Hi William,
Please don't misunderstand I think you've done a great job, it's just that I noticed while watching highlights of the '67 race the terrain was rougher, Some longer grass and seemingly less well defined edges around the track. Not sure how bumpy it was back then but I've always thoughts some bumps here and there add some immersion to our sim racing.
Again thank you for your time and talents.
Don't worry, i take everything as a constructive criticism, i want this to be a great track, not just another plain conversion. That means to listen carefully everybody's thoughts on it. I want this feedback, is part of the reason i released the track before having it completed.
Now to the point, you are certainly right, i agree with most of what you say. I can comment a few things on that for sure, as it's not something i have never thought about.
The terrain was indeed rougher, i mean if you compare any mod usually the real surrounding terrain is a lot rougher, but maybe in this case is a bit more "soft" because i'm basically using the same amount of vertex the original model had. I didn't want to apply a mesh smooth (that multiplies vertex amount) on the whole terrain because it is a very big track, and FPS factor worries me. The amount of trees alone have a big impact in performance, but i'm planning on optimize that in some way. The hedges in some parts of the track (the real track) were well defined and in other parts were just a big mess, this is correct too. Before doing some big modifications regarding these things, i want to see how's going to look when the small vegetation process is done. There's still going to be some time until this process is done, as i haven't yet started it. I'm placing big vegetation on the sudschleife in this moment.
I'm confident though, that when the grass and bushes are placed, it will look very different, and will hide this "softness" the surrounding terrain has at this moment. I think the rough look of a terrain can be greatly influenced by the textures and stuff that has on it. So i say let's wait a bit more, and see what happens when it's finished. There are some places where i think i will probably have do something about the terrain, like between ex-muhle and bergwerk, but i think this will be a number of places that will need that kind of work, and not the entire track.
Now, about the bumpiness of the track itself, of course i tried to make it in a way you can feel the track in the wheel, and not feel like a boat. In my setup, i think i feel it bumpy enough, i didn't want to make it bumpier because i didn't want it to feel too rough on the wheel, like in a bad sense, rattling and stuff you know. In some spots it feels like almost rattling using some cars for me, that's why i didn't want it to make the track rougher, but if you think it needs more bumpiness, i'll surely think about it.
That's about my thoughts on it.
