Overall, nice looking model, Disaster. 2 years is a lot of effort. Don't be discouraged, your efforts were not wasted.
But, polycount is a performance issue, no matter how many bikes you put on the screen. The more polys on screen, the less CPU/GPU are available for wow factor backgrounds, particle dust effects, smoke, crowds, and physics.
If you can do a reasonable likeness of the bike with HALF the polys, why would you add more? It is probably best to rework the details on the model so that you can use the hi-poly instance for creating skins, baking shadows, and adding the details that don't need polygons. Nuts and bolts and 3d license plate letters? No, man. Not worth it. Better to put those polys to use smoothing out the gas cap, gas tank, gauges and sprocket.
When the player is on the bike, his view is restricted to handlebars, gauges and tank's saddle area. If this was my model, I would build 4. One super hi-poly as above, 1 medium poly for in game, walk up or display, 1 low poly for distance shots, and finally 1 that had no (or simple) wheels, and no lower section at all for a mounted player to ride. Each would be between 1500 to 3000 polys, except the big one for artwork, which would probably weigh in at about 30-40k.
As it stands, yours is really good, if polys are redistributed to points of interest, for artwork and renders.
I went through this when I was working on my T-Rex. I started out with an enormous 30k poly-count, and just kept hacking away at the smaller poly groups until I got it down to around 2500 while maintaining the overall shape. I focused on the mouth and feet, since they would get the most attention in game. The body lost muscle details, wrinkles at the joints, and even eye socket depth because they can be faked. My target was 1500 polys, but in the end, he really did need claws and teeth. LOL.
Why not create another model, using this as your guide? Build it right beside this one, and delete the original piece by piece as you go? I do this all the time to get just the desired level of detail. I generally end up with 3 to 6 versions of a model until I'm satisfied (or bored) enough with it to say "Good'nuf" and move on.
Just my 2ยข. Spend it as you wish.
Mark
