Update Speculation thread

Oops I thought the blue car was Bluebuck, novice mistake at 8000+ hours on the clock. Anyway the biggest difference to me is the car windows that look much thicker and car-windowy than before. What even is this thin air stuff that we have now?

 

When I'm doing conversions from other games, windows indeed is area that is somewhat annoying, if PBR improves that, then I'm all in.

Although we all have been hyped of something, then we get said something and it does not feel so big, but when we have not been hyped of something and we get said something, then it feels much bigger.

So conclusion is, hype is bad for shock and awe effect of new release

 

Okay, thank you - sorry about that

 

In the teaser video, it was mentioned that clearcoat would be rendered, which makes me wonder if peeling clearcoat would be rendered too. After all, the “old paint” skins for the remastered LeGran and the Wendover have peeling clearcoat, something absent from most vehicles- and maybe something added in anticipation of PBR??

 

You mean a probe based system for cubemaps combined with a high roughness cutoff, i don't see it. Beamng needs a way faster renderer before they implement stuff like dynamic global illumination or global dynamic reflections. I imagine it's easier to rebuild the renderer from ground up to support Ray tracing effects than adapting the current one to faked methods that are outdated even today.

 

peeled clear coat would be just connected to roughness so it's less reflective

 

are we talking about a video with a traffic light?

 

Yeah but it was deleted.

 

update coming this month?

 

Don't ask this question, devs won't answer but someone else will, saying no, it doesn't make sense probably end of 2022, no because steam wasn't updated 22 times like always a week before an update or it doesn't make sense to update on Friday (it was updated on Friday many times) but no and so on just to make me sad

 

about the video with traffic lights, in it bots just go to green and slow down to red

 

We don't know, usually the summer update come in August so that might be the same for this one.

 

why then was the update shown so early?

 

The PBR teaser is not repertoried on youtube and was shown on twitter with the hashtag teaser tuesday, wich means it don't give any indications on when the update will come. As for the traffic light video it seems like it was leaked unintentionnaly.

 

/

 

Given all the information that we have I'd assume that the update is coming next week or the week after. Due to the amount of major changes to the game, and thus potential bugs, I believe that it would probably come earlier in the week due to needing time to make hotfixes.

 

That is an optimistic possibility

 

My reasons are as follows:

• QA branch has been updated very frequently all week. This usually happens for a week or two before each update. Although the first post on this thread says to not use SteamDB as a source, I have found this to be a very reliable indicator of an upcoming update from experience.
  
• BeamNG Tech (BeamNG for universities and researchers) is supposedly going to be on a 3 month update cycle, and it would make sense that Drive could possibly be on that same cycle. 0.22 was released on March 29, three months from then would be June 29 (next Tuesday).
• We already got one trailer (not teaser but full trailer) for 0.23. These usually drop a week or two ahead of the update at most. The leaked traffic lights trailer had a "insert devblog here" in the description, which clearly indicated that most if not all trailers have been finished and all there is left to do is put the finishing touches and bugfixes in the update and write the devblog. That traffic light trailer was uploaded on June 12, over two weeks ago. Trailers are not made until the update is extremely close to completion.

My predictions for the update:

Likely (assumed to be coming):

• PBR Rendering - Confirmed for 0.23
  
• Gridmap Remaster - Teased frequently for months and shown in the PBR trailer
• Grid, Small, Pure "Remaster" - Quite likely to get updated textures and lighting from the new Gridmap
  
• Updated vehicle textures - Likely a requirement for PBR support
• Linux Support - Mentioned on the BeamNG.tech part of the documentation as coming this summer.
• Audio Changes/Improvements - TDK has said to "wait for the next update" to a user reporting audio issues.
  
• Updated skins - Some skins are showing their age (the Roamer fire chief is one extreme example), and as textures are redone I wouldn't be surprised if some skins are updated/replaced.

Possible (might happen, might not happen, we'll just have to see):

• Ibishu Wigeon - Has not been shown in game yet, however given its simple design and assumed low quantity of content due to how niche it is, there is a possibility of it having been completed.
  
• Ibishu Pigeon Remaster - Not officially revealed, but the Pigeon is in extremely rough shape and given how it might share parts with the Wigeon, if the former is added, this remaster would be likely to appear alongside it.
  
• Traffic Improvements - Last update there was a lot of WIP traffic stuff (most notably vehicle pooling), and it would be safe to assume that it is going to at least see some improvement.
  
• Traffic lights for AI traffic on ECUSA - Shown in a leaked trailer for 0.23. However, said trailer was removed.
• Additional JRI content/remaster Phase 2 - While we have no official announcement of this being a thing, there is a lot of suspicious stuff going on with that map, and it was absent from the PBR trailer. Most maps were shown (including Gridmap V2), however it is quite strange that the most recently remastered map was completely absent from a trailer about graphics. The potential Japan re-theme could suit a new JDM car (Wigeon) and a remastered JDM car (Pigeon), quite nicely. While this likely means nothing, I would still consider this a very slim possibility.
  
• At least some sort of improvements to the UI - Given how a major focus of the update is an improvement to how the game looks, there is a possibility of new UI alongside it to improve how everything else looks. New loading screens and main menu backgrounds are very likely to be added in order to showcase the updated graphics, and vehicle thumbnails will probably see a refresh too.

Unlikely (most likely will not happen):

• ETK Driver Experience Center Remaster - One of the last maps needing a remaster, the amount of work that this map would require, if it's not replaced outright, would be substantial enough for us to assume that we won't see it this update.
  
• Additional vehicle remasters - The vehicle developers are probably busy enough with the PBR materials that I'd be impressed if we get the Wigeon and the Pigeon at all.

 

I mean there was mentioned that devs are switching to one update per 3 months. So, if I go to December, the update is always close to xmas, if I'm not mistaken. As devs want also celebrate the holidays. From there you can theoretically deduce that the update before xmas is in September, then in June and the first one of the year in March.

 

Would this new PBR fix the issue of dust & smoke overlapping with glass/transparent textures?