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:

August 2013: 0.3.0, 0.3.0.1, 0.3.0.2 ( blogentry)
September 2013: 0.3.0.3, 0.3.0.4, 0.3.0.5.
February 2014: greenlit on Steam
June 2014: 0.3.1.0, 0.3.2.0, 0.3.3.0.
July 2014: 0.3.4.0, new office.
August 2014: “Coming soon” in Steam
September 2014: 0.3.6, 0.3.6.1 ( blogentry), 0.3.6.2, 0.3.6.3.
November 2014: 0.3.6.5, 0.3.6.6, 0.3.6.7,
December 2014: 0.3.6.9, ( blogentry)
January 2015: 0.3.7.1, 0.3.7.2, ( blogentry)
February 2015: 0.3.7.4 ( blogentry), 0.3.7.5, 0.3.7.6 ( blogentry), 0.3.7.7 ( blogentry)
April 2015: 0.3.7.8 ( blogentry), 0.3.7.9, 0.3.8.0, 0.3.8.1 ( blogentry)
May 2015: Released as “Early Access” on Steam, 0.3.8.2 ( blogentry), 0.3.8.3 ( blogentry), 0.4, 0.4.0.1, 0.4.0.2 ( blogentry)
June 2015: 0.4.0.3 ( blogentry), 0.4.0.4 ( blogentry), 0.4.0.5 ( blogentry), 0.4.0.6 ( blogentry)
July 2015: 0.4.1 ( blogentry)
August 2015: 0.4.1.1 ( blogentry), 0.4.1.2 ( blogentry)
September 2015: 0.4.2.0 ( blogentry), 0.4.2.1 ( blogentry), 0.4.2.2 ( blogentry)
October 2015: 0.4.3 ( blogentry)
November 2015: 0.4.3.1 ( blobentry), 0.4.3.2 ( blogentry)
December 2015: 0.5 ( blogentry), 0.5.1 ( blogentry)
February 2016: 0.5.2 ( blogentry), 0.5.2.1 ( blogentry)
March 2016: 0.5.3 ( blogentry), 0.5.3.1 ( blogentry), 0.5.3.2 ( blogentry)
April 2016: 0.5.4 ( blogentry)
June 2016: 0.5.5 ( blogentry), 0.5.6 ( blogentry), finally finished writing that blogpost …

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.