Bob Blunderton
patreon
"FINALLY" landing, now with a better airport!
🕑 Added 2021-02-27 23:55:36 +0000 UTCA new airport runway and tarmac arrangement greets pilots at the top of our list of new features this time around.
From one end of the runway to another is roughly FIVE MILES, and there's a pair of runways, too. 36L and 36R north and 18L and 18R south. It's 4.5 miles exactly from touch-down spot to the opposing touch-down spot on each runway, and the distance between one runway pair and the shorter ones closer to the highway / flyover is roughly about two miles. It's a MONSTER, and by far and wide the largest model in the entire map, dwarfing the mall.
Some fixed textures and misc annoying bugs squashed.
There's also some more development just across the highway from the townhouses added in 3 months ago, near the worst buy.
The first AWFFLE HOUSE has appear in the map. It's not 100% done but it's close.
A super-steep hill like those in SF USA is also nearby.
A LOT of detail was added to the parking areas at the civilian airport, bringing them more in-line with what you'd expect in a modern game. However, I was a bit rushed at the last minute (not you guys, it's my doing) as this was a good month over-due so I had to cut out a little time to place extra stop signs and road signs etc.
The textures on the ring-road at the airport and some lot textures are VASTLY improved, and will continue to be worked on here and there as I do more to the area.
There's a few bugs and imperfections such as:
Airport parking area missing some stop signs and misc signs.
Minor seaming issues on the wear overlays on the airport tarmac in regards to taxi-way appearance and methods used / how I was able to keep draw calls down so low.
The corners on the taxi-ways and runways are not 100% perfect on collisions in regards to how smooth the corners actually are. I didn't want the narrow fine detailed corners causing vehicles to get stuck, so I made it a simple 45 degree angle collision for now to keep the triangles which make up the object larger and less likely to stick you. I will work on this more later. The runways and taxi-ways are fine with collision and shouldn't eat you otherwise.
The map may desire to use up to 8.5GB of video memory. I have to work this down over time but in the end, 8GB will only be able to do medium detail - there's just no way around this with the game engine unable to unload assets on the fly when they're out of sight. I am working with the developers on this issue and trying to get them to help me out here.
So if your performance is poor especially by the airport edge of the map, turn down detail to medium and re-load the map. Medium detail should be used on 4gb~8gb cards. Anything with 10gb or more should be fine on high detail. If it still gets slow and you have 10~12gb or more on your video card, do post to the forum about it as that is a bug/undesired at that point.
The following file is 3.44GB and can take a while to download. The map may take two minutes or more to load in-game, but even if it seems frozen up while loading, just leave it go for up to 10 minutes (until it loads). If it still does not load, please forward me your system specs and make sure to have at-least 12~16GB of memory in your system.
"https://mega.nz/file/KJUwCJzY#1hxbyGnKfq4gGQVSlqKtoKQq6WuzphU_yPer846KVMY"
End of March or early April for the next following beta.
Other bugs:
Traffic lights on low detail don't work. I have a solution it will just take a while to implement it.
Some minor graphical issues with roads scrambling in appearance (but otherwise fine), and the occasional bush-in-the-road (tm) issue on the rural side of the map.
This took entirely too long. Sorry about the time it took, but real life can do these things to you. I was fine with delaying a week or two to take time learning Houdini, which is better modeling software. I was NOT fine with having to delay this additionally to work on my sister's future home - a single-wide trailer where it rained inside when it rained outside. It's a rent to own property that used-to-be a trap-house (drug house), which we cleared out and cleaned out (don't wish this on my worst enemy)... and I'm still finding and gutting moldy walls, floors, and so-forth. However, it must be done; as she and her 12 year old daughter (my niece) need a place to stay and once fixed up, this will be absolutely perfect and will be a nice cozy little home.
So you can see that while I am physically disabled, I have been brought up in construction my whole life, and the highlight of my weekly TV watching in the 80's and 90's as a kid was Thursday night on PBS at 8pm when "This Old House" and "Home Time" would come on and I could see how things get fixed. There are things I can do (and then must take one to a few days off to recover physically), lots of things, there's just not enough physical endurance left in my body to survive it for more than 4~6 hours a day once every few days. My joints are full of Arthritis and my Fibromyalgia (spelling?) kicks up and my body is physically in screaming agony as if I'm laying in lava while I try to help others.
Thankfully most of the grunt work is done (well more than half of it) and it's just going to take a lot of time and effort and I can get her and her child a nice place to live.
Thank-you for your support. No project money will generally be used to fund working on her home (she is paying), and it shouldn't cause too many delays in the next release cycles (beyond a day or a few days here or there), but it's something I must do to help those in need. I can't look into my 12-year old niece's eyes and say 'no you don't deserve a warm, safe home with your own bedroom', after-all - and I'm not sure I know anyone who could do such a selfish act.
So I wish all of those a warm welcome to spring, as it's almost here, we're almost through this. Try and get out and enjoy some of the coming nice weather for those in the northern hemisphere when you're not playing BeamNG Drive.
