Something is still on the horizon …

Hey folks,

First: Sorry for the huge delay – this blog post is a long time in the making. We are working on lots of things at the same time and some things got delayed.

In this post we’ll focus on the past, present and future of BeamNG.drive. But first we’ll make a brief flashback.

We, the initial four guys (estama, ljfhutch, gabe, tdev) got together in 2013 with the dream of advancing vehicle simulation to the next level. Since then the team has grown into a full professional games studio always following the initial vision.

If you had asked us three years ago, we would never have imagined that this would be possible and that so many people share our vision.

You guys rock!

Without your continuous feedback, comments and financial support this wouldn’t have been possible.

For this very reason, we are super grateful about all the support that we received over the years. We value transparency a lot as we are gamers ourselves and want to be open and honest about where this journey is going and what the end result will be. That being said, we try very hard to not disappoint you – we try to finish the promised features and not promise anything that is not financially possible or otherwise not achievable for us.

The past

Since August 2013, we were able to release 56 updates. A short timeline of our company:

What we worked on

We worked on lots of things over the years, so following is a very brief summary.

The Game Engine

Fixed major render bugs

Implemented required render features, like per vehicle color, dynamic reflections, gpu vehicle skinning

Ported renderer from DirectX9 to DirectX10-11

Improved render performance a lot

Vehicles

Released many new cars

Started with just 6 vehicles

Now up to 20 cars and over 200 variants, with more coming, attempting to cover every archetype

Improved existing vehicles – bug fixes, design and engineering changes

Optimized vehicles’ performance – removed unnecessary nodes and beams

Added more customization ability and variants – wheels, body parts, skins, and much more





Greatly improved handling and drivability

Several iterations of the new tire model have gotten us close to real tires in their performance data

Re-engineered suspension with precisely adjustable alignment

Terrains

We released several new maps:

Derby



East Coast USA



Hirochi Raceway



Utah



Reworked the entire Dry Rock Island map with new vegetation, textures and a whole new layout (now called Jungle Rock Island)



Terrain evolution

We improved the visual quality of our terrains immensely over time:

early dev old recent Improved the East Coast USA map by upgrading the Town, adding new areas and points of interest. Upgraded textures on most maps and improved level of detail, objects and lighting Industrial improvements Dry Rock Island / Jungle Rock island updates

We worked on a lot of scenarios as well, but we’ll skip over that here.

Physics

Ported to 64 bits and use of SSE2

More than 2 times performance improvement of physics core

Improved parallelization of physics core over many CPUs

Stable dynamic collisions (for example to carry other vehicles around)

Added simulation of pressure (air inside tires), buoyancy (balloons), lift (separate from drag), slidenodes (nodes moving on rails) and fire

Added more beam types in physics core to improve tire simulation

Improved friction simulation

Added physically based steering wheel force feedback that is being driven by the simulated vehicle’ skeleton

Created an AI that is able to freely drive around, at speed, over a rural road network (making decisions as it goes) and using exactly the same controls that a human is using (a gamepad to be exact). The AI is under exactly the same physics that a player is and is completely Open Source

Implemented lifelike simulation of vehicle Electronic Stability Control (ESC), Traction Control System (TCS) and turbochargers

Huge improvements in tire construction/driving behavior. Our tire construction/characteristics are tested using in-game simulated tire testers

Input

Revamped the input subsystem to support all kinds of controllers (mouse steering, force feedback joysticks, steering wheels, h-shifters&handbrakes, etc), allowing you to customize the bindings directly from the game’s user interface.

Added support for multiseat gameplay (several controllers plugged into the same computer, each driving a different car on the shared screen)

Added ability to navigate the game menus using your gamepad or favourite controller

Phew, lots of things. If you want more detail, please have a look at our full changelog.

The present

What we are working on for the upcoming 0.6 release (this will take some more weeks) and beyond:

The Game Engine

Optimizing render on CPU

Shader optimization

Refactoring code for future changes: working towards PBR

Vehicles

Finishing the last few vehicles we have promised

Adding more customization parts

Continuing to improve existing vehicles

Terrains

Working on the new Italy map. Being both the most ambitious map to date and still early in development, this will still take some time to complete.

Implementing the campaign mode

The campaign will start out teaching basic concepts and showing capabilities and expand into light story to prepare for the open world section.

Physics

In depth engine thermal simulation with advanced damage modelling

Accurate supercharger simulation

Drivetrain and transmission optimizations

Suspension simulation improvement

Add couplers that are able to glue nodes (from the same or other vehicles) together

Add AI chase and racing (round a lap) modes

Continue optimizing physics core

Audio

We got an audio specialist (Sebastian) now that is doing research on how we can improve our game sounds.

Current topics being worked on (these should not be expected soon): Models for different surfaces Model for engine sounds created with Max/MSP

Various car interior sounds: handbrake, indicator, gear shift, horn, light, hazard light Destruction sounds: model for car being on fire, tire bursting First attempts to create realistic, interactive tire squeals Sounds for blow-off-valves, turbos and superchargers Focus will now be on the implementation side and making the assets created so far work in game, then improving the assets and sound system



Gameplay

Campaign mode: will feature 15 minutes of quickstart, then light story introduction. Story will be light and shallow, told by short comic strips and a simple dialog system. Some examples of our art style:

It will be presented in classic comic strip style:



Gamified user interface: we are working on a garage mode that features a new parts selector with many more features. Sneak preview:



So, this is also the time to present the current team to you 🙂

Our team

Our current BeamNG team: (Please note that not all of us are working fulltime)

Thomas, programming, CEO/management

Eleftherios, programming, CTO/physics

Sam, art, art director

Gabe, art, vehicle lead

Luis, programming, programming lead: Game/Render engine

Ludger, quality assurance, mod moderation/compatibility

Bruno, programming, generalist/input

Corey, vehicle, tire specialist

Mitchell, art, level/vehicle designer

Konstantinos, administrator, systems and network administrator

Chris, business, consultancy

Saskia, management, secretary

Yale, programming, user interface

Lisa, art, 2D concept art

Christin, art, 3D art

Sebastian, audio, audio designer

DSam, art, vehicle designer

Georgios, programming, user interface

Ananda, customer support

Nour, programming, generalist

Fabian, programming, vehicle systems: ESC/TSC

Moncef, programming, vehicle systems: turbocharger

Winston, art, vehicle designer

Jali, art, vehicle designer

Petros, programming, artificial intelligence

Colin, quality assurance, mod moderation

Andrew, programming, senior generalist

Pascale, programming, generalist

Annisa, art, assistant level designer

Timo, programming, junior generalist

Mark, programming, GPU optimisation

Janne, art, vehicle designer

The future

We have so many things we want to do still, here are some of them. 🙂

Most of these topics represent ongoing research. For some of the items we don’t even know if we can make them work out correctly. So: No guarantee or promise for anything below for the final game!

The Game Engine

Replay system: rewind/replay

Online leaderboards/multiplayer

Improved render quality: Vulkan renderer Physical Based Rendering [PBR] for a more realistic representation of ligthing New Material definition, simple to understand and more optimized for render Deferred Shading New Terrain renderer for improve visuals and more optimized for render New post effects for improve visuals and performance



Vehicles

Expanding into more diverse vehicle types

Vastly expanded library of customization parts

Designing and building more cars!

Terrains

Releasing the Italy map

Physics

New thread scheduler that packs objects together into one thread

New dynamic collision engine that also supports edge collisions

Physically based particles (maybe also used for aerodynamics)

Tire Thermal Simulation

Improved simulation of transmissions and differentials

Gameplay / Campaign Mode

Vehicle ownership – buy a car, upgrade it, and enter it in events

Car dealerships populated with random car configurations

Earn in-game money to buy upgrades and more cars

Experience the satisfaction of finally buying that supercar after saving up for it

Everyone loves statistics

We also created some graphs for you:

Updates vs time:



(however, we changed recently into a monthly update schedule to allow more time for breaking changes)

BeamNG Employees vs time:



Number of SVN Commits vs time (these are the changes to the game’s content):



We will try to publish more blogposts about our work in the future that are not changelogs 🙂

Thank you so much for your ongoing support

– The BeamNG team

Please use this thread for feedback – thanks!