Combining multiple building models into one reduces draw calls, therefore increasing performance. @bob.blunderton Knows a lot about this from the creation of his massive maps.
Yes, if you think it runs 'poorly' wait until you break all those roads, buildings, bushes, and so-forth that's all combined apart. You would not be happy with the result if you did, it would be very very bad. It's much easier to do things in-editor in the game, so trust me, if they could have done so, they would. A draw call - which making huge objects can reduce - is the CPU telling the GPU to render X amount of contiguous / connected triangles on a model, with the same texture on it. The more draw calls you have, the more work for the cpu, the less draw calls and more triangles you have, the more work for the GPU. In a perfect world this is always balanced 50/50 so that your machine and most other competent machines can run it to the fullest. This is not a perfect world, and some compromises were made so that people other than owners of 10900k, 10980xe, and 9900k processors can run WC USA well. Also, keep in mind, many games including this one can/may/do group objects to prevent certain commercially sold objects that may have been purchased from being 'redistributed in the current form' due to license restrictions and trying to keep out anti-competitive stuff like folks getting those models 'free'. I have objects on my map that are commercial, such as textures or certain buildings, but they're small in number in comparison to what I've made, or used from the game itself here. I have stuck those in a 'commercial assets' folder so people know that they're not to be redistributed outside of BeamNG or my own backup server (and even then, only distributed in the form of a map). You can make a whole city out of modular objects, and run it well, but this raises the CPU and memory* requirements of the scene if you are not 100% extremely careful with your CPU budget. *not always, depends on the objects, amount of use, etc How did I manage to do it? Objects that can be simple, are simple! I didn't stuff extra detail except into buildings you can drive into or through, or places that are common destinations such as fast food stores, the abandoned mall, the fancy airport (which still needs details like road striping, lights, etc). Keeping the majority of buildings as just fancy brick boxes in various shapes and colors (while a bit mundane or bordering on boring) is fine if you put plenty of detail, accuracy, and realism in the roads and popular destinations (or parts used in missions / campaign). If you're flying by random house # 65535 and it has 10,000 poly surfaces VS 60 well-done poly surfaces, you're not really going to notice if you're going 100+ mph. I just chose to put the detail in the roads/highways and infrastructure and not the houses as much due to the fact that, well, this is a 'driving game' or 'driving simulator' and while you want realism and immersion, it's not 'The Sims'. Basically, if you want to expand the city in West Coast, the skybox will foul you up (which is what's beyond the edge of the town and why it stops, because modern PC's have limits), and you will quickly run into performance issues. However, that said, I encourage you to use my map with it's modular roads, wipe the terrain and forest object placement clean, starting fresh, and make your own city using my objects. I won't mind, and I think you'll find billions of possibilities with the 1000-or-so objects in the MRK kit (Modular Road Kit) that goes together like puzzle-pieces. You can make a city, or a road rollercoaster, it's up to you entirely, though I will admit I made a few road roller-coasters and they're quite a trip. I have to keep it real though, so there won't be much of that in the final release outside of the stunt parks. So, with that (another book, oops) said, unless you're good at modeling, you won't get WC USA into bite-size pieces, at-least not in any meaningful way. Use assets from other maps, or patiently wait for the new Los Injurus update to be publicly released in the middle of August (this is a best-guess, not a promise, and it's subject to much possible change!). Regardless of the fact, feel free to make a looping race track that merely looks like a highway, I am sure many folks will enjoy it as they did Nevada Interstate when it came out in 2016. But worry not, my city with it's modular road kit aims to give any would-be city builder all the resources and tools you could ever wish for. It's by no means perfect, but it can be darn fun if you try! If you download Los Injurus, you'll find all the pieces you need in the MRK subfolder inside the map art/shapes data structure. Just remember that if you hold shift while you rotate objects in the editor, they rotate on fixed angles, so it's easy to get stuff lined up then when working with various chunks of roads, highways, and bridges. At the very least, you'll have well more than plenty to do.
