Max pixel size 4096x3072
 

I am tring to add the inner sea map folio to RW. I originally placed each page of the folio as a separate map, but seeing how the legend and scale are only on map 4, this has become impractical. So I spliced the four maps together into one 17"x22" image. When I scaled it down to the maximum pixel range, a lot of the words become unreadable.

I know very little about code. Is the limit of 4096x3072 pixels and 40 Meg a code limit or arbitrary numbers picked based on usage assumptions?

The intent with smart images and images in general in Realm Works is for display on a computer screen. Due to that intent, having an image larger than around 4096 x 3072 pixels will be largely wasted as you wouldn't be able to view the full image on most monitors today without scrolling or zooming out.

Also, we provide a warning for sizes above 4096 x 3072, but you could continue to import the image.

The second constraint that you will run into is Realm Works is a 32-bit application. It is limited in the amount of memory it can use at once to at most 2 GB even if you are running on a machine that has more memory than that. Larger images take up more space.

For example, if you have an image that is 8,192 pixels by 8,192 pixels, when uncompressed and in memory for use, it will take up 268,435,456 bytes of memory or a quarter of a GB. Realm Works combines masks together to form the final image displayed and so during manipulation, it can require several copies of images of this size in memory at once. It quickly puts pressure on the memory available to Realm Works and could lead to an out-of-memory condition.

Also, keep in mind that PNG or JPG files are compressed image formats. But when displaying or manipulating those images, they have to be uncompressed in memory and so will take up typically 4 bytes per pixel.

All of these reasons went into our decision to limit the size of the files that can be brought into Realm Works to 30,000,000 bytes and to warn users when they try to import images more than 4096 x 3072 pixels in size.

I'm curious about this subject as well. Would you be able to tell us what's the worst that could happen if Realm Works runs out of memory for an image? Are we talking about a simple failure to display the image that can be solved by reloading it? Or might the whole smart image and pins get corrupted or something? I'm just curious what the risks are so I can decide if it would be worth it to have a higher resolution image or not. Thanks.

my suggestion as a workaround would be to copy/paste the scale/legend onto each separate page. When I'm working with huge CC maps, I have the one large map with little detail, then smaller sub-maps that go into more detail. It's very memory-consuming (and seriously slow) to try and have a map that does both.

There should be no corruption, but Realm Works will show the "report error" screen and exit after reporting the error. It may go very slowly leading up to that, first, including appearing to be unresponsive as it tries to re-organize memory in a futile effort to get enough contiguous memory to continue.

Techie question: Is a 64 bit version planned? Is it a database issue (I know a lot of DB arent 64 bit), or a backwards compatability issue?

Thank you David.

I would also be interested in knowing if a 64 bit version is in the cards. 64 bit OS's are becoming more common.

As far as the map being larger than a screen and zooming and scrolling, well, I like that ability in Google Maps. I doubt that would be a downside for people wanting to load larger maps.

Still a great product though.
 

I am very interested in knowing this too.

I do not know a single person on any kind of personal level, offline or online, that has used 32bit after Vista and especially after W7. 32bit is still in use of course (XP is eternal after all), and it makes sense from the business perspective of making it 32bit so as to effectively allow anyone to partake in the product. That said though, it's a bit regressive to create something in 2013(/14) with the intention of keeping it within the limitations of operating systems that are 3 generations (or more) behind. I'd be willing to bet that more people purchasing W7 or W8 machines are getting 64bit than 32bit, even if unaware of what they're buying.

I would be happy enough if we could at least upgrade to a 64bit version, I'd even being willing to pay for it. I suppose LW would need to be assured enough people would also be willing to pay for it though, since having two commercial versions of RW to maintain would likely require more staff or higher pay for those already here.

I'm not really sure what the point was being made about maps being too large for the screen, aside from the technical. Just my personal preference but I always prefer maps that are too big for my screen. Chiefly because it means they have a much higher threshold of quality before image degradation. Baring someone doing something stupid, like blowing up a low quality image, a giant source image typically means a high quality image. It's the primary reason I elected to use the Pathfinder Folio map instead of the others -- superior image quality at any level (it's also the only one that is actually visually accurate to locations within the books; the other maps are not 1:1 with the sectional maps in most Pathfinder books). Even at 100% the map is crisper than any of the others (provided you are extracting the map from the PDF and not screen-capturing it -- you'll lose the word layer of course but sacrifices must be made).

Why settle for the lesser version of something when you are getting the same base entity anyway, is what I'm saying here. If there's a 2000x2000 version of a map and a 4000x4000 of the same map (and it's not just a blown version of the smaller one), you can be sure I'm getting the bigger one. It's the same map but I know that at any zoom level the bigger map is going to look better and provide superior functionality for map manipulation. In fact I've only ever used the smaller versions of maps because of some limitation with the software I'm using.

My preferences aside though; on the technical side I can understand creating the hard limit, since it lessens the possibility of someone importing a map into RW with their 64bit client and then someone using their 32bit client to display the map and crashing. That's without the mass of problems web-access would cause with people looking at the maps using the plethora of browsers available (if web-access is browser neutral), many of which have 32bit and 64bit versions (most of which could be avoided I believe if, upon import, the map could be "flagged" as for-use-with-64bit -- you could extend this flagging to any other needed aspect of Realm Works too). No doubt that would be one headache after another for support.

Regardless I still firmly support the idea of a 64bit version of RW, in the future of course. When focus shifts to adding upon the existing, functioning aspects of RW.

+1 for a 64 bit version