[WIP] Targa Florio by 6e66o & team

[VELOCIPEDE]

qualcosa si muove...

 

 

Hello guys,
I want to share some update regarding this project.
Just like most -if not all- of us here in the forum, I was really looking forward to this track.
When I read that the project comes to a freeze, I was thinking maybe there's something I can help with.
And with 6e66o's and SandroX's permission, I have start working to continue this project.
That being said, technically I'm going to start over from the beginning, since optimization need to be done from early stage. And it is much more difficult to optimize a project once they're on later stages.
At first, I was gonna wait until we got to later stages before sharing the news to skip the boring part . But then I thought maybe it's better to share the progress in this forum
Well for the progress update, basically, what I'm doing now is still at the basic preparation;
- Breaking down the model, purging, and re-organizing objects to reduce the number of draw calls
- Clean up multi-material and remove unassigned mat ID
The goal of this first step is to have the same amount of objects as the amount of textures with no multi/sub-object material. This is done.

Second step, Optimizing assets to increase average batch size.
This is a bit tricky. Since this track is huge, I'm taking linear-flow approach to split and group the mesh based on material characteristic, radius, visibility, and uniqueness.
From there, I'm creating texture atlases and combining mesh groups into single mesh.
I'm working with scripts to automate most of the time-consuming process, so it doesn't take much time to create texture atlases and re-layout UVs
So far, roughly 50% of the process is done, and the textures have been reduced down to around 800. I'm targetting to reduce the number below 150 texture maps.
After it's done, then the next step is to create boundaries and building the high res track surface.
Please excuse me if I'm not updating the progress very often. Beside, you guys will probably getting annoyed if I post an update without significant progress lol

[Blitzkrieg]

No,no... Posta, posta, che almeno ci fai sognare...

[VELOCIPEDE]

nuovo aggiornamento:

 Hello guys,
we got a little update on the progress here
So far, I'm still in the process of optimizing the models.
Most of them are done, like buildings, road signs, advertising boards, crowds, and walls
And I just finished working with the trees. 111 types of trees optimized into 2 draw calls in form of 18K+ instances . They will be grouped later as KSTREE_GROUP

That leaves only two categories left; the cars and the ground.
The cars, however, I may have to remodel these cars, replacing the existing if necessary with more efficient models. Every poly counts
The ground need some works too, as I've seen lots of gap along the track.

Regarding the track surface, I made a test build for testing purposes, using track mesh 40x the density of the original mesh. The smallest segment is about 8 cm wide lol. Maybe a bit overkill there.
But it's not heavy on the resource, actually.
From these test I think I kinda understand how the physic calculation works. It looks like there's a way to make the sim engine calculate physic only for meshes in radius, so it shouldn't be too heavy for the cpu. I'm gonna experiment a bit more on this
the AI also works btw. It's frustrating to to see them leaving me two hills behind and gone completely out of sight lol. They works kinda ok, at least up to the point where I fell asleep during recording....
Lesson learned. No recording AI at 3 in the morning.
Even after the recording, it took almost 2 hours to process when exiting the game! oh Well I'm gonna have to redone it anyway
Well I guess that's it for the update. Stay tuned!

[VELOCIPEDE]

Just a little teaser
 

Well anyway, I'm happy to tell you guys that the optimization progress is going well. As seen in the screenshot, I got 123 fps (up to 134, with the lowest still above 100) with all effects on max, in a race against 1 AI. Mind you that my video card is only stock GTX570
I also managed to push the CPU occupancy down. 6.00 during replay, 6-8 during 1 opponent race, and 3-5 during practice. The score will differ for each CPU, of course. If I compare to original tracks, it is still slightly higher, but it's unlikely you will find CPU occ >95% unless you're racing with a lot of AI
regarding the track surface, I've been experimenting with a few version of the model. The first one is a common grid-type mesh, but the result is too smooth and I don't think it's resemble a public road surface at all.
So after a few tries, now this is what the track surface looks like;


a random topology mesh, to simulate the irregular surface of a public road. Some of you might have seen this type of mesh somewhere
It's not completely done, and there are still a lot of tweaking to do. Because actually even now, the surface is still too smooth. But as you can see in the screenshot, no need to worry about low density mesh. We got enough
That all being said, there are still a lot of things to do before it's ready for release. And I only got so little time to work on this, much less than I wanted
but I will get this done. So be patience guys

Targa Florio is coming

Edited December 1, 2014 by Uff

[baronesbc]

bellissima notizia!

[Robbiexsstar]

Fantastico!

[TurboGigi]

Che ricordi,

l'ho fatta il 25 Aprile del 2005 alla guida di una 911 Turbo (964). Spettacolare.

 

 

 

[Guest Uff]

Still focusing on the performance and physic for now, so please excuse the visual. Haven't set the shaders just yet.
But still. no exact estimate when it's going to be ready guys. But we're getting there. Working with this track feels like working with 15 tracks at once lol

[blackwood91]

notizie per questo tracciato?

[manettino]

Ci sono aggiornamenti in relazione??  News??? 

Grande banco di prova per auto e piloti, 

... tracciato storico che non deve assolutamente mancare ad ASSETTO CORSA!!!

Grazie