Ten Years On...

Gather 'Round, children, and listen to 'ol gramps spin his yarns.

Back in my day, we early BeamNG players had nothing you kids got now. When was that? Oh, about ten years ago. We were happy to have a whopping five (5!) official vehicles to play with: the D-Series, Covet, Grand Marshall, Bolide, and H-Series, and we got our hands on that majestic Moonhawk right around a month later. Customization was pretty early, though. We didn't even have a color selector back then, much less skins and PBR!

There weren't too many places to drive of course, we had the old Gridmap, back when the ground was a sterile shade of white and there wasn't a racetrack around the map's edges. There was Dry Rock Island (RIP), Industrial, before they split the port to a different map, and then rejoined them again. There was Pure Grid, of course, Small Island and Derby Arenas, sporting an autumn and winter coat, respectively. And there was Cliff, though back then it wasn't an island, or even really a mountain.

Every vehicle had the same engine sound. Even the Covet, which was eventually the first to have a unique engine noise. Scraping sounds didn't exist, suspension sounds didn't either, and all the noises sounded the same between realtime and slow motion.

I hear all y'all kids complain a lot these days about how the AI isn't competitive enough or how traffic isn't dense enough. Would you believe that BeamNG didn't even have pathfinding AI for the first few years? The AI could either drive straight for you, or away from you, obstacles be damned. Engine damage was nonexistent, so the only way to really kill a car was to snap its driveshaft (a lot harder to do when you don't have a nodegrabber). And scenarios and time trials weren't even a glimmer in the developers' eyes.

Speaking of developers, can any of you guess how many of them there were? Nine? Eight? Nope, four. There was @gabester who designed and built all the vehicles, there was @LJFHutch, who created the levels. @estama was the wizard making the whole simulation work from the backend, and @tdev was up top, managing the business of launching both a company and a game.

What we might have lacked in manpower was soon filled by the community. @Mythbuster created the first mod, a beautiful '49 Cadillac, which was developed before the game launched so that it could drop on the same day as the alpha did. Still one of the best-looking mods. @DrowsySam was responsible for many of the early creations, such as offroaders and even some of BeamNG's first aircraft! @Insanegaz and @Nadeox1 pulled impressive double-duty, developing mods like Stairway to Hell and the Crown Victoria, while also creating many of the game's most popular videos and crash compilations, back before the conveniences of replays and the path camera. Did any of you know you couldn't even access the mod subforum unless you registered your account through your copy of the game? Crazy times.

Yup, we truly live in a blessed age.

Fake grandpa RP aside, thank you to the devs for the hard work, patience, and especially passion you've put into one hell of an early access experience. Thank you to the modders who crank out new content to capture the game in a different light. And thank you to the YouTube creators for a decade riotous let's plays and memorable crash compilations. It's been a long road, and one I'm as happy to see reflecting in the rearview as shining through the windshield.

See you at the next milestone,
-Occam

 

We've come a long way since then, it'll be exciting to see where the next ten years take us!

Edit: in my day we didn't even have a game, just the forums with like three threads and a handful of replies.

 

Time flies when you're having fun

Glad to be a part of BeamNG history

 

joined 2017 and the progress BeamNG has made over the past years still impresses me
here's to another decade of pushing the boundaries of physics simulation (slight exaggeration) and making BeamNG even more fun
also better anti-aliasing or i will enter your walls

 

if you'll all allow me to get a bit sappy myself: it's crazy how i've almost followed this game through its' entire lifespan

i learned of it as a kid in 2015 or so watching old ybr and insanegaz videos and it absolutely blew me away seeing that games could do this now, so i always yearned to play it at some point (i even installed the 0.3 demo on my potato laptop to play it at a whopping 2fps. i did not get far in it.) and when i finally got a pc in late 2018 or so, round about when 0.15 dropped, i could finally play it and nearly 5 years and 650 hours later i've never stopped really playing it

it's been absolutely incredible seeing the game's progression both in development and mods! the newest thing the devs gave us to play with was the pickle and italy, the bolide was still a kit car proportioned hunk on a totally nonsensical frame and everyone was begging for modern cars and another supercar. i came in right at the tail end of beamng's "old days" i guess i'd call them, cause not long after everything started getting its remasters, pbr became a thing, traffic was introduced after an incredible mod, we finally got those modern cars and that supercar we all wanted, and the quality of the game's content increased to unfathomable levels compared to back then. i mean back in 2018 the pinnacle of modding to most was wbimp or the prasu or the b25, now we have people like lucas making stuff that's well made enough to spend genuine money for, and people do!

if i saw even a glance of what beamng would be today when i first started playing it i'd tell you you're lying, and it makes me really wonder how good we'll have it 5 years from now. beamng has been the single best £20 i've ever spent in my life and the game genuinely changed my life. i owe a lot to everyone not only on the dev team but in the modding community (except for that website, of course. we know the one) and i hope one day i'll see this game get its full release because it's come so far and it can and will go further. thank you for all the incredible experiences you've given me and so many others

 

Hey I grew up with beam, from watching whybeare steelorse and insanegaz all day, I could only dream of having a pc to play the game. 9ish years later, I’m playing it frequently with over 900 hours. The only reason why I upgrade my pc is for this game. From my brothers old hp pc, to my own custom gaming pc, beamNG has always had a place in my heart.
My first BeamNG version: 0.17
Pc: HP compaq with i5 2500 and r5 430 (brother’s pc)
Current beamNG version : 0.29.2
Pc: Ryzen 5800x and gtx 970

For me I’ve been loving these forums because everyone here loves the same things as me: cars, computers, and motherfuckin beamNG. No one I’ve ever met had all of those criteria’s.
this is the game of my life, and nothing will ever separate me from it. #beamng10

 

beamng is my all time fav game.
it is what pushes me forward in life, back when it released i was a kid that knew nothing.
this game motivated to pursue knowledge in 3d and physics because i want to keep learning more on how to re-create vehicles in this wonderful simulator.

from time to time i go in my old backups and play the og 0.3 beamng to remember all the wonderful progress thats been made, all the years of final countdown and hype.
BeamNG is my religion lmao. Thank you Beam Team for the hard work over the past decade. my life would not be the same without BeamNG! i grew along with beamng lol.
Its the only game i cant stop coming back to.

Happy 10th bday BeamNG.Drive! Thank you for all the years of fun! Cheers for hopefully another decade of awesome content! <3

 

Omg is it really 10 today... So it is.

I saw Squirrel try the demo in 2013. Concentrated on other games from about that time though, but then during 2020 learnt there was a Nardo mod. So downloaded that...but then obviously had to get BNG itself! Fantastic enjoyable stable testing platform for both 'real' simulations & more creative muckabout sessions. Looking forward to what the future can bring to the platform.

Here you can have some of my cake from yesterday. Also I'm off work today - perfect timing.

I'm thinking now I should do 10 laps of 10 scenarios in something like the default D15 or Covet.

 

I really dont think i can say anything about this.... amazing experience throughout the past ten years. one of the best ten years of the history...

 

I don’t have much to say but, I have well over 1,000 hrs and I have been playing since 2018 and happy bday beam!

 

My childhood infatuation with car crashes began on this website in 2006: https://www.wreckedexotics.com/newphotos/bad/index.shtml. Sadly now, the website is super old and falling apart, but the nostalgic pictures of horrible accidents remain. I was too young to read at the time so the death tolls listed underneath the pictures didn't dissuade my interest. The site stopped being updated in 2010, much to my dismay. I must have looked at the pictures in the "bad accidents" and "weird accidents" section over a hundred times, just clicking through them in awe. Between about 2009 and 2013 I drew about 500 car crash pictures of my own, inspired by this site, and organized in the same index format. The summer of 2013 I found rigs of rods videos. Finding out that game existed since 2005, I was like "where has this been all my life!?" Soon after, in the recommended videos on the right, a newer thing appeared, and we all know what that was.

I got the game sometime in 2014 around the "pre-race update," and have enjoyed crashing and driving in this game ever since. The family computer downstairs still has that old version, along with a bunch of modland crap that 12-year-old me didn't yet realize was terrible.

 

I remember I got the game after the 200bx came out, those were fun days

 

BeamNG.drive is and will be my favorite vehicular simulator of choice. Whilst the team itself reached 10 years back on May 28th, the simulator keeps getting better and better and growing, and with it, growing pains. Back then, no one thought the simulator would become what it is today, and I feel confident to say that many of us will wonder where the simulator will be in another 10 years. I first ran BeamNG.drive on my then state-of-the-art Acer Aspire V5, equipped with an Intel Core i7-4500U and GTX 750M. I was instantly hooked to the OG tech-demo. Since then, I came to know most of the ins-and-outs of the simulator, and started a business focused on delivering content for this masterpiece of a soft-body physics simulator, that really is capable of just about anything.

 

I think it's time I put my two cents in.

Back in 2018, I was watching YouTube and I saw this rather peculiar video of (as what I thought of it as), this car crashing game. Almost immediately I was hooked. I watched endless amounts of videos of BeamNG, and about a year later, I finally caved in and bought it. Best $25 I’ve spent to this day. I can’t believe how far the game has come, it’s honestly amazing.

Pretty random side note, but the song I’d use to describe BeamNG is Break My Stride by Matthew Wilder. It really fits the game in so many ways.

 

I wanted to make a short little video of the Firwood Police Department chasing my IRL counterpart the Bruckell Bastion and ends with the D-Series Ambulance pushing it off the cliff and the ol' Blue D-Series ending it, skidding to a stop unharmed. Of course, OBS decided to be a potato.
There is so much I want to say about this game. I've been following it for 9 years and playing it for only 5, yet I have thousands of hours on it. By far the best $25 I have ever spent, possibly in my life. The most joy and time I've ever gotten out of $25.
Seeing it develop has been a pleasure and has the best developers out of any game. They could have made vehicle DLC's for 5-10 dollars and I would have handed it over, but update after update, big or small, this game has been immensely improved all for that original $25.
Happy 10th Birthday BeamNG. It started with Rigs of Rods & I can't wait to see what the next 10 years holds for this game!

 

Personally good sir, I prefer the monochrome print of the isle. The colour detracts from its atmosphere.

 

10 years on the forum today for me, kind of a bittersweet moment, but anyway, looking forward for the next 10.

 

On the 15th October 2023 it will be my 10 year anniversary on this site, its come along way since version 0.3.0.5 when I was on here and I had in 10 years 2 computer upgrades in that time...how time flies! sorry this is a lotta stuff in this post here....

Learned to drive in 2015 which gave me the freedom I wanted, that took me actually 2 years, 5 failed theory tests, mum took me on my 6th and passed, practical tests 2 failed, 3rd attempt with my mum in the car and passed it, first going onto the two failures first up

The first attempt that was 16th December 2014, low sun at a really vile roundabout and I missed a bus and I told the instructor "for the life of me I couldnt see that bus with the low sun in my eyes it was utterly invisible me to" and he said "Yeah, it was there but I had to fail you for it, but I do agree the conditions failed you, so dont take fault with it"

Although the second test I hold controversy over because I was pulling out safely before the guy stopped me saying you missed the bus that was coming around the corner, I looked 30 seconds later a truck turned up and went across the junction, so I was intentionally failed for no reason, I would have passed if it had not been for that driving instructor but oh well, live and learn , but I learned from it

The third attempt I passed it and I still remember the emergency stop when the guy hit the clipboard to the dashboard I hit the clutch and the brakes at the same time and with such force on the brakes I swear I left a groove in the road where the oil sump was on the engine....thats how low it got on the front....ever since I passed my driving test I have taken to wearing polarised sunglasses while driving to reduce the sun glare so I can see whats coming up ahead of me, its saved my ass a few times! and also getting the book by Ben "The White Stig" Collins called How to drive and thats really saved my ass on the other occasions, I am silky smooth behind the wheel now because of that

I had one job in procurement for a lighting company, I got pressured out of it because someone was always crawling all over me making me question my judgement causing me to make huge mistakes and I got the blame for it all which wasnt my doing! and then almost 7 years of nothing before FINALLY finding a new job working as a driver for another company as a delivery driver that I actually like

That first job I still regret how I left it and how I was made to take the blame for it all, I wasnt ready and the company that found me that job was a damn joke and I had my revenge on them I hurt their intake for the 2017 group by decimating it by a half so they could only run one site....after what I told the parents of the people coming in, I held nothing back...after that they restructured and that company has become better and has learned not to pressure people out of finding jobs outside the city council or resorting to pressure tactics to put people into jobs they are not suited for, they learned a valuable lesson from me, DO NOT MESS with a person like me or underestimate my ability to cause pain, because I am calculated in my responses and I hold the aces in my hand when I need to toss them down and ruin your day...

 

Cool game 10/10 will play again

 

I will never forget the first @Insanegaz video I found, followed by my first deep youtube and internet dive into this game. Sometimes I forget I am an older member on this forum. My head is still in 2014 when every big member was from 2013. It always makes me smile when I see the big names from 2013 posting, as so many have been gone or just rarely post. Love this game and always will. Been a long run, started as some kid, now I have an associates degree and am shooting for a masters. Glad this game and community has been a part of my life.



Remember when you could spam "Q" and fix broken drive shafts?