It seems as though now may be a god time to dig this up, i think I saw it on a devblog a while ago. whiel it only seems to be concept art, it may hint to a story mission, possibly in belasco.
So... Italy is continuing to shape up ... not a bad thing, but after WCUSA, I'm almost certain that I'm never going to be run it on normal graphic settings.
I had a different thought about Italy. Like, once it's done, we might not get any new maps for a while. I mean, think about it. It's going to be a 16sqkm map, which is the largest the developers have ever done, so unless they're just using a lower heightmap resolution than usual, that means they're working on pushing the boundaries - either tiled terrain or a higher limit on heightmap size (remember at least @tdev is involved with T3D somehow). So, I have to wonder if, once they're done with Italy and its associated improvements to the game, they're going to go back to some of the other maps, at least the ones like ECA, WCA, and Utah that have built-in room to grow, and expand them? Utah has a broken bridge and that nonsensical looping freeway tunnel, which definitely smacks of placeholder to me. WCA has roads running to/off the edge of the map all over the place. So, I do have to wonder if they've left room for expansion on those and have been planning such all along?
Heck, Industrial and Derby arenas are in serious need of attention. The former has mud puddles in the middle of a racetrack that drag cars down even when they're six feet away on solid ground!
In my opinion we need improvement in AI right now. Utah, ECA, WCA etc. All these maps looks good, but without good AI is kinda boring. The only reason why I'm still playing is that wonderful racetrack on WCA.
I do agree, the AI seems to be made a bit more careful in the city area. it seems to almost always crash into poles on the side of the road, even not after taking a jump.
I don't quite think it's meant to be that way - if it was, then the mud would only take effect where it is visible, and I wouldn't be sinking to the axles in what appears to be dry dirt:
Is that maybe why WCUSA has blocked off roads in the city? We could get an expansion with a total map size of 16km2 But that also would mean that the devs would need to rework how T3D's engine works, since there would be ENORMOUSLY low fps with the current engine version... (Look at the Tennessee map for example; lags like hell in the city (for me atleast)). So Italy with it's size on the current engine would be like a ticking bomb, waiting to explode with comical 1 fps
For me at least for comparison sake. When playing on the Tennessee (mod) map all my apps break (maps, fuel, speed, ect.) but it always stayed at 20fps which is what JRI and WCUSA hold at.
well well well. looks like we got some new screenshots. this time dealing with the underwater areas. "mproved 'Caustics' being displayed at any depth at full strength. Now fades out the deeper you go. "We also disabled the underwater bobbing/distortion effect, as it was kind of nauseating." - @Nadeox1 posted this and something posted by @Diamondback "Just a tiny cryptic teaser As always, no promises on if and how that actually makes it into a final release but we are experimenting with something like this."
I'd say that that has a pretty good chance of coming to the game. I've been right every other time I've made such a prediction so...
Keep in mind that if that is going to be more engine tuning (which I hope to all that is holy that it is - we seriously need more engine tuning in a game that's insanely customizable everywhere else), that will likely necessitate more slots. More slots = more lag, which means that the devs will have to try and find some sort of solution to keep the FPS high.
Lag? If you mean UI lag then yeah, but a UI overhaul is quite overdue now, i don't know how high it is on the list of things to do but the performance can be appalling with many cars and etc. I think engine tuning is quite good at the moment, what else would you tune without going technical (like air fuel ratios and etc)
I remember someone of devs mentioning that there would be something new coming that should help with that exact issue, but as always my memory can't be trusted and also if devs say something about future features or changes, it is big maybe, if there is problems with a feature it won't come at least not until it works well enough. I'm not going to mention anything about world editor, they are working on that so maybe that issue can be put to rest in a near future
Almost 2 month old post here I am replying to... but here goes! Roane County Tennessee lags in the cities due to demanding graphics, sheer amount of polys being rendered (4~7 million is about the ballpark for downtown areas), and the size of the collision brush due to large 'forest' (decorations) takes up the RAM amounts it uses. Believe me, I've even hacked models to display at lower detail, barely helps it at all. It's just the fact that without a lot of tricks and modeling gimmickery there's not much I can do with the FPS besides removing detail. Some of us may just be unlucky and have to wait a year or so for a better computer to run it better, if low settings don't help. We're supposed to get tiled terrains support in the future, the devs have it on the roadmap and in speaking with them personally they do wish to add it. It would be super-useful and not TOO hard to implement (we can do it now but other terrains have no collision beyond the first main terrain unit). There's roads blocked off in the city of WC USA, due to the fact that that is the edge of the terrain, and to have the city end suddenly would break immersion. So due to hitting the edge of the terrain, the map ends and a little (1 block) space is left, to protect the immersion so you don't 'see' the edge of the map from the car. The goal of good mapping, is so the player cannot tell where the playable area ends (besides barriers or deterrents), and the 'skybox' (surrounding scenery) begins. You can add playable area beyond the single terrain with model DAE's the have collision, but it must be done with an abundance of caution. They're easy to make into sky-boxes (as surrounding, distant terrain) though.