animated maps of day one and two

Very, very cool, John!! As one who has zero programming experience, did this take you a ton of time to accomplish, and do you have plans to continue with other battles, or was this a Gettysburg-only exercise?
 
I love this stuff! I wonder what our master time keeper, @Tom Elmore thinks of this. It must be difficult to place troops when you are restricted to showing only the brigades. There were plenty of times when individual regiments broke off their parent brigades in significant action.
 
Very, very cool, John!! As one who has zero programming experience, did this take you a ton of time to accomplish, and do you have plans to continue with other battles, or was this a Gettysburg-only exercise?

Thanks for the kind words!
Yes, very time-consuming. It's a retirement hobby.
Yes, a Gettysburg-only thing. My hands are more than full with just this one project.
 
I love this stuff! I wonder what our master time keeper, @Tom Elmore thinks of this. It must be difficult to place troops when you are restricted to showing only the brigades. There were plenty of times when individual regiments broke off their parent brigades in significant action.

Again, thanks for the support!
The brigade versus regiment issue is a judgement call. When it seems necessary I split the brigades into two pieces - left and right wings. For example Robertson's brigade in the attack on the Union left in day two. Right now when you click on either the left or right wing icons it will just respond "Robertson's brigade", but it should be possible to distinguish between the two cases and properly respond with for example "Robertson's brigade left wing". Future versions...

I also hope to add artillery, eventually...how cool to be able to show where artillery was targeted at different times during the battle? Future versions...
 
That is really good stuff. Great work.

I really like historically accurate presentations (recognizing that time is a difficult aspect to nail down). I have many books on Gettysburg and 1863 era maps are used to document movements. I have always wanted to see current Gettysburg maps used in documenting troop movement. Seeing troop movement and how it relates to the monuments and current day roads/buildings is something I would love to see.

I have no idea on the technology you used to do this fine presentation. Is it possible to have a map selection feature to your work? One map would be the current map you used, The other map would either be a Google satellite map or a map such as Battlefield America which shows most monument locations.

Obviously monuments are key battlefield anchors that we use during our Gettysburg visits. As much as I would love to see the battlefield in its July 1863 condition, I know that can never happen. Using modern day maps showing monument locations would greatly help in bridging the 1863 action with modern day Gettysburg.
 
Is it possible to have a map selection feature to your work? One map would be the current map you used, The other map would either be a Google satellite map or a map such as Battlefield America which shows most monument locations.

Wow, that's an interesting idea. Theoretically it works if I scale the 2nd map to match *exactly* with the 1st map. In that case the animation running over the top of the two maps has the same effect. Right? The skeptic in me says the 2 maps will not be 100% identical: the historic map was hand-drawn using 19th century technology, while the 'satellite map' is just a photo...seems like mis-alignments are inevitable, but how bad?

Great idea.
 
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A great start. An improvement would be to show individual regiments, because regiments in a brigade like Burling's fought independently in several different locations. Then you need better input data than is currently available (but I for one hope to address that shortcoming), including adjustments for attrition over time, and a way to depict disorganized units and also skirmishers (with dots perhaps).
 
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Very, very nice. One suggestion: set your YouTube link to not automatically bring up the next video after playing yours. I think many of us will want to replay yours. (PM me if you'd like help with the settings.)
 
Sorry partner, although very good it's a bit complicated for us older guys that have limited computer skills/patience with such. Individual regiments would be nice.
 
Wow, that's an interesting idea. Theoretically it works if I scale the 2nd map to match *exactly* with the 1st map. In that case the animation running over the top of the two maps has the same effect. Right? The skeptic in me says the 2 maps will not be 100% identical: the historic map was hand-drawn using 19th century technology, while the 'satellite map' is just a photo...seems like mis-alignments are inevitable, but how bad?

Great idea.

Civil engineer, what program are you using to put this together? I may have some hints and tips. Also there are photos and then there are scaled, georeferenced photos. If done right a photo is more than accurate enough for what you are doing and you would want to scale your map to the scaled photo. Likely would need to break the map into several parts and scale each part. Feel free to PM if you want.
 
I'm working on animated maps of the three days of the battle of Gettysburg. Day one is complete - at least as a version one; and the second day is available in an early version that shows the action up to 8pm.

A 3-minute YouTube demo of the day two map is here.

The maps themselves are here.
Love it.
 
I have no idea on the technology you used to do this fine presentation. Is it possible to have a map selection feature to your work? One map would be the current map you used, The other map would either be a Google satellite map or a map such as Battlefield America which shows most monument locations.

That's why I superimpose historic location maps on to the modern satellite images of Google Earth. It really revolutionized my understanding whenever I visit the battlefield.

Wow, that's an interesting idea. Theoretically it works if I scale the 2nd map to match *exactly* with the 1st map. In that case the animation running over the top of the two maps has the same effect. Right? The skeptic in me says the 2 maps will not be 100% identical: the historic map was hand-drawn using 19th century technology, while the 'satellite map' is just a photo...seems like mis-alignments are inevitable, but how bad?

I have had pretty good luck with old vs. new with alignment. If you look at the Phil Laino's atlas, his maps perfectly align.
 
This is really great!

My only feedback is that I second Tom E's suggestion about showing individual regiments (because all regiments in a brigade do not move the same way - Davis's and Cutler's are prime examples on Day1, as well as 6th WI from Meredith's brigade) and would add that it will also be hugely beneficial if the space they actually occupied is to scale (for example, both Archer's and Davis's brigades occupied at least 3-4 times as much space when they went to 2-man deep lines, than shown.)
 
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