Strangereal is the fascinating planet where the Ace Combat series takes place, it features
many nations similar to ours like Osea being the United States, Yuktobania being the Soviet Union,
Belka being Germany and so on.
But one thing that I have always wondered is: how do these nations compare to Earth’s?
I mean, Strangereal features large nations like Osea and Yuktobania and small nations
like Leasath, but how large or how small are they in terms of actual area?
Fortunately I found a way to answer this question and in this video I will show you the approximate
area of the Strangereal nations, how they rank up and how the major Strangereal nations
compares to the ones in Earth.
But before I show you the results please allow me to explain my method of measuring the area
in Strangereal.
My first step was to get the official Strangereal map, which is originally 9,799 pixels by 5,654
pixels, on my Photoshop.
My second step was to crop out the these borders so only the map itself was in the picture.
As a result this new image is now 9,744 pixels by 5,601 pixels, so if you multiply these
numbers you’ll see that there are a total of 54,576,144 pixels in the picture.
According to Nasa, Earth’s surface area is of 510,064,472 square kilometers and so
if we use this proportion then 1 pixel in the image is the equivalent of 9.34 square
kilometers, and in order to measure the area of the Strangereal countries I used the measuring
tool in Photoshop to measure the area, in pixels, and then I multiplied the area times
our proportion of 9.34.
Before I show you the results of the final area that I obtained please let me clarify
the two assumptions I had to make for this method to work.
First, we have to assume Strangereal and Earth are planets of the same size because otherwise
the surface area would not be the same and the proportion I have would not work.
Second, I am also assuming that the official Strangereal map was made with the equal-area
type of projection in mind, like a Gall-Peters projection, otherwise the measuring would
not be accurate.
In real life though, the majority of the maps use the Mercator projection, which although
it looks nicer since is the one we are used to see in everyday life, greatly distorts
the areas close to the poles and as a result the Mercator map gives us the impressions
that countries like Canada and Russia are larger than what they actually are - so please
keep these assumptions in mind.
So to begin our measurements, I first measured how much of Strangereal’s surface is water
and I got about 36 million pixels, multiplying by our proportion we get an area of about
337 million square kilometers.
Compared to Earth, Strangereal has much more land because it is said that 71% of Earth’s
surface area is covered by water, and that is about 362 million square kilometers.
Using the difference we can then conclude that Strangereal’s surface area is of 172,636,152.98
square kilometers.
After measuring the total surface covered by water and land I measured the major Strangereal
nations, and here’s the ranking on how big they are, the percentage of the land area
they cover in Strangereal and how they compare to Earth’s nations.
In first place is Osea (just before the Belkan War) with almost 24 million pixels, which
would give Osea a land area of 22.3 million square kilometers.
That is huge, that's like putting Russia, India and Mexico together into one country.
On the second place have the other Strangereal
superpower, Yuktobania, with 23 million pixels and that is about 21.5 million square kilometers.
Yuktobania is just as big as putting Russia, Indian and South Africa together.
In third place we have Emmeria which has almost the same size as Brazil,
in fourth we have Estovakia with about 3 million square kilometres which is followed by Aurelia,
Belka (measured before Belkan War), Erusea (whose map I got via some estimations using screenshots
from other games since its borders are not shown in the official map), Sapin, Leasath
and Ustio.
There are of course several other nations in Strangereal, or even the same nations that
I have mentioned before but that had their area changed at other periods like Osea and
Belka after the Belkan War, that I haven’t measured.
This video of course was only to give you a very rough estimate on how big or small
the Strangereal nations are.
Like I’ve mentioned before, the fact that this is probably a map on the Mercator projection
greatly increases the areas of countries near the poles for countries like Estovakia, Emmeria
and Aurelia and also greatly decreases the actual size of countries by the equator like
Sapin and Erusea.
Anyways, this was the today’s video.
Please do not use the previous measurements as a fact because there are some inaccuracies
caused by the map projection and at the end of the day we don’t even know if Strangereal
has the same size as Earth.
If I manage to convert the Strangereal map projection or find a way to measure area in
a Mercator projection then I will make an updated version of this video that will go
more indepth and will include some more countries.
Anyways guys, I hope that now you an idea on how big or small some of the Strangereal
nations are.
If you are interested into this kind of videos about Ace Combat please check the Stuff About
Ace Combat series and if you want to learn more about the lore in the series check my
Ace Combat Lore playlist.
This was Ace Combat Fan, I hope you have enjoyed this episode
and stay tuned to the channel for more Ace Combat!