I'm not fully sure if this is the right place to ask this so I apologize in advance if this is not, But I plan on making a big map soon, around 205,000 SQ MI, however I'm not sure whether I should keep the map texture resolution low (2048x2048), or use something at a higher quality, I want this map to be somewhat optimized or as optimized as possible as it will have many roads and interstates/cities, however a low texture res like this looks not too appealing up close and also makes it harder to do texture painting/terrain modifications precisely as the smallest tool size turns out being obnoxiously big still, if anybody would have answers or tips about this it would be massively appreciated!
So, a square with an area of 205,000 square miles would have a side length of about 452.2 miles. It's impossible in BeamNG due to technical restrictions. Even if it would be possible: How would you be able to fill such a huge area with life? 8x8 kilometers is more or less the upper constraint. The map texture resolution can be 4096x4096 or even 8192x8192. Should be possible and looks better. This would be good sizes for the terrain as well having a scale of 1.
It's pretty possible, considering that maps even bigger than this exist already so I'm not sure what you're talking about, unless I'm misunderstanding you here. The main "technical restriction" would be the floating point error that makes some bigger maps look a bit "shakey" like Roane, TN, and Los Injurus. I would have "fill it with life" by starting out with the main roads/highways, and then once I finish with those, start doing the more important towns/cities, and then some of the sideroads once I get to it, it would be a long process but I plan on just focusing on the interstates first as that's where the player would be driving mainly, obviously I wont fill every inch of the map with life but only the areas that players would be driving in. But that's not the point, I'm just wondering if having a high texture resolution on a map this big would affect performance heavily or not.
If you want a map big like this you would need with a 4k terrain a scale of 450. The base texture would be scaled by this factor, too. So it will lokk crappy either way with (2k, 4k or 8k texture). Drawing terrain material will be hard, too at this scales.
My recommendation is to make the smallest map possible to start with. Before trying to make a very large map. And 3d mesh is the only way to go beyond 8k. The base terrain paint can be scaled, but the highest that can go is 16k. The terrain paint that is. The terrain block is 8192 x 8192 max. If you make the base texture size 8k for your terrain paints, then you need to make them jpgs, and have a lot of patience. cause it is slow.
