Quick progress report

Hi all, hope everyone's fine!

So, I've been busy lately with some testings about something I have in mind since the first release : to merge all the maps from the Mediterranean Special into one "big" 4x4km one.
I used the 3 stages made so far and managed (with quite some trial and error) to assemble these 3 times on a test bed.

Nothing fancy to look at obviously, but this was a crucial point to check if the build process and the performance hit during gameplay were realistic or not, before I continue building new stages, according to this goal or not.

The results are mixed :
- I found my way through most of the process and managed to get everything in place, so good news about that.
- The terrain detail accuracy is OK though not exactly matching the original sources, but this will do fine without having to rework everything.
- On the bad side, the performance hit is hard, from most of the places we never see under 10M polys, and we have some spikes at almost 20M (for comparison, in the vanilla Italy you'd never reach 10M polys). So, its still relatively playable, but I'm affraid it will need quite a strong hardware to run smooth.
On my rig (Ryzen 7 1700 3GH, 16Go RAM, RX 6700 XT sending 2560 x 1080), it runs between 30 and 50 fps without turning any graphical features down, which are maxxed out except dynamic reflections...
That said, these results will also vary depending on the future levels and if I'll found some workarounds to optimize things a bit.

If you're wondering why 4x4km, this is because it's the max size of terrain available so far within the BeamNG engine without compromizing the mesh resolution (which would be a no-go). The other solution some use to make bigger levels, as far as I know, is to use a mesh object instead of the built-in terrain object, but this method cut short the use of groundmodels (surfaces physical characteristics) and groundcovers (grass, stones etc)...

Anyways, even if it will be quite heavy and a huge amount of work in sight, Im keeping this as the closing goal for this serie, so the remaining stages will be built accordingly.

Speaking of the remaining stages, I started the build of the 4th one, which will be located NW from the SS3 and E from SS2.

Still pretty rough so far, but maybe you got the vibe...
Its gonna be a 100% gravel this time, probably quite flowing on the Main layout, and a bit more technical on the Alt one, I'll do a gameplay video as soon as road shapes are settled.

Thats pretty much it for today, take care, drive fast and have fun along the way!
Cheers! 💥🐗💥