I am wanting to use a 40" tv, laid flat on a table, to display battle maps. For those that have done this, what image viewer or program do you recommend to display the maps at the proper size; 1" square = 5'? I want to use a regular image viewer, not something like Roll20 or other VTT program.
Measure your screen and figure out how many inches of visible screen are available. On my 55" screen, I can get just under 48" x 28" displayed. Since I would prefer to have my grid squares slightly larger than 1" instead of slightly smaller than 1", I assume 47x27. Then just look for ungridded HD battle maps without grids and use GIMP or Photoshop to lay a 47x27 grid over the image. When displayed at full screen, everything shows up right.
To answer your question, I prefer to display images using Google Chrome browser in full-screen mode. That also makes it easy to zoom in or out easily if it's a gridded map and I want to snap the grid sizes to around 1". For PDFs, I just use Adobe reader in full-=screen mode. I would also suggest going to Home Depot or some place like that and buying a piece of Lexan or other clear acrylic plastic sheet for about $30. They will cut it for you on the spot and it should drop right into the TV on top of the screen. This way, you don't have to worry about scratching your screen. My players even roll dice on the screen now. If it gets beat up, I'll just buy a new one.
By the way, check out Living maps on YouTube. You can thank me later.
If you want to use minis, you'll have to set the map to display with 1 inch(ish) squares. This will limit the size of the map you can use, though I guess you could pick up and move the minis when you adjust the map.
If you use digital tokens, then adjusting the map is easy. I let one of my players manage the player map that's cast to the TV so I don't have to deal with that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I am wanting to use a 40" tv, laid flat on a table, to display battle maps. For those that have done this, what image viewer or program do you recommend to display the maps at the proper size; 1" square = 5'? I want to use a regular image viewer, not something like Roll20 or other VTT program.
Measure your screen and figure out how many inches of visible screen are available. On my 55" screen, I can get just under 48" x 28" displayed. Since I would prefer to have my grid squares slightly larger than 1" instead of slightly smaller than 1", I assume 47x27. Then just look for ungridded HD battle maps without grids and use GIMP or Photoshop to lay a 47x27 grid over the image. When displayed at full screen, everything shows up right.
To answer your question, I prefer to display images using Google Chrome browser in full-screen mode. That also makes it easy to zoom in or out easily if it's a gridded map and I want to snap the grid sizes to around 1". For PDFs, I just use Adobe reader in full-=screen mode. I would also suggest going to Home Depot or some place like that and buying a piece of Lexan or other clear acrylic plastic sheet for about $30. They will cut it for you on the spot and it should drop right into the TV on top of the screen. This way, you don't have to worry about scratching your screen. My players even roll dice on the screen now. If it gets beat up, I'll just buy a new one.
By the way, check out Living maps on YouTube. You can thank me later.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Also, just set the zoom level of the image viewer you are using to your liking...
I like owlbear.rodeo. Keep in mind....
If you want to use minis, you'll have to set the map to display with 1 inch(ish) squares. This will limit the size of the map you can use, though I guess you could pick up and move the minis when you adjust the map.
If you use digital tokens, then adjusting the map is easy. I let one of my players manage the player map that's cast to the TV so I don't have to deal with that.