Tracks Pacific Coast 1.0

[acrox999]

Thanks @acrox999 glad you like it,
Sorry mate, there's not a lot of point checking out the video... as Pacific Coast is getting such a big overhaul... After taking the decision to get the road flow more like LA Canyons... Pretty much everything is getting re-done... While I'm at it I'm getting it prepared for a few other things...

Roadsigns, bushes, trees, FFB mesh, AI lines, layouts, barriers, road position, terrain smoothing, track cameras..... But it's all going to be more than a little bit better Just as soon as I get the chance to get the sidepanels blended 100% the other things will fall into place.

It's all cool man. I love cruising at both Pacific Coast and LA Canyon. They're really fun and amazing.

View attachment 202585
A rough max screenshot of the mansion in place... with a 3km... driveway...
which is possibly the longest pitlane in AC....
The AI can make it down in one piece on a race weekend... which looks cool

Traffic AI on this map would be super awesome. Imagine having something like a gathering there and everyone moving together like a convoy.

Looking terrific so far. Do take your time with it, this will definitely be one of the best map soon.

 

[Phoenix77]

It's all cool man. I love cruising at both Pacific Coast and LA Canyon. They're really fun and amazing.

Traffic AI on this map would be super awesome. Imagine having something like a gathering there and everyone moving together like a convoy.

Looking terrific so far. Do take your time with it, this will definitely be one of the best map soon.

Great that you're having fun along here and at the canyons... That's the main thing

I've intentionally altered the parking lots to allow more room for the AI to turn around and do "laps"... I will also be including at least 48 pit (possibly 60+) / start positions spaced at 1km increments across the map for the traffic version... so as soon as you start you have 24 cars heading in your direction... and 24 cars to overtake... I also might be able to limit the AI to only overtaking on the straight sections, and will limit their top speed with an ai_hints

I might also do an online server version... with 20 pit boxes in the north, 20 pit boxes in the south and 8 pit boxes at the mansion... But I will decide on all of that later.

I have put in a few sideroads in the new version... a total of around 7km's of extra roads so far... I'm planning ahead for possible police chase scenarios... Some of the side roads will be noticeable... some of them will be very well hidden... almost like the entrance to the Bat Cave

On a separate note... I wish there was a way to get rid of the pit guy holding the lollipop... He's not following the mansion dress code... without a suit and a tie

If anyone knows how to get rid of him, let me know... cheers!

 

[acrox999]

That's a lot of work! Seems like you have a lot of things planned out very well already. Police chase scenarios sounds so fun, like those good old days of playing Need For Speed.

 

[scoobywrxfan555]

holy cow,this is epic.cant wait

 

[schrep1964]

Great that you're having fun along here and at the canyons... That's the main thing
View attachment 202619
I've intentionally altered the parking lots to allow more room for the AI to turn around and do "laps"... I will also be including at least 48 pit (possibly 60+) / start positions spaced at 1km increments across the map for the traffic version... so as soon as you start you have 24 cars heading in your direction... and 24 cars to overtake... I also might be able to limit the AI to only overtaking on the straight sections, and will limit their top speed with an ai_hints

I might also do an online server version... with 20 pit boxes in the north, 20 pit boxes in the south and 8 pit boxes at the mansion... But I will decide on all of that later.

I have put in a few sideroads in the new version... a total of around 7km's of extra roads so far... I'm planning ahead for possible police chase scenarios... Some of the side roads will be noticeable... some of them will be very well hidden... almost like the entrance to the Bat Cave

On a separate note... I wish there was a way to get rid of the pit guy holding the lollipop... He's not following the mansion dress code... without a suit and a tie
View attachment 202620
If anyone knows how to get rid of him, let me know... cheers!

Hi,

To hide the lollipop guys, go to assettocorsa/content/objects3d and move the file "pitcrew_Left" to some other folder (best to make backup folder inside objects3d folder). Credits to Matyeah.

 

[Phoenix77]

That's a lot of work! Seems like you have a lot of things planned out very well already. Police chase scenarios sounds so fun, like those good old days of playing Need For Speed.

The different layouts should be relatively straight forward.. The job I've almost finished has been Loads and Loads of work... getting the track side panels smoothed between the terrain and the road... I'm hoping things will speed up after I get this stage totally finished.
My aim with this track was a Test Drive type of track... using Assetto physics...
NFS also applies pretty well though Have you seen this thread where some extremely talented modders are re-creating all the NFS 1 cars?
http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/the-need-for-speed.134193/

 

[Phoenix77]

holy cow,this is epic.cant wait

Thanks mate, it was a really good decision to back-track and redo the road... Loads and loads of work... But the road is FAR more accurate... ok it's not laserscanned... but it's pretty accurate to all of the google street view angles I checked....
And the flow.... It's now much much better, massively more driftable... I can't wait to get it all to come together

I'm especially looking forward to cloning the visual road mesh and using a transparency / normal map over the top to give certain sections cracks and tar lines... I then intend to take those cracks / tar line textures and turn them into displacement maps for the physical road, so you'll hopefully feel them through FFB as well as see them. I will be keeping it resonably subtle though.

 

[Phoenix77]

Hi,

To hide the lollipop guys, go to assettocorsa/content/objects3d and move the file "pitcrew_Left" to some other folder (best to make backup folder inside objects3d folder). Credits to Matyeah.

Superb mate, thanks for sharing that... It looks much much better
and thanks to @Matyeah also.... It's a shame I can't include that as part of the mod (could possibly do it through the JSGME thing)...
But I will make a note of it somewhere so people can turn them off if they want to.

Thanks again mate!

 

[acrox999]

The different layouts should be relatively straight forward.. The job I've almost finished has been Loads and Loads of work... getting the track side panels smoothed between the terrain and the road... I'm hoping things will speed up after I get this stage totally finished.
My aim with this track was a Test Drive type of track... using Assetto physics...
NFS also applies pretty well though Have you seen this thread where some extremely talented modders are re-creating all the NFS 1 cars?
http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/the-need-for-speed.134193/

OMG, Test Drive Unlimited was my favourite game. I've been thinking to drive and cruise around in a huge map using AC with realistic traffic to recreate that feeling of TDU again. Maybe one day someone will pick up the idea and write scripts or mods to have a roleplay online server in the game. Would be pretty cool.

And oh yeah, I have the NSX from that project, never realised it was a part of a project though. Too bad it's broken now and still waiting for the update.

 

[Phoenix77]

I'm going back a bit further than TDU... I was imagining the first Test Drive game when I started this project...

That's why the gas stations are styled along the lines of this...

Pacific Coast will have as realistic traffic as I can manage with the AC engine.
Test Drive Unlimited was a great game... But due to the physics limitations with AC, the larger the distance from the track models physical centre you go...
the more the physics go wonky... with shaking and graphical glitches
There's kind of a limit of 16km x 16km...
Pacific Coast is slightly over the size limit. So I doubt there will ever be Hawaii in AC... AC 2.. who knows?

Yeah a roleplay server could be pretty damn cool... especially using the Need For Speed cars. Yeah the awesome NSX is broken atm (I think there is a workaround mentioned somewhere) but I'm sure when the author gets it fixed... It will be even more awesome than before

 

[Phoenix77]

The terrain is now signed off as done, so hopefully things can increase in speed...
The time spent doing this was completely worth it. The flow is now SO SO much better...

This 3km road leading to the mansion is now worthy of having it's own layouts... Mansion Downhill, Mansion Uphill..
Mansion North & Mansion South will start here and the head to the North and South gas stations.

Just testing out how the "traffic" layout works out... Seems fine so far... except for a couple of incidents.
I'm weighing up restricting the AI from overtaking to prevent these headons that occured...
But it might limit the fun and might cause traffic jams. We shall see

I plan on having three traffic layouts. 2 of which will use the below real world turnout as a loop back.
There will be Southbound, Northbound and Full traffic versions.
I will release layout addons as separate mods mostly because of the size of long AI lines...
but also to keep the main track download simple as the mansion "pit lane" needs penalties turned off... and the wrong way png needs to be made transparent, same goes for the traffic layouts, obviously.

There are now a number of spots to stop along the way... again these are accurately placed to the real world..

And here's one of the 6 side roads (accurate to the real road) that will be useful if anyone plans on having Pursuits, I intend to hide these with plenty of trees... 4 of them are dirt tracks... 2 of them are tarmac.

The poly (Tri) count is around 1.7 million for everything... The terrain alone was over 2 million previously... And the DIP's are around 1000 at the moment. I will keep that as low as possible.
I will use plenty of Pro-Optimiser modifiers to get that 1.7m down much further before planting a ton of trees, bushes etc.

 

[SS454]

high poly count is okay. Ppl having performance issues need an excuse for a better PC.

 

[Phoenix77]

high poly count is okay. Ppl having performance issues need an excuse for a better PC.

Going higher on the poly count is pretty hard to avoid on seriously undulating terrain.
With a ProOptimiser modifier most terrain sections can be reduced by 60% with no noticeable difference... I might be able to drop that a bit further so the poly count will probably be around the 500k mark, 4 times less than before.

There are a number of reasons I will be concentrating on reducing the poly count...
firstly, the more I drop it down... The more trees I can put in...
The trees I intend to use will use a bit more than a simple 16 tri X tree, 18 tri's if I have a downward facing plane to cast shadows on the floor.
Instead I'm planning on doing something a little different, so the trees will also hopefully work well from above, for future HeliCams, and cast some nice shadows.

Secondly for the Full traffic version... due to the 23km track length.... If you ever want to see another car ... I have to up the amount of AI on the track to around the 60 mark. On the 11km South Traffic layout, 25 AI means pretty frequent traffic...
The full traffic version will have the option to do a full race weekend... So I've needed to make space for a big pit area in the South (will need a few street lights)... I have to get all these parking areas nailed before I can finalise the layouts.

The gap just behind the building will be used for the "race track" loop back....
The other bit will be the pit lane...
This is a some improvements on the Northern gas station parking lot...

And every side road now has it's own parking lot... Shame you can't have multiple pit_lanes

 

[Phoenix77]

50 AI can leave this parking lot now... with a few shunts... But this isn't a standard pitlane so that's expected.

 

[Phoenix77]

Things are progressing slowly but nicely... one quick question, if anyone knows...
Is there a limit to the amount of AC_PIT / AC_START's Assetto's engine can have?

 

[Leonardo Ratafiá]

there ir a 108 grid mod for the ring so I don't think that's a problem

 

[Jez_Hammond]

An interesting side effect I noticed with "pitboxes" setting (in the limited ui_track.json file) while experimenting with IoM TT's AI; increasing the value from 10 to 30ish...only the first 20 boxes had cars in them, while I started 30th.

108 grid (or traffic) would be fun anywhere! I must try that Nord mod @Leonardo

 

[Phoenix77]

there ir a 108 grid mod for the ring so I don't think that's a problem

Thanks for the info mate Glad to know it shouldn't be a problem.

An interesting side effect I noticed with "pitboxes" setting (in the limited ui_track.json file) while experimenting with IoM TT's AI; increasing the value from 10 to 30ish...only the first 20 boxes had cars in them, while I started 30th.

108 grid (or traffic) would be fun anywhere! I must try that Nord mod @Leonardo

Cheers for the info Jez... I'll keep an eye out for any side effects.. Hopefully if there are any side effects they'll be interesting

All I will say (for now) is I have loads of parking spaces after expanding both the North and South parking lots, which I originally did just to give the AI a bit more space to turn around. It's a bonus that I can now fit a lot more pit boxes in.

 

[Phoenix77]

Unfortunately this project has hit a bit of a speedbump... Due to something I've done... a modifier or something in 3DS, my terrain mesh has gone faceted...
I've unified the vert normals.. which solves the facetting problem and makes the terrain look pretty normal... Apart from the "normal seams". But the terrain shadows have gone loopy... and the temp trees I'm using to test a few things... don't cast the texture's alpha transparency outline on to the terrain... instead resulting in "blocky" shadows.

Also on my road transition textures if I have depth mode on eNoZWrite (the setting I want to use)... the transition textures disappear so I'm using eDepthNormal instead... I'm pretty sure these two things are linked... and somewhere the terrain mesh is slightly ****ed!

As everything goes on to the terrain... I'm not about to put a ton of things in only for them to have to come out again if I need to do something drastic to the terrain mesh. Until I solve this it's pretty much on standby.. B***ocks!

This is how crap they look in the editor... I've also tested in game and they look just as crap

It's a shame as this mansion road is really fun to drift down.

 

[Phoenix77]

On a positive note... even with the terrain issue... It's looking like this in game