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

Yes, ALL of my maps have full AI support on all the major roads. This map will be the first one with all (or almost all) of the roads named. Like, for example, you could tell the AI to go to Post Oak Rd (nodepoint #), or goto the spawn-point service station, or even Burger World (it's in Kingston)... etc. It may even drive through the drive thru. This should make for good police chases

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GOOD NEWS, the map is now up to about 112 miles of roadway, as 18.8 miles of roadway were finished tonight. I must've spent a good 10+ hours on this today, and still got my stuff in my yard started (too much for my back in one day). Any my cats and dogs still haven't died of thirst or hunger.
All (almost all) the major roads have been done that I wanted near Rockwood, Eureka, Post Oak, up to the area north of there by the college and Roane State Park. All those roads are named, too (every one). It'll show up in the AI target point.
I must still fine-tune a few things. I noticed a few small bumps (and 2 huge monster bumps, heh) those I have to level up, a few rough terrain edges to fix, trees to plant, and stop-bars (that white strip you stop at) to place at all the intersections. One intersection yet to do with pavement, also, which is by the Tractor Supply on Roane Street N of Rockwood by Cardiff (I think that's Roane St???). Once that's done, which will most likely be one more evening (tomorrow evening), then I can upload this.

I could release it tomorrow but I am just not happy with it yet. Looking like monday mid-day (USA time) I'll put this out (post a link) in the early afternoon. I have to run an AI test on it too, to make sure they don't get stuck anywhere new that I've added.

Release schedule looks like the following (barring unforseen issues, unlikely):
Monday - Full Detail version that I'm working on now, will go live, provided there's no show-stopping errors. 12~16gb Ram req'd!!!
Tuesday-to-wednesday sometime - Lower-Detail version that will run on systems with 8gb of ram will become available. BUY MORE RAM.
If you only have 4~6gb of ram, please try to upgrade. Those systems are outdated, and you shouldn't expect to run a 144sq/mi map on it.
This is a very, very large map, possibly the largest one in Beam. It's almost too big to work on. I am going to have to buy more ram soon...
I though 16gb was going to be enough, but I have had to restart Beam 3 times in the last 2 nights due to 99% ram usage!!! It takes twice the RAM to edit that it does to just run in it though. Current RAM footprint is 6~7gb or so. Just under 6gb when loaded*, closer to 7gb when you've driven around some.

*When I load the map up, I don't use the default truck, I load the 88 Pessima or newly-released ETK up, then check ram requirement.
Load times are within 2~4 seconds of what they were, in other words, they really haven't changed. At least there is plenty of driving here.

Was playing Carmageddon last night for an hour or two, boy what I wouldn't do to put cows in this game! MOO! MOOO! MOOOOOO!
Pics, the area is barren, it hasn't been tree-ed yet

 

I have noticed severe lags when car is sliding. I have 60 fps almost all the time (except the town, but I rarely visit it) up until the moment the car begins to slide. Any help?

P.S. I think some maps have the same problem and disabling the tyre marks helps a lot, anyone keen on explaining how to do such thing?

 

Skid marks area causing lag. Try looking in iheartmod's Desert Highway thread, there's some fixes there. IIRC it was hit F11, go into editor, and delete the skid marks but idk the exact step by step.
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Is there a Google Drive mirror or anything? MEGA freezes at 99% downloaded whenever I try to download through browser.

 

He will be releasing a new version here soon.

 

TOMORROWS UPLOAD THAT WILL BE POSTED REQUIRES ATLEAST 7GB FREE RAM TO RUN. THIS MEANS MORE THAN 8GB RAM INSTALLED IN THE SYSTEM!
Close all non-essential programs before running BEAM.
Okay, Got trees installed. Finishing the intersections now (~15mins tops). Removed as many bumps as I could find. Dressed up the terrain where necessary. Installed grass layer against the roadbeds (so that the sides look nice) on all the new roads. I'll get to some of the older roads in time, but that won't be tonight. When it's uploaded, you'll be able to have plenty of places to drive, as this has 112 miles of roadway now. For comparison, So-Cal has about 13~ or so more miles of total road than this does now and about half the road network is done now. Sheesh. That's alot. A LOT.

90% of my ram is being used... 91%... while it's editing. Ugh. I have 16gb here, it's not enough, I've run out a few times. Thankfully, those with 12~16gb will have 0 issues running this map. Those with 8gb may have to wait for me to upload a lo-fi forest file in the day or two following the release of this map (or you can use the old version's .Forest file, but the new version roads won't have any trees there!). Again, those with 4~6gb of ram are most likely out of luck. Buy more RAM, seriously, its as cheap or cheaper than a night at the movies. I picked up 2x2gb DDR3 set for my 'AMD-Busta-box' almost four years ago for 16.99 and they were Crucial Ballistix or whatever it's called. These Corsair gaming ram set cost like 70$ for 2x8gb (16gb) of 2400mhz speed. No matter what brand cpu you have - they both love gobs of RAM. I like this Intel setup though, I got so sick of shoveling COAL into my AMD computer every 15~20 mins

No pics, you'll see the upload tomorrow (THE 12~16GB VERSION REQUIRES 7GB TO LOAD AND UP TO 8GB TO RUN - just for Beam!).
Will run my AI test and upload a mission fix if there's anything amiss after the upload starts. This will be mega-hosted. 7z version will come later. Radeon 7700/7800+ / Geforce 670, 760ti + (750ti will do on medium, maybe) recommended. 2gb video memory recommended, but 1 or 1.5gb will do just make sure to put your game graphics detail to medium. DDR3-equipped cards should most likely run on LOW graphics or set the resolution to 720p to offset the memory handicap.

TRYING TO LOAD THIS MAP WITH LESS THAN 7GB FREE RAM MAY RESULT IN THE SYSTEM COMPLETELY LOCKING UP.
I will have the link posted in the early-mid afternoon USA central time, tomorrow. That's about 12~16 hours from this post time.

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EDITED: I have fully checked, everything seems to be working as it should. I think you will enjoy this. I will re-upload both a 7z version, and a Lo-fi version seperately during the week.
I am going to start uploading now. Check for a link posted this afternoon.
Users with 8gb of ram must wait a few days (at most) for the lo-fi version to be uploaded.
If you are REALLY desperate, you could temporarily remove the forest file. The map would be just Roads, Water, and Land, and a few sidewalks at that point, and possibly be extremely boring - but it would run. There would be no buildings, at all, period. Not a one.

Added a few pics of my testing misadventures...
AI hit the brakes late and drove off the end of the road, into the river...
The car after jumping about 40~50 feet high in the air, about 100~120 feet jump length...
A beautiful sunset, and the ETK.

 

Now I'm really glad I bought 16 GB of ram istead of saving and going for 8

 

Bought 8GB more ram just for this map.

 

"Firefox crashed, leaving a big steamy pile of crash dialog box on your desktop" ......
Like I said, this is why I put in 'barring unforseen problems'... so yeah
Reuploading it, chose to do a 7z because I think I will go thru withdrawal if I am without internet for the 7~8 hours required to upload a 651mb zip file, vs a 440mb 7z file. Hopefully I can get it uploaded before it CRASHES again.
Place into wherever and drop the 'levels' folder into your Beamng.drive folder.
Remove any old versions of my map from your BEAM mods/levels or /levels directory (Tennessee_*).
It's 1052MB unzipped. It's just over 1gb in size. It's monstrous in size, but there's a lot of road mileage here.
It's bigger than GTAV, it's 21299.2m x 21299.2m - even huge Desert_Highway is only just slightly smaller @ 18000m x 18000m - and this has trees, custom buildings, and hundreds upon hundreds of MB in road texturing.
This makes this THE BIGGEST MAP in Beamng.drive. It just shows how awesome Beamng.drive can be on a huge seemingly-open-world environment VS small closed environments like are provided with the game.

If all goes well, I will attempt at putting this up to this forum later this week when I get the lo-fi version setup correctly.
The road network, bridges, and buildings will stay the same between these versions (hi-fi and lo-fi), only the amount of trees will differ, reducing the physics model size in ram by a substantial amount. Hopefully I can get both versions scripted into the same zip file. It shouldn't really change the size more than a MB or two.
I will have a look at Ouerbacker's Mammoth Valley as he's done all the work figuring this out and use it as an example.

Will most likely have a link posted 3~4 hours from now, but you'll have to manually extract it as it's 7z but 50% smaller download size.
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(redacted link to mega, 7zipped file superceded by new version available on mods>levels)

 

...Old updates to old version redacted, use new version instead.

 

I need 8GB of RAM alone for all the text and updates in this thread probably. Man, this has come a long way since I last checked on it, don't think I'll be able to run this map anymore though with all the progress.

 

Excellent work! It all seems a bit supernaturally smooth, but it's honestly a nice change from the rough and tight corners of Jungle Rock Island and East Coast, USA. It's really fun to zip along and explore.

I had a blast tearing along the roads and experienced very little perceptible FPS loss anywhere that I could find (yet):
Video -

 

Yes you will. If you have 6~8gb or more of system ram you will be fine. Use the forest file I linked and overwrite the one that's in the zip in the southernhighway directory. If you have 4gb ram then no, it won't work (yet).
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Sweet video. I'll go and post this into the opening post.
Thanks for the compliments. This is a rather smooth rolling landscape. I took extra work smoothing out all the hills and such in the roads so that you could speed down them a bit more than IRL. The roads DO follow the landscape and I spent many house pouring over google 3d maps to get them 'just right' or atleast as close to right as I could muster.
This landscape is 0.94:1 scale - so it's just a smidge underscaled - but it works out in the end just fine.

I think all will enjoy this if they have a computer to run it, I hope they do anyways. It's sure been a long time - 6 months in the making (it was on the back burner for about 60 days of that time, though). It might take a few months more to totally finish it though. It will be worth it when it's done.

You have a lot of nice car mods there, pretty awesome I'd say.
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Current "bugs" on the map, though no really have any effect on gameplay:
NOTEXTURE in one remote corner of the map where there is nothing for miles, you'll most likely never find it.
Texture bug near heckler's gap, where one road ending overlay's another, not big deal, might not even notice.
Large dip in the right-turn lane in rockwood when you turn off the main drag onto Roane State Hwy. OOPS.
A few times the AI cuts corners before the big hill on the highway (doesn't effect much), and on Roane State Hwy near the county park. This doesn't effect anything either.

Other than that, seems to work dandy. I will re-start more progress on this within the next day or two.
Enjoy the map folks. For those that want to make vids, feel free to do so. I will go out and pickup a network cable in the next town and proceed to attempt to upload this to the mods section, provided it's not too big (it might be).

Updated this post to remove the old forest file patch. No longer needed.

 

Ram usage for beam, while using this map hovers around 7-8 GB. Great map keep up the good work !

 

Current "bugs" on the map, though no really have any effect on gameplay:
NOTEXTURE in one remote corner of the map where there is nothing for miles, you'll most likely never find it.
Texture bug near heckler's gap, where one road ending overlay's another, not big deal, might not even notice.
Large dip in the right-turn lane in rockwood when you turn off the main drag onto Roane State Hwy. OOPS.
A few times the AI cuts corners before the big hill on the highway (doesn't effect much), and on Roane State Hwy near the county park. This doesn't effect anything either.

Other than that, seems to work dandy. I will re-start more progress on this within the next day or two.
Enjoy the map folks. For those that want to make vids, feel free to do so. I will go out and pickup a network ca

Yes, that's the hi-def version. I was going to re-upload a whole-nother version however, simply 6mb patch manually applied is so much better than something precisely 108 times that big of a download (75 times the download, if in 7z form).
Eventually (sooner than later) I will have a ZIP version (though 50% bigger in size) uploaded for those that want game-friendly zips.
Thanks for the kind words. This is no-where near done, and there is much work I will do to it yet.
If anyone wants to use this on youtube - I think I've said it before - but will say again - you don't have to ask - just link me to it the video so I get to watch, too (and please provide a link to this forum on page 1, somewhere in or around the video so other folks can enjoy it too).


--Cheers

 

A couple of games of Cat & Mouse to demonstrate the surprising adeptness of the AI:

And a high-speed 'stress test', still using the HD version:

 

No offense, but try that in Group 4 bolide without any esc, abs etc. at almost constant full throttle with 2 year old worn out xbox 360 controller and we could begin talking. Don't take it personally, I wrote it probably just to show off. Hmmmm... We need multiplayer so my 160 hours of gameplay could finally pay off. I need some challenge that is not a pathetic and slow AI. Seriously, I took Baja Hills map set AI to flee from me in top spec ETK K series (AWD twin turbo v6) and I nicely kept up with Ibishu miramar base model...

 

I wouldn't make my worst enemy drive a bolide - unless it wasn't my insurance and there's lots of cliffs nearby.
Try that on my SNES controller - because I am oldschool and couldn't use an analog controller (unless it's a flight yoke or realistic-steering-wheel type) if I tried! I have 3 SNES controllers hooked to the PC, two real and one cheap chinese 7$ imposter. It's good enough for demo derbies with friends or family, though!

No, really back on-topic here: Sometimes the AI slows down when hills are involved due to the way that the AI handles vertical alignment with the desired route from node to node. If it's randomly hitting the brakes, turn on some of the AI debugging features, especially if there's hills nearby - even shallow troughs or mounds, that could be throwing off the AI calculating it's course when it thinks it should be lower or higher than it actually is. AI routes are drawn in direct lines between decal road nodes (points) and if the AI can't follow it within one car-height of this, it slows down like it does going over hillcrests. I've also shared this info with IheartMods to help him with Desert Highway's AI issue in the same respect (2~3 months back), as I'd not want that map to be cut short of what it could be, either. I've worked most of them out, but in areas I've not touched enough - like Downtown Harriman (north end of the map, the four-lane that runs across the 'nice' bridge with 8~10 lamp-posts on it (lighted), this is N Roane St - goes through Downtown Harriman just north of the mentioned lighted bridge) - the AI does what I mentioned just past the two smaller bridges when heading north, before it gets to the turn with the water on both sides where the road has a sharp left.
I hope you could read my terrible sentence enough that it made sense - but these will be worked on. This primarily happens on many user maps & my maps are not immune (though this is much ratified in Nevada Interstate and So-Cal Interstate - my other maps, as they're more complete). If there's too many spots where the AI mashes the brakes, I usually fix these when I go through and refine the areas (adding more roads, buildings and such, good times to fix this).
Downtown Harriman/Rockwood Airport Road (N, NW map) is the next area I will be working on so, for now, enjoy what's there and know the AI will function a tad better in some spots on the next version. There's some of it that's Beamng.drive early-access related but not too much of it. Forcing the AI to a set speed will ignore this.

TL-DR, it's early access - both the game and this map - but hey, this software is pretty bangin' fun I must admit.
To make not only your own race track - but an entire county - a games worth of content - for what little I paid - is awesome. I've been wanting to do this for 20~25 years now. I used to draw game maps in study hall 25 years ago when I was in school yet - only dreaming of doing this stuff for real - and being able to play and share this with others. This was before the internet was even a thought. So I am taking this idea, and running with it, and no one's gonna stop me - or any of you - from having a carload of fun on the way. I've got 25 years of ideas and creativity to unleash on the previously-unsuspecting Beamng.drive minions and it might just take me another 24.5 years to do it all... but I don't care

I'll see ya'all at the finish line, or wherever or whenever we are - with a new update, every 7~10 days or so until this map seems 'finished. Then I can make another map like this. And another. And another. And another... heh.

...to be continued...

 

After closing chrome and skype it is possible to play the full fat version with 8 gigs of ram like you said, it just takes a couple of days to load . Helps to have an SSD too, but I've been temped to upgrade my RAM and this is the perfect excuse. Great map bob, it's a really great map to just go out for a cruse and explore.

 

Thankyou for your kind words and feedback! Yes, I don't blame you. I have 16gb here, and it's tempting me to upgrade, too. For a paltry some of 69.99$ US-Dollar I can purchase 16gb of 2400mhz DDR3 memory (2x 8gb sticks), so I mean really, feeding the PC lots of RAM is not a serious budget-breaker. RAM is the single-least-expensive way to increase PC performance and longetivity.

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Today's Class Lecture is about SOLID STATE DRIVES. (read if you like, if not, skip this remainder of this post)...

Picking up an MLC-based solid-state drive (MLC because it won't slow down when the TLC-drive's buffer would have run out), will ensure you quick loading, and no serious performance penalties when games request data. This is especially important when playing open-world or large-world racing games as they stream data constantly. I purchased a pair of Toshiba Q-Pro series drives two years ago (MLC-based), and RAID'ed them (some people caution that can be slower at times) for the sequential read/write speed benefits that I frequently use moving things around often (with mods!), and creating game-content. Nothing like opening 600~700mb of textures in 100~200 files at once into paint.net or GNU-Image-manipulator and it gets it done in a few seconds! Why wait if you don't have to?

TLC based drives are also the reason for the Samsung Evo fiasco a few years (~2 years) ago, where the drives got really slow on stale data (~90 days old). TLC stores 3 bits per cell instead of TWO bits per cell that MLC does. MLC = multi (dual) layer cell, TLC = triple layer cell. This is inherently why MLC drives are 2x as reliable though, because the more bits you put in a cell stack, the more sensitive it is to voltage charge degradation (happens over time especially with cell wear), and cell walls can burn thru rendering data unrecoverable if it's beyond the parity-check-bit's capacity to recover and verify it. Real world use scenarios mean the TLC drive won't die that long before the MLC drive, and most likely not before you replace it with a bigger, faster model anyways - just know what's on the table before buying.

While you don't need to go out and break the bank and buy business-class MLC Toshiba Q-Pro/Q-300-Pro drives like I did, get something MLC-based, like a Samsung Pro (evo=bad, pro=awesome), Transcend MLC-based drives (good $ for performance ration), or Sandisk (I think the ultra may be TLC version), who also makes a good MLC-business class drive. Storage/repository drives just for holding data, you might be able to get away with a TLC drive there, though it's going to take forever to copy all the files to it, but for main system drives, I seriously recommend MLC-based nand drives. Keep in mind, the firmware (drive's version of BIOS) fixed on 840 and 850-series samsung EVO (not PRO!) drives did not entirely mitigate issues with old data being slow, though the drive will periodically juggle physical bits around to different spots to keep things fresh, so you shouldn't 'lose' data. This doesn't really realistically affect the drive's endurance, either. Amazon and Newegg (if you still shop at the latter) have some decent deals on SSD's time and again, with the former always seeming to offer great deals on Transcend products. Hey even Best Buy (yes, a brick and mortar store!) will match large-competitor prices on and offline in-store on SSD's so if you see something you like, see if they offer it. I picked these Toshiba Q-Pro's off their sales-floor two years ago for some 90~110 bucks each for two of them with price-match. Sequential reads are up around 969~1065mb range, with sequential writes of about 930mb~1025mb range. This comes in super-handy when moving zip files, or other things like writing out very large graphic or terrain maps. Even moving mod or download directories around is easy now.
Why wait longer than you have to? The money invested into what would normally be the SLOWEST part of the PC, should feel quite worth it in the long-run - and it does! You won't regret purchases one bit in this sector.

Note: Though I run in RAID config, if you're not creating content a majority of the time, you won't really benefit from using more than a single SSD for your Operating system, games and data. I create content most of the time on here, so, while I benefit, you may not. Do your research to see what benefits you the most. Having a RAID array may not be beneficial to everyone, and backups (if running Raid 0 especially) must be done regularly! If you just run games, a single MLC-based SATA drive (or if your system is brand new and supports it, an NVME-supporting MLC-based drive) would be the best for a majority of the folks out there. Get a large 240~480gb drive for OS and some games, and add more drives for more games as-needed.

I hope this helps. Private message me with any PC-hardware related questions so as to keep this thread clear of offtopic things(though I won't get mad if stuff appears on here). Ofcourse, it is on-topic again if it's related to running this game map so like I said, you're not going to anger me either way.
--Cheers
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Updates on the map... Why oh why did you make my words small you stupid forum...

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Updated the 'old "new two lane road" texture' and deleted about 90mb worth of stuff that should NOT have been in the textures directory. Newly added stuff is about 16mb. Only have to skim it down about 2~3 times more in hopes of fitting this on this site! So over 75mb less of textures - now it's down to like 920mb or so instead of just over 1gb.
There's plenty of stuff I no longer use in here still, so will be combining and cleaning up other textures etc. If I haven't made use of it thus far in development of the map, I most likely won't, and can add it back in should I find a need for it later. Like I said, If I can knock another 100~200mb out of this, I should be able to fit it on this site - yay!

New road texture pics - I even used the type of reflectors that we really use here in TN. Going to try and add these to a few more of the textures as the night goes on.
Edit - did the two lane road, and it's associated misc textures, also got rid of the boring old textures left over from Nevada Interstate yet, blech they were bad. New ones are way better.
Added a new 'don't drive here' diagonal striping often used prior to left-turn lanes and such.
Got the textures to MATCH now, too :x
A few of the pics of the larger road is Kentucky St just north of the starting point, by the highway.
Added two pics of the intersection on Roane State Hwy near the county park, where the college is.