Road Texture Preference? Style?

[kohnboy]

I am currently working on a new modern private track and would like to incorporate a road texture which is quite dark and new looking (freshly painted white lines, no cracks, etc).

The available xpacks come close but are not quite what I was looking for.

I delved into some texture updates from others to see how other tracks have been done. I see most go for a 512X512 texture or smaller. Some have stripes in the road texture. Some are on both sides. Some are one sided. And I am assuming the seamless texture is added to the middle of the road...

Others have an additional thin stripe of texture for the white lines which I assume is added as a thin terrain box around both sides of the track? Or as a added part of the larger texture.... That is not clear.

Long story short how are most people making and adding in road textures??

I've tested a variety of road textures and find some blur the white border lines in the mid distance.
Adding the white lines as terrain texture seems to stop that issue.

I'm leaning towards using my dark hi res texture for the whole track and adding the stripes in as terrain on both sides.
Has anyone else done this? Good idea? Is there a better idea? Best FPS??

Any sugestions would be appreciated. I want to build this one right from the start!
Thanks.

 

[QuadCoreMax]

Interesting thread...

It's best integrating stripe along the road texture, eventually adding/blending some grass on the edge borders for real nice transitions.
Another good way, for stripping your track, is to 'Sobjects' your alpha textured strips (all forms, colors, in/middle/out...) on 1 or 2 merged quads.

I've actually created a new Xpack including alpha skid marks regrouped under 1 map only, that means 8 different skids. I payed some attention to the proportions, so approx. a 30cm wide wheel & a 2m wheelbase for the polies. They were created at 0.01 m +Z & actually overlapping them, looks promising enough.

Same could be done for roads where you have some alpha dirt textures (also called 'decals') to blend 2 different road textures with Objects or even better with Sobjects.

 

[Raido]

I am currently working on a new modern private track and would like to incorporate a road texture which is quite dark and new looking

Hey Kohnboy, is this still your HK Kai Tak track? Been eagerly waiting for that one (but haven't heard about updates for a while, hence my question :tongue: ).

Dark texture for new asphalt sounds good but you'd also have to encompass the effect of sunlight on the road though. rFactor already is not that good in this department, and dark road textures tend to get unrealistically dark quite fast in rF (like driving on a black void, if you know what I mean).

 

[kohnboy]

Raido,
I've gotten much further with Kai Tak but was facing a little burnout. The track has been my sole project for almost 2 years. I've had 2 crashes of my PC. I've started over from scratch twice. This year I have moved from Asia back to the US. Plus I have family. I am happy with it but it looks like a WIP still in some parts- and I've learned so much along the way that I know I should go back and correct a lot of it. That said the thought of going back to earlier versions and rebuilding is daunting.

I don't want this to be work!

So I decided to put it on the back burner for now and build something completely different. Twists, Turns and Elevation! The latter something I have not had a lot of with a airport derived track! Anyhow I'll post some hotlapping from Kai Tak tonight to show you some progress. In parts it looks pretty sweet.

As for this thread- I went with adding white strips to the tarmac I had in mind. Imported it and it looks great. Am finding it is a lot easier to tweak & get this right from the start and be happy with it early than 1 and half years later when the track has ballooned to be being very large and prone to crashes if/when you want to change a basic element.

Still would like to hear from others on their preferred means of laying down road textures...
There is always something to learn in BTB.

 

[Alex Kyriak]

I have been experimenting with street tracks recently. I use a bitmap at 1024 wide x 512 length pixels. The width gives you the detail across the track. I made an asphalt texture for the basic road texture, then in photoshop created layers with different lines arrangements to create the different road markings, ie, normal dashed, double lines, crossings, stop lines, 'stop' text, etc. Export these as DDS files and when applied it gives a believable(ish) amount of variation. I was also going for the "new" appearance, rather than the old cracked and worn out appearance, although I have left in some detail of the aspalt itself, and the joins you get when the road builders roll two sections of asphalt together. I also stick a basic bump and specular map on it, otherwise it can appear quite dark.

 

[Johannes Rojola]

I follow quite exactly the same procedure than what Alex told there, also I might add more painted road markings with wall tool in places which would otherwise require lots of complicated textures.