Time to present my map, as I have some polls to make before release and suggestions are welcome. And I want to clear that now, release will be when pigs fly. I choose that track because having the deadliest car track of all (so excluding the Island of Man motorcycle track...) in BeamNG only seemed natural to me. This map is representation of the 64 Km² area surrounding the small town of Nurburg, Germany. This include the Nordschleife track and the international Nurburgring GP track. The terrain : The 3D model of the tracks is a courtesy of its current maintainers for rFactor (and credit is due to them : DJCruicky, Tosch and mianiak from studio-397 forums, along with their predecessors as this model is an on-going work since 15 years as they said to me). This map will only have the tracks moulded into the terrain using Blender and the roads_tutorial_v2.blend setup file from LJFHutch. No mesh from the 3D model will be in the map. Due to terrain resolution, this previous method leaved saw blades artifacts on the terrain. I enlarged the tracks in Blender (3x) while conserving tilt to smooth all that. Here is a preview made just after I've moulded the terrain with the model : My goal here is not to approach the actual Nurburgring complex layout and all its safety equipments. I want to get back the Nordschleife to its "Green Hell" glory. This is BeamNG after all, so asphalt and trees is what you'll get here. And it's orange because I was in an autumn mood. The rest of the area is an heightmap from terrain.party, onto which the tracks are moulded. Forest, grass and "urban" areas (the grid textured terrain on the first image) were manually done with a corresponding OSM view. After having successfully moulded the tracks, I've added some things. What's currently done : 1 - ≈ 45 Km of large, foolishly tilted/curved/sloppy asphalt decal roads (carved in blender) with : around 4000 hand-placed road signs (curve, danger, tunnel, double-curve left/right and yield) 5 tunnels going under the GP/Nordschleife tracks "autumnized" decal road texture 2 - ≈ 25 Km of large, foolishly tilted/curved/sloppy dirt rally track (carved in blender) with : 4 bridges going above the asphalt roads and the tracks Little preview made when I found a satisfying track shape : 3 - Autumnal vegetation with currently around 670 000 forest items, plus ground covers items and terrain textures. 4 - 9000ft Airstrip 70m wide near the Flugplatz curve. 5 - 1/4 mile dragstrip with "water box", 600 additional meters for slowing down and return lane. What I want to be done before release : A distant terrain A proper minimap Nurburgring-ring-ring-ring (mostly done) Water feature(s ?), I have doubt about this. Most probably I'll make a tropical island standalone version of the tracks Nordschleife and GP track smoothing : because of terrain resolution (squares are 1.95*1.95m) and the Nordschleife track narrowness, tilted curves were as a saw blade in many places. I Finally found a way to enlarge the track in Blender, while conserving tilt, and used it to smooth the tracks. Textures : an autumnal decal for the rally track and the asphalt tracks, some vegetation textures need colour tweaking, adding a cliff material for roads sides and other steep terrain Direction/indication road signs Rally dirt bridges have to be redone Asphalt and dirt roads have some parts that need adjustments in some places AI tweaking to pass through the tunnels, bridges and intersections Particles : I want leaves (and dust) flying behind the cars, obviously ! Ambient sounds (forest, tunnel zones, ...) Map decoration : seatings, marshal towers and pedestrian bridges for the tracks, some houses in the grid areas with roads, pits for the tracks "Against the clock" sections for the tracks And others I'm forgetting, I'll add them later. Polls I'll run polls to have answers on things I'm not sure about or to confront opposing suggestions when popular (if any), and keep results beneath : 1st poll : Credits GP and Nordschleife tracks initial model : rFactor modders DJCruicky, Tosch and mianiak from studio-397 forums, along with their predecessors : Pleclair, *Com8*, Nor, G99. Caracciola Karussell, Kleines Karussell and the GP track 1st u-turn models are directly derived from this initial model, adapted by me. Bridges and tunnel models : me All other models : BeamNG staff All textures : BeamNG staff, I just tweaked colours and pasted some leaves on them. Help and advices : BeamNG staff and forum members
I wish I could say more then amazing work so far. To hopefully get an in-game version of Nordschleife in the game without major porting (I think that's what you meant. Good luck, however long it may take.
Yes indeed, no porting at all. I've added a video I made just after successfully moulded the track in the first post for you to see what I kept from their model. And thanks for the kind words !
I'm surprised how well terrain.party terrain works for you, because what I have got from there has been quite low resolution making it kinda pain in game. Looking forward of this, current only Nordie is not very pretty, yours is much pretty AI don't like intersections of bridges where other AI road goes over, without intersections or crossing roads AI might actually work well, just needs own AI decal road to be placed. I wonder if to get best from AI you need to build two versions one with dirt track AI enabled and other with tarmac AI enabled, but I would think that it could be possible to make AI work quite well in this map. Looking forward to do some crashing to those trees as that is what will result even I try to go around the lap quick
Well for the terrain.party heightmap I was indeed amazed of smooth it was in BeamNG, that might be due to the fact I pass it through the road_tutorial_V2.blend file to mould the tracks and the roads. I did not try to import it directly. As for the AI, I haven't yet checked how to make the bridges/tunnels and forgot to add that to the to-do list, thanks ! Edit : I'd have to be more specific for the terrain.party heightmap. Before using it in blender, I increased it's size to 2048*2048 (from 1081*1081) in photoshop (might make a first smoothing while expanding) and then I normalized it (to have highest point as pure white and lowest as pure black) with imagemagick to be able to scale things properly in blender. Details are in that thread about the issues I got setting things up : https://www.beamng.com/threads/need-help-setting-up-the-roads_tutorial_v2-blender-file.58119/
I'm quite bad as you can see from my videos, so I don't like being stuck into traffic sign, it just does not feel right.
I don't even know if you can vote more than one time or if you can change your mind. And I'm guessing you have to be logged in to be able to vote. Well after having almost a tie all weekend, the yes is gaining some advance finally I did not think of how long I would let those polls open. So considering I'm not progressing quickly (currently stuck on ambient occlusion mapping for the distant terrain), I guessing I'll let them rolling a week. If an answer is largely ahead of others (>2/3rd of voters) when I check results, I'll stop the poll there.
Sorry, I didnt mean to sound like an ass when I said that But personally I don't like collidable signs because I also mess up a lot.
Don't worry, you did not sound as one I'm not particularly fan of colliding with them ... well that depend. But I can't make that poll, having the yes wining and finally not making them collidable
You did not sounded like an ass, I just thought it would be good to bring up that annoying effect of small diameter collidable objects which means getting stuck. It can of course be helped by setting diamater of collider to something larger like 40cm, but then one gets hit by sign 15cm early or something like that. I'm already so slow that can't be anything more than average at best and mostly I'm below that, just crashing constantly, when trying to go faster than is possible, hence my liking to neutral to oversteer setups as I can always throw car sideways then and drift trough the turn
This argument is a double-edged sign, used as a sword. Signs can be made collidable without eating the car, but the collision mesh has to be oversized deliberately so that you don't get 'trapped' in it. It's thin surfaces <2~3cm wide and rather long skinny triangles (all surfaces are triangles, even square ones, they're two, sometimes more). If it's a city street and you're more interested in driver's simulation of a real place (like Roane County is) or driver's training, make signs collide, because hitting them IS avoidable. If it's a race track that just barely (or quite a lot) looks like a street, and you want speed, DO NOT make signs collide, as at any speed you'd go through them anyways. Hitting signs when going for best lap is almost unavoidable as we will go faster and faster until we mess up, then slow down a touch. If you are going to make a sign collide, place the collision box center behind the sign slightly so the forward edge will hit more when you expect it to, as you don't run into the back of them as often as hitting the front (if you made an 8~12cm wide cube, place the center 4cm behind the sign, this is merely an example, please experiment with size yourself). It can help to put large objects such as post-office blue mailboxes, telephone/utility poles and such to mask this. Also, nothing is stopping you from mounting signs to telephone poles themselves.
As of now I consider the poll closed. I thought I could just close it whenever but no, so in 1h it is and the results are in the 1st post.
I wonder which map you talking about. The one which is this topic's subject isn't released yet. I have much work to do on it before even polishing AI behavior on it. One thing is sure, it won't get released this year. I announced it much earlier than I thought.
