Tracks Applecross 0.9

[Grant Hendry]

Grant Hendry submitted a new resource:

Applecross - The most famous driving road in Scotland has arrived for AC

Located in the NW of Scotland, the Bealach Ne Ba (Pass of the Cattle) runs from Tornapress to Applecross and goes from sea level to 2053ft and back down to sea level. Narrow, twisty with lots of roughness and off camber hazards the road is one of drivings great challenges.

Real world location with real world road and set up as a point to point sprint with limited online capability

If you like my work and would like to buy me a virtual pint of beer...

Read more about this resource...

 

[hal4000]

Thanks mate, good to see you keep working on this stuff. Haven't been able to try anything out yet but will do asap. (Also thx for Glencoe update)

 

[Dimis]

Nice one Grant, only flew of 8 times on the first run. (Note to self: Do not take the Porsche gt3-cup car for testing mountain trails anymore)

 

[Cote Dazur]

The road surface is very rough, to a point I cannot enjoy it with my set up.

 

[Grant Hendry]

The road surface is very rough, to a point I cannot enjoy it with my set up.

The road in real life is even rougher. I use road cars on here as race cars will just bounce off the road. Try the Glencoe track if you need something a bit smoother as the next update for Applecross makes the surface even more varied

 

[Icky427]

same, i felt like i wouldnt be able to drive the whole thing without having to buy a new wheel base by the end of it. and that was driving the bmw e30 325. ive driven gravel roads in a miata with coilovers and it wasnt nearly that bad, i have a hard time believing this road is like that in real life. its a shame because it LOOKS phenomenal. out of curiosity what wheel do you use?

 

[Grant Hendry]

same, i felt like i wouldnt be able to drive the whole thing without having to buy a new wheel base by the end of it. and that was driving the bmw e30 325. ive driven gravel roads in a miata with coilovers and it wasnt nearly that bad, i have a hard time believing this road is like that in real life. its a shame because it LOOKS phenomenal. out of curiosity what wheel do you use?

I use a G27 and yes the road in real life is a lot worse. There was no way i could have presented Applecross with a billiard table smooth surface as when i showed the pre release version to some peeps that know the road, every single one pointed out that it needs to be rougher and more potted. I use cars like the GT3RS, Audi UR, Fiat 500, Escort RS and various other road cars without issue during testing

I do run slightly lower spring settings in my wheel due to a medical condition that effects my muscles, i can post they settings if you wish for you to try

 

[Cote Dazur]

At the end of the day it is your mod and I am grateful that you are sharing your work. All I wanted is letting you know why I would not be able to enjoy it much, it appears it is working as intended. I would most probably avoid it in real life as well.
As suggested I will keep enjoying Glencoe.

 

[LesMacNeil]

This is a fantastic bit of work! I started trying to build this one myself ages ago, but I needed more practice and other projects have since taken its place. I've driven it in real life two or three times and it always came to mind as a road to recreate. You've saved me the trouble of finishing it! Good fun in the Subaru RB22. All the way round the peninsula to Sheildaig and through Torridon are classic roads too.

 

[Grant Hendry]

I want to loop it up around Bienn Bann but will probably have to start again to include the height data from around Sheildaig and Torridon. I plan to turn right when you come off the low level twisty route that takes you from Applecross village to the A896. This would let me concentrate on the roads as making the villages of Sheidaig and Torridon would be a major time consumer. I plan a site visit in the Spring to use the drone to 3d map some of Applecross village. If this works then the world is literally my oyster when it comes to getting the best driving roads in Scotland into AC. Imagine the NC500 without any other tourists or motorhomes or caravans. Thats the grand plan

 

[LesMacNeil]

I'm getting good results using publicly available lidar data to generate tracks: 50cm resolution seems to be more than good enough. Problem is that there's not much available in england, and virtually nothing in scotland. I'll be interested to hear how the scanning goes. What's the setup?

 

[Grant Hendry]

I use RTB to get the height data and SAS Planet to get higher than normal res for the background image then a combo of Sketchup and Blender to fine tune things

 

[LesMacNeil]

I was actually wondering about the drone scanning setup

 

[LesMacNeil]

Another factor in the bumpiness of this track is because of the length of it, and it's a fundamental limitation of AC, unfortunately. The further you get from the central point, the more the car shakes, however slow you go. I wonder if the new version will address this...

A couple of suggestions for improvements: a reflective water texture would look really good here (like Pacific Coast for example). Then I would add a roundabout at each end so that AI traffic can go in both directions. That would be interesting on a single track road with passing places. It would also be good if you could increase the draw distance to see the more distant terrain. I don't know how much there is, but one of the best things about this road is the view. There may be a way to do this in kseditor, but I'm not sure

 

[Grant Hendry]

I think the the draw distance is fixed in AC, for terrain/road. I have started another Applecross, as RTB is now 64bit i can do a lot more detail without the app crashing, that takes us up towards Sheildaig and back towards Tornapress to complete the loop. Having 2 way traffic on this road would be bonkers plus the reason i built this was to get the road free from traffic to hit a GT3 RS over the pass sideways without fear of the Milk Truck coming the other way.

The original Applecross was really bumpy down to the randomness of the road surface mesh being to high, trying another method with the new track and get the bumps from the texture maps instead of using the mesh.

https://labs.assettocorsa.jp/downloads/addon/patch-fix-graphic-wobbling

DL this link and install, this gets rid of any shaking due to being to far away from the 0,0,0 point of the map. It was the shader calculations that was messing with the constant shaking when sitting still, who would have thunk it eh

Agreed with the water texture and just waiting on a suitable one or i might just use the drone to capture an original sample of the water up that way and ramp the specularity up in KSEditor to get it nice and reflective

I stream sometimes on twitch at www.twitch.tv/artofgrunt, hit me up there and i will link you the test version of the new Applecross

 

[LesMacNeil]

Wow, I'll try this patch as soon as I get in. My TT circuit could use this. Thanks!

I was kidding a bit about the two way traffic. I think you're right about the draw distance too. Pity about that.

 

[Grant Hendry]

Grant Hendry updated Applecross with a new update entry:

Applecross peninsula 0.9

This version is 0.9. Need to finish the rest of the AI lines and camera points. Finish building the rest of the roadside objects.

This version has normal maps and UV maps for the buildings along with lo poly LODs

Race Dept has a limit of 500mb per upload and this weighs in at 1.4GB even with Ultra compression on 7z. So the only way to get it out there is through Mega

Final version should be done by about end of August

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Dave Thayer]

AppleCross is very good. Question, Before I bring up the particular stage i want to run it shows maps that show a complete loop. Do any of these 4 or 5 stages loop back to the starting point?
One way i went it did not. Just curious. The other way I didnt go the entire route yet.

All works great and looks good in VR. i get 80 fps with my Oculus Rift S.

Bumps seem to be normal with the GT3 car I used and didnt seem extreme to me at all.

 

[Grant Hendry]

Stage 1-4 are all point to point but the haybales guiding you are not solid and you can drive through them

Working on maps for each stage just now but in the short term i used the freedrive map as a temp measure. will hope to get an update out soon with the AI lines and maps for each stage and loop

Applecross freedrive is a complete 45 mile circuit that loops back round to the start with working timing. If you are driving on a road that does not appear on the map then good chance it is a dead end.

 

[Dave Thayer]

Thank you Grant for the information on the different stages. Didnt try the freeRoam stage yet. take care