix. The underlying distance math has always been correct though, using the Haversine formula.

@orbatmapper Very cool that even in 2d the measurements stays the same

@matt_zaps (b) I draw Block by placing the crossbar first, then pulling the stem from its midpoint. The math happens in flat Web Mercator, so globe mode gets a projected perpendicular, not an Earth one. Fix: Use a local tangent plane for the calculations. (2/2)

@matt_zaps Two problems: (a) In globe mode, a straight line appears curved because MapLibre interpolates between the points using screen-space (Cartesian) interpolation on the projected globe surface, not along a great circle path. Fix: densify the line using great circle math (1/2)

This is the harsh reality of planar geometry on a spherical Earth 😞

@ThomasHalwax Sounds right. I probably should not spend any time fixing edge cases like this 😄

@orbatmapper What’s the max dimension of a Brigade for disrupting the enemy? At most 20km?

@SapperJaeger Let's hope so. The math is much easier when we keep things on a small scale.

@orbatmapper on a positive note I hope to never have disrupt or block tasks on that scale 😉

I can probably solve this with some projection magic, but I kinda like the curved lines.

@spatialillusion You know your paper sizes 😂

@orbatmapper A0? You are thinking too small. (Also A0 is a stupid size since you can’t print it in landscape on a 44” plotter, and once you go 44” wide your length is almost infinite, or at least 30m.)

If you create a very, very, very large ORBAT in Battle Staff Tools you might run into that you can’t save it as PNG since it exceeds the maximum canvas size. I have now made a fix that scales it down to fit into 32767x32767 pixels.

@spatialillusion You'll need A0 support for the really large ORBATs

In the future I might add PDF support so that you can download them for print in their full high resolution glory.

A photo from earlier this week where I gave a lightning talk at PHPSW on optimising the war diary geocoding process with AI. Not just prompting ChatGPT, but utilising agentic AI workflows combined with a custom MCP server to integrate directly with the site and its tooling, making the whole process faster and more efficient.

Some user interface experimentation: subsea elevation visualization showing the profile of terrain along a mission

👀