29 replies to this topic

[Jugador]

 Hey guys, here's a course I've been screwing around with. I used lidar, so the elevations should be pretty close. It's a design by Nicklaus. Two holes were giving me a hard time on fps, (6 and 16) but the rest of the holes have pretty decent frame rates. Just dial the "view distance" down to 1000 on those two holes, and you should be good. (personally, I didn't notice any difference in the scene itself), just a nice jump in fps. (see pics below) 

 Just a quick recommendation, play the course at least once with no more than a 3 wood off the tee and no more than a 5 wood from the fairway. That will bring the hazards into play, and make for a more challenging round. I included a recorded round using those clubs if you want to play 18! 

I'll leave a download link here for a few days until the course is posted at PGLS. Thanks to all the designers here,and across the world who pitched in to make this course possible. You know who you are! 

https://mega.nz/file...Hr5algowPFkGTyU

Here's a few screenshots...

 

[uvmnick]

Nice work!

[jspirate]

I played 6 holes and look forward to playing the rest. It looks like a gem!  The greens seemed smooth and rolled really well.  There is lots of eye candy also.  Even some animation - very nice.

 

A couple things that I noticed.

1.  Dig those ponds out and make then deeper.  I think thats what is causing the flashing??? It doesn't effect play, but it is annoying. 

2.  No 5 Tee box could use some smoothing/leveling.

3.  The FPS on hole 6 could be increased by adding LODs to the stuff that is out of view (cars, lamp posts all sorts of stuff).  I bet you could get 6 - 10 frames by doing this (depending on verts etc).  You don't need lower poly versions of the item in question.  Just make it so the item disappears when its out of view anyway.

 

Can't wait to load this course up for an alt shot!

[jt83]

I've only played one round, quick thoughts - nice skybox, runs OK despite massive file size, stray tree growing through clubhouse lobby, and I'd like to know where a lot of those 3D assets came from! 

[Jugador]

I played 6 holes and look forward to playing the rest. It looks like a gem!  The greens seemed smooth and rolled really well.  There is lots of eye candy also.  Even some animation - very nice.

 

A couple things that I noticed.

1.  Dig those ponds out and make then deeper.  I think thats what is causing the flashing??? It doesn't effect play, but it is annoying. 

2.  No 5 Tee box could use some smoothing/leveling.

3.  The FPS on hole 6 could be increased by adding LODs to the stuff that is out of view (cars, lamp posts all sorts of stuff).  I bet you could get 6 - 10 frames by doing this (depending on verts etc).  You don't need lower poly versions of the item in question.  Just make it so the item disappears when its out of view anyway.

 

Can't wait to load this course up for an alt shot!

 Cool...thanks for the tips. Yeah, I hate the flashing, too. I'll give it a try.  I"m not sure how to do the LOD stuff, but I'll look around on youtube. I tried this guys idea earlier, and all I can say is THANK GOODNESS I  backed up everything before, I pretty much deleted the course.   

[Jugador]

I've only played one round, quick thoughts - nice skybox, runs OK despite massive file size, stray tree growing through clubhouse lobby, and I'd like to know where a lot of those 3D assets came from! 

 Okay, thanks for the heads up on the tree. Yeah, got the skybox at Polyhaven, sweet 8K HDRI skies.  They don't all work, but I found a few that don't have telephone poles, or buildings sticking out like a sore thumb. You'll know what I mean when you try one. 

 I get most of my assets at Sketchfab and lots of cool stuff at Archive 3D.

 https://polyhaven.com/hdris

 https://sketchfab.com/feed

 https://archive3d.net/

[RBarley]

Just played a full round from the champ tee's. I'd check all those tee boxes. Most of them are not very flat. Other than that a very well done course with lot's of eye candy. I did see the flashing that was mentioned before, but I'd expect that with the amount of objects used.

[Jugador]

Just played a full round from the champ tee's. I'd check all those tee boxes. Most of them are not very flat. Other than that a very well done course with lot's of eye candy. I did see the flashing that was mentioned before, but I'd expect that with the amount of objects used.

 Okay, thank you, sir...it will be a couple of days before I can look at it. I'll give all the tee's a closer look. Be sure and try the aforementioned

3 wood off the tee and no more than a 5 wood from the fairway. It really brings out Nicklaus's design talent, and fairway bunkers come into play much more. Most of the par 5's can still be reached in two with a little tail-wind. One of my favorite shots is a big fade around the trees with a 5-wood from #12 fairway. 

[maxie]

Cracking course plays smooth good frames nice on the eye , love the sky and clouds great work

[jspirate]

 Cool...thanks for the tips. Yeah, I hate the flashing, too. I'll give it a try.  I"m not sure how to do the LOD stuff, but I'll look around on youtube. I tried this guys idea earlier, and all I can say is THANK GOODNESS I  backed up everything before, I pretty much deleted the course.   

 

 

Someone here made a "how-to-video" for adding the LOD Group to an item, but I can't seem to find it.  I thought it was noputt, but a search on his name was also fruitless. 

 

Anyway, here is a quick and dirty:

Set up the item as outlined below.  it requires hand placing, but with some pre-planning, prefabs can help tremendously.

 

LOD on item:

1. Place item in scene

2. With item selected go to "Component>Rendering>LOD Group"

3. You will then see the "LOD Group" in the inspector for that item

4. From the Hierarchy, CLICK and drag the item and place it in the different colored sections of the LOD Group that appears in the inspector. You must do this once for each group described in Step 5 below.

5. If I remember correctly, you must have at least 3 LOD Groups (for example LOD1, LOD2 and Culled) 

6.  Adjust the sliders so that "culled" makes the item disappear from view at the distance that you want.

 

This is a bit of a tedious process if you don't set up prefabs and do it from the beginning, but if I remember correctly there is a fairly easy way to replace items with a prefab. I don't remember how to do it, but I do know its possible.

 

Also, in game view distances are a fair bit different than Unity view distances.  That is kind of a PITA for some items that you want to cull at a specific distance.  You will have to get a feel for that by setting some up...

[Jugador]

 

 

Anyway, here is a quick and dirty:

Set up the item as outlined below.  it requires hand placing, but with some pre-planning, prefabs can help tremendously.

 

LOD on item:

1. Place item in scene

2. With item selected go to "Component>Rendering>LOD Group"

3. You will then see the "LOD Group" in the inspector for that item

4. From the Hierarchy, CLICK and drag the item and place it in the different colored sections of the LOD Group that appears in the inspector. You must do this once for each group described in Step 5 below.

5. If I remember correctly, you must have at least 3 LOD Groups (for example LOD1, LOD2 and Culled) 

6.  Adjust the sliders so that "culled" makes the item disappear from view at the distance that you want.

 

 

 That'll work...gives me a good place to start. Thanks!

[xooze]

Very nice course, thank you for another gem.

[Jugador]

  Okay, I think I got the "water flashing" problem pretty much fixed, and I smoothed out the pond edges. All the tee boxes are flat. As far as the lower fps on # 6 and #16 problem, I looked into scene occlusion, culling and baking the scene and came to the conclusion I don't know what the hell I'm doing, so I recommend dialing "view distance" to 1200. I honestly didn't notice much difference in aesthetics at this setting and it gives a nice increase in fps for those two holes. 

 I'll leave this download link for a few days in case someone notices a problem, before I upload the final. Thanks for the input, guys! 

https://mega.nz/file...Hr5algowPFkGTyU

[jspirate]

  Okay, I think I got the "water flashing" problem pretty much fixed, and I smoothed out the pond edges. All the tee boxes are flat. As far as the lower fps on # 6 and #16 problem, I looked into scene occlusion, culling and baking the scene and came to the conclusion I don't know what the hell I'm doing, so I recommend dialing "view distance" to 1200. I honestly didn't notice much difference in aesthetics at this setting and it gives a nice increase in fps for those two holes. 

 I'll leave this download link for a few days in case someone notices a problem, before I upload the final. Thanks for the input, guys! 

 https://mega.nz/file...Lim451wsUDthrX8

 

I am not sure that scene occlusion is possible on the free version of Unity?  Anyway, its a fun course to play with lots of eye candy - well done!

[Jugador]

I am not sure that scene occlusion is possible on the free version of Unity?  Anyway, its a fun course to play with lots of eye candy - well done!

  Thank you, sir...I'll keep watching videos, and if I stumble onto something that clicks for me, I can always update down the road.

[slouis]

I played all 18 holes and am very impressed with your rendition.  The many sounds and objects including the animated amusement park adds a lot of immersion without negatively impacting the FPS.  The clubhouse is very nice.  The FPS I was getting on the tee boxes of the championship tees were:

99/105/100/145/64/56/90/112/97

74/62/123/105/147/78/52/65/96

I played with dynamic skies off and my camera distance  is 10,000 yards.  My screen resolution is 2560 X 1440.

I hope that you release more courses as this one and Eagle Eye are top notch.  Thanks for providing these to the PG community.

[Jugador]

I played all 18 holes and am very impressed with your rendition.  The many sounds and objects including the animated amusement park adds a lot of immersion without negatively impacting the FPS.  The clubhouse is very nice.  The FPS I was getting on the tee boxes of the championship tees were:

99/105/100/145/64/56/90/112/97

74/62/123/105/147/78/52/65/96

I played with dynamic skies off and my camera distance  is 10,000 yards.  My screen resolution is 2560 X 1440.

I hope that you release more courses as this one and Eagle Eye are top notch.  Thanks for providing these to the PG community.

 Nice FPS! I'll have to try that screen resolution...try not to hit it in the ponds, I've noticed when I have, I get that stillness where it's not frozen, but the next shot doesn't draw. I must have done something to the water hazard boundaries when I smoothed out the pond edges. I'll redraw those splines, again. 

 Thanks for the kind remarks...since you asked, the next one up is the Old Course at Les Bordes!    It looks like a fun "and tight" layout!

https://www.lesborde...ses/old-course/

[bgast1]

Chiming in with my 2 cents. Nice work. I'm not one who really knows how to offer an honest critique on the design, but it looks good to me and plays nicely also.

[BSilvernail]

Excellent work on Bearpath! I didn't notice any playability issues with the course during my round. I like the atmosphere you created with all the custom models and the skydome. The animated ferris wheel and rollercoaster were highlights. I also love the varied soundscape you created. Yes, there were some frame drops at certain sections of the course, but it didn't greatly affect gameplay on my system.

 

Thank you for the many hours you put into creating the course. I'm looking forward to Les Bordes.

[bgast1]

Jugador, are you the only one currently designing for this game? I remember reading that a group of designers jumped ship and went over to Trackman. I can't blame them for wanting to make money, but it seems there is no loyalty to this game anymore. Please correct me if I am wrong.