I have a simple idea to make the traffic look denser and optimized using something many notable titles like GTA use. Traffic vehicle in the distance could use very low poly vehicles in the distance to make the world look more populated in the distance. These vehicles have no Ai or collision, and just slide along Ai paths. They only spawn far away from you, and when you get close, they fade away so you can't get close to them. It makes the world look more alive in the distance which could really help the environment in BeamNG, as right now the traffic looks super sparse given you can see that far away there are no cars. GTA 4 and 5 both use these. Here is an example I made with an ultra-low poly sunburst. I recommend over doing the bloom for the lights, and make the lights on older vehicles VERY yellow, too yellow to really emphasize the variety of these background vehicles. You would only need a few of these models to make the traffic in the distance believable. In my opinion you need 2 sedans, an SUV, and a pickup. And only need black, white and gray vehicle colours. Hope you devs take this idea into consideration! This would be the easiest way to make the enviroment look more populated when traffic is on, and there could be a toggle to turn it off. I might make more if you guys want.
I made a D - Series version, all textures being on one file. You can kinda see why you only need like 4 different models if I zoom out you can see the distance you would be viewing them as, showing you do not need much detail to look good. The main thing you need to see is the silhouette.
Exactly! If I only have 5 cars in traffic, but theres 20 of these low detailed ones in the background it seems much more dense.
depending on the flow, could agree with an extreme low "LOD" for cars, could make it generic shaped to cover most cars without looking wrong, getting the base color + shape/size from the vehicle (red? blue? windows? maybe limited pattern support?). Also if there is less to run, how they would update or "move"? would some be "ghosts"? would some be map wide but slow/cheap + cheating in how it's updating? wonder how it would be in MP. To mirrors that you wont see much at 100-150m and 200-300m depending on the mirror placement and at the max default quality, maybe a bit different on higher resolution + quality.
They would just follow an ai path, just sliding. They wuld be client side so it wouldn't matter that much on BeamMP
I see. also suggested for the trucks and car, trucks to fill the gap between body and wheel, also maybe having "wheels/height" on the car so it doesn't look like it floats or stuck in the ground from the angle you might look at? but I guess wheels might look weird either way unless they have a small black plane (wheel underneath the car) in the front and back to not look "skinny" when viewed from the front or back? some other example of an tool to be suggested, could work as LOD and/or create LOD's for various cars? showing Imposter/billboarding (with its own limitations). (rip, can't post just the link?)
Bumping this because it should 100% be in the base game (Just the distant low poly cars, not them switching into real ones. Also I made it into a mod. Spawns about 300 fake traffic cars (I will make it correlate with how many real cars you have) Has the D Series, Roamer, and Lansdale. And the bus, but I stopped it from spawning. I might release it but idk. Currently vibe coded, but I plan to re-write it myself.
I think it would be cool if there was ambient distant traffic and the occasional honk of cars, it looks amazing! Btw, maybe make the cars a little faster?
