Intentions

The main intention of this race track is to challenge the player's mastery of the controls that he learned earlier in the game through a rallycross track. It is a rather difficult track as it switches frequently from offroad to asphalt and inversely.
Since the game taken as a basis for this Custom DLC is a realistic one, the work on landscape is a huge part of this whole race track concept, whether on the verticality, the potential road bumps or even the gaps and shortcuts. But since it's also inspirations of real places, it offers quite the freedom to adjust them to fit a race track context.
There will also be a huge work on Level Architecture to make the level even more impressive, with vistas and massive structures, like the bridge at the end of the track.

For this personal project, I started by researching the game I'd take as the base for this custom DLC. I then chose NFS Unbound at the beginning but switched to Forza Horizon 5, as it better fits the arcade feeling I want to give to this whole race track. The only thing I kept from NFS Unbound is the place where it takes place : Chicago.
I extended my research to the whole state of Illinois and found two places that I thought were interesting : Mississippi Palisades State Park & Shawnee National Forest. I then looked for many reference images and played different racing games to get other references, like The Crew Motorfest, Burnout Paradise and NFS Most Wanted.
After all this research, I started blocking the race track on Unreal Engine 5 using the Landscape tool, the Blockout Tools plugin, but also the AVS plugin to get better control about the setup of the car blueprint I'll be using to showcase it. It also made me work a lot on 3C to get a comfortable version. It is still a WiP, so see you soon !