A Small Car on a Big Map – Version 0.15 released

Good news, everyone!

You have all been very patient, and the wait is finally over: today we’re releasing the new update, which includes some hotly anticipated features, including:

A new vehicle: Autobello Piccolina

The Autobello Piccolina might seem funny and small, but it’s no joke. Taking cues from German and Italian economy cars of the 50s and 60s, we’ve created the perfect match for the new Italy map. It’s lightweight, nimble, and durable, but of course, absolutely terrible in a collision. You might find yourself giggling as it eagerly pivots around switchbacks and narrow cobblestone streets; however, some unnerving lift oversteer will put the fear in you as speeds increase. Powered by an air-cooled engine, there is no radiator to damage, but keep an eye on the temperature gauge, as too much hard work without enough airflow can swing the temperatures into the red. As the base model might be a bit too mild for some, we have included tons of customization parts to make things more exciting. Kit it out as a vintage racer, street machine, or baja buggy! A new map: Italy

Important graphics and physics optimizations, along with our usual stack of improvements and fixes.

To gain some perspective about the work that has gone into Italy for the past 2 years and 8 months, here’s a comparison with a few of our other existing maps:

That’s an area of 16km², four times as much as our previous largest map. Italy features 120 kilometers of lovingly hand-crafted twisty roads, together with more than 4,300 manually placed traffic signs, and of course the vast amounts of associated road marking, fences, curbs, walls and other roadside features.

This road network links together several rural and urban areas made up of roughly 2,100 buildings. Going further off road, you’ll find Italy includes no less than 140,000 individual plants. And that’s not all, as a few areas have yet to be populated with further detail and polish in future updates.

All of this combined meant that initial versions of Italy were simply too resource intensive. This forced us to postpone the original release date some months ago, so we could optimize our game engine for this kind of complex map.

After all that work, we’ve seen framerates improving up to 240% on Italy, which means it’s now playable on most computers.

These optimizations may partially translate into other maps, depending very heavily on the map and on your hardware. As an example, here’s the improvement at ECA and WCUSA maps, as tested in a particular computer configuration:

Your mileage may vary, but we think most computers should see some improvement, so cross your fingers and check for yourself. Which, by the way, is a good excuse to test drive 700+ kilograms of post-war economy goodness, and discover all of its variants, aftermarket parts, and colorable paint jobs! 😉

The whole BeamNG team wishes you all some happy, relaxing Christmas holidays!

Thanks for the awesome year 2018, on to career mode in 2019! 🙂

If you need to kill time until you reach your computer or the update downloads, you can continue reading the full list of the changes for version 0.15:

Physics

Small optimizations in the physics core (~5%)

Increased sensitivity of duplicated beam warning

Improved dirt and gravel surface friction values (gains more grip with sliding than before)

Tied fire thermals to engine and brake thermals

Clean up of fire subsystem

Fixed random fire ignitions

Fixed removing engine also removing the wheels for some vehicles

Fixed particle slipForce values reported by the physics core

Fixed particle collision depth values

AI

Added scriptAI subsystem. It allows to record a driving path and then having the AI try to drive the same path

Added penalty parameters for above and below cutoff driveability, to map.getPath. They control the path finding algorithm based on the cutoff driveability threshold

Powertrain

Prevent DCTs from shifting up while in frozen mode

Automatic transmission doesn’t provide an engine load anymore in N when frozen

Added bigger freeplay to sequential transmissions

Tuned default upshift prevention settings

Electric servo device now has settable min/max angles

Temporary rev limiter (used for launch control and TCS) now uses the actual rev limiter logic of the engine instead of always a smooth limiter

Turbochargers now work much more reliably at low framerates

Increased display accuracy of torque curve app vs actual performance of turbocharged engines

Fixed clutch slipping too easily when vehicle has a low range gearbox

Fixed reverse airflow causing temperature increase in radiators and oil coolers

Graphics Engine

Render optimizations to improve CPU bound cases

Render optimizations for TSStatic objects

Added support for BC7 texture compression. Should be the prefered format for all textures except normal maps. Results in more detailed textures on-screen.

Fixed decals not rendering correctly over meshes using visible mesh for collision

Fixed some performance meters used in Performace UI

Fixed “look back” behavior of orbit camera

Fixed black screen after physics instabilities

Vehicles

Added new vehicle: Autobello Piccolina

Added ‘Shift Lights’ (Single LED and Multi LED). Added by default to Race and Rally configurations of most vehicles

All new ‘Rally Lights’ meshes and textures, with skinnable covers

Rally Lights: Adjusted brightness and shadows on variants with more than 2 lights. Improved positions to avoid light flares from leaking behind

All new ‘Roofrack’ meshes for the Gavril Roamer. Higher quality models and textures, added a Jerrycan

Added an 8-speed DCT to modern ETKs

Civetta Bolide: Added ‘Polizia’ configurations (skin and emergency leds). Added ‘Volitalia’ skin

Hirochi Sunburst: Added ‘Gripall’ skin. Fixed minor issue on the mudflaps uvMap

Hirochi SBR4: Added ‘Apex’ skin

Added new license plates format (European 52x12cm) and pattern generation. Read more here.

Ability to set default license plate for every new vehicle `settings/cloud/forceLicencePlate.txt`

Tuned sunburst CVT to use lower RPMs

Tuned ETK 800 Series and ETK K-Series weight distribution, awd parts add more weight

Fixed beacon lights not shutting off when broken

Improved Lightbar/beacon siren sounds: now come from vehicle’s horn location rather than the lightbar itself

Strengthened suspension subframes for most vehicles

Increase burnside radiator effectiveness

Fixed ETK K-Series default front track width

Fixed many cars getting small amounts of damage just from aggressive driving

Increased small standard tires treadCoef to match larger sizes (increases off road grip)

Some changes to some configurations’ colors

Refreshed thumbnails

Added information about current vehicle in htmlTexture (`VehicleInfo`)

Levels

Added new level: Italy

Automation Test Track road surface overhaul: now using a 3D mesh for greater smoothness and for improved control over details where needed. Should improve Force-Feedback feeling.

Fixed drag strip christmas tree on West Coast USA

Fixed minor water issue on Gridmap’s groundmodels area

Fixed minor issues on East Coast USA

Added new preview images for Cliff, Gridmap, and Utah

Scenarios and Time Trials

New scenarios: ‘Autobello Piccolina Showcase’ and ‘Pizza Delivery’

New Time Trials for Italy: Crest Road, Highway, Mini Village Loop, Asphalt Hillclimb 1 & 2, Island Tour, Mixed Circuit, Mountain Village Circuit, Cliff Road, Gravel Hillclimb 1 & 2, Mixed Hillclimb and Through the Centre

Bus Routes

Added bus lines for Italy: 101 Norte, 101 Norte reverse, 142 Lucera-Norte, 142 Norte-Lucera, 145 Norte-Villapace, 145 Norte-Villapace reverse, 701 Conca azzura-Fastello, 707 Fastello-Conca azzura

Added ability to use other buses in ‘Bus Route’ mode

Fixed using two times the same waypoint for different stops in navhelp

Fixed spawning the bus in the last bus stop trigger

Track Builder

Added procedural obstacles: Cube, Bump, Cylinder, Ring, Cone and Ramp.

Sounds

Changes to loading type for all assets, should improve overall performance

Added cobblestone groundmodel sounds

Added 2 new siren sounds

Added support for multiple engine sound source

New suspension sounds for cars

New cannon roll and fire sounds

Tweaks to cabin EQ and mix

User Interface

Added propulsion, fuel, transmission, braking distance, and drivetrain to vehicle performance data

Optimized navimap sending to a vehicle to only happen when the map has changed

Updated tooltips

Updated some outdated levels’ thumbnails

Fixed Italian language not always being properly recognized and used

Fixed navimap road construction for the case of multiple overlapping road segments intesercting with another one

Replay

Fixed rare bug where vehicle colors and skins would momentarily switch around between identic cars

Input

Enabled force feedback by default for the Logitech Momo Racing Force Feedback steering wheel

Fixed sped up response when switching back and forth between keyboard and gamepad steering

Fixed force feedback persisting when a vehicle is deleted

Controller

Node collision event is now exposed to controllers

Added shiftlight controller with highly configurable settings

Support for electric propulsion WIP

Fixed a few corner cases where a manual transmission in arcade mode would get stuck in a higher gear at stillstand for a while

Refactored how Sports mode works across all relevant transmissions

Improved DCT control logic

Launcher

Displays an error message if can’t clean cache (if using userpath==rootpath)

Added progress dialog for clean cache, fixed backup folder created using 12h time format

Added trackEditor and new editor to clean cache whitelist

Misc

New and more reliable Performance Graphs

Removed some unused files

Updated vehicle tests to include new data points such as “Propulsion”, “Fuel Type”, “Induction” and automated detection of transmission and drivetrain type

Added warning message when importing terrain texture map outside game/user folder

Fixed free space warning when using `-nouserpath`

Fixed a bug where the web browser would not open at all

ProceduralMesh: fixed a crash when vectors are empty

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.