Views: photos, Street View, aerial, terrain, AI fill
A view is one camera position on the incident: a side of the building, the tactical map, or a room inside. Crews move between views during a drill, and elements you place belong to the view you placed them on.
Views are managed on the Views tab of the left panel. Each row shows a thumbnail, the view name, and the source it came from.
Adding a view#
Click + Add view. Four sources are available as tabs.
Upload#
Your own photographs. Accepts JPEG, PNG, and WebP up to 20 MB. This is the best source when you have it, because it is your building in current condition.
Street View#
Enter an address and the image comes back from Google Street View. Three sliders adjust the shot:
| Slider | Range | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Heading | 0 to 359 | Which way the camera points. Sweep this to get around the building. |
| Pitch | -30 to 30 | Camera tilt, down to up. |
| Field of view | narrow to wide | How much is in frame. Wider fits more building and flattens perspective. |
Street View usually covers the street side only. Use AI fill for the sides it cannot reach.
Aerial#
A satellite photo of the address, with a zoom slider from 16 (wide) to 21 (tight). Set the zoom so the structure and its approaches are both in frame, since this is what the IC uses for apparatus placement.
Adding a view from this tab marks it as the tactical map automatically. See Aerial calibration and the sides.
Terrain (wildland scenarios)#
A map of the real ground anywhere in the United States. Enter coordinates as lat, lon, or
type a street address. Four map styles are offered: imagery with topo labels (the default),
the classic topographic quad with contour lines, bare imagery, and shaded relief.
Which sources a scenario offers depends on its kind, chosen when it is created: a wildland scenario builds on Terrain plus photo uploads; a structure scenario offers Street View, aerial, uploads, and AI fill.
Pick how much ground the view covers, from a quarter mile to ten miles across. The view remembers its real extent, so distances on it are real feet: this is what makes the wildland module's fire perimeter and, later, its safety checks honest. After the fetch, the panel reports the elevation range and steepest slope across the area, with the sample spacing so you can read the number honestly; over about 20% slope, doctrine says safety zones must grow.
A terrain view becomes the tactical overview, like an aerial. It is not a walkable position, and it has no Side A: the quadrant calibration does not apply.
AI fill#
Generates a view from imagery you already have, which is how you get Sides B, C, and D without sending a company out to photograph the building. Review what comes back before you use it: it is generated imagery, and it should look like the building your crews will recognize.
Naming a view#
The name dropdown offers Side A, Side B, Side C, Side D, Aerial, and Custom…. Choosing Aerial also marks the view as the tactical map. Choose Custom… to type your own, which is what you want for interior rooms or for anything that is not one of the four sides.
Names are what crews see on the view tabs during a drill, so keep them short and unambiguous.
Row controls#
Each view row has three buttons on the right.
| Button | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Satellite | Marks the view as an aerial or overview: the tactical map, not a position a crew can walk to. Highlighted when on. |
| House | Marks the view as interior. Contents are visible only to companies cleared to be inside. Highlighted when on. |
| Trash | Deletes the view and every element placed on it. |
Deleting a view takes its elements with it. An Undo bar appears under the header afterwards: use it and the view and every element on it come straight back.
The order views appear in#
The order of this list is the order of the view buttons a crew sees during the drill, so it is worth getting right.
Sides A, B, C and D and the aerial order themselves. Nobody photographs a building in order, so these are sorted into A, B, C, D, aerial and moved to the top of the list the moment they are added, however you added them. Add three custom views and then walk around to Side D, and Side D still lands in its place behind Side C rather than at the bottom.
Everything else you arrange yourself. Drag a custom or interior view onto another to swap them, or select a view and use the up and down chevrons on its row. The sides and the aerial cannot be dragged: A/B/C/D is the fireground's own naming of the building, and the aerial is the map rather than a place anyone stands.
Views can only be reordered within their own kind, because a drill always shows exteriors, then interiors, then the aerial. Moving an interior view above an exterior in this list would not change anything a crew sees.
Which flag to use#
- Neither flag is an ordinary exterior position. Crews walk to it freely once on scene.
- aerial is the tactical map. It is not a walkable position, and it is where apparatus placement happens when that module is on.
- interior is a room inside the structure. Access is controlled during a drill by the interior module rules.
Do not mark the same view both aerial and interior.
Practical notes#
- Build all four sides when you can. A crew that can only see the front learns to size up from the front.
- Keep image proportions similar across views. The scene fits the image to the pane, so a mix of tall and wide images makes elements appear to jump in size as crews change views.
- Replacing a view's image is done by deleting the view and adding a new one. The elements do not carry over, because their positions are relative to the image.