Tracks Applecross 0.9

[Leonardo Ratafiá]

hi, you (and everybody) should look at tracks like https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/la-canyons.15067/ which is under 500mb and it's 42Km.
Optimization of resources, objects, textures is the key on a good track. Any track over RD limits is clearly not well optimized and imo not even worth downloading since it will generate loss on performance.
I always appreciate the work on new tracks, specially roads but having to download 1Gb for a track is definitely
nothing personal, probably the track is great and I'm missing it.

 

[Grant Hendry]

Thanks for your feedback post

The track is optimised with draw distances and LODs for the buildings, along with UV texture maps for the buildings and DDS format textures. FPS on a single screen is 220plus and VR is steady at 90fps

The DIP, (Draw Index Primitive) avg is about 1200 for a track that contains over 80km of road then the DIP is very good. DIP is the command sent to the graphics card to draw, the higher the number the more work it has to do

At nearly 80km of roads this track is roughly 4x the size of KS version of Nords, which when compressed with 7z, is 523mb and if the Nords was the size of Applecross it would be about 2.2GB compressed. Both of these would exceed the 500mb RD limit

 

[LilSki]

I took a minute to look at this thing and it's far from optimized. Main thing is duplicate textures everywhere causing excessive file size. There is no reason a track even this long that looks like this should be that big.

 

[Grant Hendry]

When i first made a track it was full of PNG/JPG files with everything at 2000 draw distance and at one point 6500 textures. I figured out how to make a LOD model in Blender, make basic models, make UV maps for the models, make normal maps for the models and make sure everything was DDS to the power of 2. So all things being relative this track is optimised and runs well for the size of it.

I keep on learning and teaching myself how to accomplish things to make the final product better. It would be better if someone that was high in the golden tower was to point out the way to make things better quicker but as this old fart has to find out the hard way, it takes time and a lot of trial and error but i get there in the end

Thanks for the input, i will look into reducing the duplicate textures

.

 

[scoobywrxfan555]

runs great for me mate, good job, keep it up

 

[alekabul]

Hi, Grant
Thank you for the big and involving tracks. I`m posting here feedback because updating Applecross from v0.8 to v0.9 did not much good for my game. The biggest trouble is the ground shaking - it`s imposible to drive. To recreate the problem you may try starting "Practice" from "Starting Line". I`ve tried every one of the layouts and then again with disabled Custom Shaders. Only way to stop the earthquake is to move "Back to pits" but that is a very remote location away from the start line. Then "Restart Session" moves the car again on the start and the shaking is back on. For now I`ll stick with the older version as it worked better albeit less colorful and shorter.

As development unfolds on this track may I recommend using the "UV animating shader for water" that would make large parts of the visuals more appealing? I`ve seen it in action and looks very natural. It would be very nice to have that in Applecross.

I`ve tried to make the areas adjacent to the road kick up dust and incur an oscillation when driven on but editing "surfaces.ini" got no such effect. Maybe those are not defined as "GRASS" nor "OFFTRACK". More natural would be to have the effects every time one steps out of the road.

On textures there is a need of slight adjusting the brightness and/or saturation on some of the trees and shrubs but most of them are already pretty. Problem is wherever my windscreen sees trees the gpu load triples and a brand new gtx 1660 starts lagging below 60 fps and even <50 fps whilst in open areas it pulls steady with ~40% load. I know - dynamic reflections on the car are heavy but it`s ok on many other forested tracks. Maybe moderate use of textured "tree walls" is needed or a decrease of the overall number of trees.

The most lagging parts of the course:

In the instructions "Download and install this file to assettocorsa/extension/config/tracks , this will bring on the street and RV lights
https://mega.nz/#!VbAG0CTD!OGRX-2M1XrAdC1ZTyyApT8vZrA6P7pz1sEUohNSamcc"
did you mean "assettocorsa\extension\config\tracks\loaded" where I can see all other config "*.ini" of other tracks? It worked well when in the folder with the rest.

Also on final touches it would be nice to prepare and include in the upload VAO patch for the track. I know, it`s a monstrous task but patience is a virtue of yours as the work so far reveals it.

I`m almost done preparing a long loop for driving with AI traffic in additional layout but I think that releasing it now will leave many people disappointed because of the aforementioned problems. Maybe when v1.0 is out...

Good luck with this fine project!

 

[alekabul]

After closer look there are some more suggestions:
- on buildings there needs to be separate object (better more than one) for windows in order to make possible illumination at night.
- for the pits to function properly the "1ROAD_265" object needs to be renamed "1PITS". Verified in "Trackday".

Probably the earthquake on the start line is due to it being very far from the center, and the no shake in the pits due to being very close to the center.

To remedy that maybe making the stretch between the pits exit and the rockie bit twice as wide and placing checkered start grid there is gonna help.

OR
Making separate four ".kn5" road meshes from the roads to have as much as possible distance close to a center:

Some additional read on the subject .
And that`s the reason a big track like the LAC to be comfy for driving:

Making puddles a special no grip surface is great. Hope you manage to do it for both mesh and textures aligned.

Making 4 stages with individual starts needs also 4 different pit lanes, and respectively named too. Those individual starts and different pit lanes can be separate ".kn5" insertable by "models_***.ini" of each layout.

 

[alekabul]

To help with the overall balancing the colors I propose to use the neat trick of loading the track in AC with the Custom Shaders Patch and Weather FX active (fixed on Clear and time at 0x), and then editing the config file of the track "applecross.ini" residing in "..\extension\config\tracks\loaded\". Every time the file gets saved the values are automatically reloaded in game so you can immediately see the effect of the new values ( also in any day time and in any chosen weather too).

That way you can save great deal of time adjusting the look of any part of the track. Just better at the end to put all the values from the config into the corresponding model for every corrected material.

 

[alekabul]

earthquake on the start line

Found the way to make it subside... Separated the physics objects in a different model and moved everything 9000 m on "x" axis

You can test the result and if you like it - use it for the next release.
Cheers!

 

[alekabul]

If you wonder why the game does not obey the coordinates in "models...ini" for all the models - that`s because some of them (object2, object3 and string1) contain "protected mesh" objects. I propose everything physics related on the track to be in the one "applecross_phy" separate model - "*ROAD", "*GRASS", "*WALL", etc. and tagged non-rendered and no-shadows. In the other models there should be only the visual stuff as this is the easy fix by only batch-renaming the objects to preserve their other properties.

 

[Mascot]

Thanks to @alekabul it sounds like this particular apple is ripe for a re-release.

 

[alekabul]

Well, since I got busy with Applecross for a while I think it would be beneficial for the project to share some of my findings:
- the woods stop to impose the heavy GPU load when shadows are disabled on the trees. That way everything else can operate normally;
- the LOD_Out of the cliffs at the hillclimb is set too low and they pop in one by one in front of you. Setting that from 600 to 4000 has no significant effect on performance but is much nicer;
- the LOD_Out of the trees and the airborn objects is also too low. Setting that high enough to be seen from 10 km has no significant effect on performance but is much nicer.

 

[halsey1006]

The MEGA links seem to have stopped working for me, says the file is unavailable.

 

[Jukka Drugg]

Same thing for me

 

[Artek Fantasy]

Links for download dont' work!

 

[kaneda06]

same to me

 

[alekabul]

Good to know you are still working on this. And to help a little - this piece of terrain needs physics enabled so we don't fall under

Cheers!

 

[Tokai83]

As other posters have stated, the mega links are dead. Can anyone help me out in getting a download of this track ?

Thanks

 

[alekabul]

As other posters have stated, the mega links are dead. Can anyone help me out in getting a download of this track ?

Thanks

The link that Grant posted a year ago is working. And my AI lines are still valid with that. Have a close look into this message.

 

[Tokai83]

The link that Grant posted a year ago is working. And my AI lines are still valid with that. Have a close look into this message.

Thank you. Much appreciated