Looked so pretty I had to post some
I have spent and still spending a lot of time using rendered light and shadow maps in max to create realistic environment mapping on the cars. This is clear in the rear shot of the car where the rear wing shadows the hull. Typically this area would still have envmap applied which tends to look a bit crap. So instead the envmap alpha layer follows that of the general lightmap shading and so you only get reflections where you would normally see them. The overall physics of the vehicles has taken a huge amount of time to tweak and get to a level which is fun, yet surprisingly sim too. The mod features the stopwatch system which I was having difficulty to get working. It's now perfect and without any of the previous lag issues I had. You will need to cross the finish line within a certain time to win the next level vehicle. Templates on each car determine what they will unlock at the end and these templates disappear if you are too slow! There is also a fully synced clock on the dash of each car to give you your current time. It's a good challenge.
There is a long road track, 2 rally tracks and a fun kart track also, all in the one map. I have used a large scale map but although 50% bigger than a full terrain medium map size there is enough water around the island to avoid too much strain on the engine... that said, I have around 20K statics in the map.. but 99% of those (trees, stones etc) don't have any collision mesh so this figure does not seem to present an issue.
There are a few performance cars in the mod and still plenty left to do. More pics soon..
Saleen S7
Front
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Rear
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Side
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but it should only be a couple of weeks.
