WIP Tail of the Dragon / Deal's Gap 1.0.1

Well that was rude. This map isn't easy to run, there's a reason why all of these large maps have warnings about necessary specs. My laptop can run BeamNG normally, but it can't load these maps up because of their size. Before you go and insult other people who are trying to help you, calm down and take a look at the size of the map.

 

Your older model video card would likely be faster with older drivers, if older drivers were available that worked.
It's past it's prime. Surely it's time to consider an update to your video board. It wouldn't really benefit you to update the CPU though - you have plenty of CPU and RAM available (and a new one is max 20~30% faster per-core, plus maybe having more cores but not much needs more than a quad core yet - that being said beamng.drive will use ALL your cores when you have many cars in-play).
You can use the low-detail patch that cuts out distant views. You will trade some scenery for lots of FPS. This map was benchmarked to run well on my RX 480 8gb. So either stick to medium, or try turning off reflections as that alone may help A LOT.

--Thanks to everyone else for chiming in here - but yes, the video boards in the 6xxx series have been made slightly worse through driver optimizations for Maxwell and newer series, too.

 

Small video (ok, it was 2.5GB), where Dragon does what it does, poor Doku Doku (It is D15 with LS7 swap and 7 speed Tremec DCT), but it was a fun run until the end:

 

Sweet Sweet driving (well okay, you did crash @ the end but I crash MORE so fear not).
You and Newofox do the best non-review (non-commentary, just driving!) videos out there.
--Cheers and many thanks, will add to the resource page promptly!

 

Thank you from your kind words Bob!

It seems I had somehow turned off maximum performance in power settings, now I did lower resolution a bit and managed to get fairly smooth FPS with shadows on, this is whole road with a Semi (3.7GB video, took about 25 minutes to upload):


Quite happy to that video, ending was thrilling so to say, brake fade made it quite close, but I did not bent a bumper! Could of used bit more power, less front tire pressure and better brakes, but I think that is somewhat entertaining clip and with shadows it shows map much better.

 

Well,Maybe BeamNG does not support SLI (2chip GPU like Mine)
--- Post updated ---

MINE IS ON MAXIMUM AS BEAMNG HAS AND ON MAP e.g West Coast USA i get 37fps with smooth gameplay,just like 1050ti-1060 3gb,Going to upgrade my rig on Late March 2018

 

I play with nearly maxed out settings and get 34fps at wcu. Also you could have your second graphics chip disabled in the bios as beamng does use sli if its available

 

Beamng.drive does not support Scaleable Link interface (SLi), nor does it support Crossfire (AMD same solution).
There is nothing anywhere that says it does either. SLi / Crossfire are a niche-use case these-days and only supported by a handful of mainstream games - that's it. It's uses are not the widely accepted, widely supported market of 10+ years ago.
Only half of your video card will find use when you run games without support for SLi.

You're MUCH better off from a cost, power/heat and usefulness scenario spending that money on one larger, more powerful video card, which is supported by all games you play.

There's a low detail patch somewhere around here on this thread. It's only 7 pages long this thread so look for an attachment if you know how to apply it to the file (it's just replacing an identical file in the .zip file the map comes in).
This will allow older video boards to play this map very smoothly. I'm not paid and I make no money directly from doing this, so it's not made by a pro with thousands of experience in the field. It's made by someone who's been making mods in his spare time for 23+ years since the MS-DOS days of Doom in the 90s.

When the video card prices come down, grab a 1070Ti and enjoy the power savings and the fact you can't fry hamburgers on your video card (I used to use Nvidia reference cards almost 10 years ago, my GTX 260 SLi setup could warm refrigerated hamburgers up to NICE'N'HOT (TM) in the span of ONE multiplayer GTA-IV race, heehee). So I feel your pain. When I didn't get enough to eat and didn't want to get up so often I bought the second card so I could warm more burgers. They were great, they even came with a burger warming/grilling surface built in - which they called a 'back plate'.

So yes, I feel your pain, but there's little I can do to make this run better without killing the scenic views from the mountain top - but never fear - there's an optional patch and instructions how to do it a page or three back in this thread somewhere.
Turn down/off reflections or disable SSAO (or both), maybe it will help you out not having to render so many trees!
So do enjoy!

---

I have found *NO* evidence the SLi is supported or used by this game. This is the same thing the developers will tell you, it does NOT use SLi. Your 'second graphics chip' does not get disabled in BIOS, it gets enabled/disabled in Nvidia Control Panel if anything, provided you have the required x16\x8 or x8\x8 PCI-Express lane setup on your motherboard (THAT is handled from bios, or on REALLY old 1st-generation SLi boards, with a flip card bifurcator/splitter). Laptops with SLi built in may have options in the BIOS, however, so there's always the exception to the rule.
However, if SLi has suddenly been supported as of late, you can kindly scream me into the corner with everyone else that's wrong where I belong, just please source your information when you do.

--I hope this somehow helps, please don't take blunt honesty as rudeness.
--Cheers

 

Bob's love and careful preparation of AI shows in this map too, a LOT more fun than AI on official maps (sorry for spamming your thread with videos, I just think this is worth looking):

 

MINE IS ON MAXIMUM AS BEAMNG HAS AND ON MAP e.g West Coast USA i get 37fps with smooth gameplay,just like 105

mine is 690 4gb ((1chip+2gb)X2)

 

Thanks, will give this a watch, I always try and take time to view the length of every video / review etc on stuff so I can get the most feedback. Appreciate you knowing the AI is decently done (I don't say 'well' as someone told me it eats a few trees now and then, will have a look for that & fix if I find anything), I spent a lot of time and even overlaid some roads with invisible overlays to keep the AI on course. It took a little extra work but it made it all the much more fun. No excuse to mess it up as there's truly only ONE main road. This way you can set cars with or without the lane-minder on, and race about up and down the road and have AI traffic - it really took Beamng.drive to a whole new level to have AI traffic.
Post all the videos you like, it's not spamming - fear not, as others enjoy them too. You won't offend me.

--Thanks for your time and for writing in!

 

thanks for the info proves that i dont really know much about sli. Also i love this map to test new cars very well designed

 

It's okay, SLi was great idea when it was supported to get better FPS back when cards could only barely push 30fps of high detail @ 1080p resolution. So yes, it's alright, people have to learn somewhere - nothing wrong with that.
That being said, enjoy the map, with reflections off that is, and thanks for the kind words!
--Cheers!

 

Try these settings, for me that gives about 15% higher GPU usage than without reflections and as trees are always so close I get enough reflection effect:


I keep SSAO off though and model + shader level is normal instead of high. Around 95% GPU usage @ 60FPS, but I'm almost always at 720p.

With reflections distance seems to be really high by default, setting it that low is not really making them look worse, actually I think it is better as you don't really get reflections from 600 meters away, at least in car paint, it is just nearby stuff you notice, with distance too high it looks quite unnatural.

On another note, at WCUSA playing with shadows on/off I can see quite lot of difference in GPU usage, that is rare, usually there is not much of change in GPU usage when setting shadows off. I thought that was worth to mentioning, maybe they have done something differently on that map and maybe there is something to learn from there? We always have something to learn after all

 

I did some staging here:


There is evening version too, but it is not quite as nice as I hoped it would be:


In europe at 60's they painted bit smaller squares, not sure how big job it is to scale these up to US size? Sometimes simplest of things in editor take major amount of time and effort.

 

Those are motorcycle parking areas.


That's the same spot represented in the game, where you took the picture of.
Stream/Roadway are to the left of the shot, the motel is in the background, the gas station/store is to the right (as would be the starting point).


Nice staging, btw, and yes, the road is quite fun with traffic! I encourage everyone to try it out.

 

Ah, so then it is once again one of those ETK drivers (points himself) parking where they should not

 

It's not fun road just for vehicles with wheels, those with blades can enjoy this road too!

 

I hold no warranty or liability if you do THAT. However, the up-and-coming Roane County update might be a little more fun for that. Not sure. I wouldn't try flying a helicopter anywhere that a commercial truck can't even go though.
Do have fun.

 

There sure are a lot of ways having fun in BeamNG! ;-)


TBH, flying a plane in there is not working quite well, but when you take it up above the trees, that looks pretty nice, even with this normal graphics setting.


In last pic you can see those two big trees, entry to road with a plane was from between those, it is quite narrow 'gap' there for a plane, luckily trees don't have full collision all the way up