I love playing Beam.NG as a way to relax or let out stress/frustrations legally, cruising through Belasco is very calming. The only issue I have is that the game is really silent on its own, and when I play music on Spotify, it just doesn't feel right. The music isn't coming from the radio; it's coming from a clean source. The ability to connect to my Spotify account in-game, operate the radio with my controller, and hear the music as if it was coming straight from Radio Haricot would be perfect. Setting up bindings to change the volume/song would be a breeze. Depending on the car's age, the sound emitted from the radio could be filtered to sound more authentic, and filters could also cause the radio to emit static when driving underground. I've heard that audio ray tracing is being worked on and would go hand in hand with a radio system to play with when it releases. Additionally, the in-game radios could be visually revamped to respond to the radio being used. Old analog radios could light up and wobble around the frequency, early digital displays could light up and read out simple information such as the song and band name, and modern screens could show a full arrangement of radio information and controls. This addition would be the most challenging part to implement, I imagine, but it would be the cherry on top of the whole idea. Searching this idea up to see if it's been suggested before, I noticed that a Beam.NG employee has experimented with the idea before. The thread has been deleted, so I'm unsure what came of their project. I've considered two possible issues with this idea. Firstly, I don't know if Spotify would cooperate or allow this to be done legally or what laws may prohibit this. Secondly, I've found that the Pigeon, Piccolina, and T-Series have no apparent radio system or speakers. The Wentward has speaker controls for what I assume would connect to a microphone, but no radio system. Perhaps these vehicles could use a basic app to display the songs on the screen. Please let me know if there's something I missed or if this is not possible.
Not a terrible idea, Spotify does have an API that I can't imagine would be hard to talk to via controls within BeamNG. I'm a little unsure of the legal/licensing implications of implementing something like this, but since Spotify would be providing the content and not BeamNG directly, it might be ok. There are already games going back years that integrate with your own music library (Vib-Ribbon on the PS1 comes to mind), so even if Spotify was off the table, perhaps a local playlist from the users filesystem might work. I'm guessing that this is more an issue of how relevant such a thing would be to the wider audience, and whether the devs have the time to put into it when there are other aspects of the game that need attention. I adore the small details in this game though, so it would be nice to see something like this eventually.
