Final polish before we're all seeing red

The hour is almost upon us. I'm not going to say this was an objectively difficult thing to pull off, but damn, when your Blender skills are lacking, even the simple things take forever. But, armed with contacts who actually know what they're doing, perseverance, and a desire to bring you guys something spectacular, I am so close to the finish line I can taste it.

So what is this exactly?

Well, as you may know, the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway uses a lot of red on the roads as a form of warning. I spent hours in google maps and street view, scouring the roads for any sign of red. John514 then graciously provided me with the road sections, which I then cut up and fit between the side lines. The amount of counting of red strips... my god. Finally I precariously placed the new roads just above the existing ones. This approach has some pretty tricky dangers. You may notice that on occasion there's some gray poking through the red. In other places, the red might clip through a side line or two. Yes it's a touch janky, but with my limited skillset, it's the best I can do. At the end of the day, I think this update introduces 99% of IRL open air red tarmac to the available SRP layout. Tunnel references are going to be a whole different beast.

So what's left, and when are we getting our hands on this? 

Well, I took this opportunity to also touch up some asphalt textures and introduce some variety into the base gray asphalt. Beyond this, the test team and I need to put some miles onto the new tarmac to look out for any super glaring issues. Though so far, so good. If all goes well this should be in your hands in a couple of weeks.

Whose hands exactly though?

Expect a full free release for everyone.

A special acknowledgement

This project would be literally impossible without the help from SRP's John514. Not only because I needed the base assets, but he also kindly baked a custom vao-patch without which the red asphalt would be visually unserviceable. So, if you can, do support the SRP project over on https://www.patreon.com/Shutoko_Revival_Project

As always, thank you so much for your support. A lot of work goes into my content, and the Patreon really makes a huge difference. I am immensely grateful to all who support me with a pledge, but even if you don't, you can help me by just spreading the word. Because the big leaps happen right here.

Until next time.