Buckle up, heavy traffic ahead: Update 0.17 released

Hello everyone!

The new update is out! It’s been a huge collaborative effort, but we’re very happy with the results, and we hope you enjoy 0.17.

The 1963 Gavril Bluebuck joins our growing, diversifying list of vehicles including 33 variants to drive and customize, along with a wealth of mod parts and our first-ever hydraulic suspension. In addition, we have extensively improved the deformation behavior of most of the vehicles in the game. You’ll be able to enjoy the improved deformation more easily than ever, with seamless dynamic traffic now just a click away in the radial menu. There is also now a drag minigame at the West Coast drag strip, and the AI might just give you a run for your money 😉

In addition to vehicle-related work, we have spent a significant amount of time and effort overhauling our older levels to bring them up to the standard we’ve established with the newer ones. East Coast, Hirochi Raceway, and the Derby map have received extensive overhauls to improve visual quality, gameplay, and performance.

We are also proud to have achieved some serious performance improvements on both the CPU and GPU side, massively optimizing vehicle rendering and significantly improving level rendering.

Highlights

New vehicle: Gavril Bluebuck

Level Improvements: East Coast USA, Hirochi Raceway and Derby

Traffic and AI improvements

Drag Race at West Coast USA

Optimized vehicle rendering: up to 2.5x faster for CPU and up to 10x faster for GPU. Level rendering is up to 1.3x faster

But wait, there’s more…

FlowGraph Editor: allows to create gameplay without needing to know LUA or any programming language: just clicking and dragging ‘flowgraph nodes’. The basics work, but you will find rough edges here and there. Don’t be afraid to report them!

World Editor 2.0: is the future substitute of the already aged World Editor, which can sometimes be quite difficult to use; we are aware of this, and we want to make modders life less frustrating and allow for faster work, so this is our response.

In this update, you’ll also find some very experimental features:We’ve decided to release both in a very early state, still lacking features and stability, and likely to change in the near future and break compatibility with your recent creations (although we try not to). But they are complex enough that they warrant an early release, to gather feedback as soon as possible, even if the experience is still far from optimal. If you feel like experimenting, and don’t mind all the possible issues, then go on, give them a try, and let us know what you think!

Greetings from the BeamNG team. Enjoy!

East Coast USA

Improved graphical appearance of vegetation. Improved vegetation placement to open up the map for better driveability

Sawmill has been expanded to include storage areas and has had buildings renovated

New fishing village has been placed along the shoreline to add a point of interest

Gas station and convenience store have been renovated and area has had mechanic building added

Main town has received renovations with new building textures, road textures, utility poles, cables and much more

New offroad trails have been placed throughout the map

Firewatch tower, inn and combined police/fire station added to provide points of interest

Electric vehicle charging stations added

Hirochi Raceway

Slight adjustments to racetrack layout for improved drivability

Layout adjustments to secondary roads

New offroad course for those who prefer to race off the tarmac

All racecourse buildings have received a facelift to improve their appearance and placement

New road-side items such as lighting, billboards and race equipment

Skid pad has been replaced with small derby track

New gas station and convenience store have been added

Upgraded vegetation

Derby

Upgraded vegetation graphical appearance

AI paths placed throughout map

Minimap added

Added new track

Rendering Engine

Optimized vehicle rendering up to 2.5x faster for CPU and up to 10x faster for GPU

Optimized level rendering up to 1.3x faster

Reduced terrain memory usage up to 1GB in big maps like Italy

Fixed Material’s UV animation on Decals and DecalRoads

Fixed bug with Cubemaps that cause performance issues in AMD cards

Fixed bug with normals in Decals

World Editor 2.0

Release of the Alpha, work in progress, version of World Editor 2.0 (toggle with F10)

This new editor offers better usability through improved tools and interfaces

It also features repositionable and dockable UI elements

Editing tools for Decals, Decalroads and Rivers, Shapes, Materials and a lot more 🙂

FlowGraph

Released the Alpha, work in progress version of the Flowgraph Editor

The FlowGraph Editor offers a new visual programming language, which can be used to quickly and easily create scenarios, gameplay elements and more

Contains 9 fully documented demo projects which can be explored on GridMap

Documentation can be found here

Traffic

Implemented traffic system

Implemented basic police system within traffic

Added traffic setup and options to UI radial menu

Added functionality to smartly spawn in multiple vehicles at the same time

Added multi-vehicle spawner tool to World Editor 2.0

Vehicles

Added new vehicle: Gavril Bluebuck

With several variations

Including taxis…

Drag racers…

And low riders with functioning hydraulics

Implemented detachable front subframes, removable rear subframes/mounting points, more accurately represented breakable engine mounts and deformation reworks for Sunburst, ’88 Pessima, Covet, Miramar, 200BX, 800-Series, K-Series, I-Series and LeGran. Subframes are now treated as part of the suspension

Autobello: Fixed ghost flares on type B fenders, made both types of signal lamps able to be installed together for realism, fixed steering linkage mesh streaking in crashes, fixed hubcaps inverting easily

Covet: Added more geometry to greenhouse, tweaked overall shape and proportions slightly to better match real vehicles, fixed front subframe mesh, added ‘Old Paint’ skin, updated ‘Vandalized’ skin

ETK K-Series: Adjusted emergency flashers position

’98 Pessima: Improved upon subframe prototype from 0.16, subframes are now part of the suspension, further tuning. Adjusted position of pedals

’88 Pessima: Tweaked overall shape and proportions to better match real vehicles, fixed widebody kit wonky shapes and rear half not being skinnable

LeGran: Tweaked overall shape and proportions to better match real vehicles, various geometry fixes

Miramar: Reduced roof height to better match real vehicles

Burnside: Reworked police and taxi skins to be colorable like Bluebuck

Hopper: Adjusted suspension strength for rock crawling, fixed streaking meshes on rollbar windshield bars, fixed wrong shifter on custom version, added ‘Carabinieri’ configuration

H-Series: Fixed floating racing seats, fixed racing seats clipping cab. Interior collision simplified so as not to interfere with external collision anti-clipping. Cars should no longer become stuck in the side of the van

Gavril Roamer: Added ‘Antenna’ part to off-road bumper

SBR4: Fuel tank improved, retuned handling of hillclimb configurations

Sunburst: Improved spacing of front bumper nodes to prevent spiking

T-Series: Added “T75 Destroyer” config, Ram Plow configs now use automatic transmission, fixed hood cam flopping, added locking diff

Glass weight simulation for most vehicles

Glass panes now individually removable for Burnside, Moonhawk, Barstow and D-Series (more coming)

Reworked seat jbeam structures for most vehicles

Added antennas to offroad bumpers on D Series, H Series and Roamer and to the hood on the Hopper

Material files moved to new Json format, allowing multiple files for better modability

Updated Barstow Awful and Moonhawk Terrible presets: welded differentials and off-road tires

Pickup V8 diesel power levels retuned

All engine tuning parts changed to use expressions instead of fixed values

Engine braking torque increased

Separated door panels on Pessima, ETK800, ETK-K, Bolide, Miramar

Added force feedback strength multiplier to all vehicles’ tuning menu

Added brake force multiplier to all vehicles’ tuning menu

205/75R15 All-Terrain tires added to 15×7 wheels

Tire grip tweaks to balance changes in tire friction physics

Changes to rally suspension tuning and rally setups

Changed spring perch design on double wishbone suspensions where the spring acts in the middle of the wishbone

Updated some vehicles’ configurations

Fixed an error in ETK-K Series brakes flexbodies

Implemented “hydraulic suspension” controller

Fixed sunburst lightbar input action throwing errors if used on a configuration without lightbar

Fixed starter motor physics being stuck on in certain cases

Fixed combustion engine emitting “oil starvation” message if it was turned off

Added manual aggression override in vehicle controller

Electric servo device can now be controlled via an electrics value

Tweaked combustion engine block cooling effects

Brake thermal data is now exposed to electrics

Implemented dedicated engine starter events for engine and exhaust

Added particle effects for wood groundmodel collision, fuel tank rupture and improved mud splashes

Scenarios

New scenario : Field Run

New derby time trials : The Big 8 and Dirt Oval

ConsoleNG

A future proof replacement for the in-game console that is toggled using Shift+~ (Shift+tilde)

Audio

Scaled up the sound subsystem for traffic support

Various smaller performance improvements

Replaced generic reverb with directional, dynamic slap-back delay at specific level locations (e.g. dam in Italy or under bridges in West Coast)

Cone angle EQ on the exhaust now reduces to nothing over distance

More immersive ambient sounds for all levels with dynamic wind system

Updated ambiences for the improved levels

Fixed stopping sound sources on destruction

Fixed ambient sounds stopping too early

Fixed transitioning between sound scapes causing sound skipping – stop and start over again

Added restartable FMOD sound sources for cases when FMOD stealing kicks in

Improved Audio settings for max voices, including a message informing the user a restart of the game is necessary to apply the changes

New engine sounds for semi and bus

Hydraulic sounds for Bluebuck

Custom starter sounds for all vehicles

Pass-by whooshes (experimental)



Levels

Mod compatibility: kept art folder from before the updates to preserve mod compatibility

Gridmap: Fixed licence plate colors, added 55-11 format

Gridmap: Added ‘Prepped Asphalt’ (Drag Strip) to groundmodels testing area. Smoothed oval entrance ramps.

Improved West Coast USA AI navigation

Powertrain

Fixed incorrect friction calculation on DCT gearboxes

Fixed shaft electrics value causing props to spin at 2x speed (visuals only)

Removed upshift prevention on old automatic transmissions (it prevented upshifting with excessive wheelspin)

Reduced starter motor default torque and cranking rpmcber

Force Feedback

Improved update rate estimation algorithm. It should now be harder to overload the steering wheel drivers, which was leading to severe framerate drops in a few cases

Added ability to use force feedback Response Correction Curves (see: https://wiki.beamng.com/Steering_wheel_setup#Response_correction_curves ) with devices that don’t show up as steering wheels

Fixed the automatically detected update rate not being used on the first spawned vehicle

Fixed logs showing an inaccurate update rate

ScriptAI

Added checkbox to toggle paths preview



AI

Added other vehicle awareness to AI. It’ll now try to avoid other vehicles by steering to avoid them or by adjusting its own speed

Added other vehicle prediction to vehicle awareness. AI will try to predict the future position of other vehicles

Improved AI’s high level planning

Improved AI’s behavior when deviating from the drive-line

Improved AI’s control when the vehicle under/over-steers

AI is doing its own ABS and TCS control now

Added dynamic friction sensing to AI

Added new AI traffic mode

Traffic AI will replan when it is blocked

Improved flee and chase AI

Game Engine

Waypoints have a flag to be ignored by the AI (will not interfere with AI roads)

Increased maximum input capacity of old T3D in-game console

File system changes notifications now also work in the game folder

Added ability to increase/decrease the amount of visible tiremarks in Menu > Options > Graphics

Added option to save/load/reset the tiremarks in Menu > Environment > Tire Marks

Fixed game window freezing with a black screen when left in the background for some minutes (only when debug rendering was used)

Physics Engine

Fixed ray casting to properly collide with Zero-plane if no heightmap is available

Added obj:getBeamVelocity(beamId) function, which returns the internal contraction/expansion velocity of a beam

Launcher

Fixed a bug where the launcher does not prevent you from using a userfolder that is a parent of the game folder and vice versa

Mod Manager / Repository

Print error and stack if modscript fails to improve diagnostic errors

Fixed inability to delete/unsubscribe from mods that are not in the missing list

Fixed modmanager initializing everytime the UI reloads

Fixed bug causing mods to be reenabled by moving them (eg /mods/example.zip => /mods/repo/example.zip)

Cameras

Several improvements to ‘External’ camera behaviour (e.g. it should now keep angles for a longer period, and other improvements)

Added ability to modify and reset the ‘Free’ camera (shift+C) field of view, using the traditional bindings (numpad5/3/9 and others)

Improved radial menu options of ‘Relative’ camera: fixed duplicated slots, improved the descriptions and other tweaks

Fixed the relative camera forgetting its location each time the vehicle parts are modified or when numpad5 was pressed

Fixed the trailer-specific camera crashing after LUA is reloaded

Fixed ‘External’ camera positioning issues when vehicle is underwater and close to the surface

Fixed ‘TopDown’ camera zooming out excessively if vehicle is spawned far from the map center

Fixed ‘TopDown’ camera not zooming out as the vehicle picks up speed

Added idCam, offset and rotation parameters to ‘Onboard’ camera jbeam section

Fixed ‘Orbit’ cam resetting when changing vehicle parts

Fixed rotation irregularities of path camera

Made camera paths a lot smoother by fixing the underlying math

UI

Navigation App: Roads with drivability lower than 0.1 will now appear in a different color, reduced chances of disappearing maps at certain angles.

Improved layout of graphics settings to make them a bit more intuitive to find

Added warning when very high reflection settings are chosen in Menu > Options > Graphics

Fixed inaccurate slowmotion speeds being reported on screen (even if the correct speeds were being applied)

Improved logs related to language selection and language fallback procedure

Updated some tooltips

Fixed various settings disappearing from Menu > Options > Graphics

Improved the message displayed when reassigning the default vehicle, automatically hides the vehicle selection menu too

Pre-alpha release of the new toolchain we are developing. Unstable – use at your own risk. Feedback welcome. 🙂First release of our new gameplay scripting language. Please give us feedback here – Thanks! 😀

Input

Added a binding for each of the actions available in Radial Menu > Fun Stuff

Improved the naming of steering bindings in Menu > Options > Controls

Modified the Real Time binding: it no longer forces real time, instead it toggles between real time and the last used slow motion speed

Miscellaneous Fixes

Fixed part selector not displaying anything if one jbeam variable have min and max equal

Fixed lua websocket lib failing to require client

Added warning when unable to write at the regular user folder, forcing the use of a fallback path. Added warning when even the fallback is unusable, instead of silently refusing to start the game.

Minor performance improvements to nodegrabber and External camera

Added API to inspect a prefab from GameEngine LUA: ‘size()’ and ‘at()’ prefab methods (indexed from 0 to N-1)

Fixed rare crash during replay playback, happened predominantly when using modded vehicles, but might happen with any vehicle

Fixed Sphere triggers not triggering correctly due to being too small in the world octree

Improved JSon parser error messages when loading ill formed json files

Improved stress and deformation debug visuals

Minor performance improvements for decal roads in the editors

Fixed height calculation of decal roads when “over objects” is selected

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.