I like real routes but the problem is they always include too many real details... that means time
I'm sure you could make a route that had the spirit of the real one, but avoided the costly elements that you'd have to build.
Ie, the NFS Porsche course, Autobahn, is actually just a road that splits off and forks around but all the routes lead to the same end... but it can feel as if you are not doing so.
Obviously we can go way beyond the scope of that, maybe 10x longer, loops that stay off the main route for longer, loop it around on itself...
You can make it generally quite repetitive with regards to buildings/props and just iteratively upgrade bits. Stage 1 might be the roads only, with all the same signs/lamps etc. Stage 2 might add custom signs, more custom tarmac textures, more correct signage.
Stage 3 might be adding buildings outside the course we can see. Stage 4 maybe a distant panorama of a big city scape.
I dunno... just thinking of elegant ways to work at this.
A 100km track would be nice but I'm figuring it'd need to be loaded on the fly or have really well considered LOD's and stuff?!
This is where things like imposters would be good, if things in the distance could just get rendered out once and billboarded until you got close it'd cover off a lot of the problems with doing tracks this big I think!
Hmmmm
Still interesting though...
I might have a quick play sketch of a layout, just see what happy accidents occur hehe...
Dave