Tracks Pacific Coast 1.0

[SS454]

I am glad you continue to tweak the already amazing track.

 

[Phoenix77]

Thanks guys!

No worries mate... Glad you got it working

 

[Phoenix77]

I am glad you continue to tweak the already amazing track.

I'm glad to find the time to tweak things as you'll find out... It's going to be some quite big tweaks But I'm conscious not to disrupt the essence of the track as well... I've got a reasonably long list of things to do before this gets to v1.0...
But when done it will almost feel like a v2.0

And thanks mate, glad you think it's amazing... Great to hear... Thanks to you to for your contributions to this support thread.... You were there pretty early on... Appreciate it pal

 

[Phoenix77]

I'm about 3/5's done on smoothing out the terrain...No road is in yet... I'm not going to think about all that right now! Note: this is a max render without the ocean plane in.
No objects as yet, just the terrain mesh with some slightly better placeholder textures.
Have reduced the Tri count by around 100k so far... Will reduce that more after I get it eroded how I want it.

 

[herpderphurrdude]

No worries mate... Glad you got it working

Are we allowed to run this on a public open server?

 

[Phoenix77]

Are we allowed to run this on a public open server?

Yeah of course you can mate

In fact if there are online servers, I will.. at some point... create some online pursuit layouts... With some differences...
One change being the pit / start locations spread across 23km....
With quite a few other enhancements, which I will announce later on

I hope you have a blast mate, feel free to post any screenshots or videos in this thread mate

 

[ALB123]

Also looking in to getting better transition textures...
These are looking a bit sh** at the moment... as not the proper textures.
But at least this time I will be allowing for "side panels" which I didn't do before
View attachment 198025
Hopefully I'll get a nice big block of time at the weekend to, hopefully, smooth out the rest of the terrain, so when I put the road spline in they flow more like LA Canyons.

Yup. That is such an important thing. LilSki is incredible with blending his textures. Drive around Bridgehampton slowly and watch the edges of the road. There is no repetition which would throw away the realism. It looks exactly like you'd expect a track sitting in a sandy environment to look like. When I go a little wide I swear I can feel a thin layer of sand beneath me wheels. Glad to hear you're still plugging along. For your first two projects you sure picked enormous roads.

 

[Phoenix77]

Yup. That is such an important thing. LilSki is incredible with blending his textures. Drive around Bridgehampton slowly and watch the edges of the road. There is no repetition which would throw away the realism. It looks exactly like you'd expect a track sitting in a sandy environment to look like. When I go a little wide I swear I can feel a thin layer of sand beneath me wheels. Glad to hear you're still plugging along. For your first two projects you sure picked enormous roads.

I'm comparing the actual PCH roadside photo's... and it's mostly a dirt / gravel with weeds along the edge... and will soon be matching my asphalt and transition textures to colour match this rough comp from google maps...

I wouldn't expect Lilski's level of blending, and repetition avoiding textures... as this track is a different beast... the fact this is 23km's means things are going to be different to a regular "far smaller" track...
also the fact that (at the moment) the terrain is around 2 million polys straight away eats into resources a far flatter track wouldn't be using... Hopefully a pro-optimiser modifier in Max will help get this down from 2 million polys to something more optimal...

On another note, here's a quick test of the flow of the side road that's going to be in the next version...
Very very driftable in the Lambo!

The work on LA Canyons was time well spent as I've learnt quite a few tricks about the road splines that I wouldn't have risked trying otherwise...
Sometimes a diversion is a good thing, even if it is a 42km diversion

 

[herpderphurrdude]

Yeah of course you can mate

In fact if there are online servers, I will.. at some point... create some online pursuit layouts... With some differences...
One change being the pit / start locations spread across 23km....
With quite a few other enhancements, which I will announce later on

I hope you have a blast mate, feel free to post any screenshots or videos in this thread mate

You should make a freeroam and a loop version of this, bet the cruise RP crowd would playing this!

Add 2 slots of this and you've got a good RP thing going!

 

[Phoenix77]

You should make a freeroam and a loop version of this, bet the cruise RP crowd would playing this!

Add 2 slots of this and you've got a good RP thing going!

That cruiser is pretty cool... It's a shame that light bar couldn't be transferred to a few Lambo's and Corvettes... What's RP stand for?

I'm soon going to be tweaking the gas stations / parking lots to give the AI more space to turn round for a "traffic" loop version...
And free for roam you can just use practice mode... and use this mod to get rid of the wrong way sign... http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/no-wrong-way-sign.5701/
Might need to turn penalties off though.

 

[Phoenix77]

It's a shame I won't be able to use these 16k satellite textures... (They're 280mb)

But they will help with placing trees and bushes.

 

[movo.]

Man those satellite textures look awesome! Make those optional maybe?

 

[SS454]

is it possible to use them?

 

[Phoenix77]

Man those satellite textures look awesome! Make those optional maybe?

Cheers mate, yeah I was thinking about doing an addon pack with a load of extras... which I'll make clear later...
Either way at the moment I downloaded them in png format... when I dds them they should be a lot less hopefully... This is the look I'm after anyway... one way or another I'll get the terrain looking like this.
I think there seems to be a limit to opening big textures up... these were originally almost 32k lol

is it possible to use them?

It's possible to use them... But when everything (when ammended) goes back in... bear in mind that I won't be holding back on the amount of trees and bushes... an extra 16k texture will more than likely be a pretty big performance drain...
I'll have to see how much I can optimise the terrain... and how things run...
But I will make them available somewhere for anyone with a beast of a PC and who wants them.

Serious thanks goes to @Amir Vodokotlic for recommending SASPlanet! LA Canyons will be getting the same treatment

 

[Phoenix77]

I won't be able to spend any time on this for months... Probably 4 months or so...
But this is something else I will work on after Pacific v1.0 gets released...The Norikura Skyline...

I will then juggle LA Canyons with this future track...
I personally find it good to have a few things in the pipeline to keep things fresh...
I obviously like very mountainous, very long road courses

 

[Mr.JamesJohnson]

What's RP stand for?

RP stands for Role Play(ing)

 

[Phoenix77]

Now you mention it... that sounds so obvious, thanks!... there I was thinking it was something Assetto specific lol

 

[Phoenix77]

If anyone was curious about the accuracy of the road positioning of this track... If you look closely you can see the yellow centreline from the actual satellite image... It's not 100% accurate over the whole 23km... But it's pretty damn close

I've got another few kilometres of smoothing to do... then the fun stuff can begin!
Wish me luck that some of the previous elements still work...

All the road will have to go back in... all nice and flowing though, with natural elevations and curves!
The HR FFB mesh will obviously have to be redone...
as will all the AI lines... and track cameras will need totally re-doing... Boll***s!! lol
Probably the roadsigns will need a fair amount of re-positioning...
I might as well start from scratch with the trees and bushes..
Road surface texture re-working with side panel transition textures...
and probably a load of other stuff which I won't think about right now.

 

[millen]

Looking absolutely brilliant mate. That terrain looks very detailed.

epic stuff.

 

[Phoenix77]

Looking absolutely brilliant mate. That terrain looks very detailed.

epic stuff.

Thanks mate Bear in mind that's in Max, without AC's shaders...
When I use a mask and the detail textures and a normal map it will really start to pop

Also I've so far managed to get the terrain polys (Tri's) down by 800,000 while keeping the same detail... With probably another 300,000 - 400,000 more to come out... It should leave a lot of room for trees.... lots and lots of trees
Very accurately placed trees...
Then I have the fun of painting light shadows on to the diffuse terrain texture to help simulate the shadows, while remaining optimised So I can turn of the medium - far tree shadows because it's on the terrain texture under them...

I'm also thinking outside the box with big forest areas... I might do them as a big block, detaching the terrain mesh... raising it up by 40 - 50 ft... doing a treewall around the edges... and using a seamless "top down" texture on top so it should work from above with the future HeliCams... That would save a ton of individual trees... It all depends what kind of distance it works from.

This is tons of tedious work... But in my head I can see how this is going to make this how I imagined it when I started it