The APP
The Tool
We fondly call it "The Getty Tool" and it was developed exclusively for this and future Napoleonic War (Civil War) battle animation projects.
The software extensively uses "point & click", "drag & drop" technology to allow placement of each unit on the underlying satellite view of a battlefield. Any battlefield! Change the underlying map, the dates/times, and the names of the units, and The Tool can be used to create an animated APP for Shiloh, or Antietam, or Fredericksburg, or any other battle!
Additionally the software leaves 100% of the unit position data in a perpetual fluid state. Any segment or component of the animation can be tweaked, refined, copied, moved or deleted by authorized users. Since the nature of any commentary on a Civil War battle is virtually always open to debate, and the search for fact a never ending pursuit on the Internet, the Gettysburg APP can be indefinitely edited accordingly.
1,600+
6,500+
240,000+
1,200+
The battlefield animation currently encompasses July 1, 1863 (Day 1) from 6:00 am the 1:30 am the next day; and July 2, 1863 (Day 2) from 4:00 am thru Midnight. Individual infantry and calvary regiments, skirmish lines, detached companies, and artillery batteries, battery sections and individual guns, all from a database of over 1600 military units, have been meticulously positioned on the battlefield map at 5-minute intervals called "Ticks". Then the software "animates" the movement of each unit from "point A" to "point B" to "point C" and so on, as the end user initiates the animated advance thru the "Ticks".
On most "Ticks" there are between 600-700 historical placements; a total of over 240,000 positioned units in the APP's database. Their positions are based primarily on the narratives published by Harry W. Pfanz in his three books: "Gettysburg the First Day", "Gettysburg the Second Day" and "Gettysburg: Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill". Secondary sources include "Gettysburg, July 2: The Ebb and Flow of Battle" by James A. Woods; and "The Artillery of Gettysburg" by Bradley M. Gottfried.
The times and positioning of the units are rooted in over 4,000 documented references, with movement extrapolations derived from those key components.
Unit commanders, from Corps down to Regiments & Batterys, documented on every Tick, including replacements when the original is wounded, killed or captured.
View the detailed to experience how to navigate anywhere on the battlefield, to any key location, at any time of the day; watch the units move from outlying locations and engage. See the casualties mount and the scale unit sizes decrease.
