One of the major new features in Hellfire is the ability to integrate with Google Earth, and provide updates in (almost) real time of your current position, and show you which routes you have travelled on.
You will also notice that there are a significant number of freight lines and branches which do not see regular passenger workings. If you are in luck, you may even be able to book on a railtour which will cover some of these routes.
To set up Google Earth integration, perform the following steps:
- Download and install Google Earth Pro from https://www.google.com/earth/download/gep/agree.html?hl=en-GB. Google Earth Pro is free to use.
- Start up Hellfire and make sure you have updated to at least version 3.13.
- Go into Game Settings and select the Google Earth tab.
- Select Web Server Mode and press the Set Google Earth Update Folder Button. Navigate to the folder where you want Hellfire to write the files for Google Earth to Use.
- When Hellfire is running, it will write several files for Google Earth to pick up. You will be prompted to select the location on your computer where you want Hellfire to write these files. You can create a new folder if you want. I use My Documents\Hellfire Google Earth since this is easy to navigate to in Windows.
- You can optionally set the refresh interval, which determines how often Google Earth should look for updates to the Hellfire Map, and if Google Earth should fly to your current location when you move around the country.
- Click OK to leave the game settings, and the files will be written to the location you specified.
Double click Hellfire.kml (NOT any of the others) and Google Earth Pro will launch with the Hellfire Map loaded into your Temporary Places. You only need to do this the first time after setting up the Google Earth integration, since Google Earth will remember this for next time.
Start a new game in Hellfire, and board a train heading into the area covered by the map. As you approach the first station in the mapped area, Google Earth will zoom to that location. As you continue to travel around the mapped area, the routes you travel on will change colour (just like highlighting your Bakers Atlas!).
Feel free to experiment with the settings in Google Earth. Here are my recommended settings, but feel free to use your own. The forum has an area specifically for Google Earth integration, so please let us all know what works for you.
- Google Earth Layers - I keep this as uncluttered as possible, so I turn everything off except Borders and Labels (I sometimes even turn this off as well)
- Auto Refresh and Update View Settings - these are accessed by expanding the Hellfire entry in your Places list, then right-clicking on Hellfire All Line Summer 1981. Select Properties then select the Refresh tab.
- Fly to View on Refresh - this option is what keeps your Google Earth view focused on your current location. If you want to explore the map without it snapping back to your location, then turn this option off.
- Time-Based Refresh - this is set to 2 seconds by default. If you set this too short, then you will see the view 'bouncing' as it refreshes faster than the time taken for Google Earth to point its view to your new location. Setting this time too long means that Google Earth will lag behind your current position. You can increase the speed of travel in Google Earth and use a shorter refresh interval, but I found that it became difficult to follow where you were when the game was run at full speed. Feel free to experiment, however.
Important - once you have the Hellfire Map on your My Places folder, do NOT start up Google Earth by double-clicking Hellfire.kml again. This will result in multiple instance of the map being loaded up into Google Earth.
Have fun exploring this feature in Hellfire!
