How to handle infield crowd?

[jim deo]

The current oval I am building (Langhorne speedway) had the infield filled with cars,people when the big guys showed up (indy/nascar).
I would like to fill it with nice 3d cars/people but feel it might kill fps. I thought of using a tree wall (but with people) but that's going to look crappy..
Any other ideas?

 

[Raido]

I think you've got the basic options laid out, but I doubt fps would take much of a dump on an oval. Short & light, to a computer anyway.
I've had my road course lined with dozens of medium detail cars alongside the straight and it only starts to affect fps after I add much more.
Just try it, export & save the track under a separate name as "TracknameFPSTest" and test drive it, if it's too heavy you could then always go back to the previous version, and add less stuff.