WIP Beta released A new *CITY* map - LOS INJURUS 2023-12-20

Now this, this is a thing of beauty... 8+ hours of work!

The beautifully butter-smooth highway is a joy to drive 65536mph down (or whatever speed you can reach), and that cloverleaf intersection is likely one of my most beautiful I've ever done. Something to take pride in here.
The on-ramps are decal roads where-as the highways are all done with mesh objects from the forest brush.

I have to get to making some 4/5 lane road intersections to hook on/off ramps to, I don't seem to have any yet. Oops. Guess that's what I'll be doing tonight, if I don't get sucked into Final Fantasy VI again. Gosh I love those old games from childhood (I had Final Fantasy III US version on the SNES as a child). Too bad some bird-brain at Square-Enix decided to change almost all the spell names and I have to look up what they all do :x

Still going to try and get an update out to Patron's this week sometime, but it will be out 'when it's ready' and I don't have too many loose ends (read: roads) untied (unfinished!). No one wants to fly off the already numerous cliffs in this map because some dumb-dumb bulldozed a bridge, didn't replace it and didn't tell anyone.

Oh, and signs have to get ported in, too. Thinking of fixing the collision on these before-hand though.
--Cheers!

 

Just wondering - where will my billboard be used (if you did decide to accept it)?

 

Will there be lots of Easter Eggy - small detail building with gags like Burger World?

One of my suggestions would be some kind of a chinese buffet serving "Sushi that was fresh two months ago!".

 

One idea I have is that there could be a Subway parody store where the logo is literally a subway that has the words "subway" on it's side.

...or maybe something like "Scrubaway".

 

More goodies. Got some more highway done, and the 720th piece is in, a half-piece for the Avenues with the concrete median. Fits very nicely under the bridges when you have highway access ramps at both sides.

I used the truck trailer there for size, it's got a foot or a little more room above it, so it should be fine.
This is a pretty central location, so there will be traffic lights on both sides of this bridge on this avenue.

Ignore any of the graphics on the ramps not lining up, that's just the LOD's which pop in when you're about this far away (from that intersection). There's some road destruction - I mean construction - in the distance where the road narrows. Not everything is perfect and new, after-all.

Another angle here of the same area. Plenty of highways will be in this map!!! The road going past the tall building appears to disappear, it doesn't, it just doesn't render when you're this far away. I have to really watch how many draw-calls I have with this map, as that is what really slows the engine down. You'll still see tall buildings and other landmarks (obviously, the highways stay around much longer) from far away, so you can find your way around.


Remember, that tall building actually has an interior (when you get within a half-block of it), which leads to a subway station. That's right, there's a subway right under this road here, that runs pretty much parallel with it.

Hopefully I get to work on that building or two @fufsgfen so kindly sent over as now I have a good place to put it.
Thanks!

I had fun making this stuff tonight.
--Cheers!
--- Post updated ---

The whole map is full of stupid puns, parodies, gags, etc. You just have to keep your eyes peeled as you drive around. They won't detract from the map but they will provide quite the alternative to boredom and mundane. If it's not funny, it's not a detail worth adding to a building/location as far as signs and the such goes.

@Fenneko Not sure where there will be billboards yet in the map, but they will be in. I want to get a few more neighborhoods in, then I can add some billboards in.

 

Whoops! I meant a loot OF quality work put into it.

 

@The Nowickster - It's all good bud. I figured as much. No harm done, I am not too easily set off anyways. Seen too much to let forum comments get to me (though I've been known to polite HAM someone out once in a blue moon).

---

Don't mind the road that looks half-missing, but there's a huge new stretch of 8-lane highway in now!

This area is very rough, but the surface of the highway is anything but! So keep in mind this is very early on and things look very horrid, aside of the nice new highway. So yeah, hopefully later this week I'll have nicer pictures to share!

That is all. I didn't have much sleep last night, so doing my best here.

 

Well, good luck with the rest of the work, and get some sleep soon, I hope.

 

I don't know if you were planning this already, but may I suggest an Airport?
the apparent flatness of this city, plus the apparent size of the city, i would think an airstrip like that would make sense.

 

This is actually quite enjoyable, to try many times to jump, and finally get it from both angles with a running/driving vehicle yet.

From another angle (looks a little less detailed from this distance, but that keeps the FPS up.

AI paths for the new portions of the highway (and old ones fixed up a bit) and this major route are in now, and some misc. detailing was done on the road.
Getting close to time to put some more buildings in, but before I do, I will make sure to update the online version for those who donated on Patreon. If you did, and for those who've donated models, thanks a lot!

I reckon it's a lot more fun than 'yet another boring bridge, why the @#$% are you showing me a bridge again' alternative.

Will be testing the AI paths tomorrow if I get time, real life gets in the way sometimes.
If the test goes well, I will affect any last-minute changes I need to (not much yet), and get this uploaded for the Patreon folks to check out. That means it should be in your hands by the end of the week, if that's you.
--Cheers!

@¿Carbohydration? - There will be a large commercial airport near the city/in the city and possibly a smaller private airport on the other side of the map, or at-least a commercial airport and a good improvised place to land, like a large long flat dirt patch that's marked and usable in the daylight hours. The idea is to have one or two destinations to fly to.

 

Will the city cover the entire map? or will some of the outer sections be more light suburban/outer city, with more industrial zones. (kind of like in WCA, where it goes from densely populated city to oil pumps and roads but over a wider space)

 

The city will be in the inner, flat portion around the lake. The lake which I fixed yesterday after previously changing the water levels (that was a good 2 hours). Forgot to mention that. There will be out-lying areas of population, nothing huge though.
There will also be shipping yards / industry stuff on the one side of the map, with a port and such for shipping and receiving of goods (there will be industrial areas here and there, too, spread throughout the city).
I already built one of the suburban districts with single-family homes and occasional duplexes. That's the most intensive areas to run, I just have to be careful not to over-build, as this game hits draw-call issues FAST.

Draw call = one texture, on a single object, is a single draw call. The next texture is another draw call. and so on an so forth until the item is completely drawn, then there's the next item, and so on, and so-forth.
I could reduce draw calls, but that would HIGHLY increase the amount of poly surfaces needing to be drawn exponentially. In other words, it would look even worse, and take up more VRAM to boot, and would run worse yet!

That being said, I am building smarter as I go on, or at-least trying to.
Objects have a 6-texture limit max to corral the draw-call issues. I will be making longer sections of road where needed, it might help a little bit. I will also be spreading out low-density residential areas to break up the high-draw-call areas a bit. So long as they are spread out they will be fine. Those with 6+ year old machines, bulldozer or other coal-powered machines may elect to shut off reflections, shadows and SSAO to save a few FPS, but I am still getting 62fps by the chicken munch. So it's not too bad so far! I don't want to have to reduce draw distance, which is still at 2 miles / 2.5KM. Worst-case scenario, I will have to put it down a little more but I will make it optional for those that have lesser computers or more powerful ones etc. For example, things will start to lag above 5000 draw calls for some people, and really get sketchy up above 6000 draw calls, even for the Geforce 1000 series cards, which are still relatively new. A computer that is 5 years old however, isn't going to be able to render a 5000 draw call scene past 20 FPS on max detail very easily. That being said, it's yet to drown a Core i7-class XEON running on a vintage 2009 chipset (W3550 CPU stock clocks on an HP OEM x58 chipset motherboard, with triple channel memory at 1066/1333mhz) with a 6750 1gb DDR3 video card. It does max the VRAM all the time though, but it was hovering around 60FPS on it's lowest settings. So that will be the minimum.
Folks with 750 Ti 1gb video cards could still run this if needed.

Still running more than 2x what downtown Harriman in Roane County Tennessee does though. Worst-case spot is still 1.5x and that's where BLOCKS AND BLOCKS of fully detailed city are built.

 

two airports would be awesome, large inner city one, then maybe a small one for a little town , give you something to with a the me-262 we got sitting around

 

Yes, there will be a nice large city airport, on Inertia BLVD because @Inertia is making a nice plane. I can't fly to save my hide, so, someone else will have to test it out. I stay away from planes. I can't even get past mission 3 of flight school in GTA SA (I've been stuck there for over a month, and have given up).
What's difference between plane and car? Well, to me, plane is harder to drive, and makes a bigger boom. That's it.
Otherwise, that having been taken out of the way, yes, certainly, there will be airports for folks that want them. It's a city, it should have everything. Will do my best to keep the flight path clear, too, no trees or tall buildings at the end of the runways - got to watch those pesky mountains though - they're everywhere.

--Cheers!

 

Thank god, something to hold me over till I get more ram and another city map to rp in, super excited

 

I updated Subway train. Maybe you need to update it. It is more stable now. Links in 1st post https://beamng.com/threads/train-locomotives.57150/

 

I am finishing up the last of the loose ends in the map.
I have just one or two AI paths to touch up before I ship this up to my personal backup server.
Patreon donators should expect a message via Patreon with a link to MEGA, where I have my personal backups.
Those who donated 10$ (or large usable skyscrapers!) or more this or last month will get a link up. Thanks!

On to the important bits (not that the above wasn't).

The above picture, the bridge is now mostly finished. Don't hit the ends of the railing though, you might get stuck in it.
The piece below is new. It's a Y-piece for turning two local canals into a 'small' canal (that's larger than 'local' size). Obviously at this point I haven't built the rest of the canal to it yet. I did add AI paths in the canals, though.

Below, oh no, ANOTHER bridge? Nope it's one of the ones from before, just done this time!



Due to editor glitches beyond my control, this cannot be deleted right now from within the editor.

Stupid editor. I already had to delete at-least 10 different entries manually, using the car's location to find the closest object in one of 655 forest object files!!! Argh... There's quite a few stuck objects around the town, it's only hitting the FPS 3~5FPS max though, on average. I will get them out in due time.
I HOPE THEY FIX THE EDITOR BUGS SOON. The UNDO bug is STILL THERE! It's *WORSE* now.
*uses lots of "Sentence Enhancers" about the BeamNG.Drive map editor*
*lots of Muttley muttering and swearing* ...
So yeah, now it's time to celebrate and knock out the whole internet for the entire house with my backup service.

AI feature should be considered 'in development' and 'available as a convenience and not a promise of functionality' nor is it a representation of the final product. It's there, but it's not perfect by any rate.
All things considered, there ARE AI paths in, just not for some of the new parking lots near here:

So you'll have to mash into the trees yourself (remember, this is on the other side of the lake from the other stuff that was in last version). Again, there ARE AI routes in the canals, so do try them out, they should mostly work.
--Cheers

P.S. If I haven't said it enough, there will be links via Patreon for those that donated! Thanks! If you don't get one by the end of Saturday, feel free to scream me out - via private message on here - about it and throw me your Patreon name so I can check it out.

 

Those who donated 10$ or more to the project should have a link via email. If you didn't get one, let me know your name online on the Patreon site via private message here, and I'll make sure that's remedied within 24 hours or so.
For the remainder of the month, today's beta will be the one that ships out. Why the wait?

Well, for those running the beta, I know why it's not achieving 60fps. It's those bastard draw calls. The bane of this game's map design is on Draw Calls. What's a draw call?

For each texture, on each object, it is one draw call. If the home in view has 5 different textures (I do have mosaic / combined textures for house windows used prominently in the residential area), it will be 5 draw calls. If the LOD of the house (you see this further away, it has less sides and usually less textures) is 2 different textures, it's only two draw calls. Now I do NOT know if BeamNG batches all similar objects into X amount of draw calls (total number of textures of a single object being X, vs being 500 draw calls if you have 100 homes in view at full detail - which is never the case). I feel it does *NOT* batch similar objects when doing draw calls. OK I know this now, but that's got to be fixed sooner than later before I get too far into this.

How to fix 700 objects. Well, slowly but surely. Bake the textures into the LOD's if possible or do shaded solid color and not texture. The most complex ones would be done first of course, and even the most detailed road only has 5 or 6 different textures (an on-off ramp intersection piece for the main road, has 6, large intersections of 3 or 4 ways have 5, normal roads have two or three, depending on which ones used, this drops with LOD's of course).

I will be doing more research. I will also possibly be replacing one of the road kits texture-wise to help negate this issue. So basically, I know more now, and this should improve the map FPS while changing the look very little. This way I don't have to have bare spots in the city due to the performance being in the rubbish bin. I certainly won't be producing an entire map that runs like downtown Harriman did in Roane County. Not pleased with the performance of that at all - but now at-least I know for sure what's causing it.

I will start with the homes first, and also the complex intersections. The canals will be done too sooner than later as most of these objects are 5 or 6 draw calls (I can fix these by making the lod's all one or two textures). This is pretty easy and painless. It just takes time. The ground-level highways will NOT need to be re-done as they're only two or three textures per object.

Expect it to sit quiet for a day or two, or three, then maybe some good news. Will have to see!
--- Post updated ---
OK, initial tests with a 12 object set, being mostly just:
3 intersections that are often used, as these use 5 textures up close.
2 sections of straight road (the 5-lane 'collector' roadways, has the 'suicide lane' / left turn only lane in the center), as these used 3 textures up close and afar.
7 canal sections (straight ones, and the T piece and Y-piece and a size converter piece), as these use 5~6 textures up close.

I reduced the textures on the intersection LOD's, by removing the yellow paint from curbing when you're more than a half-block away (can't really see it unless you run 4k anyways). These are used often. This reduces LOD's from the full 5 textures down to 3, then 2 for the low/lowest LOD's (sidewalks and road textures).
I reduced the textures on *ALL* LOD's of the two lengths of straight collector road (full, half). This goes from 3 to 1 texture, and made a mosaic texture of it for the LOD's reducing drawcalls to 1 per LOD vs the old 3. That's a 66% reduction per piece, and they're used heavily.
Reduced most all the straight and junction canal pieces from 5~6 textures on the LOD's down to 1 or possibly 2 depending on the piece. That's a 60~88% reduction in draw calls per piece.

Placed these in the map after removing cache (I removed the cache before I did a test, prior to replacing said pieces, then shut down the game, added the updated pieces, and then deleted cache again).
BEFORE - 53~62 FPS at the Chicken Munch
AFTER - 57~69 FPS at the Chicken Munch
Just 12 pieces. Of 700+ objects. That's a *BIG* improvement for just 1/50th or so of the pieces.

So of course - 700 objects - enough to make most mappers cry. No, I won't be replacing *ALL* of them. I will be replacing the ones that need it most, and go from there.
There's no difference in VRAM use in a 512x512 pixel texture that was added (for the Collector LOD's), and there's little to no quality difference.

So, that aside, this looks very promising folks! This is good news, very VERY GOOD NEWS.
I wasn't going to post but figured I'd share with you all.

So do look forward to future versions. The next beta won't be until there's a substantial performance difference. I may even be able to take some of this knowledge and help out Roane County a bit in it's worst areas.
--- Post updated ---
OOPS!
The subway tunnel was blocked by a last minute addition of bridge abutments. So I removed them and here are the pair of changed files.
these go in the /TSH/forest folder and overwrite 2 files inside the zip.
This will remove the four objects blocking the tunnel. Derp!

 

I think I did mention about them, once or twice

Technically you can have about 3000 buckets, until modern CPU is on it's knees (and even at that point number of vehicles is already limited by drawcalls more than by physics), each bucket CPU has to carry over to GPU and more stuff you can put in a bucket, better chance GPU has to stay fed, so it is kinda like this:


VS this:

That is 1:8 reduction right there, but then there is even more to it:


So kinda using all those fancy material map effects only where it matters is helping too, or that is at least how I have understood it from reading I have been doing in last days.

There is even more to it though, it is just bit more unclear for me at the moment, so can't really say much, but I know GPU does not care about objects themselves, it cares about surfaces that share same texture.

So all the textures that can be shared among polygons can be savings, which leads me to believe there is no point combining textures that you will never see at the same time, as drawcalls are mostly only per what you see on screen.

Then texture size I have read not being a problem with current tech, so going 4K or 8K should not be a problem, it would not increase vram usage if done carefully as all those single textures would still need to be in memory anyway, which make up equal amount of space + potential overheads.

It still is just one way to handle the issue, which suits for some cases, some other cases don't benefit so much, but that is why building things is fun for me, always learning new tricks.

Another thing is that any drawcall that sends less than 300 polys was zero gains vs 300 polys at 2007, we are now at 2018 and even at 2007 they did talk how that limit is rising rapidly, so that is another thing which needs planning when building, using batching on what one sees to gain more polys to each batch will help to have more full scene with same performance.

But everything is still compromise, one has to decide between amount of work, amount of skill, amount of hardware load etc. but more tricks to have on your sleeve, better compromises one can make.

This 3000 bucket limit may change when Beam is optimized, maybe in Beta or so, even new UI may allow bit more as that too taps on same limited CPU resource, it may change if culling etc are changed as it is per what is rendered on what you see at the moment in game.

Also in this engine I have noticed that what is behind camera within certain range is using drawcalls too, so it is kinda hard to really pinpoint something, but every new trick helps, every day something new is learned.

 

OOPS!
The subway tunnel was blocked by a last minute addition of bridge abutments. So I removed them and here are the pair of changed files.
these go in the /TSH/forest folder and overwrite 2 files inside the zip.

Yes, I do know about draw calls. I wasn't wanting to put the entire city as one as the entire project is meant more to bring the capability of anyone with BEAMNG.DRIVE editor knowledge, to be able to make a half-decent city (surely my stuff is not GTAV level, but it's within reason!). Your knowledge has helped though @fufsgfen .
I have taken some results from the preliminary tests and been able to have great luck with just simplifying the LOD's so that the textures aren't eating draw calls so much. The roads themselves only display very high detail (more than 1 or 2 draw calls) when you're within about 3/4th's of a block of them, so that's not a really big deal, I mean, 100 draw calls tops - but then you've got 400~500 draw calls from all the roads around (tops, estimate, in busiest parts) with FIXED LOD's (not all are fixed at this point).
So all in all, while not combining many pieces into single-piece units, I *CAN* simplify the LOD meshes to at-least keep the draw call count down below 4000 or so.
I also did, after I posted for what it's worth, lower the grass billboard amount as that's also seeded on the CPU, this will make the nice neat lines at the edge of the lawns - which isn't always right up against the sidewalk and is obvious, a little LESS obvious and a little less CPU use. That should help too.

So do check back over the next week or two, to check out this thread over the next week to see if I have made any progress on the draw call count issues. I am going to need a good two weeks at-least to do all this, but the initial results look VERY promising. I was expect 2fps different TOPS on a good day in a best-case scenario, I got 4~7fps difference by swapping out some fairly common objects (never mind that the canals are 1.5~2km away straight line distance - and the draw distance is 2.5km max - 2500m). Driving around the map also felt a bit smoother too, without looking at it, which I noticed the second I fired it up. Lowering the CPU bottleneck will also help reduce a bit of the micro-stutter that happens when the game streams in assets during high CPU usage.

--Cheers!