Update Speculation thread

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?

 

No, that's sadly staying, as seen in the PBR teaser.

 

Seems like even if a video is unlisted, putting it into a public playlist makes it visible again.

 

Unlisted videos show in public playlists, they just don't show up when looking through the uploaded videos and when searching.

 

They also show up with a direct link.

 

The coming update will be absolute p*rn, PBR and updated skins/vehicle textures...

 

would Italy get traffic lights now?

 

Most likely not, I assume they are only making traffic obey the lights on the map that already have them (ECUSA and WCUSA).

 

Italy has unused traffic lights in the files iirc, maybe they'll be added at some point.

 

These would be useable, but Italy's roads are kinda too small to really need stop signs in that sense

 

Where in italy was that taken?

 

It looks like one of the dev screenshots back from when Italy was still in development.

 

somewhere as a showcase, it was in the middle of development when the map was quite alot browner.

 

Ah, i see. I must admit, i do miss the brown.

 

Yea that version holds up very well.
The more brown and dull colours make the place feel alot hotter.

 

More stuff on the whole JRI Japan theory including something very interesting with traffic.

Firstly, I speculate that the town would have gone here. The canal would have hooked up to this river, and each road would have likely hooked to the roads of the corresponding colored arrows.

I also rigged the mesh to use visual collision. The roads are a lot tighter than you would think, and driving the D-Series around the "town" was quite a challenge. Clearly, a town like this would be better suited for more compact cars, especially the upcoming Wigeon.

Secondly, there is this line of code in the traffic.lua.

Code:

local defaultCountries = {usa = 'United States', germany = 'Germany', italy = 'Italy', japan = 'Japan'} -- temporary country list

As you can see, Japan is listed as a country with its own traffic set. Sure enough, the game can actually be modded to spawn the Japanese traffic set, which prefers to spawn Japanese cars. For reference I have modified JRI to use this set, JRI uses the US set as of now.

How Beam handles traffic car spawning is that it prefers to spawn cars from the country that the map is set in. However, it does still spawn cars from other countries, just not as frequently.

Some screenshots of Japanese civilian traffic:





Each test run featured 9 Japanese cars spawning and 3 non-Japanese cars spawning.

However, police cars are handled very differently. The game will only spawn police vehicles manufactured within that country in traffic. This is why you will never see police Sunbursts, sheriff/park ranger Hoppers, or police 200BX's in American traffic, as they are not "made in America". The same applies to Italy, and is why only the Polizia Bolide and Carabinieri Piccolina spawn in traffic, because they're the only "Italian" police cars according to the game (as it sees the Carabinieri Hopper as Japanese and the Polizia Vivace/Tograc as French).

As expected, the Japanese traffic set handles cop cars like this, which means that you will see Park Ranger/Sheriff/Carabinieri Hoppers, Police 200BXs, and Police/Gendarmerie Sunbursts. This does mean that if a Japanese map is implemented, the way the game chooses police cars will need to be significantly improved or else you're gonna have American, Italian, and French police cars driving around.

Some examples:





However, one could raise the following point: "what if the Japan line is just referring to the fact that we have Japanese cars, and has nothing to do with a map?"

Well, we now have a French car, so let's modify JRI to be treated as France.

Well, in a nutshell, things get weird. France lacks a country key, so the game does not know what cars to spawn, therefore, it just randomly selects cars.


As you can see in the above image, it just selects cars randomly, including police cars (as you can see there are police cars of different nations of origin with the Hopper and H-Series). In fact, not a single French car even wound up spawning. If a French traffic set did in fact exist, and worked like the other ones, then we would have had 9 Vivaces/Togracs (french cars), 3 non-French cars, and then all the police cars would have been Vivaces/Togracs.

In a nutshell, you can't just plug countries in and expect the system to work, the country has to be defined. There are only four defined countries as of now, the US, Germany, Italy, and Japan. We have maps for the former three, but there isn't a Japanese map in the game yet. This is yet another suspicious discovery upon a mountain of others that just keeps on growing that a Japanese map could very well be a thing in the future, and JRI is a prime candidate.

 

Also Japan drives on the left so that should be changed in traffic as well .

 

Same with New Zealand (automation test track)