Thank you for bringing this track to Sim Racing!
It must've taken nearly 1000's of hours to complete it.
I followed your updates regularly and couldn't wait to finally try it out.
The Lotus 25 for example, feels good around the track and is fun.
But when I tried it, there were immediately some things that were bugging me about it/made me feel a bit disappointed.
First thing I noticed are the 2D trees. They are a lot of them (Some floating, but that's ok for this big track).
Noticed the only 3D tree near the end of my first lap. I wish there would be more of them, especially near the track. Those 2D trees kinda ruin the immersion for me, and the 3D one gives the track just such a great atmosphere.
The other thing I noticed immediately, that most bollards near the track have no collider. Which is a shame.
I took a look at the performance, to see if it had something to do with that, but no, the performance is awesome, so there's room to improve.
What I also noticed was a general washed out look, but to be fair that was part of the ppfilter i used (Naturalmod Photomode). With the "pure" ppfilter the track looks much more vibrant.
Another point that reduces the fun is the roadmesh. In general, it feels low resolution aka you feel steps in the road, especially in the mountain sector. The bumps in general feel nice, I just wish they have more triangles.
The tire marks feel a bit too much for me, like theres too many of them and they don't look all to great
Cars in the pitboxes to the front are a bit too much to the right. Their wheel can get clipped. Not the end of the world, but giving a noticeable negative impression of the track.
One model that doesn't look so great are the, I think decagon shaped poles. You can see the subdivisions very clearly, and that's not great to look at, for me at least. On many of them, the normals catapult you back onto the track.
The buildings and most other models look really great, on the other hand, imo. Especially the start-finish area.
I really like the details like the tricolore banners in the city.
I also like that you can't really fall off the track once you outbreak yourself for example (didn't try every opportunity, but haven't encountered it yet). The huge amount of pitboxes is also amazing. The lack of them is the biggest downside of Napoli, your previous track.
Though the shading/lighting could be improved (Don't know how much can be changed). The buildings look great in general, but I think they could look better with different shading.
Some textures look flat, while others have depth and look great.
I think the track has great potential, but is still rough around the edges. It feels a bit empty, though understandable.
Currently, a 3.5/5 for me.
The 6$ are understandable, due to the immense amount of time invested, but other than that; it's hard to find arguments that justify the price tag.
I don't know what of the things I noticed, cannot be changed, due to restrictions in the other sims, but I hope the track will be further improved in the future.
Maybe I see some things a bit too harsh, but this is my honest opinion about the track.
Thanks for your feedback, and sorry for your disappointment!
I've already replied by PM, but I'll briefly answer/explain a few things here raised in your post.
-It was around 5000 hours, since April 2021, and since August 2023 full time.
-3D trees - yes they look better than 2D ones and I'm sorry if that takes away the immersion for you. I had making the track for 3 sims in mind, and as there are 12000 at a conservative estimate, and each one being 500 polys minimum to look half decent, that's a lot of polygons.
It would have meant redoing all the trees for AC, or adding CSP trees, and I didn't do so.
-Bollards. I was strongly advised by a tester that with collisions (both for sole bollards and the fences made with planks in between) activated it would be pretty dangerous for drivers using DD wheels. There are several hundred of the things, too many to make moveable, and too punitive to have them end your race or that of the AI if hitting one. There's a lot to crash into as it is, I thought that was perhaps the best design choice.
-pp filters I haven't experimented with too much, you can make AC look like the surface of the sun or the base of a coal mine, and everything in-between. I went with textures that hopefully don't leave it looking too bright or dark using more normal pp filters.
-Decagon shaped poles, before I exported to AC I thought I had smoothed everything, if the normals aren't smoothed for those objects then it didn't work for those and I'll have a look at them. If you're on track and hit a pole I guess you'll maybe most likely bounce back towards the track?
- Road mesh - resolution changes around the track, but there's nothing bigger than 1m by 1m in the twisty bits IIRC. I took the LiDAR data, photogrammetric data and used it to generate the mesh with perhaps a 'raw' unsmoothed result, rather than taking a set cross section and lofting it and adding in fake bumps etc. There are lots of compressions/crests which perhaps feel longer and therefore lower res?
- I will look at the pitboxes, Napoli it was impossible to put many more in, there was nowhere I could physically put them.
-There is some weird stuff going on with a few buildings, ones with arches that have normalmaps, they look fine in AMS and rF2, and with ksperpixel shader, but add in a normal map and there are black triangles where I chamfered the arches, even though it responds to light direction fine in kseditor. Those buildings would need redoing entirely, just to take a normalmap, time constraints meant it was easier just to change the shader, but yes, some lack depth.
I'm aware that the track has some things that aren't optimal, and I had to make some compromises just to get some things to work across the three sims, or to streamline the process. I'm sorry the end result wasn't what you had hoped for.
Regards,
Giuseppe.
www.motorsportmagazine.com
