WIP Beta released A new *CITY* map - LOS INJURUS 2023-12-20

I'd love to donate to your Patreon someday. Btw, just curious. Has there been anymore progress on the map or no? I understand if it isn't.

 

Might it be that you're kidding a little here cause this mod is teeming with progress

 

At the time. I thought I was serious. *Laughing my ass off. LOL*

 

Well I'm just glad you notice it, as maybe others have also (sees AGREE ratings and is thankful). It's actually only about 10% of progress that I CAN actually show and demonstrate, unless it's building new blocks of city or making new models, I can't always show what I'm doing. That is why there's generally bursts of posts ... then nothing aside of responses ... then a whole bunch of progress, etc.

I'm actually hung up on a bug that is due to some back-end rendering change that's undocumented, that's specifically causing my road-surface lane arrows (for allowed travel direction) to not show up and be invisible in 0.20 but work fine in 0.19. This same bug also broke the signs, but I haven't been able to figure out why (and it's not texture format). I will try renaming texture names via text bulk-replace in several different files tonight. I already tried changing the file names in the material index to match along with changing the graphics names to match - but that was 'no dice' for me yet.
I fixed the signs bug a month or two ago so no worries there, but the arrows, they didn't break the same way.

These stupid little errors happen every time the game updates a major version in some way; sometimes visible, often not. They are undocumented changes, so even if I had known ahead of time through some portal to the future, I would not have been able to prepare. Sometimes when things break, multiple things need to be fixed; because one thing broke the next thing, which in turn broke something else - and if the first thing did not break, nothing would seem amiss.
The visible errors, to say the least, are the easiest ones to fix (like the common NO-TEXTURE error).
The LOG file is of absolutely no help to me at this point as it doesn't even throw an error.
--- Post updated ---
We have arrows now! Hooray. Something changed with the alpha threshold settings, they no longer work in the range of 128~255.

 

I know I’m a week late, but what is your VRAM limit? I would say 6GB is a solid one but I’m curious.

 

Just curious. Do you listen to Youtube videos to relax while working on the map or no?

 

A bit about the system requirements:
8GB of system ram can run it (note: 8gb is unsupported), 16gb is good, 24~32gb is best (and future proof for other games). Large map + lots of AI + large AI network = lots of memory usage.
Video card: 4GB GPU, 1050Ti, 1650 Super for medium best results, you'll need (any gpu) 8gb of VRAM to turn up those graphic details - 6gb of VRAM might work for the time being but is unsupported.
CPU: Any Ryzen CPU with lots of cores, 3xxx / 5xxx Ryzen for best results. Intel users can use pretty much any 4xxx or newer i5 or i7 for a few vehicles plus your own *IF* you don't melt the thing.
WARNING: LOAD TIMES CAN TAKE 2~4 MINUTES ON THE FIRST TRY IN THE CURRENT PRIVATE BETA! Subsequent re-loads of the map only take around a minute or so.
BeamNG map appear to lock up when loading, but if that seems so, leave it go for up to 10 minutes. If it still doesn't load, re-download it and try again. If it still doesn't work, upgrade RAM or buy a new computer. :x
Long version:
The map should require 8GB of VRAM if you want to crank the details and run a full gamut of vehicles with AI (20~25). An RX 470~590 is plenty to push the amount of details here, a 1070 Ti is best.
For the most traffic you'll be able to reasonably handle without spending two thousand dollars on a processor, a 3900x/xt, 5900x or or 3950x / 5950x will give you the most bang for your buck UNTIL you hit the DirectX 11 draw call limit - which is the same thing Flight Simulator 2020 hits. My 3950x will happily run 20 vehicles at 35~50fps (it varies), with 'boo-hoo' 3000mhz Cas-Latency-15 (32gb) memory (if you build a Ryzen system you should really try to do better than my discount-bin memory, but it's Micron - and you can clock the snot out of it except the 3rd latency value in the memory values as-read).
Have a 1070 Ti and a 9700K/9900K/3700x or similar? You should be able to run a dozen vehicles (or a few more) with cranked details provided you don't run out of system memory (24gb is enough, 16gb will do fine until you get LOTS of traffic going).
Users of intel CPU's in prebuilt or custom built systems that use the default OEM orb-shaped intel boxed cooler should mind temperatures of the system when they first run this map with LOTS of traffic (running it alone or with up to 3 other vehicles - 4 total - shouldn't be that much of an issue with temps). Ryzen processors don't have much temperatures. I have a 3950x on a Noctua air cooler, if that's anything, and it almost never hits 80c. You don't need to overclock a Ryzen processor; but if you have an intel processor, a large cooler and your system supports it, it might be beneficial to try. If you don't know about overclocking, don't break your computer trying please.
The official system requirements will be posted as followed on the main resource page when the map is updated:
MESH details can usually be maxed regardless of all but lowest detail, the map actually looks BAD if you leave this below MAX.
An analog joystick or steering wheel is recommended for the best BeamNG Drive experience.

Driving alone on LOW detail:
1~2gb GPU, generally whatever will run BeamNG, use LOWEST if it's too slow.
8GB of system RAM
Intel 2xxx or Ryzen CPU at 2.2ghz or better
AMD FX or non-Ryzen APU, or Core 2 series not officially supported, may not work or may be too slow
10GB free disk space

Driving alone on medium texture details:
3~4GB GPU Radeon RX 460/550, Nvidia 970 or better
8~16GB of 1600mhz system RAM
Intel 2xxx or Ryzen CPU at 3ghz or better.
RYZEN APU should be OK to run low/medium, make sure your BIOS is set to 2gb reserved for Video RAM.
10GB free disk space

Driving with a half-dozen vehicles on medium details:
4GB GPU same as above
16~24GB of 2400mhz system RAM
Intel 4xxx i7 or 8xxx i5, or Ryzen 1600 at 3.5ghz or better.
10GB free disk space

Driving with 12~16 vehicles on high details while maintaining 30~40fps minimums or better:
8gb GPU RX 470 or 1070 or better.
24GB of 3200mhz system RAM
10GB free disk space
Ryzen 3700x / 5800x, or intel 9900k/10700k at 4ghz or better.
Ryzen 3900x, xt, 3950x, 5900x, 5950x @ 4ghz or intel 10900k @ 5ghz will allow you to run a few extra vehicles in addition, fast system memory helps a bit here on Ryzen systems especially. Dual-rank memory on Ryzen 5xxx helps a notable bit in addition to fast memory itself. Most 16gb DDR4 sticks are dual rank if interested.
Going higher on CPU than 3900x/5900x is not recommended as you end up hitting a wall with the DirectX 11 single-threaded draw calls. HEDT systems not recommended but may bring additional FPS gains in the 'minimum fps' department. 1st and 2nd generation Threadripper not recommended for BeamNG use due to NUMA (memory access) latency. 3rd gen is OK but VERY expensive.



OK, now with that outta the way...

Not only are the arrows in, but the buildings are all in for the townhouse development. I did a little bit of work at the intersection on the right-most side of the last shot to adjust it for the right-most lane curving onto Commercialism blvd. There's now 8 speed humps in the townhouse development. Have fun ending up upside-down or watching the clueless AI do the same (no really, it has no clue, and I engineered it that way on purpose for laughs).

I adjusted the bright or pink-color out of the city sidewalk LOD's (from far away some roads had pink-colored sidewalks, also, some were too bright at distance but normal up close).

So while it's better, the city admittedly still has a long way to go when it comes to pop-in (models changing notably when driving up to them), and things glitching through road surfaces as medium distances. That said, it looks a lot better than it did even a month or so ago with the texture changes. I've been getting some pointers on how they did things in GTA V for reference (as that game actually runs REALLY well / uses resources very very efficiently for how complex and large it is). Now if I could only butter up the developers to code in some stuff to the game engine to get it to actively unload unused assets from VRAM or system RAM in place of what currently is needed. When the map is loaded, it loads all used textures and models, that's all you get. You can't load more later and go over the limit without severe slow-down. If you exceed VRAM it gets very slow, if you run out of RAM the game takes a dump on the desktop and generates a 0xFFFFFFFF error.
With all that book of text of this post mostly over, I'll say that while this will never 100% reach the fidelity and fine level of detail of a current generation AAA game, there's no hurt in trying within the game engine limits (which I know very well, a number of which have been increased during the course of this map and Roane County's development, hooray for awesome developers).

I have some more loose ends to tie up, console errors (not game console, the text logging console within the game) to address, and misc things like some AI fine-tuning here and there on things I've noticed... and maybe time to stick in a traffic light or two.
I'll be uploading this thing Sunday/Monday sometime for Supporter Beta and then that beta will be transferred to public servers a few days after. This will not be a required update for supporters, but you can get it if you're not under data cap issues, or just would like the quality-of-work improvement or even more speed humps to flip off of. The public update that comes out (whenever that is) will be in sync with the most recent supporter update that'll land in a few days, so no need to re-download. Originally I wasn't going to make a second supporter update, but I am going to this way people can red-flag me if there's a severe issue, plus things ended up taking longer than I wanted them to (@#$%ing arrows grrrrr) .

It's no where near done (this map, not the update), it's no where near as perfect as I wanted it, there's still so many things that are unfinished that I wanted done, but enough is surely done to make a new public upload. I have to do it by Monday as at some point my internet will go out as it's going to SNOW (it was 65F today, too) ... goodbye satellite internet. So whatever I get done between now and then is what gets done.
Hope all folks had a happy Turkey Day, and felt full and fat for a while. Hope everyone is over their food coma by now. Leftovers for days OM-NOM-NOM-NOM.
Yes, my cats got some Turkey too, seeing as there's FIVE cats in this house. The one even eats stuffing, sweet potatoes, drinks gravy (it even eats cookies, toast, pop tarts, you name it). It's huge.
--Cheers!
Night time looks nice, too. Still needs work, not many lights in Los Injurus... but that'll be worked on over the winter.

 

This might sound silly but when the loading seems stuck or takes a lot of time it does helps to just open task manager. Don't ask me why but it's true. For those whose know about 'the observer paradox' in physics, well I guess it's something similar

 

When I play the game and use this mod, I load up a much smaller, less intense map first (like gridmap or grid small), and then I load up Los Injuros.

It gives the game time to warm up and you may only wait like 2-3 minutes compared to the usual 5. kinda like a car

So if you don't mind map-jumping this is also something you can do.

 

Added a few 'jersey barrier' ends (the sloped ones) on a few bridges where they were missing, still haven't gotten them all.
New traffic light added with reverse-signal heads in 3 of 4 directions (these face oncoming traffic in both directions, useful with limited sight distances / corners / hill crests and so-forth).

Fixed up the terrain texture here, which is cracked concrete - not perfect but will do for now and blends into existing concrete very nicely.

Also dressed up a few mesh-to-terrain merge ramps (where texturing was messed up ever since I moved the map up 800 meters about a year ago).

Temporarily made some other changes to the LOD's on the four-lane mesh objects, mostly turning the road-surface single-color for right now, otherwise it was really 'gritty' looking. This will have to do for now (center of the shot, will adjust color a bit lighter later possibly after the beta, it's not much of a bother unless you fly over the map). In the 2nd shot below, the LOD's start under the vehicle and past it. Can't tell at all if you're on the ground (that's due to not having specular / reflective mapping, will get to it later in development). The stuff in the center of the road past the car is the terrain glitching through a bit.


Fixed parking deck normal-texture below that was making odd-ball bright/dark contrasting mess. In addition, you can tell the difference in the 1st/2nd shot which texture I fixed, which I hated because 'it was a trash'.

Not perfect, but way better that I won't have to worry about it for a little while in development (it's as good as I can do right now).
So some more testing tomorrow, and a few more bugs to squash with textures (like the Cabrini Green texture!), and I should be good to upload this for supporters. If all goes well, then I can release it publicly.
--That is all for right now.
--- Post updated ---
Edit, Additional work done:

Finished the abandoned gas station (old ECA / Industrial asset for now) curbing / lot.
Fixed the Cabrini Green texture as the normal was broken / wrong format (due to manual touching up), now the texture isn't permanently shadowed / dark.

Above; showing left to right clockwise:
Abandoned mall (will eventually have a visible remnant of the 'Rolling Acres' sign, with enough removed to get rid of trademark infringement possibilities)
Frederick Douglass towers (abandoned)
Facsimile of the old Packard Plant (abandoned)
Half-abandoned Cabrini-Green housing project (looks somewhat similar).
All progress shown in this thread will be in the next supporter beta and public beta (soon on that public beta, by a few days from now you'll all be playing Los Injurus current version). Thank-you to the many fans, supporters, and contributors for continued support on this project (and of course thank the devs for an awesome game, even though it seems the Editor 2.0 is my antagonist right now).

Next on the purchase list for objects for the city map (likely in January)...
Airport objects (secured some textures and objects from CarlosAir, thanks!)
Background / sound stage / environmental audio
Professional subway stations and underground areas conducive to vehicular travel.
More as-needed, if I cannot find CC0 (public domain / free use) models or other things I need.

Will be uploading after a little more work tomorrow and much testing. Things are looking great and I am currently doing 'extra' work as I'm ahead of schedule with all the bugs I fixed yesterday/today/this past week. Of course I will be backing up progress, too. Amen to Ryzen 3950x file zip speed not to mention traffic testing ability (the more cars, the better, and this CPU makes testing a breeze. I am super-happy with it and encourage others to grab a 3900x or 3950x if the 5000 series is out of reach / you find a deal on 3xxx processors). This is why the traffic works as well as it does on this map. Glad I saved some of my stimulus money to spend on the CPU last July, it's REALLY helped (it was not bought with Patreon funds, however, I did dip into those funds a little bit in October when I needed to replace my dead motherboard on zero notice, only about 60~65$ of funds went to this 200$ plus-tax ASUS motherboard).
The more cars you have at once in play, the better/faster you can test traffic to see where it jams or gets stuck, which can be easily missed when only running 7 or 8 vehicles or less like quad-core intel chips did.
I will eventually have to get more RAM for this thing, and a higher license for World Machine (it only supports 2 cores on the processor I have) so that I can work the terrain over nicely, which will really step things up a good notch or two. It's entirely going to be worth it and I promise you all will love it. I might be able to get that done in the spring at current funding levels - however - I'll make sure to throw it out there before I do it for opinions on the subject, because this is a community funded / supported project. I try to make every effort to be transparent in what I do here.
--That is all!

 

Wow Los Injurus is evolving so nicely ! I'm really looking forward to the update !

 

@NOCARGO Yes I'm doing my best to make sure this map is tops. Always looking for ways to improve it, too.

---

So I've got a little more built up:

Don't expect this area 100% completed on release, but it'll be done enough to use (and there will be a truck-friendly loading dock here at the grocery store).
Grocery store lot is in and graded, needs curbs and detailing etc. Not much is done on the Cabrini Green housing project yet (on the right). Have to fix the access road up as it needs to be re-aligned and all-that to conform to typical city standards (it was just a regular boring old road that used to go to a winding road full of switch-backs - that will eventually be rebuilt, but not yet).
So yes, there is plenty of work getting done.
We're supposed to get 1~2 inches of rain tonight, then it's changing to snow sometime tomorrow. Going to try to get this uploaded sometime tonight - hopefully. If that doesn't work out, it'll be a day or two as the weather is going to be poor. I'd upload it now but I only have 20gb daytime data a month and this ZIP file is THREE GIGABYTES (actually, about 3.1gb). The map has crested 7GB uncompressed. So yes, it's huge. By long and far it's monstrous. It's about 1/3rd the size of all the maps that come with the game combined. Lots of 4k and sometimes higher textures will do this though. I will be working out some of the old ECA assets that were passed on from Roane County, in due time. That'll bring the size down a few hundred megabytes but it still is going to be a huge map.

--That is all for now.

 

Starting the map upload in 20 minutes, everything seems good now.

The weather is a little MOIST (hence the picture above) right now, so who knows when it'll finish. You try uploading 3.1GB over satellite in two-inches-of-rain-overnight that turns to snow. LOVELY. It doesn't work so well. But it'll get done eventually. Will be posting it out for supporters later tonight or tomorrow / whenever it finishes... but not sure when it'll finish.
This update will be posted to the public servers this week sometime whenever the staff gets to it (provided there's no game-murdering wacky bugs). I don't rush them on administrative duties.
--That is all.

 

The new Los Injurus map update should be up for public consumption in 1~2 days.
It has been uploaded and the only error is the gas station curbing texture (only on the buildings and pump islands) that I forgot to fix. Oops. There shouldn't be any real show-stoppers this time around.
Oh well, hope y'all have time off to enjoy it when it hits. I'd look for it tomorrow around noon or in the after-noon time (USA time), or whenever the staff gets around to manually putting this file up on the resource page (they're very busy as always, so I told them 'no rush', as I wish not to be a pest).
For now I'm going to enjoy that it's fairly warm and comfy in here, and that I have the warmest spot in the whole house, because I accidentally left BeamNG Drive running overnight and with 20 vehicles on testing traffic. Oops. Kudos for AMD making a 16-core processor that barely hits 74C with a Noctua D-15 Air Cooler on it and no water cooling anywhere. Compared to my intel Haswell quad core which I had to de-lid and use 'liquid metal' on, this is night and day (yes, the intel Haswell was a much better space heater than this).
For best results with lots of traffic on Los Injurus, a Ryzen 5600x or higher-core-count CPU is recommended for BeamNG Drive performance. Fast RAM in the form of a pair of 16GB dual-rank sticks (or four single-rank 8GB sticks) ensures the best-case performance of your gaming sessions when using the Ryzen 5000 series. The Ryzen 5000 series gives you the best of both the single-core performance and massive multi-core performance, and will run this map the best. That said, if you have already a 9900K or 10900k/10850k, you don't need to upgrade at all, best wait another two years if so.
*Not an AMD 'shill' here, but I have to say the performance is extremely impressive for the price, and who doesn't love competition bringing a good deal to the table? The 3000 series Ryzen processors are going for an absolute steal now. If you don't have one, get one while you can if you're on a budget of any kind if needed, as they will no longer be produced. The 4000-G series is still being made however, so those will be just as good as any 3000 series processor with the same amount of cores. Get a 4000-G if you don't plan on buying a discrete GPU on your next build or don't have space for one. GPU performance on these chips is good enough to provide modest detail at 1080p.

 

Are you talking about the no texture thing?

 

Yes, it's barely noticeable. I am not too worried. Noticed it too late.
Basically, it went down like this. I saw it while it was uploading, but being that I wanted to release this content update to the public since AUGUST OR SEPTEMBER, and it's DECEMBER now, I wasn't having any of canceling and postponing it any more. I had to draw the line somewhere.
Basically, if it truly bothers someone so much, they should focus on driving around somewhere else in the map. I don't mean to sound snotty, angry, or whatever like that, not at all; but there's only one of me - plus the supporters and contributors of the map, and I think that it's just very insignificant. If it was orange no-textures all over the map, I'd feel much differently about it - and rightfully so. This isn't even obvious to the point where I mostly kept forgetting about it (it's been broken a solid month or so, or longer, since however long 0.20 has been out). I am pretty sure there's enough good stuff in the other 99.8% of the map, that should keep people busy.
Oh, and nice icon with the Olds Fullsize. We loved those cars back when it was practical to run them as daily drivers. Grew up riding around in them when they were new. Sarge Fido did a great job on that mod.
I sure miss those cars, even if they didn't handle well, weren't always that fast, and pigged gas. They sure were super-easy to work on and you didn't need a lot of tools or knowledge, just a day in the driveway after a short trip to the parts store - or junkyard. Part of me isn't sure if I miss the big old cars, or walking around in the junkyard more. Sometimes I think I just miss the junk yard walks with friends
When I die, they can bury me in a junkyard for all I care, I would rest peacefully knowing that. Before I was completely disabled and hence couldn't walk much anymore, I used to spend a lot of time there.
While I do really miss the junk yard walks, and won't be able to do that anymore, I can make these maps now so it's not a loss in my book.
I hope you guys enjoy the update whenever it hits the repository (any time now I'd reckon). Just look for the new 3.1GB file, the resource page will be updated after the fact. Yes, it's 3.1GB. It's actually 7000mb (7GB) when un-packed, so make sure to have some free space handy on whatever drive your mods are on.

 

bob.blunderton updated (City of) Los Injurus with a new update entry:

HUGE content update

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

Hey! Nice update! I really want to see some lights across the city like streetlights, that stuff, someone did it in East Coast and West Coast and you should do it for Los Injurus and Roane too.

 

Yes !!

 

What would be really cool is if you would upload timelapses of you making the map. Obviously a ton of custom work is done and we would love to see