Roane County, Tennessee, USA 19.3.1

Forgot to reply to this one...
Nice name, hahaha, have you been sneaking through my doggie's bathroom area of the back yard by chance?

No, really, come back and see us here on Roane County as there's a new version with more stuff and you don't have to walk through poo's in Beamng :)
*grovels and makes face like realizing he just stepped in the doggie's dirty deed...*

Glad the fire didn't get you last year - that was a doozy. Always great to hear from a local, I live on the plateau myself here in middle-TN.
It can be quite odd to drive to some place in real life that my map contains, though, especially when I am used to seeing it in my map only.
There will be more TN USA Route 40 in this game in the distant future, there's quite a lot of fun turns and twists coming up out of knoxville after the split heading west, too many to not put them all in Beamng.drive.
Knock it down a gear and go, it's a hoot when it's not busy - already earned one speeding ticket on US 40... I don't ever hit stuff though, so no worries. This is why I only own an econo-box though, otherwise I'd be wrapped around a pole/tree/bridge impediment somewhere.
--Cheers

I am trying to push out an update by the time spring gets here in the USA. However, the editor is a hot mess right now which the developers ARE currently working on. So I am being fought tooth and nail while editing with constant CTD's and other badness. Progress is 'ON HOLD' technically, as I can't work full speed & with the bugs in it this version I am promising nothing. Maybe I can whip up a good surprise by the end of this season here - but again, no promises. Am doing the best I can with the tools available, however. So all hope is not lost.
The roads are their real layouts, as best as I can do within game limits (there's not too many aside of the sheer item count maximums and FPS limits I am minding/observing rather seriously this late in development). I am glad you enjoy the map for what it is, as it was thousands of hours of work. This project isn't dead, but it is *technically* on 'hiatus' for now.
This game is truly awesome, however, the editor... not so much right now.
--Thanks for writing in!

Thanks for writing in here! Always trying to make this better - there will be an FPS update for those that don't have access to my private, closed-beta maybe sometime this week for 10~100% performance boost (machine-configuration-dependent of-course).
I will post a bit of help for others curious enough to read this, below:

Shadows will help improve cpu and physics response for those who's processor is kept quite busy processing which of the too-many scenery objects there are already (houses, trees, curbs, rocks, everything that isn't ground or a road).

Turn off or down to near-minimum (bottom 1/3rd detail levels or so) the REFLECTIONS will also SUBSTANTIALLY help FPS as this map was purposely made with that performance test in mind. I could get it to run even better but then you'll be lost in dense fog - not a nice thing to do if you're looking to find your way around 144 square MILES. This will help folks who are GPU-limited and could use up to 80% more fps. You don't need super fancy reflections to gain the use of the mirrors.

Also, for folks with less than 4gb of VRAM or a GTX 970 with it's 3.5gb of VRAM partitioning (where it's slow past 3.5gb used) it may help to flip textures to MEDIUM (for 5~6 extra fps, maybe 10 extra) especially for those with 2~3gb (or less!) cards. Most textures for roads from side to side are 2k x 4k or 4k square, some being two textures wide (8k essentially), so there will still be plenty - and I mean plenty - of detail - the buildings, maybe not so much. So you have some wiggle-room with textures. So for example, a GTX 1060 3gb or 1050 Ti 2gb might be helped here, where a 6gb 1060 would not need to be set to medium.
I measured 4000~4100mb of VRAM usage in 0.10.x (when last checked), and 5.5GB on load for SYSTEM RAM on 0.11.x (recently verified).

I worked the performance up a bit so I can afford to add more detail further down the road, so to speak, as it's a bit bad in select spots.
So to anyone who can 'just' run this map, hang onto the next update I put up this week sometime, which will be FPS+ 0.85.2 version.

Hope you enjoy your day off today! Our car was frozen and doors were stuck this morning, almost had to go in the garage and put my car back together and get it out to go see family today - luckily strong fingers behind the door @ the top where the weather stripping is, and some fist bumps around the door opening worked to get it open. We got 0.5 inches of snow here in Middle Tennessee last night and it FROZE THE DOORS SHUT, all of them... it was a white Chris-Mess. @#$% (censored!) !!!
--Cheers!

Thanks. This will be updated this month to have the one-way roads implemented. That should be relatively quick and painless.
Now that I said that I'm going to go and see if my maps even load (rut-roh).
They should, but you never know with pre-release and feature changes.
If anyone else is reading this, please let me know if there's problems with the map(s) I have made.
--Cheers and happy holidays (don't let the Chris-Mess music make you bonkers).

Poor PC, is that your new i9 that caused the hot spell as of late? It will hold a grudge against you for eternity and will doom you to a life of purgatory of it telling you what to do :)
...Like play a 10 hour loop of elevator music...
It's all good though, for the here-and-now. I hope you enjoyed the map.
--Cheers!

As dumb as the simple pleasures of life may sound to others, I know this all too well. Why else do you think I've made a whole county?
Hey, I drive around with a truck full of 1.5 dozen pianos and see just how long it takes to break them all without killing the truck before the pianos. To do such, easily, press j to pause physics and while in windowed mode of gameplay (not fullscreen) go and hit f11 and wait a while.
You can position them better with the f1 object editor (move command, the 2 key brings that up, all of this inside the f11 map editor).
The map editor takes a while to load but once it's up hit f1 and 2 to get the modes up, go free-cam with SHIFT+C and also, shift-dragging things (hold shift when you start then let go, will dupe the object) can be useful.
When everything is all said and done don't save the map, just go and hit f11 to go back out of the editor, and unpause physics and wait. You should be good to drive about. So don't feel too bad about enjoying the simpler things like you've mentioned for one second, we all do it.
--Cheers and happy piano crashing!

Can't do anything to help the biggest map in Beamng.drive mod repository run any better than it is without having 5-star modeling skills, which I do not. I don't even have one-star modeling skills. I edit my models from a text editor. I will have better stuff when and if the editor update we got today with the game update has the shape editor fixed up yet. If it does i'll possibly be able to help with things a bit but don't expect miracles, especially after downloading a 144 sq/mi terrain that's had 2500+ hours of detailing and work put into it. It's GOING to lag a little. Tech will catch up eventually and years from now this will be a worry of the past.
I've done what I could. Eventually when cpu performance and gpu performance is double what it is now, the map shouldn't be as much of an issue. There is one slow spot in Harriman by the jumps/train tracks behind O'Rlly auto parts I intend to increase speed in though. The visibility blockers (occluders) don't seem to do much good for me unfortunately in the FPS department, they don't seem to occlude enough (maybe this is better now). Future map versions shouldn't lag any worse in most spots.
Oh, and unless you want to only see 500 feet in-front of you in dense fog, I can't help the FPS really by reducing draw distance, which would help you be hopelessly lost for eternity. This isn't the N64 so I don't want to do that.
--Cheers

Well glad you enjoyed being immersed in Roane County TN USA a while. It was fun most of the time to make (of course some of mapping is arduous as all heck and quite monotonous, but we'll cast that part back into the corner for now). Unfortunately as of this version that time total is now well over 2500 hours and I've more than lost count since then.
Thank-you for also knowing enough about your computer to set your settings correctly and NOT complaining about lag, it's a breath of fresh air to me. Once one of the kids around here complains about lag they all jump on the 'waaaah it's the biggest free (earth-based) map ever but it lags' bandwagon.
This was originally a large-map/open-world test for the game engine and was never intended to get as far along as it did. It only did get this far by user demand. When this came out for 0.6.x~0.8.x game versions it used to lag a whole lot more and have boundless amounts of hitching especially when driving fast. Though, that being said, while it runs well now, on a mid-to-high-end machine, it surely will find a bottleneck in the PC it's running on if there is one to be found.
I think this would have made a better benchmark than a map for a driving game, but ah well. It's all water under the (many) bridge(s) now.
-- Thanks for writing in!
P.S. Next update progress for this map will begin after the next game-update at (tentatively) the end of this month.

Yes, it does lag when compared to other much smaller maps 1/100th it's size, glad your enjoying it despite this.
Turn off reflections, and turn off shadows see if either of those help.
If those help you might be able to enjoy the map better. There isn't much I can do, it's an absolutely huge map and there's not much getting around that. You definitely need a gaming-oriented desktop for this one, most all except the most decked-out recent gaming laptops will have issues with it.
My 3+ year old i7 I built in 2014 (with merely an Rx 480 8g I added last year) runs this 30~100fps depending on where you are in the map. There is one trouble-spot in Harriman though near the railroad track just west of the main route that goes down a bit below that for a reason I have no clue about. Still looking into that part. I have done my best to put in occluders (render-blockers) around the towns in various spots though to help with the FPS, but they don't do very much at all for me here.... <1fps difference.
I even text-edited the grass models so they'd appear more detailed a little later upon driving up to them, so they'd keep their 2d form longer, for better FPS (which helped about 10% with fps).
Maybe we'll wait for some newer versions of the base-game and see if that helps any because I don't have too many more strings to pull here!
--Thanks for writing in!

This will have periodic updates (usually once per or every other month) that hopefully will take less time then completing the game this mod is made for. I can't make any promises for certain, or give a time frame.
I am looking into optimizing and re-releasing So-Cal Interstate with double the last version's FPS, and seeing what else needs to be done to make it more engrossing.
I also have a city map planned, it's started (basically building a proof of concept), nothing really to show for it yet though. Much models already donated or created for that - still need a bunch of modular highway pieces and curbs and such, and countless tall buildings yet.
So if you or anyone has anything as far as building or city object models to throw towards a map, please do let me know!
Glad you liked the map thus far. More progress will be made on Roane County as I get more time and get the FPS under control in spots.
--Cheers!

I am looking into the lighting bit, but I hold no promises. It's only on bridges and at the Pine Ridge Road exit for US 40 for now. Regardless of outcome, it won't be until much later the lighting gets touched/changed.
Yes it's dark as all get-out, it's a rural area, this is how they are. The towns do need some more lights though.
Thanks for the good words and glad you enjoyed the map.

I'd say I am around half-way done on the towns. I am trying to optimize more before going much further with them so I don't make the FPS (much) worse.
85% to 90% of the roads that are supposed to be in, are in already.
The airport is in. It even has a few buildings now, too.
The highway is in and mostly done (US 40, gets a little bland on the west end especially past Westel road - the last exit, but it's smooth!).
A majority of the back-end work like creating textures for signs, roads, buildings, and 'stuff like that', is done already - because it had to be.
So, over-all, I'd say the map is 65~75% done, as much as it could be for right now. When tiled terrain support comes, it will enable me to upgrade the map much much more!
Pagefile may slow a machine down, especially with a hard drive, but if you only have one drive, and 8~16gb of ram, slow loading/hitching is better than a game-ending crash-to-desktop (CTD!) any day of the week.
Yes, putting page-file on drive d: or whatever secondary drive you have, IF you have one, is better, unless that drive is more than 3~5 years old (and hence, much slower). Buy SSD's my friends, that is all I can say, even cheap bottom-of-the-barrel ones are better than consumer-level hard drives. Just... back up your data regularly, regardless of the route you take, as it's smart computing, to do so.
Thanks for writing in & do enjoy the map!

Thanks, am trying, it's a LOT of work, a whole lot. It took an entire month of working just to bring the Kingston update. It is really nice though when everything starts coming together and making the scene whole - but it sure takes long enough to get there.

--Thanks for writing in as always, it means something!

I do my best to make it not only look nice but play well and have lots of fun in it too. There's always some nook or cranny of the map you haven't explored yet. Exploration = fun, and sometimes 'just driving' without any specific destination just completely fits the bill, too. To that end, this map is where you want to be.
There's several hidden jumps in and around Kingston, so make sure you've found them all (hint: often they're at or near the far end of something).
--Cheers!

To you and to anyone else who gets the game without paying - please purchase this game - the developers are awesome and you can actually get a hold of the moderators/developers and speak with them. They are truly awesome folks who I have had the pleasure of having many conversations with. If it wasn't for their help - in addition to making the game - this map wouldn't be here (yes, they actually changed some coding in the game exe when an update on 0.9 broke the map). So entirely, with the cheap price, this game is made by a small private group of developers, they totally deserve the money.
They deserve to eat, and pay the bills, you know. They're really awesome people if you ever need to speak with them.
This map is proudly made on a computer with 0% pirated software/files on it.

Turn your settings down, you rate mid-grade on a map I can drive through on high texture detail with minimum reflections and all shadows on, at no less than 30.6 fps in one spot, the rest being higher. I only have an Rx 480 8gb card. Considering this was over 2500 hours of work, to bring a larger map than dozens of others combined, it runs pretty well. Maybe you should take some time to properly configure your graphics settings, or work a mere few hours (or more) to upgrade your system.
The you won't be the only person in the room rating it 3 star, out of 100+ people. This game is not yet final version, nor is this map is not yet final.
The system requirements are clearly stated, if it runs poorly turn down your gfx settings, or bring what is required, don't complain about others.
My 3 year old + PC with a more recent graphics board runs it just fine.
If you want high FPS consider buying an AAA game but that'll cost you money, where this was given free.

Sir your comment is 100% on the money. That's exactly what this map is intended for. To provide a somewhat-scenic realistic driving experience. 175 miles of REAL Tennessee roadway is at your fingertips here in this map. Miles upon miles upon miles of roads from super-open straight-away types to windy mountain switchbacks to American Interstate US 40 that goes from Kingston in the east all the way to a mile or two west of the Westel exit. There's much more to this map then first meets the eye but eventually you'll find what's hiding out there when you 'just drive'
--Thanks for writing in and enjoy the update.