WIP Beta released The Tennessee USA Roane County 0.71 Beta Discussion/Suggestion/feedback Thread 19.3.1

I could help you with some 3d modeling on the signs. If i made signs could you put them in beamng from a 3dsmax file?

 

Well, can you export to DAE or 'Collada' I think it's called. Chances are 3dsmax can do DAE stuffs. As long as all it's sides are textured, it should be usable. Please send along source textures also, so that I can re-form them with manual pieces should I integrate them into larger objects, etc (sign on a pole, bank of highway signs). You can private message me with donations anytime. It's always appreciated. Anything is helpful.

--Thankyou

 

alright im really good with textures

 

Are you using less intensive mesh forest or forest items?

 

Have you reached out to the Devs about the issues with the train tracks?

 

Woah man, that's cool. I drove that stretch of interstate just yesterday, came from West Knoxville to Kingston. I've been on the Kentucky St interchange probably 200 times.
About a week ago I went from Knoxville to Crossville then back, so I drove that whole stretch of road both ways.
It's a pretty neat section of interstate, especially when you're running along the ridge overlooking Rockwood.
I assume you're from the area? Cool to see East TN getting some attention.

 

Not yet but I will post an issue with it and see if I can't get more decimal values saved on editor object position. I noticed that once or twice before when lining things up perfectly. It's fine if I was making a perfectly FLAT track, or making a track that just went straight in one of the eight directions, but combine 2 or more of those things - slight slope (it's a train, not a car), and an angle, you end up with a BIG difference when the position is saved say at 27.004 instead of 27.00437981 or whatever, especially on a BIG map, where you end up having a lot less precision. Despite that, this map is still going a long as planned. I am sure they will address this because honestly, it won't be a big change, and it will also only increase resulting map sized MAYBE a kb or 10kb... tops. You don't need it on a forest, but you sure need it on a large map with train tracks.

I am using the east coast USA forest. I will however, be leaving some of the forest thinned out, especially in later versions (final release will come with a minimal-forest-only version, too). My goal is to release a map that stays at atleast fullmotion FPS on my old video board (7850 /R7-265 2gb), and in most spots it's fine, but this is a forested state, and some spots it got down to (ack!) 25fps! Just two spots, but will be thinned.
I believe if I reshape a few of the hills just a tad, I can use them as view-blockers and integrate vis-portals here (the game has them, and they just tell the game when to not render trees&more when stuff's blocked).
Trying a little harder to keep FPS up. It needs trees to look proper, though. It looks deaf and blind without it!
--- Post updated ---

Yup you were in my hometown a week ago bud. Kingston's Kentucky St. Interchange is at the very eastern edge of this map. It goes west past Westel Road (by the RV dealer) about a good mile and a half and that's the western edge. The northern edge is just north about 2 miles out of harriman (harriman is in this map). The southern edge is about a good mile + south of Glen Alice. So yeah, it's a huge map, and yes, there's loads of fun spots on 40, especially coming up out of Knoxville. I swear, every time I get out of Knoxville to come back west, there's always some sort of road race going on.
In all honestly, It's going to take forever If I ever make that sections of I-40 just west of Knoxville because I'll be too busy playing it to make it - it's the most fun section of interstate I've ever driven. That could see the light before summer's out, though. It sure is fun as all can be.
--Cheers

EDIT: Oh and yeah Rockwood, and the "Ridge overlooking Rockwood" is in this. It's near the center of this map. I added two pictures, one illustrated, one just the view from the motorway you spoke of.

 

If you have issues with lag you can always replace forest items aka the items you paint, with meshs spawned in from where you store mesh, these trees use less resources on your computer but are a little more tedious to place.

 

One possible solution to your issues with the rail line would be to make one single, enlongated track segment. Bad news is it would require a bit of time inside Blender or another major 3D package. Good news, you'll be able to make the section as complicated or simple as you like while only using one piece. You could even break the track up into distinct sections that all have a rounded-up location, such that you could still make use of LOD's or occlusion. With the right resources, I could handle this for you.

As for roadway signs, I think I might be able to whip up a few good ones through inDesign:



(distorted to fit power-of-two resolution)

 

Yup you were in my hometown a week ago bud. Kingston's Kentucky St. Interchange is at the very eastern edge of this map. It goes west past Westel Road (by the RV dealer) about a good mile and a half and that's the western edge. The northern edge is just north about 2 miles out of harriman (harriman is in this map). The southern edge is about a good mile + south of Glen Alice. So yeah, it's a huge map, and yes, there's loads of fun spots on 40, especially coming up out of Knoxville. I swear, every time I get out of Knoxville to come back west, there's always some sort of road race going on.
In all honestly, It's going to take forever If I ever make that sections of I-40 just west of Knoxville because I'll be too busy playing it to make it - it's the most fun section of interstate I've ever driven.

I do not have item slots to 'spare' to be placing trees that aren't part of the forest brush. I was able to thin the forest to where I am staying at 30~36(most spots at worst fps) and above. MOST people have better video boards than I do, hopefully anyways, as even this one is about 3 years old and needs an update (not bad for a 140$ asus-branded 7850 2gb that came with 3 games). This is a very large map, so it's not for people with OLD video boards. I mean some people are comfortable with 20~25fps but below 30fps this game becomes rather unwieldy with the controls. There will most likely be less trees in the finished product because of the fact that houses go in some spots, farm fields, etc. It should most likely perform a few fps better than it is now. If you have something like a nvidia GTX 760ti or above, GTX 900-anything series, a Radeon 7870 or 7950, or R9 anything series Radeon card, it should perform fine.
Users with 750ti and below (nvidia) or anything below my Radeon 7850/R7 265 stock clocks (as I tested the game at stock GPU settings), may have a little choppiness. I will release a low-fi version with few to no trees in the scene for users who just want to have a Potato PC race (when the map is closer to completion).
Video card prices have dropped, and will drop in another day or two as the AMD 480/4xx series emerges the 29th, so it's a good time to buy a better video card! Even I will eventually need to upgrade one day, even though I am the penny-pinching type here and don't upgrade unless I absolutely have to.

That's pretty nice actually, if you can make signs, awesome! You will 100% get credit for anything you offer up. I will use anything and everything available to make this really feel like TN, USA.
Thanks a bunch. Let me know anything that you come up with, I'll make sure it gets used. Even if it's just textures, I can do convex-object signs too now since they have collision.
--Thanks again

 

Got the final 1.1~1.2 miles of route 27 south of Glen Alice built, all the way to the map edge (put dead trees in the way so you don't fall off the edge of the map). This is getting closer and closer to having all the through-roads completed. 2~3 days for a closed-alpha for testers!!!
Spent quite a while building the bridge from Broadway of America (Harriman TN area), to Kingston, over the Clinch River. Entire bridge built and finished. Looks decent enough, still have some work to do fixing up the terrain in the area, adding rocks, houses, misc brick boxes etc.
If anyone wants in on the closed-alpha, let me know. I will be forming an Alpha-Beta-testers group shortly. Those taking part in this thread can get in. Those that know me on Steam will receive a link without any effort on your part (if you don't, just holla). Now for some pics...
Again, THE TERRAIN/LANDSCAPING NEEDS WORK, I merely just finished the bridge thus far, otherwise this area is BARREN.

 

I would love to beta/alpha test your map, Are you using size 2 terrain squares to increase terrain size?

 

So, for the first time in a map, I planted some houses, and a town grew, and grew, until I had 3.x blocks of the main street done. It's looks purdy, but it still needs to have the signs, lights, misc poles and mailboxes/cans placed.
Gas station (yes, I put in a service station!), a dozen or so townhouses, some rowhomes, a few commercial properties, and a nondescript police barracks. I have to make a few of these towns. They won't be world class, but they have the little details that will keep it from looking fake, and won't break the simulation. Remember, when this map is complete, there will be a low-detail version out that will keep the houses but few/no trees.
Edited to fix typo...

 

THIS LOOKS AMAZING!!

 

(old, unneeded post redacted)

 

The load time was quite a while but it was WORTH IT! Here are some screenshots







I am getting 45-60 fps and i have a intel i7 core processor with 16GB Ram and the PC is almost 7 years old.

 

The road texture and the view in some places is fantastic! I am getting around 50 to 40 fps most of the time, sometimes I dip into 23 fps. And btw I have a Zotac 750ti with a i5 4460.

 

Thanks, I have lost count of how many hours I spent just making textures for this map. While I got the original texture sources off textures.com, I had to do hours of work to make what there is now. Carefully expanding them, touching up pixel-by-pixel to give it the look it has now. I got the feedback off my other maps at how flat the old textures were, they were not up to snuff, basically - now they are. There's a few seams here and there, and a few spots where the textures are not as good as they could be (rough intersections, that aren't finished yet - you will know those when you see them), but this is a pre-beta/alpha release, so... Glad you enjoyed the view, it really is a beautiful state here & there is much scenic beauty to come in the future as I complete more of the map. It's barely half done.

 

On my lower end machine wait times were long to load, but that was too be expected. Once in the map I could run 2 cars with about 20 fps, playable.... But I surmise that people with lower end systems will struggle with this map.

 

I decided to try this map out and while driving around, I notice when I'm in the east part of the map, my frame rate is at a stable 30 to 40 frames. But when I drive over into the west part of the map, my frame rate dips down to the mid to lower 10's even with the physics paused and I was only using one car the whole time (Bruckell Moonhawk Sport). Though overall, it does feel rather surreal to be driving on a map that's modeled after actual terrain and using real road routes in a video game/simulator.

As for the load times, my machine took 3 minutes 11 seconds to load the map from the moment I press the load level button to the point when I'm in game with all the objects loaded in. Then when I quit the game, it takes about 49 seconds for Beam to close.

Spoiler: Technical Specs and Settings

Computer Specs

OS: Windows 10 64bit
Processor: AMD A-10-6700 APU at 3.7Ghz (can auto overclock to as high as 4.14Ghz)
Memory: 8Gb of RAM (7GB usable)
Video Card: EVGA GTX750 TI SC

Game Graphics settings:

Resolution: 1440x900 at 59Hz (My monitor's native resolution)
running in Borderless Window
VSync = true
Gamma at 1.30
FPS limiter = true at 60fps

Antialiasing = false
SSAO = false
HDR = false
Light Rays = false
DoF = false
Mesh Quality = Low
Texture Quality = Normal
Lighting Quality = Low
Shader Quality = Low
Anisotropic Filtering = x16
Grass Density = 0.5
Dynamic Reflection = true

Steam overlay enabled = true

Some of the following screencaps below all were taken with the physics paused.
Ones with the HUD visible were taken while the game is in motion.
Off Topic note: The license plate number references another game I was playing recently.

Spoiler: Screencaps