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

There will be an OOPS drop-off center or service center soon. Well eventually anyways.

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I have to get to the bottom of why this stupid map update I sent to private beta testers is making this game so crash-happy.
I don't have a CLUE what's doing it. Not in the foggiest.
The log is about as useless as a porcupine in a nudist colony, in this respect.
So now I must figure out how to make it crash again for ME so I can make amends to it.

IF ANYONE IS GETTING CRASH-TO-DESKTOP ISSUES, SEND YOUR documents\beamng.drive\beamng.log file to me in a private message as an attachment, thanks.

 

SPAN follows one way roads WRONG WAY 100%
RANDOM follows one way roads correct 50% that I can tell (it doesn't care)...

FAIL WHALE IS COMING TO TOWN, FAIL WHALE IS COMING TO TOWN.... ugh...
--- Post updated ---
It doesn't listen anyways...
What's the point of one way roads if it doesn't listen to them?

Well when the developers have this fixed, I guess they will work as intended.
I don't believe, for a minute, that roads are intended to by default one way, be driven in reverse of the way they're laid out.
Write your local developer or moderator to tell them how you feel about the situation!

 

I have been out of town since last week, but I will send you the error log as soon as I try applying the patch again upon my arrival at home. Best of luck with your progress in the meantime!

 

Yeah I am going to re-pack the map and re-upload it. If you crash out, fear not, I should have some private beta links going up tomorrow or tonight, whenever I get that pair of decal roads fixed up that's wrongly ordered (it's a visual bug).
AI tends to drive wrong way 100% of the time on SPAN as someone coded the game's one-way road function BACKWARDS, but you can have quite the chase still as the AI works as usual.
Still hits stop signs in Harriman though, downtown in the residential area!
I have to fix that in the future. Waiting to see if they get these editor bugs fixed up on the short-term. I hate to roast the developers working so hard on the game, but @#$% me I spent hours on the one way roads and they all 'invert' by default, the only way to un-invert them is by checking the check-box for 'invert'. Duhhhhhh what did I miss?

CAN I ASK FOR AT-LEAST THAT PART OF THE EDITOR TO BE INTUITIVE!?
There are many days I despise being in the 98th percentile, it can be a frustrating experience (please excuse if I sound conceded, that's out of character for me), to say the least. This was definitely, 100% surely one of those days, Times 10.
What is logical and practical and common-sense to me is complete rocket-science to others. I do not know everything, I can not know everything, but I know what I need to know to get by. What does this have to do with anything?
Well I seem to be in between a rock and a hard place here - (between a bunch of nice folks here, many intellectuals among them thankfully - if that's the one saving grace, and this GUI-DERP.EXE editor that is Beamng.drive editor most days), thanks for being there for me when I'm pulling my hair out.
This has been as much an exercise in patience and character as it has in making a map.
I am still however glad, Alpha version or not, that I have joined in and gave my input & feedback, in an early-enough phase to make this game better, from the early more influential stages of development. This way, maybe, just maybe, it won't fall victim to the same artificial limits imposed by many other game-engines. Those limits that hold back the ultimate mods, the biggest maps, or the longest story-lines, and things that must be worked around etc (Simcity 4's multi-core woes and 32-bit issues on modern PC's, STALKER game series's 32-bit limitations before the recent x64 open-XRay engine update, Source/GoldSource - Half-Life engine absolute brush-face limits, Beamng.drives single-terrain and 4096 object limits, Cities:Skylines absolute road, lane, or segment limits - which I hit 6 days after release with no mods, etc)...
While we can't push every limit away, I hope my input (and I shall assume it has) makes a better game for everyone, especially when more modders come to the scene post-release. After-all, modding is why we're all on PC, right?
I've long-since gotten sick of hitting every limit in every game I've ever modded or played for a long enough time over the last 22+ years I've had my own PC. This time around, I wanted to give my input during development, as being early on, it may even help make not just mods better, but the actual game better too!
Example: My invisible AI-only road trick was used in parts of WEST COAST, it's super handy, so why not get it to tell the AI EXACTLY where to go!? It's not just for bridges/tunnels anymore.

I've also started greying the (parenthesis) areas out a bit to make reading through my gibberish a bit easier for some folks.

The UNEXPECTED CRASH HAPPINESS of the game was due to a state in 11.1 & 11.2 where the /mods/ folder over-rode /levels/ folder. This was fixed in 11.3 in the second week of this month.
I've again scrapped the last update I sent out (privately) and re-built a new update - hopefully without the crash - will be trying that later to test - so BETA GUYS who were in on the last round - will get another shot tomorrow - hopefully.
FPS should still be significantly better than the previous official version. Might be 5~12% slower than the best I had with the somehow-game-crash-inducing version that was the last patch I sent out privately though.

--Keep an eye peeled for tomorrow afternoon (USA time).

P.S. MERRY CHRIS MESS

 

rip i can't play due to my 6GB.. Time to switch to my laptop, Which has 8gb but a crappy gpu

 

No, you actually sound the opposite of conceded....a bit combative, actually. Maybe you're coincident but that's hard to tell!

Merry Xmess!

 

6gb is not enough to meet the minimum requirements of many of today's latest 3d open-world titles, expect to need to upgrade that machine in the short term. 8gb is even recommended on many older and current newer/new-ish e-sports titles.
If that is an X58 machine, a newer XEON (westmere or similar) processor (W35xx, 54xx quad cores and 56xx hexa-core CPUs) will generally drop-in as an upgrade both in per-ghz performance and decreased power consumption/heat. In addition, x58 machines generally had triple-channel memory, which is expensive, but you can often find more sticks on Ebay used or on other sites for cheap (or more reasonable anyways). DDR3-1333 and DDR3-1600 was often used (1066 was minimum only found in OEM machines) on these machines.
XEON prices = 15~50$ US-dollar prices, used working, pulls - these upgrade the machine to at-least i7 2xxx type performance.
RAM prices = 5~10$ per GB, used is cheaper, depending on where you buy. Get that it's 'working' in writing and save the sales/auction page for later reference if you need it, and don't buy any RAM 'as-is'.
MAX supported memory is 12 or 24GB, those boards are limited to 4gb per-stick of memory. Cheapest OEM boards may only work with 2gb per stick but is best to check first on forums etc.

The latest version update coming for this map has much better FPS - 2x as good in some spots like downtown Harriman!
I can overlook the ENTIRE town and have 60FPS!!!

To undo the memory requirement for this map is to defeat it's true sense and purpose of being the LARGEST map for Beamng.drive.
To note, while you wait, there's another map called AMERICAN ROAD, on the repository, it uses signs from this map, it recently had an update too, to fix huge signs that once infested this map too - because they're my signs donated by @RedRoosterFarm so kindly - thank you RRF! Go check it out while you wait for this thingie to infest the repository once again.

Speaking of signs, the huge sign bug came back - but this time, I'm ready for it. I tested it well right from the /mods/ folder as a .zip so you can be sure it shall go as intended, unless the Beamng updates have yet another dastardly trick up their proverbial sleeves. So since it came back, I text-edited it back into submission and it should be fine. The signs are now no longer 8 feet tall, they are approx 6.4 feet to 7 feet tall - except larger highway signs as per DOT standard. This should make them no longer as high as to reach the 2nd floor of downtown buildings.

Anyone who uses my signs donated by REDROOSTERFARM needs to be aware and pay special attention to the fact that re-saving the map into 0.11.x format will BRING THE SIGN SIZE BUG BACK. It won't come back until you nix your old forest brush data-file, too. Bigger is usually better but this is breaking the mold, and the skyline, and is not the case, not when it can cause a hazard to the International Space Station.
The appropriate size for signs SCALE should be 0.02 and can be edited to such from a text editor in the corresponding correct place.

PLEASE PRIVATE MESSAGE ME FOR MORE INFO IF YOU WANT TO USE RESOURCES FROM ROANE COUNTY TN MAP.



showing the correct sign-size above. It might be 4~5 inches too tall but otherwise should be fine. Note 75~80fps!
1080p all max + shadows on full, no reflections (otherwise, all max!) - I am not seeing *ANY* part of the map dip below 49.4~48.9 FPS AT ALL EVEN IN TOWN, especially once it's loaded (driven through once before). IN CAR VIEW NEVER goes below 50FPS!!! So please, use in-car view, since we have it to use, and that it can be 20% faster and gives you the most realism. This isn't need for speed from Electronic Atrocity, you know - and thank goodness for that - no gambling/micro-transactions/loot-box BS here.


57~60FPS looking over majority of Kingston!

Looking over Harriman down-town from the south entrance over the bridge - 80FPS - not 30~35!

The SLOWEST spot in the whole map is now at 51~56FPS! It used to be 28~34 FPS - almost 100% improvement.
I couldn't really find any place slower than 50FPS (this is without pausing physics, though I *AM* gpu limited until about 80fps!).



Stupid grass in road @ this can-opener bridge is fixed. Yes, CAN OPENER. 11-foot-8 you now have a friend! 75FPS too.

Did 0.11.X break anything else? The one car-dealer sign, PLASTICAR, is AWOL. Boohoo, I will make a better one.

Conceded = to be full of one's self.
Combative! Yes, a bit blunt too, but seriously, I do stand up for myself - was always a fighter (and my childhood nickname was Butch), so yes totally that. But don't be put off - I am actually super-friendly, but totally Dr. Jekyl / Mr. Hyde comes out when cornered. Super-friendly guy that used to occasionally get threatened and toss said threatening person down the stairs in high-school in the 90s - back when you didn't go to jail when you threw someone down a set of 22 or 23 metal-covered concrete stairs between class.

Gonna finish eating my din-dins...they're cold! --Cheers guys!

 

I thought the 98th percentile would be free of conceit somehow, or spell it right, I dunno.

Awesome progress as usual, btw.

Cheers!

 

Whatever it is worth, here is video of my test in 1280x720 Borderless window, video recording is causing some 5fps drop:


This is 0.8 or 0.9 with Tennessee Beta 5 for comparison, however this is game running in 1920p


CPU: Intel Skylake i7-6700
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti OC 4GB
RAM: 16GB Kingston Hyper-X 2666Mhz

I would say I have lost some FPS since old video, I get huge boost in FPS now by pausing physics (on first video, start and end), so my CPU just is not enough fast, maybe older tech CPU's are just better, but with this, not a chance, I just keep shadows off and everything is silky smooth.

Nothing we can do about it really, well faster GPU might do some hoccus poccus so that CPU does not need to do something or at least as much something as with this GPU, who knows really, but for me it is better to keep shadows off, until shadows are fixed by devs or then I just keep them off infinitely.

I did test also with Bob's settings and using Pessima cockpit view and that made game GPU limited, loosing around 15fps from high and low fps remaining about the same, generally bit under 60fps as my GPU is more of 720p model than 1920p model.

Settings and resolution don't affect my FPS on low end and very small amount as an average, but do change bit of high FPS.

If my CPU's single core performance would be a lot higher, I could still get lot more FPS with this GPU by simply disabling SSAO, but as disabling that just causes CPU to reach it limits I get that low GPU load, there just is nothing that can be done, except disabling shadows, partial does not change much, disabling completely is only way to go, but with disabled shadows and disabled SSAO I can run pretty much anything in BeamNG even with relatively weak GPU.

When I do same settings as Bob has, but set resolution to 1280x720, I get to be GPU limited most of the time, CPU limited on built areas and FPS as high as 120 at best. There is also big difference between cockpit and orbit views.

So for lowest FPS we can't do really much, it is possible to be GPU limited by taxing GPU enough, LAG however comes when CPU is not feeding GPU enough and that is solved only by disabling shadows, which makes this map to run 60FPS pretty much everywhere with high details.

Usually I keep vsync on as it makes things smooth, so I'm not limited by CPU or GPU, but 60fps limit and try to never dip under that, it is possible in this map too, but as with WCUSA only without shadows, it is bit shame, I think devs should come up with some simple shadows to improve visual quality a bit while still allowing normal CPUs to feed fast GPUs. Just don't know if they will make new shadow system for Torque3D, I think that is greatest limitation of the engine at the moment.
I can run so many cars that I don't know what to do with them all

It is easy to mask CPU issue away with enough heavy graphic settings though, giving illusion GPU is the limiting factor, while it can be that 50fps is 50fps even when lowering graphics settings, that is something many don't quite understand, then upgrade GPU and improvement to FPS can be bit less than hoped for.

Why that is important then? I would need probably 50% improvement to CPU single core performance to get 60fps minimum with shadows on, I doubt that is going to happen very soon, it is not much better in WCUSA actually, so Bob can't do much about this issue. Only rising awareness and understanding of limits in engine might bring up the need to focus on this most limiting factor.

Update: I just read about coming FPS update, looking forward of doing comparison then, it is quite easy to get somewhat reliable data with hwinfo64, when driving same route it should reveal what happens to min and max as well as what happens to average and how CPU load changes. Might help to see where to put effort and where effort offers less gains.
Subjective things just are too subjective

 

Yes, I appreciate feedback given!
I am sorry it does not run better - however, there is more detail then there was available back then, surely.

Shadows are done solely on the CPU. They used to be done on GPUs before, like 10 years ago, I don't know why they're done on CPUs now though. No clue! I mean, we got hardware T&L (texture and lighting) on Riva TNT or the likes, didn't we, I know 3dfx Voodoo 1 had it!
Reflections, also mean more shadows. There's a point where the cpu gets buried. So we can turn reflections down to minimum, and maybe still enjoy shadows. If you have a STOCK cooler for your processor - it could be running HOT.
It's a balancing act how you set resolution, shadows, etc, though I see the map is still cpu-limited.
I guess this map is just processor limited, and ahead of it's time a bit - hardware-wise.
IT STILL CAN BE DONE THOUGH! It just takes more modeling skills then I currently have - maybe one day though.
I will still work on it, adding detail slowly and carefully. I haven't added more detail to Harriman (like grass bits to mask the jaggies etc), due to it being still the slowest area of the map by about 6~7 fps.
I will just do it SLOWLY, and while it takes time, it won't suddenly not run for anyone.

--I see my diamond-signs broke this time around, I'll have that fixed and re-upload a new file this week before that gets out, the yield sign needs renamed, as it's conflicting over the other signs - fixed it on my end don't know why it broke again (maybe I need to fix it again). So give me a few days on that to fix it - who worries about warning signs in a car wreck game anyways

--Thanks for the feedback! Will talk to the developers about how I can nix some of the cpu limit here - I can't add more fog without making people hopelessly lost. I wish there were more ways I could help this map out without reducing detail. Even reducing the tree detail by half on ALL the main trees I used - and the bushes - all at once, did next to NOTHING for the FPS. I could only do with making it less populated, more spread out - but what good does that do we'd be right back at the start. The start, where it was barely any detail at all and rather boring if you ask me - a desert of no detail.

I already have a desert, and a mountain desert. We don't need another!

Your CPU is fast enough - it's plenty good - it's my map that needs fixing. Your CPU is good for YEARS yet unless things go massively multi-core and need more than 4 real cores + hyper-threading can provide. You don't need a new PC because my 3d modeling skills STINK.

Some things holding this map back performance wise:
Sheer amount of models. Thousand + per town area in a square mile = LAG - that doesn't include trees - bushes yes, curbing yes (where it's not mesh road curb), buildings yes, but not the trees, there's well over 10,000 in the map maybe 30,000. Models within range have SHADOWS. Doing all these shadows on all these objects = CPU butt hurt!
Hope you have good cooling (you do, others may not).
Mesh Roads: I don't use any as roads like were common in old maps for easy hills - before we had the good 0.6.x editor update that gave us carving tools (yes I suggested it). These TANK FPS, even though I only used them for bridges, guide-rail where it's more than 3 feet long, and random retaining walls in rare-use cases (there's only a few, like the back of the car-dealer next to the jump in Harriman, the rear garage driveway to the lot and the walls themselves are meshes, due to the lack of ability of fine terrain detail height-wise in this map). I've removed what ones I can. Mesh roads make up the majority of curbing in the cities in this map and also hit the FPS slightly. Meshes DON'T have 'LODs' which are levels of detail, progressively rendering less surfaces the further you get away with reduced detail models until they go 2d when you're like a mile away - these don't do that, if they're within view distance, they're rendered.
Weight of textures: over 4gb is too much, I'm already at the limit with road textures. I will condense these where I can without sacrificing detail here or there. Every road should not look the same color or age, this is 2017 almost 2018 not 1996, right? But it doesn't have to use 4gb of VRAM (I just don't want to go over that, few people have more).

As stated, will speak to the developers on that notes above.

--Have a great holiday and hope your car isn't frozen fast like ours was... heh. They can keep their white Chris-Mess, at-least I didn't have to shovel - because with my back - I CANNOT.
--Cheers and thanks for the feedback - I can always use that & will fix my diamond-signs!

 

Bob don't worry, there is not much you can do to improve performance, well maybe tree walls, but then that is ugly compromise, I mean if you look at JRI, there is so much of those tree walls that you can't go to forest, there is no way to navigate shortcut trough woods and it kind makes map to be canyon run, like those old games, I think Wipeout etc? were called.

At Dragon road, you might get away with few of those, but at Tennessee it might not be so easy.

That would reduce number of shadows, hundred to one and it is number of shadows that counts if I remember correctly.

Ndx mentioned once that Torque 3d uses very old shadow technology that is very costly, I think they know about it and at some point either they have to do something about it or forget city maps like West Coast USA, I do wonder how they plan to make Italy to run well.

Using two poly place holders for buildings might work too, but that would require LOD to be made in Blender, now model is not so hard, but making textures and all that to get it to game, I raise both of my arms up and look to sky, it could be made simple I guess, but too many open possibilities add to confusion so to say. Anyway my understanding is that you could actually make 2 poly rectangle with image of house/tree and use that 500 or 1000 distance onwards, but exactly how to get that to work, I don't know. What I know is that you would need two models and game would then know to swap models at distance, there was something at wiki about it I guess. Or maybe you already have that set up. What I doubt is that it might not help, because it might be number of shadows instead of how many polys there is, but what do I know really.

Agree completely that fog is not good, especially when going close to 200MPH you would like to see bit ahead

When/if they fix shadows, I can do city delivery with my road train, right now it is no shadows only policy with this thing because somehow shadows are on same thread/CPU core as some physics or something like that, without shadows it runs 60fps no problem, well we can only wait and see what 0.12 brings or versions after that, they have some great passionate team building BeamNG and I think they will find ways eventually!:


This one has no shadows, it is running 60fps or bit less then, turning SSAO off will help bit more, always reflections off:


Silly thing is that my CPU cooler barely wakes up when I'm having issues with FPS (at any map), single thread is not warming CPU much, but put few of those trailers behind T-Series and vacuum cleaner starts right up!
Dev team probably will do something about that, future performance increase is by multiple cores, single core performance probably isn't going to improve much, so they need to find ways to stay within budget, most thing currently taxing that are those pesky shadows, so I would think there will be something for that in a future.


Thankfully only cars I have are in BeamNG, I get around with muscle power only these days, maybe it keeps me going bit longer, only problem is getting too hot all the time.

 

Yes I was working on knocking poly-detail down more as you get further away, to make it fall off faster - it did *almost* nothing.
I did trees - some houses - bushes - a whole LOT of things. Then it looks way worse & still runs within 1~3fps of the same thing and I have RX 480 8gb. Not the best card, but not the worst - I say 'middle of the road' (hey, I can still play DOS games no problem, so Beamng.drive graphics on anything better than LOWEST/LOW are awesome looking to me).
I mean, I really - REALLY drastically cut down detail of trees for example, so that a half block away they were 2d. Did nothing. So I think I am limited on the game-engine itself. I also have a sneaking suspicion at why West Coast is 'all one big model' instead of lots of hundreds of smaller ones.
Game engine and hence CPU must decide which graphics to display where at what times, telling the graphics card what to display, AND do shadows on it all, and shadows upon other shadows, etc, because items are close. It must do the physics. Add reflections into this and you have to do it TWICE per pass! I designed this map originally before without reflections being on. I wanted to make a REAL place. A REAL place meant not putting visibility-blocking hills, etc, in the middle of the town! I got lucky in Harriman because there's a big hill in the middle - but it's the biggest town and still runs SLOW right in the middle. I think I will break up the towns a little bit - just a LITTLE bit to help FPS if that's what I must do - make a big mining tailing pile 100 feet tall in the middle of Rockwood or a hill with trees - I shall do it!

Here's how I know why it's the game engine itself - as you say: Video card use <75% (not 100%), CPU use not 100% or otherwise, not fully used. It's waiting on something else - it could even be waiting on system memory bandwidth. This game is a game that nails system memory bandwidth very very hard. Going up 600~900mhz on RAM speed without incurring lots of additional latency (CAS latency) means that you could gain up to 10~12% on physics performance (I believe it's system-wide, not per core), in Beamng.drive.
But more than RAM performance it just looks like I'm drowning the game engine. This game is alpha, I am not too worried yet. If it was already released in full I would not have much hope here! This is why I am getting involved early though, and why I put this map out early in development. I noticed a lot of small micro-stutters, it's much BETTER than it used to be, but there are lots of little ones as you travel fast through town. I imagine this is much, much worse for guys with hard drives to load data from, with 15~30ms skips all the time.
The trees by themselves aren't the problem, so tree walls won't help but the most basic, much older system. It's just the trees + everything else = LAG. TOO MUCH STUFF. On Tail of The Dragon, yes it would help a bit as it's just lots and lots of trees and there isn't too much point to going off the road far - this is not walk-in-the-woods simulator 2018

That being said, I am going to be continuing my communication with the developers, and keep trying new things at Beamng.drive. I can't make every block it's own model here - it would make for 10gb of level data in models! I can keep my eye peeled, and my brain open, to trying new things though! If I go any slower at making this map, technology will out-pace my progress and everyone will be getting 200FPS by the time I am done.

Thankyou for all the kind words and feedback. I hope everyone had a happy holiday, and yes, for those wondering...
Yes, hell did freeze over, I had quite the trial by ice to get the doors on the Chevy Pick-em-up truck's doors open here at 7am Chris-Mess morning. Not fun when it's 18F outside! I got it though and it didn't take too long!

---

As far as map progress, there will be lots of little detail added here and there as I flesh out some more of the places in-between everything that is developed. It may be a bit of time before I have things to show, as I have some city map concept stuff to work on in the mean-time which may, or may not be shown anytime soon. I also have to update this computer to Windows 10 - something I am dreading - so that should be 'interesting' but I won't be really getting map productivity underway for another two weeks yet - so after that - should see something!
I would have done this already but the backup HDD I ordered last month came DOA so I put the 'kabosh' on ordering hard drives (no more!) and will just rely on solid-state from here on out as I have been.

 

That video I posted, you can see there how Windows task monitor is not showing 100% CPU usage either, but CPU dials that I made myself are showing CPU load quickly visiting that 100% zone.

This is how I believe things work, if at any given moment that heavily loaded thread reaches 100% CPU usage, something gets delayed, which then results not enough data going to GPU, which then causes not 100% GPU usage and who knows what kind of domino effect where delay raises up another delay, so every time thread hits 100% it is like hitting with a sledgehammer and things slow down to crawl.

That is why I believe it is important not to reach 100% CPU thread usage even momentarily, but that is something developers have to worry about.

I find it quite surprising that lowering detail that much did not help with performance, it again kind of points to direction of number of items instead of polygons/complexity of models. Maybe there is some overhead per shadow or object that get multiplied per object, because until certain point everything is fine, but when you go past 8000 or so drawcalls it is like train hitting a wall, however it is not drawcalls either, because sometimes 12 000 is just fine.

You know overflow errors, kind of like when at old times had to use very small amount of bits when storing data and sometimes value was too great, then weird things started to happen.

I'm looking forward of how engine will be developed further, simplest solution would be allow shadows to be cut off after certain distance from the camera, same way like you can do with reflections, just set range enough low and even low end card like mine can run reflections, but usually I choose not to use those.

I have heard about Hell freezing over, in Michigan and Norway ;-) I have no envy of trying to open car doors at those temps, had to do that a lot when younger, luckily these days everything I need is in 2 mile range, so my real world is a lot smaller than this map you have made

Bob, I made Win10 update, but was clever enough to first save image of my Windows 8, then I made image in Win 10 too, after that I chose to go back to Win 8 so I have still Win 8 and if I want to, I can go back to Win 10 too. No real need though, but in future that might be something I have to do, but will take several years. So free tip, make an image so you can go back if needed.

 

@fufsgfen Do plan on imaging with clonezilla here later.
Or atleast yanking the cables to the boot RAID array and installing to a different drive. Not thrilled to say the least.

Yes, it's like a train hitting a wall, you can go over a bit but otherwise, the train plummets down into the canyon along with your FPS's.

Too many objects for it to handle easily. It wasn't made for this dense of a scene where everything is modular. If I precombined things, i'd be fine, but I can't do that as I don't have the talent to do so.

Should be able to easily make the engine defer things if you know how renderers work, as it draws stuff farther away (though scenes are drawn far to near in that order) when there's too much of something (objects, surfaces/drawcalls shadows etc).

Of course, a slider for MAX VIEW DISTANCE, MAX SURFACES, OBJECT DETAIL FALL-OFF, etc, would be nice!

 

What can I say, I really like the US40 - ~ 25 minutes of me racing up and down it until the tank runs dry. Everything is working quite well performance wise, as can be seen in the video.

I honestly don't think my force feedback has felt better in Roane County, and that is including the fact that I usually play at lower resolution and settings.

 

Sometimes it happens that roads from navigation map completely disappear until I hit RMB on map, or tacho freeze for few seconds or gui is simply laggy.
It also happens somewhere on highway if I removed navigation map from gui, fps jumped up a lot. I also tried to set main beam process priority to normal and gui do high, but no changes.
Could be these issues caused by so many decal roads navigation points?
Screens are from Harriman location.

EDIT: On your 8GB GPU, how much vram is this map consuming?

 

Heavy stress-test was 4099mb max VRAM use, just over 4096 - 4gb limit (with multiple cars in play), so on maximum you should be fine unless you load in more than 4~6 different vehicle types.
The HUD mini-map is overwhelmed by thousands of decal roads. Turn off the HUD mini-map in APP configuration when you play this Roane County map. The in-dash GPS seems to work without issue, however, so use the in/on-dash one.
There's just too many very very long (~2 miles or so, max length before they pop-in or disappear early) and rather wide decorative non-function grass texture decals (grass aprons I've made with decal roads also so the terrain doesn't look so jaggy).

There isn't anything I can do about it, sorry. Hopefully it gets optimized or we get tiled terrain, then that may go away, or become somewhat less. Just turn off the HUD mini-map and you'll be just fine. It does it in all 3 of the towns and at many junctions in the map.

 

Work has once again commenced on Roane County Tennessee.
Since I can't do a whole lot more with the towns/cities etc due to the FPS plummeting from the sheer amount of detail and objects, I have resorted to finishing up the lesser-traveled areas, so they're actually worth traveling to!

You're looking at the West end border of the map, where US 40 meets the edge of the map.
You won't be able to pass under the bridge, it'll be blocked off, but you will be able to travel over it on the road that crosses here. I re-aligned the last 2 miles and graded (sloped) US 40 west of WESTEL RD Interchange (west-most interchange, west of the Airport exit). It was pretty flat and lifeless out here & hadn't been touched in 18 months.
There will be added roads as I plan on finishing a lot of them. Maybe if I get crazy with it (it'll take a WHILE) it might get over 200 miles of road by the next update, and the town of WESTEL (small town) will be in. It will also have a spawn point. Of course as-per my standard this will be built with full AI functionality (and NO it won't run into the map border, it won't go past where I'm standing to take the picture).
So the next update won't be too much bigger, the requirements will pretty much stay the same, I can't say when it will be - it's too soon - but it will have much more detail packed into the WEST SIDE (higher elevations) of the map.

Lots of space out here to hide stuff and put special features of the map in if folks would like that. Keep me posted if there's things you'd like to see.

Expect more updates/pictures over the coming days / weeks.


Where I am currently working now, just ¼ mile east of the previous shot (edge of map is ahead).
--Cheers!

 

So if ye shall feast eyes on this - this is 8~10 hours of work. I'd assume it's close to another mile of highway done now. Right at the top of the mountain (where it makes the hard turn and overlooks Rockwood town, all the way to about a quarter mile past Airport Rd & banked Airport Rd ramps and Westel Rd ramps / US 40 interchanges (two). They're also mostly signed now, and grassed up. Also made EXIT -> signs (right @ the ramp).
Lots of ability to make the sandstone outcroppings of rock here. It's a beautiful.. orange-tan type color. Got all the rocks colored 100% now on the NEW set.

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Yes, I do intend to do a LOT of this going ALL the way down the mountain, because that's what this plateau is made of (the high west-side of the map is all plateau, sandstone). It's odd driving across Tennessee and you end up going up this huge elevation change, up to 1800~2000FT elevation. Something pushed this big monster chunk of ancient seabed up to almost 2000ft above sea level. Never-mind the area is noted for rather strong earthquakes in the west end of the state (8.8~9.0 circa year 1800 or so and quite a few before then). Sneaking suspicion the history of quakes has a lot to do with it - that's just my 2¢ though.

I live on this plateau in Tennessee, west of the map's location by a good 30 minutes easy. On our property for example you hit the plateau bedrock (the sandstone) after only digging down 4~8 feet. That's it, so it's pretty fresh terrain here. Just a little info tidbit about Tennessee.

--More updates in picture form in the coming days, I should have plenty of time for this over the next few weeks. Let me know if you like it!

P.S. It shouldn't massacre the frame rate + I'm removing trees to do it, so it should be close to break-even on modern hardware (it certainly will be better then the towns are FPS-wise).

 

ooh nice roads!