unable to progress on a track (solved)

[EP]

was trying to work on this track when time,
it is in fact 90% complete and have been able before to drive it and reach the finish line
however now it went out of memory a few times almost before the end
already reduced grass etc., problems started when I started to add buildings (before the buildings I could drive the complete track), however also again reduced the buildings, before reducing the buildings back (I deleted about 20 buildings, not too much but cannot delete more then there is nothing left of the two decorative villages) I could not drive also for 1 minute before the out of memory message appeared.
another issue it has is that at high altitude the terrain becomes invariant to the car, on the track no problem, but when the track is left the car drops below the terrain
hopefully you have some tweaks and settings with which it can work

https://we.tl/t-n14FaPGesM

[CryHam]

Wow an incredible track. Beautiful.
But yeah, everything here is killing performance.
So first I disabled all road columns, they are very bad for FPS if many, so on long tracks. If you need a few feel free to add. But I would go with same approach as on Ultima, so using terrain to support road.
Second I halved terrain heightmap. 2048 was just a test and sadly with old Ogre 1.9 we can't really use it. So it's now 1024, it's not bad here, just made some places needing a smooth fix.
Next, I increased a lot: vegetation page to 400, road merge length, decreased road detail etc.
Well in the end, it turns out that it's still road that makes 600 batches by itself (way too many).
I fixed this, it needs a change in code. I'll add a property for this. We simply need to hide road after some distance (just like vegetation).
So after that I was able to drive this awesome track around in 16 minutes smooth with not bad FPS, I think it was 40 at minimum.
Do you still want to edit it after my changes or should I finish it (I can do it) and then add to SR?
I added some noise to terrain layers also BTW.
Here is my version: https://ufile.io/b5hh5qd8

[EP]

Thanks, yes now it is working and can drive it now as well. Yet has become a long track, but I like the short or medium ones more in general. It is the first track I made with such large height difference, and still learning. Some things do not work as I imagine yet considering view from the car when driving the track. That view is overal rather confined to the road, especially actually at these higher section. Also when driving perhaps attention is more to the road and the views change very fast. So have to investigate this. I see the mountain like look improved I think a bit with these layer noise. So think that is great in this track. Yes I will edit it a bit and then post again, perhaps in a week or something if lucky sooner. Not much ll change, but ll add those removed buildings again, and smoothen the road here and there. After that you may also then have sill some changes, so but then will post it again. Happy that at least it can now be driven, great!

[CryHam]

Okay good. Yes I agree. Usually a great looking track has only a few places where you could see good view when driving and a few more when driving track reversed. But that's okay.
I think if you wanted to show a view for longer (than in curly glass pipes) then you could try having a medium long, straight road part, where a car would be driving in that direction where the view is best. Of course this is not easy to do and after track has been made it's even harder and more artificial. So for example in lower terrain: a straight part, driving at such pitch where you would see mountains far. You could maybe have a bridge between mountain cliffs, at top, at a pitch that would show a good view below I guess. But yeah this is tricky to do. And in such mountain hill climb road usually has to go up and may not fit to artificially go down to show a view.

[EP]

you are right in reverse it can be a bit better, this one also was. Then also the panorama points where working. So changed the direction. Made some points a bit smoother and added some biuldings. What still happens is that in the high elevation the car can pass through the landscape (near middle panarama point and in the highest village). https://ufile.io/prqasc0j, will also post it now with the track title in seperate post

[CryHam]

Right. I fixed it in SR repo. So bullet terrain collision height is now at +- 1300 meters (was 300).
And that black spot on high terrain minimap, similar reason, now rendered from 1500meters high.