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

I finally tried this map and was instantly wowed. This is insanely good on a potato PC! I have an AMD A8-6500 processor with a Radeon R7 350X graphics card and 24GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM, and I was getting 50+ fps in most places! As usual a faster car limits the framerate significantly, so in my FCV I was getting around 20 fps. But in the truck, if I drove slowly, I was getting 80 fps outside the city. I get maybe 25 fps in West Coast in the truck by comparison. I'm gonna be driving in this map a lot I think!

 

I appreciate the feedback that it's running decently (or at all!) on an older machine, in this case a machine I wasn't even sure the base game would run properly on.
It's been tested as far back as a first-gen Core i7 930/940 processor at stock speed on a HP OEM workstation with some 700-series equivalent nvidia professional GPU - and it does work. The main hurdle is VRAM, if you can keep the level within VRAM you're okay.
The amount of things in the level may be too much to handle for the older AMD Bulldozer/piledriver/excavator series of chips, due to the shared FPU situation AND due to the IPC (instructions per clock) lacking compared to newer chips, but it CAN be done. You can still enjoy Los Injurus at speed that is appropriate for the machine since the amount of work on the CPU is directly tied to the speed you're moving when it comes to processing things for rendering. In the future, this might not be as much of an issue either, so I wouldn't say to count the machine out quite yet.
I've pulled a lot of stops out to make sure this runs on a very very very old machine, even if it's 15 years old! It makes a modern machine work very hard, yes, and can bring the room temperature up pretty good, but it also can scale back relatively effectively. Just don't get too close to that huge airport (specifically the fancy tunnel) or things might get pretty rough (that's one section that tends to push machines the hardest, large textures, large objects, tends to go over VRAM limits).
That means the CPU matters more, and if you don't mind missing out on shadows or things like terrain billboard sprites (the grass and small plants that randomly appear is this stuff), you don't even need a super fancy CPU or GPU. Even that R7 350x - which is a carry-over from the original Radeon HD 7750 - likely with more memory (usually 4gb DDR3 but can be 2gb GDDR5, originals had usually 1gb sometimes 2gb on the 7000 series), can run this game and this Los Injurus environment provided settings are correct for the hardware. I used to have a Radeon HD 7850 2gb, which I still have, working fine, in the box at that, just-in-case. Good card, just didn't quite have the oomph to run this with all bells and whistle or run Fallout 4 that good at 1080p, but the price was GREAT and I got many years of use out of it for a whopping 140$ USD shipped in 7/2013. I miss when you could get a fairly good card for cheap prices like under 200$ that wasn't immediately outmoded. That said, I wouldn't try to add too much more to the system you're on, it's pretty much at it's limit of what it's going to be able to do. If terrain billboards (random grass) are not already disabled, you may gain a little more FPS from doing so, but settings things to low/lowest may look awful. You don't have to turn mesh details down any though, that usually is a last-ditch effort (and makes things ugly fast) to get decent FPS on very very old cards (older than yours) or iGPU's that are triangle-fill-rate limited.
Happy hauling and definitely lots of respect for keeping old hardware going!
So entirely, if you ever decide it's time to upgrade, look for a used workstation as a base for a good gaming system in the future. Those can often be super cheap, especially old x99 or x299 systems, and provided the GPU isn't too old and system RAM isn't too little, you can get a lot of power for little cost if you don't mind the heat they put out (of-course, the used/older Ryzen options which cost little more use a lot less power and may provide even more FPS).
-Cheers!

 

I have everything on the lowest settings (except generating license plates no idea why that's even a setting) so it does look ugly but I feel that that's a sacrifice I have to make to render anything in BeamNG playable. The grass has always seemed unnecessary to me anyway so even if I had a good PC I'd leave it off. My PC would be a lot better if I could upgrade the CPU from this AMD A8 but it uses the fm2 slot so there's really not a lot of good options. Other than that there's really not much I want to upgrade except the hard drive and I don't really want to mess with that at this point since I just had the original one fail and replaced it with a spare 500GB HDD I had. I'm hoping I can upgrade somewhat soon.
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If I was going to get a workstation, what price range would I be looking at for an x99 or x299 system?

 

Look for a Lenovo or HP OEM used workstation, and whatever price that fits your budget is usually good. Try to avoid any 13th or 14th generation intel CPU 65w and higher (any K models, and any i7 / i9 model) as those had issues and there's no telling if the BIOS has been patched (could have been stored or on a pallet while the whole failing intel chips fiasco went down this summer). Try to get a 3~6 month warranty on the thing, if you do decide to go that route. Ryzen 3000/5000 series or higher machines on the used market would likely be a steal, as with AM4 (with a BIOS update) you can throw a recent 5000-series X3D chip on there and have a screamingly awesome low-budget machine capable of handling nearly any GPU, or even a 5600x/5700x/5800x non-3d model CPU on there for dirt cheap (barely past 100$ for some of those, especially on the used market).
Even a Ryzen 3600 / 3600x / 3700x, you'll have over double the IPC (instructions per clock), not to mention faster speeds per core, and MORE cores, plus 3000-series Ryzen brings AVX2 and 256-bit FPU's to the table (important here in this game-engine!). 16gb of RAM is "enough", 24gb is GOOD, 32gb is plenty. Unless you make games or movies, you won't ever need more than 32gb of RAM until the next console refresh has come and gone (I'd imagine a few years, games are just starting to show a difference with 32gb over 16gb in the last year or so).
If you go the intel route, 8000 and 9000 series chips are where they started to get 6 cores and 8 cores on a CPU (respectively). 10th generation improved on this, and then 11th generation was a bit of a flop. 12th generation was an improvement BUT some of the higher-end chips brought pesky estrogen-cores (e-cores) which caused absolutely mayhem for dev-teams (e-cores are weak cores, but still count as cores, so sometimes stuff runs on them by mistake, and thus causes problems for any older software/games).

Go to your local independent computer stores, they often have a few used systems.
Take pictures of all the system specs and prices using your government spying device cellular telephone.
Think about it. Consider spending 100~400$. Stick to the low-end of that if money is tight.
If really trying to budget tight, consider trying to bargain. When you find one you want, put the money down on it req'd to hold it, and come in and pay weekly if needed (get a receipt or sign-off each time). When you get enough money together to pay for it, then maybe you (or they) can swap in your GPU if the system doesn't come with a better one (sometimes you can get machines without a dedicated GPU super cheap, your GPU will certainly get you by for the mean-time). New machines still use PCI-express, you just want to be sure it comes with the 6-pin adapter for PCI-E power that your card may require (some of those 7750's can run off slot power alone, some require the 6-pin adapter from the power supply, called PCI-E power, it's a usually yellow-and-black or all-black set of wires that goes from the ATX/EPS12V power supply with 6 or 8 wires and goes to a 6-pin or a 6+2 pin plug, good units may also have 8-pin cables in addition). Any half-decent shop will know what's in the PC. Even pawn shops have computers - but most only have laptops, as often they don't take desktops (not much demand, so skip pawn shops unless you want a cheap used TV).
Seriously, old tech is dirt cheap ever since Ryzen started really stomping intel the last 2 or 3 generations. AMD can't make 9800x3D and 7800x3D chips fast enough to meet demand levels (and 7800x3D is going out of stock as it's end-of-manufacture at this point, though Amazon has it periodically with motherboard bundles for decent price, hint hint, but that may likely be out of your budget unless you want an expensive performance-first no-cost-spared machine - no offense meant but this isn't everyone - not even me - since I'm such a cheap CENSORED most times unless I truly need something).
As far as it goes with used video cards online, be careful, there's a lot of scams out there, and they are one of the most common (that and SSD's / USB thumb drives) things that are 'faked'. First just buy domestic (if you're in the USA) and that should cut out 95% of the junk, and get something that's from a seller with feedback and good feedback at that (it doesn't have to be perfect, but 92% or better on feedback is good, can't always please everyone and some folks get mad and leave bad reviews when THEY try and fail to scam the seller, so be aware). Also, if you buy something local, and it's not from a reputable local independent PC shop, make sure to SEE it working. Don't want to get scammed.
Used PC's usually come with Windows installed and activated, and it's license is tied to the motherboard. If you're lucky, you'll find one with a designer-brand (Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock etc) motherboard, but expect to pay another 30~60$ for this increases value (and reliability / expansion ability) too.
Windows can be purchased, online on Amazon or Ebay, and you can even get 'Windows for refurbished PC's' if you know where to look for it, but often getting Windows 11 USB or Windows 10 USB brand new sealed in the box is easy enough and cheap enough should you ever find the need or get that pesty 'Activate Windows [you filthy pirate]' watermark bugging you.
I wish you the best on it. The PC shop if they're anything worth their weight will probably know what BeamNG is, and if they're into this as much as you are, they'll have even played Los Injurus a time or two. More cores do help the matter when it comes to CPUs, but more than 8 cores (actual real cores NOT threads) will only help you simulate a traffic jam and may even cause vehicles to spawn in between lanes in some cases (working with the devs on help weeding that out, actually, RC3 should do that less) if the spawner should run out of room. So unless you want traffic jams (and you will surely get them), don't go past 8 cores. Your power bill, and cooling challenges will thank you in the long run.
If you find you need more storage, you can easily add another 2.5" Sata SSD or external unit quite easily, and USB 3.0 has been around for about 10 years now, so USB drives won't be too slow either - though internal is still normally the best. Silicon Power makes a good cheap drive if you need one on the cheap.
Good luck, and come back with any questions. I'll try to get to them quickly.

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Above, finished the curbing here on this block, it was left unfinished for too long and was bugging me when I was doing the texture blending for the road surface. Also fixed the glitched parking stripes on the concrete road further out in the picture, by the speed hump.

Got the lighter asphalt sets to match. Two cracked variations, and two that aren't (one has more variation / dirt spots etc). Took a while and a bunch of other layers, but I got it, and it's really maybe an additional 4~6mb to get them all to match. Took some hours but totally worth it, after beginning to think I'd never get them matched.
My head is SLAMMING, for about the 4th or 5th night in a row. Ugh.
--Ouch. Moan.
-The Bob.

 

This is such a cool map! I still remember how I wanted to play this map when I saw the video, and when I got a laptop, I immediately downloaded this map! It lagged a lot, but I was very happy. Now I recently got a new computer, and this map runs great, 70-120 fps in the city, 170-190 outside the city! Now I understand the beauty and scale of this project, a truly amazing big and beautiful map! Plus, I always liked American maps, with cities and highways, but unfortunately there are few such maps, but this map is literally gold, good luck with your project!!

 

This is the GREATEST map EVER made for BeamNG!!!!
I have been using it since 2019, when I got the game. It doesn't lag, and is very good to drive.
Since I got the game, i've been an big fan of the maps you make,they are great quality. They are always the first maps I install into my game.
11/10. Wish I could use it for the first time again.

 

@Silly LeGran Thanks bud! Appreciate the kind words as always.
Sounds like you have a better computer than me, that's higher FPS than mine gets, but that's all good and I'm quite happy that you get to experience it with everything it has to offer (or at-least experiencing it at best-case performance specs).
There was a time a few years ago before the big batching performance update (I don't know what year it was, was a December update 3~5 years back, but it made a grown man - me - literally cry with delight) which nearly doubled FPS, that I never thought I'd get this thing to 60fps cleanly enough. But that update alone did it in all but one spot (near the default spawn, some un-improved single-family homes that need an optimization pass hold back FPS by about 10~12fps). Here I was thinking I did something wrong and had to re-do all my models but until that update (Several years back) the game did not benefit from batching, which is rendering identical surfaces without incurring more than a 1~4% performance impact (something Los Injurus uses the heck out of and then abuses it some more for good measure, since everything is modular) VS the 50~100% performance hit it had (in other words, eating half the FPS at-least, it ran 30~45fps and then ran 60~90fps after said update).
This environment hits the CPU pretty hard, as it has to juggle A LOT of assets (something someone with a 15 year old processor also noticed), especially if you drive fast (it's directly related to the speed you drive), but it frees up A LOT of precious VRAM (the most precious asset here) and also the GPU core is freed up a bit.
That tangent aside, yeah, I don't quite get that FPS, and in some cases the editor lags so bad I have to sit and fold my hands across my chest while it catches up because the mouse movement is hopeless; but I am quite happy with the user-experience FPS in Los Injurus with one exception (besides mentioned area near the default spawn being about 20% too slow to render), and that's the huge airport & huge tunnel in the far corner of the level is occupies.
I will get to the airport/tunnel area lag issue in due time - I have so much on my plate including all the scripted stuff in Los Injurus like the traffic lights, parked vehicles, and fueling stations - but also have to fix Roane County which I've thrown into 'my documents' folder for the time being. Hope I don't forget where I put it or I'm going to be steamed right quick when I go to pick up the slack (my slacking) on Roane County.
I'm going to say it. We need more levels like Los Injurus. If someone wants to take the goodies in the MRK kit, and slap their own textures on it and use it, FEEL FREE. I'm going to release a texture set for it by mid-spring, so that people know they can grab that and use it. Also, YOU CAN NOW USE ASSETS FROM LOS INJURUS IN YOUR OWN LEVEL WITHOUT COPYING THE ASSETS IN! Just browse to it and add the assets in the MRK folder, this is a thing now with 0.34 and will be in the future.
We need MOAR levels with lots of highways and cities and stuff like that. Seriously. Someone go build something I can't do more than just my Los Injurus all by myself. I've played some other user created levels and I admit there is some pretty cool stuff out there, but rarely do I even see another level with actual highways that are fully immersive and feel like the real deal. I mean, my stuff isn't perfect but dang I tried.
It'll be nice one day many years from now when (hopefully) there's a bunch of city levels/environments.
One day. I hope I live that long.

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@fishbazookas Awesome bro, glad you like what I take a lot of time making. Too much time making. So hopefully, you and everyone else can spend more time enjoying it than I do making it, fixing it, fixing it again, releasing it and trying to get it hosted on the server (etc). I've been working on this a very long time, but it is definitely starting to become something GOOD, and I recognize the enthusiasm folks have for what I'm trying to envision here. So I'm going to keep going on this, just as it's been, adding detail here and there, fixing stuff that breaks for the 65535th or 65536th time, refining textures or jumps or detailing highways or even adding in missing signs (or even simple stuff like removing the 'dead end' sign near the pictures I just took two days ago that is no-longer a dead-end).
Even times where I don't post, there's hours upon hours of me going over and fixing little details, tiny pixel-sized bugs here or there for example, like a tunnel mouth having a tiny bit of terrain poking into it or something like that. There's always something to improve, and I'm going to find it, and do better / make it better, because it not only CAN be better, it SHOULD be better. Y'all deserve the best here, and (though not only) for all the support given, and shouldn't have to settle for anything less than awesome fun game environments.
That having been said, I appreciate folks writing in with good words, it's a nice break to me swearing at the computer and this game-engine for how it mangles the project periodically, like it did yesterday and today (and I think I fixed it, but that's no promise something won't go batty again for the 3rd time this week).

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I can't understate how much working on an early-access game-engine with an early-access project like this can so easily go wrong. Things always do. That's Murphy's Law after-all.
1.) Yesterday this stupid thing turned my whole terrain bright sky blue when I loaded the level. Don't know if the crash when accessing the decal instance editor last time had anything to do with it, but I doubt it. Maybe something didn't save right.
I fixed that in mere minutes, but that's not to say it won't happen next time I load in. Will figure it out sooner or later as I've saved the log for later. Also filed the bug report when the crash prior to this happened.
2.) This stupid game engine BROKE EVERY TUNNEL ENTRANCE, and then to mock me, spawned about 50~100 tunnel entrance objects where I last put a tunnel entrance (near the new area, never seen it do this before, I think this thing lost it's mind). It broke the tunnel entrances by walling them off with terrain. That means, every little spot where I made a 'terrain hole' to put a tunnel or building that accesses area 'below' the terrain surface (as tunnels surely do, along with subway entrances, both ends of the tunnel and the buildings which serve as stations too, even the police department uses this function for one of the parking areas below ground since the terrain couldn't conform to it precisely enough). I SPENT HOURS FIXING THESE, and surely I've missed a culvert somewhere. I'll keep my eye peeled for them but I think I got all the tunnels fixed. So no worries there. But if in the next beta, you smack into a wall where a tunnel should be, it's likely this issue (though not if it was one I noticed and fixed). Seriously, that took HOURS. I was not a happy Bob, but it was better than restoring from backup, if only slightly. It better not do that again. Stupid technology!
BUG: There's a blocked culvert near where I finished the Line City lot (semi-hidden under the lot) where the rock-wall things are blocking the culvert pretty much completely, but it's not a show-stopper. Do know that I know it's there, and that was entirely my doing. Forgot it was there. Call before you dig, they say! It will be fixed but is not highest priority.
Onto the GOOD STUFF!
Worked over the texture blending a bit more and also added detail to the area where I was working the other day. Made a building that sort-of resembles a school, of sorts. Maybe it's a school, maybe it's some other building, not entirely sure, but it works and is decently enough detailed. Even just adding some trees and such works wonders for otherwise very bland scenes.

If I do say so myself, those new terrain textures are looking pretty good! That's fairly realistic for a video game / driving simulator & best part is no textures repeating every 10 feet.
--That is all for now. When tomorrow gets here I'm sure I'll break things in a new way and come to here complain about it.
-The Bob
P.S. The very snowed-in Bob. It ICED on Sunday, rained a lot, froze last night, it freezing-rained-then-snowed today/tonight though only an inch+ of snow, tomorrow it might get to 31F (which is just below freezing for those with C, think -0.5C)... so it might take a day or two more until my car does something besides dance and play slip-and-slide on pavement. I'm not moving it anywhere until I know I can even get TO the road, let alone stay on it. Add in some nice gusting wind to make things just a little more miserable out there.
So what do I look forward to when the cold weather starts to warm up? Why, delicious TORNADOES, that is. So I'll deal with the ice and snow for the moment and not mind it too much, especially after the tornado that formed over the house but didn't touch it last summer (ears popped and it spun up the exhaust fan in the bathroom ceiling, thought we were done for, then nothing) as it hadn't touched down. This Bob will deal with whatever winter throws at him provided it keeps the tornadoes away longer while it's here, and I am not a big fan of cold weather one bit, but the cold weather isn't actively trying to eat me either
Now to figure out where I put the artificial axe so I can take down the artificial Christmas tree, before the cats do it for me - and they're not even artificial cats - so surely that would end badly.

 

I only get 30fps with a Ryzen 5500 and RX 6700...
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It won't even let me play the map on Vulkan.

 

is there any news when the update gets on repo

 

Like when I had an RTX 2070 Mini and a 2700X I got more FPS and that was with traffic, I get 10-20 with traffic now. I have cleaned and deep cleaned cache too. Restarted, verified files, all mods disabled but that one.

 

Well I had a copy uploaded around the 15th or so of December, but it was TOO BIG.
So since I couldn't hit the release day that I wanted, which was before Christmas holiday, when the devs would go away, without causing the entire BeamNG mod server to completely and utterly fail / grind to a halt due to the sheer size of this thing, I pulled back on that and decided to work over some more quality / quality-of-life features here. The last few times the server ground to a halt or 4kb/s was because of Los Injurus releases, except the last time it broke over the summer (or they were updating it or whatever).
See the link below if you don't have a copy yet. It's safe for work but you'll have to know where to put the mod zip file so that the game finds it properly. Just make sure to only have ONE copy at a time installed!

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Tonight I started added support for parked vehicles. Expect parked vehicles to slowly spread throughout Los Injurus as future versions are released. I would spend a week doing the entire Los Injurus, but I'll do some things here and there. You'll know where it's done up nice as there will be parked vehicles, and the lots that contain them will be redone / upgraded, too. Compare parking-lots from the originals to the new ones I've made and there's a HUGE level of difference. E.G. some of the originals look like they belonged in GTA San Andreas, where the newer ones I made look like they came out of GTA V but with slightly crisper textures (yes, my textures are higher resolution, paid good money for many of these, and also that's why the VRAM requirement is more stringent than GTA V or the this base game requirements here on BeamNG Drive).
The bug that broke the tunnels and turned the terrain sky blue last time I loaded wasn't back with today's load into Los Injurus, so I'll chalk that up to the editor being stupid, or me being stupid, or a combination of both. What matters is it didn't come back and I don't have to fix all my tunnels for the 4th time over the course of this project.
I went to start on the TRAFFIC LIGHTS and realized that even with the documentation, I don't have an ice cube's chance in hell at figuring out what I'm doing. So I'm going to send a message over to the devs if looking at another 'level' doesn't help. I need some real examples to work off of, then I can work my magic.
So as soon as I figure out how to get most of the traffic lights working with the AI (might not be all of them, but I'll try and get a bunch in), I will release an optimized update for 0.34.
THERE IS A VERSION OF THIS FROM DEC 25TH OVER ON MOD DB. GO GET IT!
Los Injurus public release RC3 from DEC 25 2024, the Christmas day release. This is the same version that went out almost two weeks ago, so if you got it already then you needn't get it again.
MODDB LINK SFW SAFE FOR WORK
Like I said, this isn't the newest and doesn't include my recent terrain texture updates, but it'll run on 0.34 without too much ado aside of whatever fixes have been put in during the last 10 days.
This link was put up to show my appreciation to everyone for the support they've kindly given this project and myself. This helps me keep a little bit of cash for models, textures, sounds, scripts, support software to help make resources, training videos so I can figure out what the heck I'm doing besides breaking [censored] and crashing the crash simulator (yes that's bad when I do that). It also provides cash if my motherboard or other portions of the PC go to the big tower/desk in the sky without me tagging along, or if I need more storage space / backup storage for the project (and also to help with the folks at the church I am a trustee at or the homeless shelter / local schools we donate to, and even once to the Helene impacted survivors in TN / NC USA). What this support money does not do is buy needless PC upgrades, fix the rust hole in my 20+ year old vehicle (which runs fine because I fix it if it does act up), or buy me a new lawn tractor so I can mow my yard. I'm still using a PC I put together in July of 2019, so it's not like I'm super-duper well-off over here, but y'all shouldn't feel pressure to sacrifice food money or bill money (please don't) for me (and the PC still mostly does all what it needs to do aside of some periodic lag spats). Remember, while I appreciate the donations for this project and this project can definitely use it, it's not my food or bill money and hopefully it's not your food or bill money either, because THAT is WAY more important! I'd sooner hand out a (free) link to someone who is hard-up for funds to the supporter version than take money from folks who truly need it more than I do; but if that's not you, and you're well off, feel free to support the project. To those of us who are hard-up for extra pocket change, I totally feel for you, I've been there before more than once, even had been homeless more than once. I'm in a bit of a better place now but not where most people would dream of being. That aside, if you enjoy this project and have the means, please support it if it does not cause you any undue hardship.
Other news:
Fixed up and finished off the lot for the parking lot below the spawn that sticks you on-top of the building. If you drove off the right side or drove forward from that specific spawn point and fell straight down, that's the lot that got finished (parking stall striping, stop bars and signs, a bit more curbing, AI routes and wear patterns, terrain texture upgrades / variations added, storm sewers added also, and some trees/bushes/required sanitation enclosure. It also was one of the 4 lots to receive PARKED VEHICLE support, along with the nearby gas-station, another lot across the street from this one (behind and to the right of the spawn), and the parking lot right by one of the entrances to this area where I showed off the texture one page back (this shot from a few days ago will have to do, I added some more texture variation since this picture but I don't have the game open this second).
Old screen-shot from a few days ago, but I mentioned this and it doesn't have a name yet, so used it again. There's now parked vehicle support here and in 3 other mentioned lots!

So I'm going to take some time and pull up the developer's levels and also a user level or two, and see what I can glean from how these stupid traffic lights work and where the models are in the shared resources / which ones I should use etc. The rest I understood and DO fully understand the theory on how a traffic light works (more than 99% of folks do, including yellow & red phase timings VS intersection dimensions/size/cross-road angles, feeder road speed limits, and also line-of-sight implications). When I figure out how to make these fancy smart (stupid) traffic lights work, I will add that in to be present in the next update. That and the rest of the unused resource pruning for better downloads (and not strangling the BeamNG mod server or bringing it down entirely) are the only thing(s) holding this up from being released. UNTIL THEN, feel free to head over to MODDB and snag the Christmas Day 2024 release - with a year's worth of additional content that might keep you busy for a while. This was the best-fit-for-all model for release that makes the most folks happy.
PEOPLE WANT SMART TRAFFIC LIGHTS THAT WORK WITH THE AI. Thus, I must add this in. The staff/developers want Los Injurus to not be so [censored] huge. Thus I must use my shrink-ray (resource pruner) on this project and make it smaller so that you're not still downloading this release by the time the next one comes out.
"Legend has it, that he is still downloading the Los Injurus update from a year ago" - Jeremy Clarkson voice

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Fixed some texture bugs like missing specular / reflective mapping on some of the things in ROADS and METROCITY folders. Oops. Bob sucks at this texture stuff, evidently. Also made the HR_concrete_block texture layers match in size (if they don't match, they don't work) which was totally my goof-up. They'll look better next time you see them, hopefully - plus that's one less pesky red line in the console / log file.
The SHOE-IN'S logo was 256x96 and the 96 height is non-power-of-2, this has implication on the frame rate, and was totally my bad. This bug is likely present in Roane County, too, so it'll get fixed on that one also. What's this, 0.5~1fps better now when looking at it? Anything helps! Textures that aren't power-of-2 dimensions really screw with the render speed BADLY in this game-engine.
Removed 'asphalt variation layer' that was mistakenly used as a graphic. 42.6mb size savings (uncompressed, and about 15~18mb of VRAM, every little bit helps). Already have better things to use for variation and doing things a different way, this is thus outmoded.
Need to remind myself that there could be random tunnel entrances laying around Los Injurus that were from the broken tunnel entrance asset (there were others which worked, but the entry for an old one who's model was MIA was still there and I'm sure I tried to add it in a few times until I remembered which one to use), plus random blocked tunnel entrances that I might have missed (I tried to find them all, but I know where there is ONE on the way to the industrial area/huge airport by where the highway double-deckers). There could be more but I'm actively trying to find them.
TO-DO:
Add more parked vehicle support (I'd say 1~2% of this is done).
Figure out which models to use for traffic lights for implementing working SMART traffic lights
Update new intersections to traffic lights (what's there like 60+ of these?).
Slim down Los Injurus so it doesn't crash out BeamNG's mod servers & doesn't take them to the bank when the bandwidth use bill arrives after the next Los Injurus release.
Fueling stations via button press / script needs to happen, it's 2025 not 2015.
If time allows, figure out speed control zones for some city areas where speed limits are lower so AI behaves more often.
Fix the Burger World lot tar-repair lines near the default spawn, a game update made them white. I don't know how I missed this the last time I buttoned up a release but shame on me as I've seen it many times.
Test in ZIP form to be sure there's no weird / missing resource bugs & save self some pain.
--That is all!
-The Bob
Another supporter release is due out not too long from now, where folks can try out the new terrain textures early and also see if I missed fixing any of the bugged-out / blocked tunnels - so look for THAT within the next week if you're a supporter. You can also test the parked vehicle support or just crash into it (if you happen to forget about it like I do).
When I thought about how long it takes to add parked vehicle support, I forgot just how many (thousands!?) of parking spaces (stalls) there are in Los Injurus. It's definitely in the THOUSANDS range, even for just the airport itself. Wonder if it's 8,000~12,000 by now? Maybe don't count them all, you'll be there a long time; and by the time you'd have finished a good solid count, the next release will be out by then anyway.

---

@ProjectExorcist Try turning texture detail down a notch and restarting the entire game and then reload Los Injurus - mesh detail can be left at max though (and should be). Repeat this until you're on low or lowest settings, and tell me if it then runs better. The quickest way to knock down FPS into unhappy territory is to go over the amount of VRAM you have by using high detail textures, so please do not unless you have a rather pricey recent GPU. If you use high on the base game, use medium here. If you use medium on the base game, use low here. Lowest is only for integrated GPUs and laptops you'd rather not have roasting your chestnuts over an open fire, or for very old computers.
A 2700x, while a notable bit slower per-core than a 5500, has more cores/threads than the 5500. The 5500 is a 6 core 6 thread chip (it's supposed to be, unless it has 12 threads but I believe you need the 5600 for that), where the 2700x was 8 cores and 16 threads. More cores+threads means more vehicles with an even frame rate, even if it's a generation or two older. However, newer faster chips can run more vehicles on less cores but the frame rate may be more varied. MAX 2 vehicles per core, 1 per core is recommended if you want close to full FPS. However, even a Ryzen 3000 series (like I have) can run two vehicles per core and still get average FPS in the 40~50fps range with occasional variation now and then above and below that number. Make sure your processor is adequately cooled, this is important. Also, make sure your RAM is running at the speed that it is supposed to be running at, as non-X3D Ryzen chips are sensitive to system RAM latency. Make sure your drivers are working properly by downloading new ones manually, disconnecting from the internet and uninstalling your existing drivers, restarting, and then installing new ones (again restarting). Then try running the game from the directory it's installed to, without Steam, and see if FPS is any better. A ryzen 3000 or 5000 series processor (any of them, even a 3200g which has cores from the 2000 series plus graphics) and a Radeon 6700 12gb graphics card will run this just fine at a full 60 FPS on medium (and possibly high) when working properly, with the exception of getting around 45~55fps near the default spawn at some angles, and sometimes near the HUGE airport (it doesn't lag by the airport here, I can't figure out what is doing THAT yet but it's likely VRAM size limited there). Los Injurus happily munches a full 12gb of Nvidia cards on high, without adding traffic in which raises it more. So try medium if that's too slow for you, but you have to restart for the change to take effect.
Thank-you for the feedback though.
-Good luck!
P.S. My this post got long, it wasn't supposed to be this big. My fingers aren't cold anymore though.

 

So THIS is finally fixed!

Don't pay much attention to the FPS, there's a ton of traffic spawned but it didn't show up here quite yet. It bounces around near 60fps generally for me.
This is the BW lot right near the default spawn point.
Improved the following lot nearby, for the Bloodbath and Beyond!

The new textures make a great impression - until you see how terrible the nearby pre-fab roads look by comparison. Goodness - what a difference - however it shows how far we've come since I started on this project.
Below, I've added some new stuff right by the CrashBoomPunk spawn. A few new building lots greet you here, in various stages of completion. Obviously the ones in the first few pictures are the most complete.


The buildings in the last two shots are going to need a lot more attention, but the other stuff is mostly done thus far and looks the part. What a difference details make, though. I can spend over an hour on each building lot, such as the townhouses (the six unit being 'one lot', of rented homes).
Here I've added sidewalk along this block, on the far side of the exit ramp from the residential area. I've also updated the AI routing to be more correct, and it will follow the newly added wear indicators here so you can somewhat predict where it'll go. In the future I'll probably have better concrete textures here, but that's a little ways out yet and further down the development cycle.

There's now dedicated turn lanes for all directions for this strange intersection. I still might move things around a bit, such as push this stop-bar forward another few feet.
I cut down a concrete texture to shave nearly 300mb off the uncompressed size of Los Injurus (it's 9~10gb in size uncompressed, so about 50% that size on the ZIP file - 150mb!). It's 2k x 8k in-stead of 4k by 16k (yes, 16,384 pixels in length!). NO ONE will likely even notice, it's pictured below:

No, seriously, that's high-enough resolution! I tried even lower resolution, but it looked terrible and lost a lot of the fine details. This currently is still 2x the resolution that the devs use currently, and this will certainly help with VRAM use and will use 106mb or so VS 426mb (!) though compression may cause this to be a little less in VRAM. Figures for highest texture detail levels and could certainly help some folks. Most computer users don't have the hardware to support 16k textures yet, and even 8k textures aren't too common (there's a few here, there were more but so were the complaints). Still, I've hung onto the higher-resolution files for later re-addition, especially if this project goes on so long hardware significantly advances enough to warrant re-adding them.
...and my 'window roll-up' feature (turns it into only the title bar to get to what's behind it for just a moment if you right-click a titlebar) just crashed the game again (it doesn't like that in Vulkan). It's not a default Windows feature, though, so I can't blame the devs. No more pictures tonight, though.
I did fix several other stupid texture bugs. and the bug where it broke my cobblestone texture while working with the terrain by 'forgetting' a layer, and the same for the tan loose-stone layer. This thing is pretty buggy when wrangling terrain layers. Maybe I'll be good enough once it's done to figure out how to work with the terrain on Roane County to some degree of success.
That'd sure be nice, wouldn't it?
Not pictured: I've figured out parked vehicle support (don't know if that's mentioned above anywhere on a previous post) and started adding it. Now I just have to figure out how to test it, because I totally do not know how to turn it on. When I find out how, I will test it. Hope they're not all backwards or something stupid like that. I know I saw a checkbox somewhere...
--Well anyways, that's it for now. Time to sit and wait for the snow-storm to start in a few more hours. Maybe I'll go out for some drifting in the snow in my 21-year-old front-wheel-drive glorified econo-box Corolla. Nah, better not. It's paid for but... I'll probably end up in a ditch. Those things are EVERYWHERE, and doing so would HURT. Or one of the giant pot-holes will high-side the vehicle. They're getting deeper every day - they haven't paved this since 10/2012 - and I can't see them in the snow. Would sure be nice if they paved this road this spring.
Maybe if I get to a giant unpopulated parking lot somewhere... "NO NO NOT A LAMP POST, THIS ISN'T GTA IV'S MULTI-PLAYER RACE MODE" *CRUNCH*. Maybe stick to hooning inside BeamNG and not be cold, or injured/dead.
--That is all.
-The Bob
I wonder if I live to see 70~75 years of age, if I'll still have that same old car?
I guess if I knew the whole life-time plot of my own life already, it wouldn't be as much fun to live it, would it? I think that'd take half the fun away.

 

I think I found the issue to be it is eating ALLLLL of my VRAM and I also have 32gb of ram but it is pretty slow (2666) with underclocked 16gb from I think 3400 to run with the other ram I have to use 32gb, the 5500 is 6 core, 12 thread btw and Im not sure why it won't run on Vulkan though. Every other map does but this one sometimes gets in but freezes before the car is even loaded or just freezes on the loading screen and I've let that screen sit for 10-15 minutes to see if it unfreezes but no luck but I know I'd get much better FPS on Vulkan though. I am using the updated one from December. It also seems there are some things on the ground clipping through each other.

Update: Just updated my drivers and now it just crashes on Vulkan.

 

Well, I keep fixing random goofy graphics related bugs each week here on this end, but I'd still reckon something is badly wrong over there to cause it to crash on your end.
What does the beamng.log in your user folder say at the end of it after you crash and the game closes out?
I'd seriously post that you're getting a crash on Vulkan to the forums here, under the correct subject/category or whatever it's called.
There's no reason it should crash on Vulkan - Especially not when using an AMD card!
Long story short, you seem to have an oddball case on your end, but maybe it's something I did over here that's causing a strange bug or something unexpected that the drivers just can't handle or the game can't handle.
On a better note, I am LOWERING the VRAM requirement* slightly with the next version that comes out. I'm trying to knock at-least a half a GB off the req's for high. This doesn't translate to much, but it's something, and it's definitely going in the right direction for sure.
*This is an optimization pass, of-course it means less VRAM required, but also some of that is sunk into the terrain a bit, but it's not too much more for the terrain.
Some of this optimization is expected to get neutered by me upgrading some of the ultra-fuzzy-on-low concrete highway textures in a future revision, I just haven't had time to mess with these quite yet. Don't expect it to be much of a loss in space savings when those textures actually get upgraded, just know that I'm trying to get things more consistent so that one or two different texture sets aren't eating up 40~50% of the graphics space allotted for said detail in VRAM.

---

Parked vehicles is figured out! Hooray!

Obviously my rusty-metal-primer colored vehicle is there too, but it shows that parked vehicles do spawn (not using the traffic UI app, but using the actual wheel app that comes built-in to enable AI, along with the parked vehicle setting enabled and cranked up a bit in the options menu). 24 vehicles is perfectly do-able on a 3950x with still remaining well above the 30fps comfort zone, and generally in the 45~50fps range which is the goal here (dropping below this with so many cars isn't a write-off for performance, but if I only had a few vehicles in play or otherwise and drop below 45~50fps, something is very very wrong in my scene setup and mangling performance big-time).
I have a few lots done, such as the burger world and default spawn lot adjacent to it.
Things done:
Ton of work on the highway and an area next to it:


Farther down the same road, is an area a lot of people enjoyed due to the road detail and realism it provided, so I've chosen to upgrade this area by giving it another detail pass - and it certainly is better for it.

What's new here - we thought this was already in?
Well for those who don't know this area by the back of their hand, tons of stuff was added. In-fact I spent the majority of an entire DAY on this area, giving it a fresh detail pass.
Emergency exit stair was added for those who break down on the highway, or need to exit it for one reason or another - though you could squeeze a vehicle down there if you truly wanted to or somehow feel you need to (or also if you don't care for the dead-end on the road down there, that dead-end will go away in future revisions when I have time to add the road in).
Tons of bushes and shrubbery was added here, along with lighting (just the model, not the actual light-sources yet, light-sources will go in when I do the scripting for it, so it doesn't hit daytime FPS any) to give more detail and realism for the scene.
The small road nearby which passes under the highway (and goes to the gas station in the shots previous to the last few) was heavily upgraded and given proper layered texturing and plenty of signs (as it's a windy little thing).
Bridge for small road was upgraded to the more recent better model for side roads but I kept the arched base for it.
2ND last shot showing the pre-existing double-decker portion: I gave the lower portion a better texture and spent a good hour or more putting that wall in and widening the route. It now has consistent highway texture the whole way down the side of the mountain, all concrete as is shown. You also can no-longer fly off the lower side as easily, but that's fine as it's all about realism.
The large 4 or 5 lane road had a lot of detail before but has now received another detail pass, providing not only more texture layers (6 in total: base texture, striping, cracking, raveling which is physical wear of asphalt surface, tire wearing, and of-course the darkening present in center of most well traveled roads usually from leaking vehicles etc), but also got signs - lots of them - all over - in-fact things are down-right getting crowded over there!
I've added some more detail to other areas as well.

The roadway and lots near here have got some more detail with their base texture, and the AI routing is fixed up here so they properly turn left and right when and where they should (I hope).
Also, in the fourth-last-shot, an improper 'turn right or go through' arrow was corrected to a 'turn left or go through' arrow. This was due to a game bug that flipped more than one graphic on a duplicated graphic - which still sometimes affects things disappearing but doesn't change the wrong one anymore (that I've noticed).
Surely a lot of detail is lacking in some of these areas, but progress is progress!

This texture isn't glitched out anymore. It was white for some reason as it's color setting was overridden mistakenly. This could be because it shares names with the stock graphics.
Tar emulsion repairs like this one in this level aren't a dark black color specifically, but a very very dark deep brown color like in real life. Just noticed a little tiny bit of scrambling-glitching in the above graphic, but I'll see to fixing it when it starts really acting up or I get another detail pass here / add buildings near here.
So yes, I've figured out parked vehicle support in a means that's working. It's even added to the driveways of the newest hillside homes I've added in the BELUGA BEACH area.
Still waiting for some answers on getting traffic light support in. I've gone past when I've wanted to get this release out to supports and also the public, so looks like that may push to the next release (sorry, but I can't delay this forever). The small part of the delay was also because I wanted to make sure I didn't forget any of the tunnels that broke during me fiddling with terrain texture upgrades. Otherwise, you'd encounter random blocked off tunnels and culverts. There still might be one or two culverts out there blocked off but I think I got all the tunnels you're supposed to drive through (you know, ROADS / train tunnels). I hope I haven't neglected to find anything else here that got botched on the terrain upgrade.
So, with a capital DERP, I'm going to go back to testing this thing and then slowly and reluctantly proceed to weeding out the very last of the old (2016~2017) highway texture set, so I can remove it entirely from the level and thus lower graphics VRAM requirements and file size (by what is likely a barely noticeable bit size-wise). I was never extremely fond of that set anyway, so the less I see of it, the better.
--That is all for now.
-The Bob.

 

1. Car_Killer imported Fairhaven City from NFS last year and that map is awesome. Beware of framerates though...https://www.beamng.com/threads/fairhaven-usa-a-need-for-speed-most-wanted-2012-port.96401/

 

What does that have to do with this map?

 

I'd say its something more on my end because I always and not even just with this map have to reload lua with CTRL+L otherwise no map loads correctly, this applies on Vulkan and DirectX. I'm probably gonna try uninstalling and reinstalling the game. It only seems to crash on Vulkan with this map too, so it really is strange. EDIT: I'm not sure what happened to my game. I'm in safe mode on Vulkan and I'm barely getting 20fps on WCUSA in safe mode. Nvm out of safe mode it's fine but also just found that OGC TWO also crashes on Vulkan. I remember that literally like 2 weeks ago it did not crash on Vulkan but ever since I installed this map it has. UPDATE: I put texture on the lowest and it loaded without crashing on Vulkan and for a few minutes the AMD software read about 5 FPS average then finally went to 60-70 but during the entire time, I was unable to move, then I went into windowed mode, aaaaand it crashed. It was like it was frozen but the mesh clipping where I spawn was moving so I know I wasn't frozen.

 

Puurdy...

 

I got that joke, for a year or two we didn't have a satellite connection for our second TV and we had two cable-like antennas we used. They weren't exactly rabbit ears, but they still were antennas, right?

 

Hey there! Yes that counts. I have a digital antenna for my TV here that I got from one of those junk-returns amazon-return bulk stores that popped up half a dozen years ago and then, almost as quickly, quietly went away a year or two later. I think I paid 3 bucks for it, it's for the TV I use as a monitor here.
We didn't get cable until I was nearly 8~9 years old (as we couldn't afford it), but when we did it was only for two TV's, one in my folk's bedroom and one in the family room. Eventually when I was 10 or 11 I was able to get a TV in my bedroom (and eventually, cable, hooray), but to be honest most of my friends did not have TV's in their bedroom at the time (this being beginning of the 90's) ... but I still remember my dad taking apart the large antenna in the back yard, after the lightning fried it and the following storm blew it off the roof.
Life was simpler back then. Times were good, even when we were rather poor. I would be stating falsehoods if I said I didn't miss it. I miss it sorely. At-least we had our privacy back then. Almost brings tears to my eyes. In-fact, I'd love to meet up with some of the old gang I used to hang-out with, but their either too busy with families of their own, or they're sadly taking the eternal dirt-nap (don't do drugs, kids, especially with fentanyl popping up in everything, and that stuff = death in even an amount equal to a few grains of sugar).

---

The FPS is great, 60fps is no issue there consistently. It's the VRAM that's going to beat you up if you have less than 16gb for high detail textures.
If you can run Fairhaven city on high detail textures, you will be able to run the final version of Los Injurus on high detail textures.
If it does not run well, turn down the graphics detail to medium to get it (likely) under 5~6gb. If it's still too rough for the video card to produce nice FPS, then you have to pick low to get it under 2~4gb of VRAM.
Loading that sure made me feel better about loading Los Injurus, as first-load definitely took a lot longer than first-load of Los Injurus. Fo-sho!
Also fo-sho you can be absolutely confident that I crashed the game on my end after about an hour with it upon falling out of the level, because of course I did. I'm good at doing that. Very good. In-fact my level-creation skills pale in comparison to my escape-the-level and crash-the-game-to-desktop skills.

---

Cleaned another 300mb off the size of Los Injurus. That's 600mb down off the uncompressed size (about 300mb ~ 365mb compressed from ~600mb, a little less than 2:1 compression). This is IN ADDITION to anything else that'll get removed from the level in regards to pulling unused resources out. I think there's a 50mb layer textures to one of the texture layers that's not used (from one of the new PBR textures), so that may be even further savings, but the unused resource checker will pull that for me.

There's something seriously wrong over on your end then, likely drivers, but could be a hardware issue too.
Get DISPLAY DRIVER UNINSTALLER (DDU) off of the guru3d dot com website.
Download the latest available driver for your video card, and also download the latest (may be WHQL) stable or 'studio' driver version. If you're currently using a beta driver, when you go to reinstall use the stable one, if you're currently on the stable branch then you'll want to put on the beta driver. The way you do this, is...
to start up display driver uninstaller, and disconnect from the internet and leave it disconnected until you're done with this. This is to prevent Windows from automatically re-installing the driver which it'll need to download from the internet. Run DDU and uninstall the driver, restart, run it AGAIN a second time right away, and this will remove any remnants that were locked (and/or in-use) the last time. Restart again. Now, while STILL disconnected from the internet, install the new driver you downloaded (reference above note about using beta or stable/WHQL branch). Restart again, now you can go ahead and test the game by running it from the game folder (usually steam/steamapps/common/beamng.drive or such), and test it. See if you still crash on low or medium (remember to restart the game EXE if it was previously set different to a higher texture detail unless you haven't loaded a level yet), and if you do, I'd like to have a copy of your log file (which you may send, it's in your user folder under the game version number 0.34 folder and is called beamng dot log), which you can send over private message OR (if your PC login is NOT your real name) you can post it here.
This way at-least I can see if your PC is crashing out due to something in my level, or if it's more game related. I will also pass this on to the developers so that I can make sure this gets fixed on their end, too. There should never be a crash issue that takes you back to desktop or completely bricks the loading process. A soft-error is OK, like a broken texture or a car that doesn't spawn in fully, but crash-to-desktop / stuck-loading issues are a BIG no.
When you've given this a test, you can then re-connect to the internet.
The reason I use a physical means to disconnect from the internet, is you can be entirely sure that Windows won't re-connect automatically on reboot. Otherwise it'll reinstall the same driver that crashes you out. Also, set auto updates to 'notify but do not auto-install' so that you can review them before auto-installation. This way you can monitor what drivers get updated, and also come-to-think-of-it you can disable that pesty driver auto-update feature within the Radeon / AMD control panel while you're at it (though it won't bother you while disconnected from the internet). Windows, among other things like driver control panels/applications, like to update automatically - which is great while things stay working. Of-course, we never hear about the good times. When it's working fine, SHUT THOSE AUTO UPDATES DOWN, then it STAYS working. I never had an issue with this thing aside of the nvidia control panel screwing with my color settings now and then (surprise idiot! it's night time in the monitor, courtesy of buggy nvidia drivers, now you don't get to see anything Bob!), until I let it update this past year. MISTAKE. Should have left it as it was, there's more problems with it now.
*RANT*
Yes, the professional version of Windows is worth it, it gives you control via policy editor to deny that stupid updater program from updating things without your explicit permission. In-fact, it took me a while to figure out how to un-break the updater on this as I had rigged it to fail in multiple ways, just in-case Microsoft got a little more desperate. Sure worked to stop the updates, took me 3 weeks to rouse out all the changes just to end up with me breaking this thing in several ways updating all the software.
That's alright though, as this is my last PC with Windows on it. No more! I'm done with Windows. I absolutely cannot stand Windows 10, and Windows 11 is every bit as bad plus the phone home plus it'll send screenshots of all your most private / most embarrassing moments to Microsoft. That and snooping company secrets / willfully disregarding or breaking non-disclosure agreements galore if you're under contract with anyone. NO THANKS. Not even for free. Don't want it, no good comes from that. Windows. Just. Sucks.
Those who give up a bit of freedom in exchange for security deserve neither! - famous words of an old president of the US and they never rang more true.
Besides, the last good Windows was Windows 2000/2003 (or XP when de-bloated), and a bit of me liked Windows 7 as you could still make it look/feel like the legacy Windows versions. The newer versions are ugly, look like some touch-screen cellphone interface, have too much data mining / phone home stuff, killed most of my keyboard short-cuts, and broke things with software I've used for decades (well that was bound to happen). I'm aware of things like Openshell etc, I'm currently using a commercial set of apps to get this to look/function like older Windows versions so it's tolerable at-least; but I still despise it with every bone of my being. Windows in the last several versions just pulls too much control away from the user, and when it comes to my data, I'm not ready for that yet.
*END RANT*
May those in California experiencing wildfire fury have blessings to get them through tough times. I only hope they use more fire resistant / fire-proof building techniques and materials on the rebuild, but the knowledge of human beings knows most people won't or cannot afford to. It's better to re-build a smaller less fancy house that won't burn easily, versus a fancy large house that's prone to the frequent natural disasters which happen there. You wouldn't build a house that'd quickly collapse in an earthquake now, would you?
Still what's happening in and around Los Angeles is an absolute travesty - the worst of it being when the power company shut off power including that to the water pumps which provided pressure - and therefore WATER - to the fire hydrants which thus ran dry. Thus mess-up left firefighters hindered and otherwise prevented from saving more homes and property (and possibly lives, too). So there's definitely tort to be had in civil court against that power company, not just because of one of the fires being from their lines going down; though I doubt there's anything that can be done in a criminal court about it.
--That is all for the moment.
-The Bob.
Tort: Right to sue, basically. Usually used in meaning you have a right to sue someone if you can prove culpability over a person / people / business committed some civil infraction (or similar action) that's left you less than whole or wronged you in some way. This definition is not legal advice and you should look up legal terms formally if this interests you or you wish to learn more.
WHQL: Windows Hardware Quality Lab, this PAID certification means there's been testing which ensures this driver isn't going to be so crash-prone and generally is stable. It costs a few hundred per test or X amount per month for a manufacturer to get things certified, so not every driver which lacks this certification is inherently unstable, it's just that some manufacturers may not have the budget and/or time for this.
Both AMD and Nvidia offer STUDIO or STABLE driver versions for those of us who have no need or don't want to be on the bleeding edge. These are more stable and generally for production / business environments, but I use them here normally and yes they crash less.
There is no difference between Nvidia and AMD when it comes to absolute driver stability and bugs. They both have issues. So when upgrading your GPU, get whatever's cheaper and works best with what you run.
WCCFTech has a good article on 8GB graphics cards and why they're out of date. You can look it up, just skip the comments section as it's the worst comment section I've ever seen (I've completely blocked disqus comment service off my PC at the OS level in response to it, it's up there with tracebook, spyspace, fox news, google ad services etc).