The Automation Collaboration – Version 0.13 Released

Automation cars, a level and new sounds!

In this update, we are collaborating with the development team of Automation. Automation, developed by Camshaft Software, is a separate game revolving around managing your own car company and designing extremely detailed vehicles from scratch, and is getting an update today too.

This joint update allows users of BeamNG.drive to drive cars designed by Automation players, using the regular BeamNG mod repository. At the same time, players of Automation are able to export its vehicles, drive them in BeamNG.drive and submit them to our mod repository, for any BeamNG.drive owner to download and drive.

In addition to that, here’s some other highlights in this release:



Drive in the new Automation Test Track map:

Delight in the new sounds of tire squeal, revamped crunching metal audio, new surface sounds (gravel, sand, dirt, grass, asphalt, rumblestrips), turbochargers, superchargers, etc.

Support for importing and sharing Automation cars

And of course a myriad list of improvements and fixes in response to your awesome feedback

The Automation Test Track contains the track layout designed by the Automation developers to be the perfect test of vehicle performance. And in addition, there are various other test areas, a mixed surface hillclimb, an airstrip, and a large hydroelectric dam with great stunt potential! Set in New Zealand, the home of the Automation team.

As mentioned before, today Automation is also releasing an update that will allow you to export your Automation car designs to our game and test or trash them to your heart’s content. While the exporter comes with Automation, we really all put our

heads together to make it possible. You can pick up Automation and get started designing and sharing your own cars, or at least try out the cars that others share in the Repository!

If you decide to try Automation, here’s a useful guide to designing your first car:

Reminder: A cross Promotional Sale starts today! If you own either BeamNG.drive or Automation, you will get a Steam coupon to purchase the other game for 20% off! The coupon expires in three weeks.

On the home front, our physics programmers and audio engineers have been hard at work on improving vehicle sounds. We created physics-driven tire sounds for asphalt, dirt, gravel, grass, sand, and rumble strips!

Crash sounds also got a big improvement. Now all vehicle impacts can generate destruction sounds that have variety and proportion to their severity. Even the parts that fall off will continue making sound as they tumble away!

Turbocharger, blow-off valve, supercharger, and interior sounds have been reworked, and a lot of mixing and balancing has gone on behind the scenes.

Here’s the full changelog:

Gameplay

Track Builder: Added ’empty piece’, allowing you to have gaps in the track

Track Builder: Added three tracks: Whirl, Jumps and Parkour

Track Builder: Custom lap count and allows tracks to be reversed

Track Builder: Improved performance, now only updates track pieces that actually need to be updated

Vehicles now spawn/reset with activated smart parking brake

Fixed bug where scenarios stopped working when the user changed the vehicle

Fixed inability to use a bus stop twice in the same route

Fixed Time Of Day resetting to default when a scenario is restarted

Fixed bug incorrectly giving a user the success outcome when they actually failed the scenario

Fixed static collision not working in some scenarios while playing campaign mode

Fixed bug where a newly started mode or activity would not work if the game was paused previously

Fixed Bank Robbery scenario

Fixed Moose test scenario

Fixed restarting scenarios

Time Trials: No longer resets level and track when clicking “Change Configuration” in the end screen

Vehicles

T-Series: BeamIndustries, Two-Tone (3), Patriot (from MJ) skins

ETK K-Series: ‘polizei’ variant (skin, lightbar), ‘Sporty’ livery

Burnside: Added ‘taxi’ variant (skin, parts)

New-Gen Pessima: ‘TurboBurger’ skin

Barstow: Added ‘old paint’ skin (default on ‘Awful’ configuration). Re-textured ‘Frontguard’

Moonhawk: Added ‘old paint’ skin (default on ‘Terrible’ configuration)

Wentward DT40L: New door opening mechanism, corrected the color of some exterior rear lights, and other minor fixes

T-Series added 2nd UV channel, supports skins

ETK K-Series added 2nd UV channel, supports skins

New-Gen Ibishu Pessima added 2nd UV channel, supports skins

Moonhawk: Reduced weight of to ~1700kg, tweaked Stage 3 supercharger

SBR4 rear suspension design improvement, engine and transaxle tuning changes, rolling resistance of tires reduced

Tweaked Sunburst and SBR race DCTs/manuals for quicker launch

Tweaked semi fifth wheel, it’s now 3.5 times stronger

Added more damping to all tires, makes for more direct steering feel and more controlled body motion

Semi brake balance tweaked

Miramar race brake strength reduced

Increased steering system rigidity on most vehicles

Hopper: Increased wheel attachment strength

Minor durability tweaks to some cars

Fixed intercooler meshes stretching when engines come out of the car

Turned off collision for wheel axle nodes to stop snagging things (self collision is still enabled)

Fixed City Bus micro deformations which increased the damage counter from normal driving in scenarios

More consistent radiator damage for Barstow and Legran

Sunburst: Brake power and balance tweaked on Sunburst Rally, tweak CVT hill holder behavior

Fixed H45 Van rear axle becoming unstable at max track width

Pessima rear suspension stability fixed

Added Race seats available for most of vehicles

Fixed camera breaking when removing subpart on Wood Crate, Wood Planks props

Improved trailer behavior on vehicle reset/recover

Physics

Added thread scheduling subsystem to physics core. The scheduling subsystem removes the 64 vehicle/object limit, that constrained previous versions

Increased max nodes limit from 2000 to 3000 and max beams limit from 10000 to 15000

Added “extentFactor”, “inExtent”, “outExtent” parameters to hydros. They work in the same way as “factor”, “inLimit”, “outLimit” but with meter units

Added “RUMBLESTRIP” ground type

Added pitch detector and peak force detector subsystem on wheels

Added impact energy tracking

Improved tracking of wheel’s slip attributes and downforce

Improved deformation energy tracking

Fixed possible crashing bugs in static collisions subsystem

Fixed river calculation for vehicle nodes

Improved customization of airbrakes

Terrains

Added new “Automation Test Track” map

Added new billboards in West Coast USA

Added an aged and weathered version of the bus stop to Jungle Rock Island

West Coast USA: fixed various collision mesh issues, terrain spikes and decal road transitions

Removed extra lake on East Coast USA

Fixed a decalroad on Gridmap

User Interface

Added clutch thermals debug app

Updated key binding app to be smaller by default

Improved ‘ABS’ settings’ name, ordering and tooltip

Added translation strings for scenario difficulty types

Added keybinding to refresh UI (F5)

Changed UI process priority as game priority

Increased category filter height on in-game repository

Added electrics source for displaying if N2O is being active or not

Fixed replay notifications being hidden by most menus

Fixed Forgotten raceway time trial having wrong layout on the thumbnail

Fixed part selector not updating when changing between vehicles

Fixed some minor bugs regarding part highlighting

Fixed AiPathEditor icon

Fixed typo in Thumbnail Generator app

Fixed typo in an Industrial map scenario description

Audio

Added new surface sounds for various surfaces, including various loose roll, skid and kickup effects for: Gravel, Dirt, Sand and Grass

Implemented experimental geometry-based rumblestrip shape detection and its corresponding sound effect triggering

Reimplemented apshalt sounds from scratch, with new Asphalt skid samples and much better logic

Improved forced induction: new system with separate hiss noise and spindle whine layer

Forced induction: new turbo sounds

Forced induction: new supercharger sounds

Impact sounds: new vehicle collision samples using different impact strengths, with added LFE sample layer

Improved logic for fire and impact sounds, they can now follow the position of nodes

Implemented various sets of handbrake effects: ratchet, electric, pedal and lever mechanisms

Implemented support for having interior sounds at their correct location

Aero audio: replacement wind samples

Suspension: replacement loop (longer, more detail)

Improved piano crashing sounds

Mixing: various smaller tweaks for balancing snapshots, volume and filters, environmental reverb slightly reduced

Updated FMOD to version 1.09.14

Fixed incorrect pitch fluctuations in Doppler effect

Expanded possible range of audio pitch and volume values

Removed ingame audio device selection, please use Windows settings instead (was buggy for a few users, but impossible to fix without a complete rewrite)

Added setVolumePitchCT, playSFXOnceCT, playSFXOnceStaticCT functions that allow to control the “color” and “texture” attributes of sound events

Fixed ambiance sound leaking after exiting garage

Fixed rotation of sounds attached to vehicles

Fixed memory leaks on audio system

Powertrain

Implemented turbo boost per gear support

Implemented ECU top-speed limit support

Added ability to set max physical engine RPM from jbeam

Added support for automatic shifter layouts not including D

Improved thermal support for air cooled engines

Improved clutch thermal simulation, exposed various parameters in jbeam

Reduced inertia of gearbox input shaft in neutral

Locked differentials can auto calculate a maximum stiffness and strength value if nothing is defined

Automatics now properly reduce throttle during shifts

Fixed Park mode problems

Added some missing internal features to CVT code (minimal effect on behavior)

DCT now uses independent stiffness calculation for each clutch, making for tighter shift feel

Combustion engine intake/exhaust modifier torque tables now use the last raw value past their defined range instead of 0

Fixed automatic transmission getting stuck with reduced output torque

Fixed electric motor not generating any torque if turned against its turning direction

Fixed powertrain inertia not being recalculated after shifting a manual without using the clutch

Fixed powertrain inertia not being recalculated after shifting a DCT at all

Fixed excessive turbo RPM/pressure overshoot

Mod repository

Added Automation tab to repository

Artificial Intelligence

Overall code cleanup

Fixed inputs being unnecessarily reset

Fixed force feedback effects being generated while AI drove the vehicle

Misc

Fixed userpath being mounted twice with wrong priority

Fixed problem with FileSystem if manually defined userpath didn’t have a trailing slash character

Fixed levels list cache being a refreshed everytime a file modification happened in the userpath

Lua

Added getSensorZ() function, it returns the acceleration (without gravity) on vehicle’s Z-axis

Added getSensorVectorRaw() function, it returns a float3 vector containing the acceleration (including gravity) on vehicle’s X, Y, Z axes

Added optimized tableSizeC function to utils, it returns the size of C-like arrays (starting at 0)

Graphics Engine

Debri particles and ‘Time of Day’ now correctly follow the currently selected slow/fast motion speed

Added support for BC4 texture compression

Fixed normalization of specular light for forward rendered meshes

Fixed unsteady field of view angle during replay playback while using Orbit camera

Fixed license plates being generated on vehicles without licence plates too

Fixed tiny memory leak in render system

Fixed jittering of top-down camera

Fixed PostFX Open/Save functions

Replay

Note: the internal replay format has changed and old files won’t be readable any more Included additional select-able playback speeds during playback

Improved vehicle reuse during replay, leading to faster playback startup times

Added safeguard to replay system, will now correctly stop recording when the level or any vehicle changes, when running out of space on disk, etc

Improved detection of deprecated replay file formats, they will now stop immediately

Fixed gap in replay recording while a second vehicle was reloading

Fixed rare crash when resetting a vehicle during a replay recording session

Fixed vehicle shape corruption when playing back a second replay

Fixed unwanted full vehicle transparency in various situations

Game engine

Added new ‘Force High Performance Plan’ option

Added game’s version to launcher’s title bar

Optimized raycasting algorithms

Small speedup of vehicle loading

Slightly improved vehicle switching times when tens of them have been spawned

Fixed rare black screen after all vehicles were removed

Fixed ‘Out of memory’ crashes when loading certain assets from disk

Fixed level saving process, was ignoring empty scenetree nodes (leading to error logs when loading the level)

Fixed game getting stuck in loading screen when the default vehicle was no longer valid

Fixed memory leaks on vehicle spawn

Known Issues

Main menu is sometimes shown when starting a time trial