WIP Cascadia U.S.A. (4096 X 4096) 8.29.2019

I have created this thread to collect information on my map. If you have any criticisms or suggestions please post them here. I'm still new to this so I'm no @LJFHutch yet. So if you have any advice I would really appreciate it.

https://beamng.com/resources/cascadia-u-s-a-4096-x-4096.4874/

 

These rules are bit hidden at time, but what it says is that you should have some progress to show before creating thread:


Then again, those rules are at vehicles section, maybe they don't apply here, but as you asked information, thought you might find that useful.

Anyway, if it is first map for you, then maybe do 512 map first, it is lot more fun as one can progress faster and first map is always more of less just learning ways to do things and then improve methods.

Also if you have not watched these videos, it is highly recommended:
https://www.beamng.com/threads/highly-recommended-modding-tutorial-series.55534/

Good heightmap would be one of nice to haves, finding one that works can be tricky.

Then don't put lot of static objects on map, don't use mesh roads from the editor, pay attention to your drawcall counts (GFX and shadow), forest objects are bit cheaper in terms of hardware performance it seems and to transfer workload from CPU to GPU you can use bigger objects like WCUSA, but there are limits, don't go too crazy or big as that will prevent of using LODs efficiently.

Then find out road design information, it is not quite simple to make realistic roads, use pitch UI app to see what kind of angle your hills are really, often hill angle can be more than you think, so staying somewhat realistic numbers can be bit of work.

Making map is easy, making realistic map is difficult, making realistic map that is fun and does not kill computer, that is true test of how good you really are

 

Okay i don't know what a lot of those words mean. I work on cars for a living, i'm not a computer programmer. Drawcall counts, GFX, yeah i'm drawing a blank. Anyway, i wasn't really trying to make an extremely realistic map, i was trying to make a fun map with good roads and nice scenery. My map is higher quality then a lot of the maps out there, not developer quality but decent nonetheless, and i don't see them getting poor ratings and criticisms. My computer experience may be lacking, i have had to learn everything through trial and error because there is nothing in the way of help pages on the BeamNG website that i could find. You don't want to know how long it took me to figure out how to rename the pathnames to get the maps to work. So i don't have the ability to create my own models and whatnot for a map. I have to use all of the default textures and models mostly from the ECA map.

As far as the roads i have used the pitch app to make the roads and i tried not to exceed 15 degrees when possible. I spent a lot of time driving around in the T series with a trailer making sure it could make it up every hill. I spent more time driving around in just about every sports car to make sure the roads were smooth enough for high speed driving.

The main criticism i'm getting is people saying its not detailed enough and theres not enough vegetation. Now the forest folder is almost 26 mb, the .json file for the tree_oak_blocker has 34,625 lines alone. Thats a lot of shit. How much is enough? See i'm faced with either leaving it a bit sparse or loading it up with so much vegetation that it lags so badly that only a super computer can run it.

 

I have been always puzzled of why maps lag, so far I have not found satisfactory explanation for that, it is not trees though, JRI runs fine, Automation map has lot of water and over 20 000 objects, so no water or object count explains it.

So I have been experimenting a little, I have put trees from JRI on 2km by 2km map, accidentally I got all trees, houses and rocks from JRI as well on this map, then there are over 1000 houses that I did made, which from some reason appear to be leaning:


So after few clicks:


CPU does not really mind, GPU has to work bit harder, but 50% with gtx1080 is not really a lot, I have put same density of trees to cover whole 2km by 2km map and there is no change in how heavy it gets, maximum you can get with trees is about this:


No, trees won't cause map to lag, especially if used even a bit sense placing them and if using trees that actually have some kind of performance optimization with them, JRI ones are well done in that regard.

So would houses cause then more lag? Some say density is the key, so lets try that:


On background you can see part of JRI jungle, our added dense forest and over 1000 houses, on foreground few houses more:


My editor crashes because I have added so many layers of stuff covering 2km by 2km area before there is any kind of lag appearing. Highest LOD of house is around 1900 tris which is quite excessive for such a simple building.

Those all are forest brush items, individual objects, but from forest brush, houses too.

So certainly, there must be something else which is reason why some maps lag so bad, maybe it is in textures, in model or non optimized objects in general, but I haven't been able to put so many objects in small space that it would of started really lagging.


If you press ctrl-f twice you can see drawcalls, compare to official maps and try not to make it too high, but it is not all there is to performance, not all drawcalls seem to be equal, some maps lag horrible even with small amount of draw calls, or polycount.

Avoid sketchup models like a plague, 10 of those can take good chunk of your fps. Also there is something about ECA buildings that is causing this odd single core cpu load to increase a lot. ECA town is tiny, it does not have too many objects, yet it is really hard on CPU, compare that to my thousands and thousands of items there and it makes one wonder how it is possible, why some maps don't just perform, what is the key to avoid, that I have looked and nobody seem to really know the answer that would hold in tests.

Now for your problem of course is that you can't make your own optimized models, but my tip is to look how much drawcalls object adds in distance, that seems to give some indication if there is going to be some trouble with performance.
--- Post updated ---
Also, I had no idea you already have made a map, put this link in first post!

https://beamng.com/resources/cascadia-u-s-a-4096-x-4096.4874/

 

See i placed tons of groundcover and BeamNG kept crashing. Every time i tried to save it it would sit there for a minute or two before it would finish saving. Lag wasn't an issue but i can't really build a map if it crashes every time i place a few plants. So i guess i can try to add a bunch of large bushes rather than tons of smaller plants to fill up some of the empty space.

I don't know what cause lag either. I really can't even play the WCU map on my computer. The ECA map isn't too bad though. I think it really has a lot to do with the optimization. They have a small crew and i'm sure they have beefy computers so they have no problems running these maps. But i have to run the game on low settings with grass and shadows turned off and i still can't play the WCU map. Now my computer isn't fast but its not slow either. I can play just about any game on high settings no problem. Its just Beamng.drive that lags like crazy. I know that they have a lot going on with the cars, tons of node and beams all shifting around constantly. But i really think its down to optimization. The game tries to load the whole map all at once. You think about it games like GTA 5 are 100 square miles and it runs just fine. Its because they load only the area that is in the immediate vicinity of you. They really need to adopt a similar system in BeamNG.

 

Ok, now that I actually have seen your map after figuring out it was already released and reading some comments, I think this is how you could make it better.

You see this area I made red, how you want area to be, to be accessible for the player or just look like a dense forest that is not really meant to be driven into?


With large map, it might be useful to set at least some forest inaccessible, if you look JRI map, you can see how they use vegetation walls, there is some bushes, trees etc at front of them, but those create illusion of dense forest even there is nothing or not much behind them.

So focusing placing trees etc. near the roads, blocking of inside of forest and using some lines of trees to make it appear like it would be a forest, would be more efficient, but it will be then custom to block access inside the forest.

For example at Hirochi, they have this kind of empty area, which looks like dense forest when driving:


Then at ECA, they are placing these lines inside of those empty areas, you can make also kind of X shapes from those lines of trees, so that even from bit above it looks like forest when viewed from distance:


Hills can be difficult, especially when you have road where people can look down, but placing trees kinda two lines each and odd for left and right line is almost as good as placing each one of to cover the area, but that works on distance mostly. Maybe picture explains better:


Always thinking where that place is possible to be viewed and what pattern would give most coverage for least amount of trees.

That way you don't necessarily need more trees, but then again trees are not very bad for performance from my experience.


BeamNG can be bit funny with a performance aspect for sure, your map seems to be running really well though, what little I had time to test, need to test more later.

Yeah, that editor crashing issue starts to happen at some point when adding lot of stuff, not really sure how to get it cope better, I have heard that 32GB of ram would help, but then again it is not using even close to my 16GB, until it freezes that is!

I have i7-6700 which is running 100th percentile according to userbench, quite close to 6700k, even in Banana bench I get over 40Mbeam/s so not exactly slow, but still struggling.

Carkour 2 map is interesting as it is so small yet so laggy, CPU dies on that map, like on many others.

With gtx1080, I don't really see any problems on GPU side, but also gtx1060 6GB should be fast enough for most maps, but for WCUSA on highest details, I think gtx1070 might be needed.

 

I was trying to do that with the trees. The problem i have is that the maps is quite hilly and there are several lookout points. So i don't want to have a bunch of empty spots. I think what i will try to do is find some fairly bushy ........bushes and load those up like crazy on the edges of the roads.
--- Post updated ---
Progress so far, do you like it?

 

Yeah, that should give much better sense of speed on that big road

I'm getting 500fps at top of the mountain, wouldn't exactly be worried about performance, empty grid map is only 900fps which is not even a double and I don't know any other map that would run this well



Maybe you can put some bushes to that center divider too, even usually that is kept quite clear.

Then I don't know how to get grass to work, it seems that now it spawns over concrete too which I have not seen it doing before, it should only spawn to painted terrain that is grass or similar. Grass would probably be something that would change static look to something completely different and it should not eat too much FPS as users can adjust how much there is of it.

 

Wow 500 fps? I was getting 20 and now 15 with all the added bushes. Where did you get your computer? NASA?

 

They did sent it from Germany, in many pieces and packages

gtx1080 is bit fast for this game and especially for my CPU, also on some maps keeping 60fps is a problem, even this machine can be considered high end level.

Do you have a laptop?

17fps with iGPU that is in i7-6700, on normal graphics and big window size, if I reduce window size a bit I get 20fps, with shadows enabled and all, it is good fps for iGPU so map is performing really well:


On lowest details and bit smaller window it can do even 60fps it seems:


Compared to other maps this runs really well, probably one of the best running 4096 map, so if editor allows adding more trees, that should not be a problem, but as with more trees it tends to get crashing, it might be good idea to find where you can cut few trees and still give impression of forest.

It is bit like magician makes illusion, limits of technology mean map maker has to often make illusion too so that things appear nice and complex, even they are quite simple. Challenge with your map is indeed those hills, but figuring out how to get grass to appear only on green areas should really help with some of plain looking spots.

 

Yes i'm running it on a laptop, how did you know? Yeah hopefully it will still run good for most people with the thick vegetation. I want it to look good but also run good, its a map for driving after all.

 

Laptops, even fast ones have bit of trouble with BeamNG, your FPS is so low that usually that happens only on laptops.

Don't worry, any desktop for gaming purposes should run that map, no matter how many trees you add. Thing with the trees is that they really need some computing power when they are near, so clever placement can do wonders for fps while still allow them to be used plentiful when viewed from distance. Most thing to worry will be vram usage that can get high, but I think you can almost double the amount of trees without issues with that, probably editor will not allow doubling the amount though :-/

 

Yeah i have been messing around with it and i have seen it go from 15 to somewhere around 17-20 fps. It'l just take some tinkering. As long as i can get to 20 fps it makes playable, anything below that and its too laggy.

 

Alright then i finally got it finished.

 

I did record short clip, used eco friendly electric car for tree hugging:


Few times I was bit lost and some corners did caught me by surprise, which made me realize that one thing your map is missing is road signs, some warnings about bumps and corners might give map nice detailed touch

 

Oh cool, the trees will greatly appreciate that. Yeah it usually easier to navigate if you use the navigation UI app. I know that some of the corners sneak up on you but its largely because of the terrain. I used a heightmap of Mount Adams in WA so it obviously kinda random like nature. But as far as road signs i couldn't really find any good ones. In the ECA files they had some German road signs but considering its not set in Germany it wouldn't really be accurate. I'll have to look in the west coast map to see if they have any.

 

You could ask @bob.blunderton he has lots of road signs of US maps and he is really nice generous guy, always offering help and quality maps for people to enjoy.

I don't really mind corners sneaking up on me, there are lot of real world roads that have those, keeps you on your toes and that is part of the fun!

 

Alright i'll have to ask him. It would add a nice touch of realism.

 

Oh thank you i couldn't figure out how to do that.