Dune Island, USA, the map created by RedRoosterFarm, is one of those rare maps that has just about everything you need for your testing and experiments. It includes everything from a small town with buildings to off-road dirt tracks to mud pits to highways. It even includes an airstrip for aircraft and high speed vehicle testing!
The default spawn point is at “Gus’ Grocery” which is located in the heart of Dune Island’s main street. From there, a quick drive through the town will let you see the variety of buildings included with this map, such as residential houses, a grocery store, a gas station, some commercial store fronts and even a fire station! This will give you the perfect backdrop for crashes and testing in a small town type environment. The fire station has been designed to actually fit a fire truck which will allow you to have that added realism for short stories by having a fire truck actually respond directly from the fire station.
As you make your way towards the outskirts of town, you’ll begin to see some larger properties and farmland. These properties make for a nice transition from the more densely-populated main street and into the country and beach-side areas. Taking the main highway out of town will bring you to one of the map’s straightaways, which is great for high-speed and head-on crash testing. On one side of the road, is a heavily wooded area while on the other, you’ll find a sandy beach with the aforementioned airstrip running parallel to the roadway. If you’re looking to do high speed tests, whether on the road or airstrip, this is the place to be!
The wooded area on your right when taking this road out of town has plenty of dirt trails that you can turn down and take deep into the wilderness. These trails are great for off-roading as they provide a number of twists, turns and slopes. A nice touch worth mentioning is in the center of the map, you’ll find a heavily forested area where trees have been cut down. This gives the player a bit of an opening for off-roading compared to driving through the dense forest. It gives the off-roading a nice mix of tight, white knuckle driving through the forest and a more open area for fun.
Continuing down the highway, you’ll eventually hit a sharp right-hand turn which will lead you to a bridge over a small lake deep in the forested area. This bridge is long enough that you’ll hit some pretty serious speeds as you travel along it. At both ends of the bridge, you’ll find a significant slope up/down that will give you some nice airtime as you exit the bridge.
In one of my favorite videos that I made, I setup a police roadblock at the beginning of this slope and jumped some cars (in most cases) over the roadblock. Check it out below and you can see how much speed and air can be had exiting this bridge!
Exiting the bridge on the other side will give you the opportunity to join up with the dirt trails which leads to a dirt loop around a small lake. However, if you proceed straight down the highway, you’ll find yourself immediately immersed in desert-style sand dunes! These are great for sand off-roading and provides enough dunes to get some serious air in your dune buggy!
Entering the final stretch of highway before you find yourself back in town will take you through the rocky, steep, and curvy section of roadway. This will pose challenging for even the most experienced BeamNG drivers as care will need to be taken not to go crashing into the rocks or guardrails. In contrast to the high speed straightaways seen elsewhere in the map, this area is what you want if you’re looking for a challenge! As you can see in the below police chase video around the 4:30 mark, the difficulty of the roads posed a serious challenge to both the police as well as the suspect!
Speaking of twisty roads, take a turn off the highway and onto the dirt trail from here and you’ll find yourself climbing to the map’s highest point. Once you arrive, you’ll have a beautiful view of the entire map, including overlooking the town in one direction and more of the map’s expansive dirt trails in the other direction. This is a good way to get your sense of direction and plot your next adventures in the map!
Verdict
Dune Island, USA is an excellent map providing plenty of variety for your tests and experiments. For a small town/country style map, it provides everything you could possible ask for – a main street backdrop, high-speed straightaways, tricky turns and hills, bridges, off-road trails, beaches, dunes, and even an airstrip! I often find myself loading up this map when I’m not sure what I want to do as I always find something to do in Dune Island, USA!
Score: 9.5/10
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