Technical Reference - Terrain Textures

How can I display my own texture(s) on the ground?
The simplest way to display custom ground textures is to store tiles of 1 by 1 degree in the  %ProgramData%\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\  or  %APPDATA%\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\  folders.

You must follow the same naming convention as SRTM3 and SRTM1 files. For example, to replace the north-west corner of Corsica you should create a tile named:  C:\ProgramData\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\N42E008.png

A suffix T / B / C ( N42E008T.png for example) can be added for each tile where
 * T -> Transparent (50% merge with tacview default map)
 * B -> Adaptive black outlines
 * C -> Adaptive color outlines

Which texture formats are supported for terrain tiles?
Tacview supports textures of any size as long as they are recorded in WebP, PNG or JPEG files. Both 24-bit and 32-bit formats are supported. Which means that you can use the alpha channel of WebP and PNG files to smoothly blend an overlay on top of Tacview native terrain.

Is there any example texture pack I can try?
Yes! Feel free to install and have a look at the official NTTR (Nevada) demo in the add-ons section.

Mapview
Use the third party add-on Mapview developed by Jacques Deyrieux to easily download tiles to cover an area of any size (subject to your system's limitations). See this video to find out how:

Terrain Downloader Add-on
Use Tacview's native Terrain Downloader add-on.

To activate the add-on, make sure you are using Tacview 1.8.5 or above and go to Add-ons → Enable/Disable Add-ons and make sure Terrain Downloader is activated.

Then go to Add-ons → Terrain Downloader → Cartography → MapQuest to select map options and download tiles.

First you will have to sign up for MapQuest at http://mapquest.com to get a MapQuest API key which you need to enter at Add-ons → Terrain Downloader → Cartography → MapQuest  → Enter MapQuest API Key.

The add-on should download tiles to cover all the objects in the map, or, if there are no objects, it will download a 5 x 5 square around the camera's center.

Freeform maps
if you have a freeform map that you would like to add, you will need to know the coordinates of the four corners of your map.

Place your .webp, .jpg or .png map in %ProgramData%\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\  or  %APPDATA%\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\

Suffixes T / B / C as described above can be used here as well.

Copy paste the file %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\CustomTextureList.xml to  %ProgramData%\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\

Manipulating the  CustomTextureList.xml  file now found inside  %ProgramData%\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\, follow the instructions in the file to add a new entry.

Satellite Maps
Satellite maps can be downloaded from SAS.Planet. Download the app then follow these steps to download tiles of 1 degree by 1 degree.

Select the area you are interested by coordinates. Notice that SAS Planet asks you to select your coordinates by entering the upper-left corner to lower-right corner of the area you are interested in.

Tacview requires tiles of size 1 degree by 1 degree so it is recommended to do one such tile at a time.

Tacview requires tiles named like N06E099 where (6,99) is the latitude, longitude coordinates of the bottom-left corner.

Step 1: Download the tiles
On the Download tab, select the Map/Overlay layer you want and the zoom level: Zoom level 15 may be very high resolution for Tacview.

It is best to Overwrite old tiles unless you are sure all the tiles in your cache are good.

In this example, we are using Google Maps. Click Start - this may take several minutes.

If you wish to have extra details such as labels, you may next proceed to download a second layer such as Hybrid (Google) in this example:

Step 2: Stitch the downloaded tiles together
Once you have downloaded what you need, go to the Stitch tab and specify the map, overlay layer and file name.

Save to %ProgramData%\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\.

Remember Tacview tiles should be named after the coordinates of their bottom-left corner.

You may change Quality to 85%

Remember to pick your Zoom level

From the Projection dropdown select Mercator / WGS84 / EPSG: 3395.

Click Stitch to generate the tile. If the layers are in Russian, the native language of the program, go to Settings -> Layer Settings -> Hybrid Google and remove any language indication in the URL. If tiles are not coming out nicely you can try deleting the cache and switching the program to source from Internet only. Then close and restart the program. Also in Settings-> Map Settings and Settings -> Layer Settings, you can try changing Pause, ms to 100 and Max concurrent http(s)-request number to 1

Special Instructions for DCS World Users
In order to override the native DCS World terrain textures, after having downloaded tiles following the instructions above, move the downloaded tiles from

%ProgramData%\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\

to

%ProgramData%\Tacview\Data\Terrain\Textures\DCS World\.

and re-launch Tacview. If you still don't see your tiles, note that certain types of terrain texture files override others.

First, by picture type:


 * 1) png
 * 2) jpg
 * 3) jpeg
 * 4) tga
 * 5) webp

Then by transparency:


 * 1) Original
 * 2) AdaptiveGreyScale (file name ends with "B"),
 * 3) AdaptiveColor ("file name ends with "C")
 * 4) Translucent (file name ends with "T")

So for example, if you don't see your tiles, try changing them to PNG, with no transparency.