Rotation of Real-World-Maps

[doktorhonig]

This is a topic, that always bothers me when making a map based on the real world.
Should the map be rotated 45° to the left, 45° to the right, or shouldn't it be rotated at all?

Rotating it to the left means, that you take a rectangle from a map, and use the rotate-to-left feature. The northern border of the rectangle becomes the upper left border of the diamond-shaped map in the game. Example

Rotating it to the right means, that you take a rectangle from a map, and use the rotate-to-right feature. The northern border of the rectangle becomes the upper right border of the diamond-shaped map in the game. Example

No rotation menas, that you take a diamond shaped area of the map. In the game, the top tile in the middle is the "most northern one".
I mostly do that by rotating the picture by 45° to one direction, extract a square or rectangle, and use this rectangle in openttd. Of course it has to be rotated into the opposite direction as before. Bad Example of Sakhalin - the russian mainland is missing.

[Ameecher]

I'd normally say to the left, but that's because what I'm used to doing myself.

[XeryusTC]

I think it kind of depends on the map, some places look better with the north at the left side, some better at the right side. If I'd had to pick one of those I would pick right though.

[doktorhonig]

I find it somehow strange to rotate, and try to get a diamond-shape out of the real map [3].
Since nearly noone does this, I prefer having north at the upper left edge. Maybe for areas at the top left or bottom right corner of a world map, this would be different.

[Jim Powers]

Mr. Doktorhonig;

Almost all of my scenarios of countries or states are actually 61 degrees to the left,
if you're interested, Sir. The reason is that that is the angle of which the scenario
will "lay down". Any other degree causes the scenario to loose it's perceived 'real' look.

That's one of the 'keys' to making Real-World scenarios, in my humble opinion.
It was a good question, Sir.

Always,
Jim Powers

[Arby]

In my first scenario based on a heightmap I tried to rotate it to the right, and then I was confused about station names like "<city name> north" lying in the supposed-west of the map. So rotating 45° to the left is the one and only correct way.

[Metatron]

To the right.

Rotating to the left as north just looks, well, wrong.

[Youri219]

It strongly depends on the map you're playing with, you might want some important landmarks aligned properly. I used the gimp to rotate the Netherlands map 51 degrees to have 'de afsluitdijk' straight in the game.