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

You won't be disappointed in having 16gb. I regularly use over 12~13gb sometimes more on this PC. 12~16gb is the new norm in gaming, and the lucky folks have 24/32gb. If you have an SSD, and 16gb of ram, you'll load this in a minute or so (if you have a recent Intel CPU).

When you mentioned the mouse skipping, sounds like the processor's direct-memory-interface (DMI) bus was saturated. That's fixed with more ram, and it wasn't able to handle any more IRQ requests from the chipset at the time.

 

Sweet tech explanation! My current bottlenecks would be my RAM and Graphics card. I'm not too keen on SSDs just yet.

 

Fantastic mod! Would you be willing to make an FPS friendly version, and delete the trees that can't be seen from the road?

 

But, your desert highway map is larger than this map? Maybe it's the amount of detail that's put in the Tennessee map.

 

Offtopic a bit, but nevertheless: SSD's are the most awesome upgrade you can give to your computer. If you can afford to, pick up an MLC-based SSD, vs a TLC-based SSD, as it's got more reliability, and much more consistent write speed. If you're often swapping mod directories around, or making large gfx files etc, you'll be glad for the better write speed and response time of an MLC-based SSD.
Read up on it on the wiki if you're not entirely sure. Roughly an SSD will get you 2x~5x better load times on Beamng.drive, and reduce hitching in ALL games, not to mention make the operating system feel super-snappy. SSD's don't benefit AMD machines as well as recent Intel offerings, however, it surely helps regardless. There isn't a week that goes by that I use my machine's drive-speeds to the fullest!

The forest causes 60~75% of the load time with tree positioning and calculations. The game is in early development, so it isn't entirely optimized for huge maps like this with LOTS of stuff in the forest brush. I chose to beta-release this so the game devs can have an example of what to expect from Beamng.drive on a large map, and improve the game before release. If you stuck lots of trees into desert highway, you'd have the same exact thing that goes on here - long load times and reduced FPS for mainstream or entry-level GFX cards when near trees.
The Desert Highway map is roughly the same size as this map, for comparison's sake.
To my best knowledge, I do not think anyone's released a map of this size with this many trees in it.

 

This map is the reason I have 64GB of RAM. Just kidding, I use it for work and hobbies. But I'm glad I'll never have to worry about RAM for a very long time.

SSDs have improved miles since the older days. They can now write PB (1PB = 1000 TB) of data before even thinking about failing. I have 1 for my OS (512GB Corsair MX100) and 1 for my work/hobbies (400GB Intel PCIe NVME SSD which is about 4 times faster than a standard SSD). Seriously go get one, even the medium-level drives like the EVO and MX200 (new generation vs my MX100) are superb quality. You'll find after you get a SSD that your one biggest system-wide bottleneck was your HDD. It won't get you more FPS but your computer will feel much faster in general

 

Agree 100%. I was using a mechanic 10,000rpm HDD for years, since fall 2006 because the 7200rpm hdd was the bottleneck. Bought a few of those over the years as 7200rpm hdd's transfer speeds caught up to them, I'd get a newer 10k drive - or eventually, RAIDed Raptor/Velociraptor drives. This alone was miles better than 7200rpm desktop drives - but SSD's blew the doors off computing.

Running a recent Intel PC on a hard drive is like having a Bugatti Veyron with 13" econo-box tires rated for 70mph max. Yeah.
Like the above poster said, it won't improve FPS, but it'll improve some minimum-fps scenarios like hitching and otherwise data-streaming during area transitions or in open-world games (or very large Beamng.drive levels where it must periodically load level data as you drive!).

Back on-topic: I must confess that more than one person tried running this map and could not. While it is fun when it runs, too many people can't run it without first removing the .forest file (which removes the trees, houses, gas stations, rocks etc) to get it back within RAM spec.
So yeah, I'll be spreading out the trees, and making more long-grass fields, and we'll see how that goes. There's still 35~45% of the map that isn't done yet with trees at all. I must cut this short as we have a bad storm over us and there's a tornado warning. I expect to lose power here soon. --Cheers!

 

First, work continues on Tennessee (and intermittently So-Cal also).
Main topic of the post today is a BIG SHOUTOUT TO OCCAMS RAZER http://www.beamng.com/members/occams-razer.8227/ for letting me use his beautiful houses that he made for Garfield Heights suburb map. I can't model houses for didly-squat in Beamng.drive so he saved the day by granted permission. The weight of textures and models only added about 33mb to the level load, though don't be alarmed, surplus files in the map already before this addition double that amount, so it's no loss on loading times. I should be able to make some pretty cool suburbs with these goodies. All that aside, it's going to be atleast another week of building developments/towns before I get anything much more 'done' on Tennessee. They're all scripted into the forest brush for basically unlimited object amount (that alone took 1~2 hours), so they won't cut into the amount of objects I can use here. I am actually getting pretty good at scripting this forest-brush stuffs so maybe I can add some other cool goodies, too.

---

The loading times with the excess amount of trees will be addressed before this map is re-released. This is why a few folks couldn't load it up properly, the collision model map-wide for ALL the trees took an extra-ordinarily large amount of memory. Non-colliding grass in fields actually works much, much better memory-wise.
The state park, which takes up almost a quarter of this map (SE corner, some in the middle part also), will have to come in two varieties once the low-detail version is out - one with a forest (for high detail/realism); and one without a forest, just sparse trees and grassy fields (for lesser graphics cards, lesser memory requirement, and otherwise machines that don't meet the recommended specs).

Two pics below to show what I'm talking about with the houses - this is just a mock-up, and I don't have my sidewalk/grass textures in yet here (or poles, bushes, the like).
Added two more pics for tonight's progress. It's only been going 2~3 blocks a night the last two nights as I spent many daylight hours beating up my yard IRL.
It still needs some more poles/bushes and the signs (and maybe a few more driveways).

 

Sounds like this release will be great! Cannot wait!!

 

Come, relax, and make yourself at home at The Commons at Cheapwood apartment complex. Bricks, custom cracked concrete, and roads that are no where near able to support the daily traffic we generate abound to make sure everyone gets his or her own piece of the echo chamber that is living here. If I can't sleep, you can't sleep - and you'll never be alone due to all the furry little critters that we can never seem to get rid of. They'll even clean all the old (and new) food out of your fridge and behind the couch for you, without even asking.
Ever-busy management that gets nothing done will always make sure you're last to use the always-full answering machine and will never return your call promptly (or fix any problems). Some apartments even feature skylights to let in all that beautiful natural light (and rain, or snow) where the roofs caved in over a decade ago. With us you'll never need to worry about heating and airconditioning costs running your bills up again - we don't have heat or a/c! Not-so-ample parking ensures you'll stay in great shape; both in having to walk really far to your apartment from where you parked, and from planning trips of several hours each way to get to the far-out-of-state office on foot when your car is lovingly parked in. Standard amenities include: Cloudy drinking water, Windows with no glass so you'll never need to clean them, brand new power service installed (yea, we finally have electricity), historic buildings that look like they're from the 18th century and feel that way too, angry neighbors always making sure you're not the only one left out of the dance party at midnight by blasting music, constant car alarms, and plenty of other police-incident-generating excitement. Our non-working elevator will give you a new love for all those flights of stairs you'll have to climb after a hard days work. We were thinking of you though, since the elevators never work, we put the elevator muzak system in not only the stairs, hallways, and never-cleaned shared bathrooms, we even piped it into all the apartments for FREE and we never shut it off BECAUSE WE CARE! You'll never look at 'Lady From Ipanema' the same way again!

Come see The Commons at Cheapwood today to make sure your life is always eventful!
Mention this add and get a free built-in-angry-wasp-nest on any new apartment rental agreement!

(translation: I built some apartments and also made 3 new sidewalk textures using bits of the East Coast sidewalk texture as a base).

 

are the sidewalks mesh roads with the eca textures scaled to the texture you want?

 

Section 8 for everyone!

 

Ah, Burger World, the benevolent king of all that is cartoon fast-food dis-service parody. I got the texturing done on the signs tonight, so I figured I'd put one in. There will be a few scattered around the map.

 

Hi,
I just wanted to stop by and say how much I love this map. The highways are amazing for fast driving, you have bridges over the highways and long roads. This is the type of map i have wanted for a while. It is also MASSIVE. So many roads to drive on. The quality is great too. I cant wait to see how much more gets added to the map. Thanks for the awesome map!

 

So I took the time to finish the truncated Kentucky Street/Decatur Hwy that was cutoff just south of the player start. It's the road you take that leads you directly to the highway if you go North from the starting point. So I set-out to do what I estimated was... 4~5 miles of road, with a 1/4th mile long bridge, or something to that effect. Nope. It was almost 7.5 miles (!!!!!) That got downright monotonous, BUT it's perfectly 100% smooth (probably the smoothest in the whole map), lightly banked, and is great for absolute speed. I haven't added any trees yet. Funny part is, when I tried to pan out to take a screenshot of the entire part, I couldn't even get half of what I did in one screenshot... HUGE map *HUUUUGE* map. I will create a reduced-version of the forest file for those that can't load this map with all the trees upon next release, or for those who's video cards just barely meet the minimum requirements - reduced-version will still have trees, just LOTS less of the pesky things.
I put in a small strip mall to complete the intersection @ the player start, across from the gas station and gov't-building-looking-thing.
So I am *assuming* that the completed road network will be close to the mileage that So-Cal is, possibly a little less, more possibly a little more. Entirely NOT sure. I am only at about 1600 objects of the alotted 4096 (This is GOOD). This means I have the ability to properly finish the road networks, built the bridges I need to, and add other niceties like sidewalks and driveways/parking lots. I wouldn't want to get stuck with the map only HALF done. Keep in mind, a release would be about another week (at least, building towns takes a LOOOONG time) if I make good progress and don't get hitched up on anything. I want to try and get atleast 2~3 towns mostly built, before I do another release. I'd upload the release and then, upload a lesser-forest-file that can be dropped into the ZIP file to be used with this (it's less than 100kb). Next release should be just slightly smaller or about the same, file-size wise. A few pics for progress are below, though not as good as yesterday's! Keep in mind part of the map where the new road went in has NOT been decorated yet. Also, there is a wide-shot (last pic) of the whole town on there (most of it!), that's Kingston. It's not 1:1 perfect, but I built it within game-limitations. It's 3/4ths or atleast half of what it will be when it's done. Slow but steadily it's getting there.
--- Post updated ---

--Thanks, appreciated! It's always nice to hear nice things, as always. This is a real terrain, real road network, location somewhat near where I live, in Tennessee. The version of this map available for download doesn't really have much to it besides roads & terrain and was a test to make sure it'd run for most of us (well it runs for about 75% of the people, but for some it does not). I am packing a lot more detail in this new one, but thinning out some of the trees - and using some visibility blockers here and there to keep the FPS on par where it should be - a few spots escaped my checking last time. I'd keep an eye out a week (or a little more) from now to see if there's a new version. Chances are, I will try and submit it to the mods section, too, if all goes smoothly. Work will continue beyond that point, also.

 

This map looks good but when i lunch it that say "beamng drive is out of memory". Is it normal?

 

--Thanks, appreciated! It's always nice to hear nice things, as always. This is a real terrain, real road network, location somewhat near where I live, in Tennessee. The version of this map available for download doesn't really have much to it besides roads & terrain and was a test to make sure it'd run for most of us (well it runs for about 75% of the people, but for some it does not). I am packing a lot more detail in this new one, but thinning out some of the trees - and using some visibility blockers here and there to keep the FPS on par where it should be - a few spots escaped my checking last time. I'd keep an eye out a week (or a little more) from now to see if there's a new version. Chances are, I will try and submit it to the mods section, too, if all goes smoothly. Work will continue beyond that point,

Make sure your web browser is closed and you have atleast 8gb of system memory. SOME people with 8gb of system memory are still unable to run this, so if you have 4~6gb of memory only, you'll not be able to run this yet. You'll have to wait a bit for the next version (I will make a version that runs with less than 8gb of memory and/or lessor video cards that has fewer trees). Beamng.drive is early in development and doesn't have complete streaming routines yet, so it's got to load most of the level data on map-load. When Beamng.drive is loading this map, it can use 7.25gb of memory from the system (that's what it's currently using on my computer right now for Beam). This is largely due to the collision model for the map due to the amount of trees. If you just want to drive around on the map's roads, and don't care if there are no houses or trees (or rocks, but there's so few of those it doesn't matter), you can look around in the .zip file directory /levels/southernhighway for the southernhighway.forest file and remove it from the zip file or delete it. This will drastically reduce the requirements to run the map (and it will be smoother if you have a lessor video card), but it will be very bland and not pretty anymore (doing this may cause an error but you can click OK and it still loads)! All the roads and bridges will still be there.

 

How big is the map square size?

 

Terrific map. very well optimised for its size. can't wait to see what else you have in the works.

 

Well, why wait to see when you don't have to. While the following is not everything by a long-shot, it's a good general idea of my goals for Beam map modding. I basically want to make something for everyone. Not everyone wants all desert maps, or all tree-filled maps ALL THE TIME.
On the drawing board is (not started yet, not in order of priority) -
*Pennsylvania Abandoned Turnpike - Haven't started this yet but it's now possible with new features to the editor.
*Eventually making houses and such in So-Cal Interstate. It would be a fully-furnished HD version, basically. The current low-detail (LD) version would stay available. Traffic lights too.
*Atleast one more Tennessee map featuring the super-awesome curves in the US highway 40 going west out of Knoxville (google it!) as it climbs mountains & the plateau that I live on.
*Yet-another-desert-map because lots of people have potato-pc's that are allergic to trees and because I *still* have this rubbish 3-year-old 2gb Radeon 7850 (R7-265 equivalent). I am a cheapskate when it comes to video cards BUT it doesn't mean we're all damned to an eternal hell of deserts, however - just a few I still can't touch a better card for less than the 140 US $ that I paid THREE years ago + 3 free games.
Inflation didn't go up THAT much.
Currently in the works (started but not finished):
*Still working on this Tennessee map. This is going to require atleast 2~4 weeks more work. It's huge, really ambitious for one person, but it's doable. There won't be a release for about another week yet. If that goes smoothly, it'll possibly get beta-submission to the map-mods page. This submission would include high and low detail (low detail with no/few trees, high detail with full trees, longer load times/less fps in spots). I will most likely be able to get some highway signs put into Tennessee before the next release.
Both versions would have full amounts of buildings etc, so that you have the essentials.
*Currently also have gotten about 6 miles or such of So-Cal's highways upgraded and re-banked with longer, smoother turns, better banking (where there was none), correct banking (where it was the wrong way in a FEW spots), and there's several miles more road added where it wasn't finished. LOTS more miles to go, however. I am trying to get Tennessee re-released before I go ahead and re-release this one a few days to a week-or-two later. The re-release for So-Cal would not include houses yet.

Sometimes I get fed up working on one map and/or run out of ideas, and switch to the other map. It's useful for keeping creativity/productivity at it's fullest. My health hasn't been doing the best, randomly passing out for no-reason due to sugar issues again, so have been losing some editing time there. Doing my best (but am disabled for a reason - for many actually).

Tennessee will get a banked race-track where appropriate. It might even get more than one. The next release of So-Cal will also have a small one on the island with the unfinished bridge leading to it. Both maps' tracks will be AI pathed, but it will be such that the AI is trapped on it, and can't leave it unless you move it with f7.

That is all for now. If anyone has any other suggestions that will fit within the realms of reasoning (realism) of Tennessee, USA, feel free to ask. I am sure I can add stuff in if it's realistic enough and within the means of my ability with this game. If anyone has any sign models (with texture), or other buildings and such that are of good quality, feel free to submit your things via Private Message to be added to the map. Full credit will be given!
--- Post updated ---

Squaresize is 5.2. I think to get the *perfect* size of the map to real life it SHOULD have been like 5.6~6.0 but it was just getting unmanageably large at this point. I already have to dress up the map quite a bit to get around this. Beam wouldn't take much anything higher than 6144x6144 terrain import, which would-have only dropped the square-size to 4 or so, vs the 5.2 x 4k texture resolution, would have made memory requirements higher and performance a notch worse. What I've done here is small sacrifice of having square-ish grass edges VS the good performance you get (so long as you have a good amount of RAM to load it, and a video card that's not allergic to trees). I have submitted feature requests to the devs for higher terrain texture size import.