WIP Beta released So-Cal Interstate Highway (126 miles of road & path) 0.8

bob.blunderton updated So-Cal Interstate Highway (126 miles of road & path) with a new update entry:

words

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

My first drive in the new update - not much of a video, but it shows some of what I experienced.

It is a vast improvement, to say the least. I can carry so much more speed and it just generally feels much more like when I am in southern California.


Just the end of the second attempt by itself, for those who want to
skip to when I lose control after getting bored:


Keep up the excellent work!

 

Thank you.. I like the updated 0.8 version though was a little shocked to see my favourite 5 humps had been changed but they are still there I like how the ramps are now unidirectional instead of jump/crash n get stuck.. I really like how the Bolide thinks it's a Mercedes CLR-GT1 the moment it hits the water and starts flying.. Thanks for your work of art

 

I've played, and enjoyed your maps for many hours! Thanks for all the work you put into these maps. I probably wouldn't have the patience for it.

 

So this area is incomplete?

Try making an artificial excuse for players not to go there, such as the bridge being broken.
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great map try making a tennesee-ish map that's this size

 

I think I read something about 'cliffs' and 'danger' in the brochure somewhere but didn't think much about it until...





Edit:

There appears to be a section of road that is flooded near the pair of bridges to Incomplete Island. Look at the off-ramps. By flooded, I mean something like eight feet of water flooding the road.

 

@bob.blunderton, I'm getting pretty consistent 60fps on this map, unless I see water, then CPU load on one core goes to 100% and FPS drop as GPU waits CPU.

Light quality and shader quality seem to affect this, something to do with reflection of water I guess.

Official maps seems not to do this with water, even I thought they would, so I guess there must be something different in water on your map, maybe your water uses material from pre 0.8 Beam version and maybe they changed something in 0.8 that helps with CPU load or then there just is some difference I don't have any idea of.

Now my memory is not the most perfect one, it lies to me that SoCal and Nevada both would of had similar high CPU load when camera is facing towards water, but at least one of them had. Tennessee had such too I think.

Maybe you already know what is the cause and what is the fix.

 

Well I am glad it feels more like California now, with the winding, banked freeway sections. I thought so too, so glad my sentiment is shared.
I had a lot more fun testing this once I finished banking things and worked the kinks out of things so it was fairly smooth. Videos were awesome as always!

To answer back in order here: The ramps I changed because the AI tended to wedge itself into a doorstop-shape when it went under them often while I was testing nearby, so I fixed that. The Bolide can be quite fun with it's large tires, flat bottom, skid plates and light chassis and can really get up to some good boating speed. It may even skip over the water for a short bit before going in (cars CAN do that - see my Mythbusters post).

There *will* be more Tennessee maps, in due time.
It's only going to be a lap-track there, it'll get a better bridge once I have time. I wasn't going to waste the time building a broken bridge only to have to un-build or re-build it later. There's road closed signs there so people don't waste time going there when it's not done yet.

Cliffs and danger, yes, what better for a car wreck simulator? Some serious Wile E. Coyote moments to be had here for old fans of 'that' !
Ah yes, that ramp you mentioned is intentionally flooded! Just stay to the left side (the AI should go to the left side there, too), and you should make it through. Most flooded areas WERE built that way. I was hoping maybe someone's kid when they grow up won't drive into high water IRL, if they'd play this first (I know, it's wishful thinking). I am sure future drivers wouldn't be the only ones who could benefit, a quick search of youtube shows me plenty of folks that aren't experienced enough with it.

4k terrain (which my 3 maps use) is quite a bit to render + water reflection (which I actually turned down a bit this last release, it's in 'thelevelinfo' object in the f1 object editor if you wish to change it in the map editor). The most slowdown, that even slows my Rx480 8gb down, even though it's not unplayable anywhere, is when looking away from the map, out to sea. I thought this was the water, then I realized it happens in OTHER maps too. Ones without water, ones with it, doesn't seem to matter. There must be an imperfection in my implementation of the water, or something. I will copy it's specifics out of another official game map to make it so that it's possibly easier on the GPU. On another note, there's something odd when looking away from the map, FPS drops, but it's not solely the water itself! It's like the game panics when you look away from the map. 300fps will go to 70fps (on low-medium), 100~150fps will go to like 30~40fps on higher settings. I will get this narrowed down eventually, if all of us don't have a better computer by then, hopefully Thanks for your insight.

Glad everyone has had a good time with this, took me a few minutes to respond here but I am appreciative of all the feedback.

 

I'm not all too sure it is all about map being hard on GPU, there are some other maps where it happens and I think it is direction of water most of the time, but water don't need to be visible, kind of gets processed even something blocks view to water and distance to water seems to make little difference, it is really weird what is happening so naturally it creates interest of what would be reason of such.

My GPU is resting when I take a look of scenery after landing a little jump, only 58% GPU load


When I look other way it is 140fps and GPU at or near 100%


I'm not sure if same happens with other cards / CPUs, I have a look of that object in level editor, hopefully solution to mystery can be found.

My GPU is GTX 1050 Ti 4GB, got that actually so that I can drive Tennessee map, so that upgrade is kind of your fault

Flooded areas are no problem with loaded T-series, ramming speed ahead! That is if one can make to flooded areas

 

@bob.blunderton, I had a play with world editor and I think that I have an idea what is happening, but idea might be stupid and completely wrong, my knowledge is rather limited which makes me most dangerous guy

Water plane has full reflection selected, disabling that lower cpu load some and gains 10fps, but still fps is CPU limited, removing that very tall bridge gives quite bit of boost to performance, but neither of those alone are sole reasons why I'm getting very low fps, low gpu usage and high CPU usage on single core.

What I think is happening is that each single object creates CPU overhead, when there are many objects this CPU overhead becomes greater than that single core of CPU can process this object overhead and thus GPU has to wait that CPU process overhead which comes from finding out what CPU must tell to GPU in order for GPU to compute. Now I can be perfectly wrong about this and it might be that things work way differently than what I think.

However by reducing number of objects, I did manage to bring CPU load down and I think it would be interesting experiment to combine that bridge and other constructions featuring many objects, into single object and see if that makes a difference in performance, but I have no idea how to make that to happen.
Maybe for example bridge needs to be exported to blender and combined there or something like that, not really something I would have done or even heard how it's done.

I don't have any kind of slowdown if I look to sea, only when I look inland and it seems to be tied closely to number of objects on screen (of course can be something else and just appears to be so), maybe there is difference between different GPU's or CPU's in this.

Quite often I use 720p resolution in a window, that might help to bring up performance issues related to CPU more than when using 1080p or higher as gpu is able to handle.

Another thing which I found out is that Cali terrain actually improves my fps a lot, disabling terrain makes really high cpu load, this again I believe is because terrain masks many objects so that those are perhaps not computed, but without terrain all objects are seen at once.

Yet another bit is that this happens only when light quality is higher than lowest or shader quality higher than low, shader quality turns on reflections and light quality turns on shadows and as those are computed per object, I believe that might be why number of objects has high impact on cpu load.

Certainly took few hours to find out what affects CPU load and hence FPS, but I'm sure it might take lot more hours to try combine objects to see if that has any effect, currently I think it is very plausible reason, but there is so much I don't know.
--- Post updated ---
Took two screenshots that show how looking inland is slowing down fps more than looking out to sea, I have vsync on and fps limiter so 60fps is maximum I get from that reason.

Update: I did look around different maps, those which I get high CPU load issue are ones that uses meshroad type of objects for bridges, buildings etc. Some maps use TsStatic or something like that for such objects and they don't give me high cpu load, so addition to object count, it might be related to object type too, maybe static object gets handled differently by BeamNG?

 

Setting visible distance in level info to 1200m and disabling full reflection on water made SoCal smooth as a butter on my computer with everything cranked up, no high CPU load anymore.

I think what is needed is an option to override visible distance, for example for terrain it would be good to be able to set that to island size or max at 30km or so, but for performance reasons, all objects don't need to be seen for that long, many smaller objects it is fine to have only 100 meters or so visible distance.

Just to have option to set terrain to different visible distance would help with visual quality while maintaining performance as you would see far mountains, that is hardly any performance hit in SoCal and other objects roads etc. could be then at lower value, but it is up to devs if that is way they want to go, they might have better ideas about it of course.

 

Yes I could limit this in Thelevelinfo, I am considering that, as I'd rather not rebuild the whole map's bridges :x That's be a month of work right there and by that time, many people might have better PC's as AMD's RyZen comes out in a month. I will go over some of these things again later 'down the road' when I am done working on updating Nevada Interstate (again). What's weird, is the slowdown I get in this map here, is only when looking out to sea, not in the map, the map runs at 60~420+ fps depending on where I am, and what video settings I have (1080p, high settings vs lowest). It's the damn ocean that's slowing down, or the space AROUND the ocean, as in Nevada Interstate (my map) *AND* Wasteland too (not my map) it slows down BIGTIME when I look out of the map even if I don't have water around. This a bug, it didn't used to do this back in 0.6.x or such. As such, I am not going to do much about performance until they've fixed that or I know for-sure why it's doing that. It's very possibly they'll fix this in future versions.
If I do this in thelevelinfo, I will add only a smidge of fog in so that you don't see the view distance limitation, you'll still be able to drive pretty fast. It will be optional, will most likely be a released-as-a-'mis'-patch.
Thanks for writing in!

 

I think that in 1-2 months time, we can also have new kind of performance by updates they are currently doing to improving base of BeamNG.

Slowdown sounds to be really something hardware specific at the moment, where as you get slowdown when looking to ocean, I get highest fps when looking at the ocean, only thing slows things for me is number of objects and I think for that devs might do something.

I know very well what amount of work there must of been when building all those bridges. I can easily make model of bridge in Blender, but mapping it, texturing and getting it out in right size is the problem I need to study a lot.

As it seems to be that I can't get anything map related exported from BeamNG to blender, size becomes an issue very quickly. I try to learn though, maybe some day.

 

It takes some time for Vimeo to get HD version up it seems, so I don't know how terrible their compression makes video to be, but I guess you can see something from it.


Normal graphics quality setting with all eye candy on, turned down dynamic reflections a bit, I had visual distance at 2500 and fog at 40, I guess I should of changed time setting to early morning or maybe fog color bit more towards ground color. Around 3:25 there is a corner where fps dropped to 30fps even with very low graphics settings, now CPU load did stay easily under 100% and did not get slowdown. I think that next update of BeamNG might have that behavior different as now even very distant objects create shadows and have reflections, light affecting each other etc which creates CPU load, also there might be some bugs so that CPU is used instead of GPU, idk.

Anyway, it is one of lighter maps to run in BeamNG what comes to GPU load.

None of that adjustment seems to make me any better driver though

 

New video for Bob to laugh at

 

LOL!

The grades on this map are seriously cruel to my pessima. I wonder if American roads are this hilarious IRL...

 

Videos were awesome. Vimeo's beautiful quality video that works over my fred-flintstone interwebs here really shocks me. Very insightful, and I also see I missed 2 bushes in the road (I seriously checked that road atleast 2x if not 3, and drove down it a good half a dozen or more times).
Learning Blender (or sketchup) is tough. Exporting to Beamng.drive is even tougher. Getting it to not crash the game, and actually show up AND work, is a process I gave up on long ago.
That is why my maps have objects made of mesh roads, and not so much made of models (exception: if someone else made it, and lent it to me or donated it otherwise, very kindly of them).
I can use sketchup, that I can learn and somewhat have, however, even with using PC's for over 22 years, and editing games for that length of time too... I don't have a clue. I can build my pc, load it up, OC it if I must (I don't), make my own levels, even do lua or similar scripting like js/html, in simple forms for game anywho. I CANNOT GET A MODEL IMPORTED INTO BEAM FOR THE LIFE OF ME. NO MATTER WHAT.
I can't tell you how many times I've crashed this program, trying to get one in. I've followed 3 step-by-step tutorials and such, tried different models, etc. Don't hold your breath.
It's about the only thing that is stopping me from making AAA-quality maps is not having my own models.
I can build a road - a highway - a network of them for that matter, design a logical layout of the whole county that flows but (opposite of reality) still makes you take 'the long way around' to keep the game interesting and keep from seeing the same places too often... I can do semi-realistic bridges, and even the landscape it sits on. I can make my own road graphics if needed, of varying quality (see my latest work on Nevada Interstate).
I can't do models. It's like a chicken without a head. So yea, that's why there's like NOTHING in this map.

There's NEVER going to be anything in this map (beyond signs and traffic lights @ one point or another) UNTIL they make it EASIER to get things into this game. When it is easier, I will gladly and happily add plenty of stuff to make sure you never go over 0.1 frames-per-hour on your cutting-edge-PC's and all potato-PC's will instantly turn into scalloped potatoes (yuck!).
No, actually, teasing, I'll add things, but I'll LOD things too, so it doesn't chugga-chugga on you.
I spent whole nights (more than one), trying to add things to the game. It didn't work. I tried to add a house and got 1 deck post of it to show up. I crashed to desktop for hours trying to get things to load. It was a MESS. Not going to bother until this game is done and it's worth trying and someone else has shown a more clear tutorial on it. I have all the time in the world to make beautiful maps, but none to waste.
I can't make convex objects with the simple shape editor because unless I make them 100% the perfect size @ the get-go, they have dodgey collisions that make cars stuck or otherwise don't scale right with the object (I have brought this up). If I resize them at ALL they become off from their collisions, and cause issues.

Yes, the developers do know about mesh roads hitting performance, it's known. I am sure it will get better, they mentioned about it that they do know. I have all the time in the world to make you folks beautiful maps, and I am glad to see everyone enjoying them (thankyou personally @fufsgfen for your videos). I have no time to waste trying vague things like trying to shoot fish out of the ocean from a helicopter a mile away. It makes me bonkers, makes me want to kill the PC. So yeah, I have long since given up on that 'adding custom objects, bridges, buildings, etc'. I would add stuff like bridges from Utah etc (most of this map was done when that came out), but then it would lose it's 'custom character' that I built it with. It would also make the download larger, and use more VRAM. There's a reason my bridges aren't like everyone elses. Sure, my bridges might look like they're outta GTA-SA (the old one not V), but they do function!

So I want to thank everyone for their responses. This map will be updated after 0.9.x if it breaks the map (if!), if not, sometime there-after. It will eventually get multiple spawns, etc, in due time, possibly signs or traffic lights, as I have time.

I am working on getting a city map started (yes after i talked about not being able to make my own models), I will be using other folks' models with permission (I never take without asking, had good folks!), to create it.
In the weeks or months coming, look for more things in the future on that subject, as that's my next project, just as soon as I feel like firing up the Beamng.drive editor again.

--Cheers

P.S. Not trying to rage or be pessimistic but trying to get my own models into Beamng.drive last fall when I could have been playing with my CAT LAUNCHER in Fallout or making the rest of one of my maps, really had me steamed.
--- Post updated ---

California is known for some of it's steep hills. Seriously steep ones. I mean it!
Though, I don't believe main roads are normally this steep, it's normally only residential side-streets, though I know a few in every town that are like that. You don't touch those in winter

 

Hell, this map lags from 60 to 45 even on my GTX 970 with 16GB of RAM, but that's not too bad. I made a video to show my appreciation of this epic map.

 

Map is indeed incredible!

It's probably not your GTX970 lagging, it's probably more to do with CPU and some Torque 3D's annoyances, however exact reason can't be found easily, it might be several reasons too, but if exact reason(s) can be found and becomes known, it would help map makers a lot to go beyond what is possible now.

 

Yes. I get a steady 45 FPS, maybe there is something else running. Do chrome tabs running effect speed?