Well silly me i mean BFBC2 but that statement is false if bandar desert is the biggest. Exact size of the BFBC2 map heavy metal is something like 34 miles long.
But you hit the nail on the head on this statement
I would point you at this site to review that terrain and the other Battle Field # terrains:
http://planetbattlefield.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Gameinfo.Detail&id=310If you click on the 'thumb nail', for Heavy Metal, you'll be taken to a 2048x2048 image of what's apparently the whole map. Then, judging from the buildings and roads, a pixel is probably around 4 feet but being generous, let's use 5 feet per pixel.
2048 x 5 feet = 10240 feet / 5280 feet = 1.94 miles on a side.
That makes your Heavy Metal terrain under 2 miles x 2 miles square!
For those who might be interested and know something about AH terrains:
Going from the current 1/2 mile vertices to 1/4 mile vertices would make a huge difference in the terrain, but at the current 14 mile viewing range, that's a 400% increase in graphics load! I would love that, but the game would be a ghost town.
A possible alternative?
AH currently uses a 1 mile x 1 mile cell in its terrains. If that were changed to a 1 kilometer x 1 kilometer cell, you could accomplish reasonable visual benefit at a 260% increase in graphics load. The problems and questions start immediately. All the terrains and tiles (airfields, cities, etc) and especially some of the objects would need to be rebuilt! Force scaling of the terrains might help the process. Would all distances shift to metric? You have to wonder what would be the final terrain size, ~318 miles? Any shortcuts in the ground collision model would be compromised. I imagine it would be a huge undertaking, much worse then simply switching to 1/4 mile verts.
