WIP Beta released The Tennessee USA Roane County 0.71 Beta Discussion/Suggestion/feedback Thread 19.3.1

i guess i could

 

You should be fine with it, close out your web browser first though, it'll help. It generally uses 6~6.5gb of RAM once you have your choice of car loaded up and have driven around 40 miles or more.
The game uses a large amount of virtual memory, which is usually enabled by default, just for your information (when running large maps anyways).
If you run multiple cars, memory use gets much higher, so be aware of that and you could have issues running several vehicles. One should be fine though. Once you look around for a few seconds with the camera, most things should load up and gameplay should be generally smooth (unless it's streaming data from a hard drive).

By the way, you have a CPU on an M5A97LE motherboard. The LE version is like the 'light edition' and doesn't have heatsinks on the VRM's near the CPU (above and to the left of the processor itself on the board). This means the board, while it may be able to, shouldn't really be overclocked very far or you'll shorten the life of the thing by overheating the VRM's. Since you have only a 4xxx series cpu on it, it shouldn't be pushing it very hard so I am sure maybe you can knock stock clocks up 200~300mhz before hitting any instability. I own the same board for my FX6300 system I used to have in use a few years ago before I got my i7, except it's the non-LE version, original revision. Only difference is those heatsinks for the most part.
If your not overclocking, I wouldn't worry about it at all, because otherwise it is a good solid motherboard and has been in use many years now and rather proven/solid.

 

Just a tasty tidbit to cheer up your weekend time, Look what's coming in the very near future.
Featuring 4k terrain, scenic forest swiped right out of ECA in an almost copy-paste-a manner, and LOTS of turns.
Of course my road textures for Tennessee will return, in a very selective manner (as I won't need all of them).
NO MESH ROADS will be used for roads here (only bridges, dams, guide-rail, etc). ALL decal roads for 100% smoothness.
This should be comparable in size to my So-Cal map, however, performance will be better as only the 'used' areas will be kept.
The NE and SW extremes of the map (mountains only) will be omitted for FPS reasons so it should run on lower-spec machines that don't quite reach the recommended Beamng requirements, but can run ECA smoothly (ECA = East Coast USA), as it will have numerous trees.
So long as the machine runs 64-bit Beamng.drive, it should run, I will *try* to make it run on 4gb-RAM equipped systems.

DEALS GAP / TAIL OF THE DRAGON... it's coming! This is one of the top-desired locations along with the almost-as-popular, also up-and-coming PA Abandoned Turnpike (I haven't forgotten!).

 

It will be epic!

 

Hey, I'm not sure how far you long in the map yet, but what are your plans for keeping it "1:1 scale" I'm guessing the area you're making is 4kmx 4km, and so will the terrain, but I'm a tad curious about your plans for keeping the roads exactly where they need to be in relation to all the mountains. Are you using an overlay like on the Utah map? I'm not too sure how you want your map to look visually, but recently, I get a scluptmap and texture from a site called google maps customizer (http://www.chengfolio.com/google_map_customizer). You can set it to satellite mode and then set the boundary to something like 5000x5000 and then take a full screen (I use some generic chrome extension). Then line it up with your height map in an image editor and then you have a nice 4k sculptmap (and texture if you how it looks)

 

I am trying to LIDAR this, that's the new imagery and such, which is available for the purpose I am attempting, in the area I am working on.
This is purportedly some really fine-grained stuff! So I should be able to keep things where they're supposed to be as much as possible.
The road will be reproduced as close as possible to it's real-life counterpart, just as I reproduced the roads in Tennessee Roane County map.
I will most likely take a drive out there next week to see what it's like, I've not been out there yet and it's only about 90~100 minutes from my place.
Gives me a good excuse to stop by Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge after the wildfires they had in November.

I have all the imagery I need on LIDAR from USGS, not using terrain party here (or google, which was just a reference for the picture).
Just FYI, you can get the several height points (4~5) across a two-lane roadway, vs 1~2 MAX with terrain party or other similar site.
This gets a data point every meter, vs every 3.15 meters with USGS's older stuff. YAY FOR NEW SATELLITE TECH YEAAAH!!!
it will be a 4096 meter x 4096 meter map so around 4km x 4km, no larger than 6km x 6km (hopefully, otherwise I lose precision past 1.5m square size). It will be as small, but also as large as it can be without losing square PRECISION - if that makes any sense. Think roughly Nevada Interstate / Blackhills terrain size AT MOST. I will trim the fat where I am able. Direction will be true, though, north means north (not going to rotate it to fit better, wouldn't gain much anywho). I will still checkout the link posted and keep it bookmarked, having more tools at the fingertips never hurt at all - thanks!
Look for a thread on this somewhere between the end of the weekend and middle of next week, if I am not too preoccupied with the damn lawn and going out to the actual area to take in some scenery and get a feel for it (required!).

 

Are you going to include the Tree of Shame?

 

Sorry, it will only be a regular tree (if it's there at all), I am merely doing the road/terrain/bridges/guiderail & adding trees/rocks where needed. I have zilch modeling ability here, it's just not something I am able to do. I will use custom models if they are sent in, though.
Rebuilding the road to perfection, is going to be very tough to do, however, I will do the best I am able; and as shown by this Roane County map, it's not going to turn out too badly.

 

https://www.beamng.com/threads/tail-of-the-dragon-deals-gap.39818/
Please take all discussion for Deal's Gap / Tail of the Dragon to the above link, I've merely started a thread there so that it doesn't derail this one any more than it already has. Thanks for your interest, this is the most requested map project there was out of all of them.

 

This map rules. Loaded up in seconds and now i have 5 ais running around it crashing randomly into signs(set them to split road mode they tend to hug the shoulders sometimes). I love all your maps. You do incredible maps and terrains, dude way to go my hat off to you

 

Nah it's cool if you don't trust it don't use it. Single-core performance in the game right now is hurting you on the Phenom II. CPU's have come a really long way in the last 8 (estimated) years since that CPU was top-dog in it's class. The fact that it even runs at all is testament to a sound purchase when it was bought. Just know that when you do run this, on a newer PC, it's plenty playable. Not world's smoothest map, but it's plenty playable for mostly everyone except the 2ghz AMD APU's...those won't run this game well worth nothin'.
An Rx 460 for 45$ used? That's a good deal, I could drink to that, can't much blame you for that.

Using a cheap TLC-nand SSD might make it flake out a little earlier, but if you'll notice, that MLC-nand has about roughly 10x better longetivity. So make sure your next SSD purchase is MLC-nand, and that it's got a good 5 year warranty on it. If one of my toshiba's dies on me, I get a brand new drive, they even pay shipping BOTH ways. Haggle-free, and so good I am hoping they don't sell of their drive manufacturing division to someone else. Most all SSD's, especially over-provisioned ones for enterprise and pro-sumer class have a MTBF superior to HDD's, and there's no moving parts to wear or have a head crash - especially important to mobile devices. I was also hesitant for years on this topic of longetivity - but dove in, in 2013. My AMD FX rig barely noticed a difference, though browsing the internet was a little snappier, and games a touch faster. An SSD on a recent intel machine was a whole-different-story here, I will say.
If you don't want to spend a bunch, buy something with Micron's flash, like the Crucial MX300 (though TLC, it's a good drive!), or their better series with MLC nand if money isn't so much an issue. Hard drives are great for file-hoarding, but with the future of ever-increasing bandwidth needed for open-world games, an SSD always will reign supreme.
Just make sure your shadows are off in this game, especially on this map, they're cpu-bound and not reliant on the video card.

Don't be too upset that this map doesn't run that well on an older processor, it's pushing the limits of this game itself, with roughly 3/4ths of the total map assets used that are available to be used. The only thing that's missing is some more town decorations and some races. This was originally a large-map-test for the game engine to simulate an open-world-ish environment. I do not regret making it.

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For anyone interested:
I've got an FX 6300 CPU, AMD (asus brand) M5A97 (970 chipset) motherboard (full ATX not LE version), with a Cooler master Hyper 212 here in like-new condition for sale if anyone wants it near middle Tennessee. It's in a Lian-Li black aluminum PC-60 series mid-tower case. Well cared for, private message me for details or offers! Runs CPU at 4.1 or 4.2ghz (can't remember) 24/7 stays cool and rock-solid stable. 100~125F under load. This was my old PC until 2014 sometime. Has valid Win 7 home license, and Win XP pro license included. Make offers in private. Hasn't been used for 2.5 years or so except to wipe drives periodically as-needed, otherwise it's collecting dust.

 

Man you did well i like this map a lot it runs perfect on my pc 70fps maybe down to 50fps if i really start to screw around

only thing i would say needs to be added is more trees and like stuff to look at

maybe a 4x 4 park somewher in the map like a real good one i reccon you could make a good one

again good job keep it up

 

I wouldn't bother much with the 8350 unless you get it for <60 bucks. It's not going to help your beamng.drive performance much, but it will make windows multi-tasking a little better, and it will give you two extra cores. These FX cpus had weak FPU's and rather-poor IPC, so they weren't anything more than a clockspeed increase over the existing Phenom II. Until I built this i7 in 2014 with top-end hand-picked hardware I was using scavenged stuff from thrift-shoppes also, so I can't blame you there. I scrimped by until I got fed up with the poor performance of my Athlon II quad core PC, upgraded to an FX, used it for about a month, got so angry with it I built an entirely new tower because the FX 6300 was barely 40% faster than my athlon II (though the l3 cache made it snappier), and it was clock-wise 40% more, so it was literally based on the clockspeed solely.
I wouldn't pay new price on the 8350, however, if you find one cheap used, then go for it if you feel the price is right.
There's positively, absolutely nothing wrong with being thrifty.

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I tried, I did my best to optimize where I could, though there was little helping a large-map-test for the game engine, at being easy-to-run. Glad to know it works well enough. If you get many cars in the map, with AI use, keep an eye on your system memory used. If you get cpu bottlenecked, knock shadows off or for player-car only, and reflections can be lowered or disabled to speed up video rendering (helps A LOT in towns too). Glad to know you enjoyed it. Over the summer you'll see the towns fleshed out, though it's on the back burner this month.

 

Best bang for the buck is generally between GTX 1050~GTX 1070 on Nvidia, and Rx 570 or Rx 480~580 on Radeon cards.
Don't feel too badly about needing a gpu-upgrade, I just finally upgraded from my 3~3.5 year old 7850 2gb video board last fall.

That 8350 FX cpu will do well for helping you do twitch streaming, keep in mind you do get newer extensions with a newer cpu, some of these help the cpu encode better for things like streaming or hoarding your dvd collection into the pc, etc. It's not a night and day difference as the FX wasn't that renowned when it came out (the first FX iteration was rather a big flop when it hit, the 2nd one was a bit better), but it does help in multi-tasking as you speak of with streaming, especially on higher clockspeed as the FX 990 can provide (and power).

I use a monitor about that size, it's actually a TV I picked up at the pawn shop, hey it works and I couldn't pass it up for the price, and I can hook my ancient-but-awesome SNES right to it's co-ax input.
It sure is nice when you want to just lay on the bed (I have a BAD back) and watch TV because you hurt too bad some days to be vertical for long.
I will say it's rather difficult, though still possible to edit Beamng.drive levels using a SNES controller on an extension cable with usb2snes converter...and a program to forward it's inputs to the mouse, and a second controller to move the camera...but it's POSSIBLE!

 

Are the two towns linked together by road? I can't seem to find my way between them both. I was driving for about 2-1/2 hours trying to find the next town.

 

I put a map up
Kingston is over half done, like 65~75% done. (that's right side middle of the map)
Harriman is mostly done (downtown, the outskirts aren't done) 85% done or so... north middle of the map
Rockwood is barely started, there's a small cluster of buildings here or there that's it
Cardiff, Westel, Midtown, etc, those other ones aren't on the map yet.
Where it says AIRPORT, that's where the airport is, on AIRPORT ROAD. There's a waterfall / mud crossing where it's closed at the NE end of it.
You can use the mostly east-west highway (Route 40) to get to and from parts of the map quickly. It's banked nice and fairly smooth.
There's a major north-south four/five lane road that goes from Harriman to Rockwood, too.
This road, Route 27 one of the longest, straightest roads in the map.
Route 70 goes from Rockwood and winds through the park/forest area to get to Kingston. This is also a long, somewhat straight road (in spots).
Theres gobs of other roads I haven't mentioned. 163+ miles of roads here. You will get lost, just keep driving, you'll get somewhere, or eventually find the edge of the map

You can also select targets like ones with DT (DT = downtown) from the AI dropdown target box
There's RACE ST in Kingston, or Decatur Hwy will surely drive you through it (as going through Kingston is the only way to get to Decatur, which is south of Kingston, Rt 58 I believe)
There's Roane ST (South roane street is more towards Rockwood, North Roane Street is by Harriman downtown), many targets for that.
Roane Street is Rt 27 - not to be confused with nearby and almost paralell for a bit Roane State Highway Rt 70!
Try and look for things like DT Harriman or Kingston or Rockwood on them in the AI target box, and follow the AI there or have it drive you, THE AI WORKS, especially if you get lost, have it un-lost you

AI might 'stuck itself' on a stop sign now and then but usually only downtown, so you'll surely find your way back to the town 1st.
--- Post updated ---
OOPS, Forgot to mention, AI control APP is on the apps menu, just select it and stick it on the bottom of the screen, and maybe make it a bit wider by dragging the edge of it so you can read the box entries.
There's also 'North map edge turn around' and 'south map edge turn around' and also east and west ones (east and west is on highway, so the AI doesn't dead-end, it can continue by driving across the median to turn around, makes better chases this way).
North map edge turn around will usually take you through harriman and south map turn around will usually take you through Rockwood.
The east map edge turn around target is just a mile north of Kingston, maybe not even, you can't miss Kentucky Street (one of it's mains).

 

Not sure if this was already addressed or not, but why do vehicles on this map vibrate?

 

Floating point physics rounding. Floating point is a fast math that while correct, rounds a bit of the decimal places off the trailing end of the number. This means that in one frame to the next of animation, things might look vibrating like they do when a vacuum line comes off under the hood of the car. This only happens on the outermost edges of the map, less down by Rockwood. Nothing I can do about this, as it's the only feaseable way to run car physics @ 2000hz with a modern processor. This is a limitation with a super-large map in a game engine that otherwise had mostly shoe-box sized maps. It gets worse as you go to the edges of the map, as this map is 12.x miles x 12.x miles vs the 2km x 2km or 4km x 4km of the in-game maps. I can assure that while it looks like the car needs a tune-up, it has no negative affects on the physics engine or the crash realism. Your car won't fall apart any different than it normally would. It's merely visual only and unfortunately, every time they add a decimal more on physics, it would take exponentially more processing power. So we put up with a bit of visual vibration but get a huge map in return.

Long story short, I can't do anything about it, it's a game-engine limitation, but this may be addressed in future game revisions a bit through some hackey methods, or not (though, it may not be fixed, there's no promises here). Again, if you hang around close to the Rockwood starting point, though it's not done yet, it's much less dramatic.

 

Ok, I wasn't really concerned about it. It's just slightly annoying...

 

Another joyride along US40, where it graciously provided enough room for me to blow my engine.