Electrifying 0.16

With the long weeks of winter coming to an end we’re ready to release our update to bring BeamNG.drive to version 0.16. This release sees several improvements and additions to the game. We are releasing our first fully electric vehicle for BeamNG.drive, the eSBR. In addition to being fitted with an electric drivetrain and battery system it has also been given a major facelift, giving it an appropriately modern look and feel. Our team has had a lot of fun pushing this car to its limits and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Italy is also receiving some additions, as promised when we launched 0.15 in December 2018. We have completed the port area of the main city, added the small coastal village of Portino and improved the appearance of the airport, fortress and castle. Italy is now also dotted with petrol stations and electric charging facilities as well as having several new offroad trails for you to explore. The local residents are also happy to have access to a new hospital and the protection afforded by fire and police stations.

Under the hood the team has continued to optimise several areas of the game. We now have a UI that can render up to 60fps. Optimisations to our physics engine have resulted in performance gains of up to 10%. Combined with improvements to the rendering engine that have reduced stuttering, your driving experience should become a lot smoother.

On the audio side of things, we are releasing support for 5.1 surround sound. The team has also been hard at work to bring scrape effects, transmission whine and a new dynamic muffling parameter into the game to continue the work of making our cars sound as good as they handle. Work on tuning these new effects is still on-going so expect to hear improvements in the coming releases.

This release also includes new and tweaked game scenarios, enhancements to several vehicles and a bunch of bug fixes and quality of life improvements. The full changelog can be found below. We hope you enjoy the results of the team’s hard work and as usual please let us know what you think on the forums!

Highlights

New vehicle: Hirochi eSBR

Italy improvements

Audio improvements



Italy Level

The map has received a new hospital, fire and police stations:

The castle and fortress have been updated

Small trails have been added throughout the map for more offroad fun

The airport building and surroundings have been renewed and more detail added

Portino village has been added as a new location

Petrol stations and electric vehicle charging stations have been added

The port area has been updated

Some rural areas have had their walls renovated or removed

Boats in the water on shores now have animation to rock on the swell

Added beach access across the map

Added small ports to the two towns by the ocean

Added entering/exiting signs to all named locations

Added level of detail and collision meshes to several buildings that missed them in the initial release (mainly industrial structures)

Improved some object meshes (such as details on trees)

Some minor improvements to materials to reduce tiling

Fixed various bugs such as floating trees, bushes, signs

Fixed some collision meshes that were eating cars and others that missed them entirely

Fixed some collision meshes that gave problems

Added decal roads on road borders to the small villages

Fixed Portino village town base to better fit with terrain

Corrected signs directions to cities through the map

Vehicles

eSBR: Added new, electric variant of SBR4

D/H-Series/Roamer: Added 6.0L diesel V8 and diesel 5spd transmission options to Gavril D-Series pickup, H-Series van, and Roamer

Hopper: Added off-road bumpers, bumper mounted spare tire carrier, and rock sliders to “Custom” variant

T-Series: Added ‘Heatshield’ sub-part to ‘Exhaust stacks’. Added 4 exhaust variants and 3 heatshield variants. Added ability to install a single exhaust. ‘Exhaust stacks’ are now a sub-part of the engine. Left and right exhausts are now merged for easier tuning

Sunburst: Tweaked body shape. Added widebody quarter panels/doors/fenders/bumpers for all AWD models (FWD models are narrowbody)

Moonhawk: Tweaked body shape

Roamer: Tweaked body shape

H-Series: Tweaked body shape

Miramar: Tweaked body shape. Moved seating position towards center of car. Adjusted front bumper and air dam so they no longer conflict

ETK 800: Tweaked body shape

ETK K-Series: Added colourable ‘Sport Trim’ part

Box Utility: Revisited textures. Fixed minor UV map issues

Covet: Tweaked body shape

SBR4: Added new interior skins

Added glass weight (200BX, Autobello, Barstow, Bolide, Burnside, Covet, Hopper, Legran, ’88 Pessima, ’98 Pessima, SBR4, Sunburst, other vehicles still WIP). Removing glass from the body now saves weight

Added final drive gear ratio parts for all vehicles for more customization potential

200BX: Increased CG height

Autobello: Improved exhaust tip rigidity. Reduced likelihood of fuel catching fire

Barstow: Improved deformation. Narrowed suspension track width

Bolide: Fixed hood wobbling while driving. Added shorter final drive for base model. Added quick ratio race steering

Burnside: Improved deformation. Reworked/simplified body mounts. Fixed suspension instability with some wheels. Increased radiator effectiveness

Covet: Decreased curb weight by 40kg and increased CG height

D/H-Series/Roamer: Added more configurations. Dually wheels converted to actual dual wheel structures. Increased engine crash strength. Reduced rigidity of frame and body/bed attachment to allow more frame flex

ETK800/ETK-K: Increased I6 inertia. Reduced engine torque at <1000rpm. Fixed ETK-K not having a transfer case mesh. Changed exhaust tip configuration

ETKI: Increased CG height

Hopper: Reduced strength of body and frame. Increased spare tire mount rigidity. Improved skid plate structure. Converted steering to use torsionHydro beam. Increased engine inertia

LeGran: Fixed rear sport drum brakes showed as disks

Miramar: Improved deformation. Increased race engine inertia

Moonhawk: Improved deformation. Reworked/simplified body mounts

’98 Pessima: Overhauled/optimized structure. Separated front and rear subframes. Improved deformation

Pigeon: Added friction to stabilizer wheels. Improved stabilizer wheels and mounting. Fixed vehicle damaging itself on spawn

SBR4: Improved deformation. Added shorter final drive for base model. Reduced engine inertia

Semi: Added more configurations. Converted steering to use torsionHydro beam. Fixed front hub mesh stretching in crashes. Fixed axle inter-shaft breaking when the rearmost axle droops

Sunburst: Tweaked CVT behavior

Reduced wobbliness of intake snorkels

Added more peak grip to race tires

Converted all vehicle swaybars to use torsionBar beams

Use dampCutoffHz in all suspension dampers

Changed all vehicle bumpstops to be deformable when landing hard

Changed all vehicle bumpstops to use new more accurate positioning method (precompressionRange)

Added torsionBar beams to steering arms to improve steering rigidity

Minor changes to suspension tuning for all cars

Reduced compression stiffness of many tires

Changed some part descriptions for better naming consistency across all vehicles

Fixed instability with high tire pressure on Ibishu alloy wheels

Fixed specular creating errors for German and Italian license plates caused by missing sprite

Small fixes to roofrack part textures

Tweaked ‘mirror’ material for better visibility

Fixed vehicle lights not turning off when they are broken off

Fixed ESC/TC not working correctly with vehicles that have more than 4 wheels

Improved friction caused engine lock detection

Improved combustion engine braking logic

Only automatically restart stalled engines if the throttle is pressed

Fixed launch control not deactivating correctly in some cases

Fixed clutch thermals not being able to be deactivated

Changed differential friction to act on input rather than output

Improved damping calculation for locked differentials

Increased damping in clutches

Added input actions for changing ESC modes up and down instead of toggle only

Reduced runtime memory allocations of vehicles. This reduces micro-lag spikes

Implemented advanced jbeam value merging strategies:

-start a jbeam key with $+, $*, $< or $> to enable addition, multiplication min or max instead of outright overwriting a previous value (only works for simple key:value pairs where the value is a number)

-example: use “$+mainGain”: 10 in a subpart to have an already existing mainGain value from a parent part be increased by 10 Reworked ESC/TC logic for an improved TC behavior with AWD and under cornering

Adjusted jbeam parsing logic to exclude “information” table from merging strategies

Added recuperation logic to the electric motor device

Updated automatic vehicle testing to work with multi-engine vehicles

Created different motors, batteries and ESC/TC configurations

Implemented specific control logic for electric cars that is able to handle any number of motors

Audio

Engine and exhaust sounds are now split

All new sounds support a dedicated muffling parameter that changes the overall impression of the sound

Exhaust muffling is dynamic and changes accordingly when the exhaust breaks or is unequipped

Location of the exhaust sound emitter chnanges based on where the actual end of the exhaust is

Engine and exhaust sounds now use a dynamic equaliser based on camera position

5.1 surround sound support

E-SBR engine sound

i4, i6 and v8 Diesel engine sound

Implemented scrape audio system

Scraping vegetation produces sounds

Implemented physics based sequential and manual transmission gear whine logic

Improved transmission whine, input/output/reverse, with gearbox rattles for sequential gearboxes. Reverse transmission for manual gearboxes, forwards to come later.

New aero sound

New engine explode sound

New distance attenuation settings for all vehicle related sounds

Fixed lag for UI sounds

Fixed continuous loop of church bells on Italy map

Memory and performance improvements

Reworked vehicle interior filter

Fixed leaking interior sounds

Implemented a simple live tuning app for engine sounds (imgui)

Fixed cockpit audio filtering not applying correctly at high driving speeds

Upgraded FMod to 1.10.12

Scenarios

New Port Gymkhana time trial in Italy

Added Tasti-Cola Delivery scenario

Added Electric Hypermilling scenario

Tweaks and improvements to all of the time trials (Slight layout changes to : Jungle Rock Island Dirt Stage 1, East Coast USA Asphalt Stage 2 and Street Stage 1)

Ported Automation Test Track Dam Climb time trial to scenario

Fixed “Hustle And Bustle” first mission ending unexpectedly when un-pausing the game

Fixed special camera setup for specific campaing scenarios

Fixed scenario blacklists failing to exclude actions

Fixed UI not working as intended for vehicles without configs like the Cannon

Fixed objects leaking during a transition from one scenario directly into another scenario

Physics

Physics core optimizations improved performance by up to 10%

New implementation of Lua garbage collection managing subsystem of physics core, this reduces micro-lag spikes

Optimized CPU and memory usage of physics core’s static collision subsystem

Optimized CPU performance of physics core’s raycasting subsystem

Improved orchestration of dynamic collision subsystem’s thread scheduling

Increased friction on wet asphalt

Added scrape sound subsystem into physics core, it filters and aggregates scrape sound events

Increased accuracy of physics core object positioning subsystem. This affects positioning accuracy of objects that are far from level’s origin point

Wheelspeed data is now calculated at 2000hz, giving much more accurate data

Added obj:getGravityVector() function which returns gravity’s vector

Added obj:sendRPMLeds function and removed older obj:playRPMLeds function

Improved particle emission filter

Game Engine

New implementation of Lua garbage collection managing subsystem of game engine (same as in physics core), this reduces micro-lag spikes and could provide up to 5% better framerate

Various other performance improvements to the game engine

Fixed default user path check failing when it doesn’t exist

Fixed FS:findfiles not handling non-standard mounting points

Performance graph: Added new custom imgui graphs, json and csv file export ability. Optimizations reduced CPU load by up to 50%

Fixed FS:findfiles not handling none standard mounting points

Added “getClipboard” function (complementing the existing “setClipboard”)

Nodegrabber sphere size can now be tweaked using be.nodeGrabber.renderSize

Fixed broken camera system when switching cars after reloading LUA

Fixed fully hydrolocked engines not displaying a message on screen

Graphics Engine

Preload material permutations to reduce stuttering during gameplay

Integrated CEF GPU rendering

Fixed direct lighting for translucent materials

Fixed render timers used for performance graphs

Text render improvements in various vehicle debug modes

User Interface

Tweaked road colors in Navigation app for better visibility

Cameras

Made “Look Back” instant and “hold” instead of “toggle”

Fixed chase camera having incorrect offset when changing vehicles

AI

Added save/load functionality to Script AI Manager

World Editor

Added “Snap To Terrain” Forest Editor brush

Fixed T3d::PathUtils::getUserPath still using defaulting path (may have fixed some issues regarding paths)

import/export holeMap, resizable import terrain window, fix export/import terrain flipped Y axis (use only flip if it’s file exported with previous version)

Fixed crash when using more than 32 material layers on terrain, added message to not go over the limit of 254 layers

Fixed materials texture animation when using Material Editor

Fixed hidding of TSStatic and Forest in the Editor

Improved integration of Imgui when used from multiple threads

Replay

Fixed graphics corruption during replay playback if a vehicle had lost parts and was then reset or recovered

Fixed missing replay audio, skidmarks and other details when the computer cannot keep up with the requested playback speed

Input

Added player number labels to the Options > Controls > Hardware menu when multiseat is enabled

Added input controller identifiers next to multiseat tags

Improved default Logitech G920 force feedback settings

Slightly more robust force feedback updates

Misc

Moved ESC/TC debug apps to imgui

Launcher now writes dates in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD)

Improved banana bench vehicle placement. Vehicles are spawned on the ground level now so they are not slamming down from a height. This has reduced a little bit banana bench scores

Notices

Notice to players about recording video when using surround sound:

Recording video using a 5.1 setup: Unless your video recorder is capable of 5.1 please make sure that your Windows output settings are set to 2.0 stereo and NOT 5.1 when recording BeamNG.drive gameplay. If you record a video with Windows/BeamNG set to 5.1, the video will just record the FL and FR channel of the 5.1 output, rather than using the downmix of the 5.1 setup. Notice to players about Windows “Game Mode”: Windows 10 ‘Game Mode’ features could cause issues with the game’s UI process. We recommend to disable this feature to avoid possible issues. To disable ‘Game Mode’, press Windows + G while in the game. This opens the game bar. Press the button on the right to disable ‘Game Mode’.



Thanks for reading the full change log 😉

An up to date list of known issues can be found in the dedicated Feedback & Bug Reporting Thread here.

Instructions on how to update the game here.