0.31 Discussion Thread

Your welcome.

Of course complex systems should be transparent enough for the average casual player so that there is no need to study "How Air Brakes work" for half an hour before you can start driving the truck.

I just think that some impressive features of BeamNG are so transparent, that basically almost nobody ever notices them which - considering the sheer level of detail behind the simulation, is both regrettable and also makes your game look less attractive to the more hardcore simulation crowd than it really should be. I think that a lot of people from that crowd could be your future customers if you would be a bit more forthcoming about the amazing level of depth in your driving physics simulation.

Maybe the community could at least help with some of the more mundane tasks? Because I can quite understand the difficulty in justifying a highly skilled developer spending valuable hours on something as mundane as basic documentation that requires mostly patience and diligence.

Take for example this page:

https://documentation.beamng.com/official_content/vehicles/

It sorely lacks more details, yet most of those details could be easily be filled in by the community. You dont need developer knowledge or skills to add things like fuel type, available transmissions, weight and so on. Many people even have a favourite vehicle, so they would be often quite capable of filling an individual vehicle page with details.

Maybe Community Management somewhat similar to how Coffee Stain (Satisfactory) or Colossal Order (Cities Syklines) does things, could also work for you? Those two use communtiy driven wikis where the players fill in all the pesky details (easy but time consuming work) and the community managers / developers only fill in/answer those questions that players cannot.

I can of course only speak from a player point of view here, but those games have excellent documentation/wikis while workload for their developers seems to be limited to answering those pesky details that are impossible/very hard to research for players.

I am in no position to butt in onto your business practises and maybe I am just odd. But the first thing that I do when stumbling on a potentially interesting game is to locate its wiki. Because from my experience, spending 30 minutes reading an unknown games wiki answers more questions that 20 hours of youtube videos.

I am just pretty certain, that a lot of potential BeamNG players dont really know, what they are missing and that this lack of information hurts sales in that demographic. And that shall be my closing remarks on that topic.

You could improve the ingame description/documentation of the feature because I - and I am sure not to be alone - had precisly zero idea that

Arcade ABS - actually grants ABS to vehicle that dont have or cannot have ABS system installed.

Until you mentioned it here, I assumed that the only difference between

Arcade ABS
and
Realistic ABS

was the explanation given to me by a dev a while ago (which I cant find anymore, speak about lost community knowledge)

He explained that Realistic ABS only uses realistically available information for the system (like wheel speed) which can in some cases make the system fail to detect the need for continued ABS operation.
For example:
Breaking weakly on ice for example could make all 4 wheels lock up, but since wheel speed deacceleration is within the expected value of heavy braking on grippy tarmac, the Realistic ABS would - incorrectly - assume that the vehicle has become stationary and as such refrain from further action, leading to a long slide on ice.

Meanwhile Arcade ABS would look at not realistically available values like Air Speed, thus would happen to know that the vehicle with 4 fully locked wheels is still sliding over the ice and as such would continue to be in action, granting superior braking and handling capabilities compared to Realistic ABS.

Nowhere was it mentioned by that dev that Arcade ABS would also grant ABS braking capability to vehicles that dont come with ABS equipped. Which is really impressive and cool, considering the amount of vastly different vehicles the logic needs to take into account.

So I got to ask:

When was this added and where are the patchnotes mentioning it? Because to me, that is a pretty new thing.



Those 3 options available now seem pretty new to me. I for the longest time was only aware of two options (Realistic and Arcade ABS)

The "Hovering over it info text also seems to only know about two possible settings for this, not 3.




Suggestion:

Change this text to:
Realistic ABS simulates real life ABS technology and its drawbacks on cars that have ABS equipped. Always Arcade ABS bypasses those realistic problems and also adds ABS to vehicles not equipped with it. Always off disables ABS on all vehicles, no matter if equipped with ABS or not.

Change Short Text to
Realistic ABS only --> Realistic ABS only (for vehicles equipped with ABS)
Always off --> Always disable ABS on all vehicles
Always Arcade ABS --> Always enable ABS on all vehicles (no matter if equipped or not)

And to finally answer your question: No, Arcade ABS works perfectly fine for the T-Series and all other vehicles without ABS equipped that I tested. I just until now wasnt aware of Arcade ABS actually adding ABS to all vehicles and instead - in vain - tried to mod ABS into a few vehicles that dont come equipped with it in the first place.

I will also enjoy playing several vehicles over the holidays from which I shied away until now due to playing with a keyboard and those (realistically) not having ABS.

Thank you for explaining. .

Having a closer look at all the cars in the game today I also have to say that my feelings of diesel fuel tanks/other types of shifters missing where for the most part incorrect.

The only car I found that really could have an diesel option (for the European Market (EUDM)) is the Sunburst.

• Built between 2009 and 2014 it would have faced heavy competition from compact diesel vehicles in Europe.
  
• Being an upmarket but still economy focused vehicle overall, it would have suffered from having neither the torquey power development nor the fuel economy of those diesels. A fact not helped by the efficient but unloved CVT.
  
• With an somewhat upmarket target demographics, the additional costs of a diesel engine would likely not be a deal breaker for most potential buyers and could justify the additional development cost for Hirochi.

Of course... the Sunburst hasnt been touched in a while and I assume is supposed to be remastered somewhere in the future. If you were to follow the popular community request of giving it a Flat 4 Engine, a diesel option is admittedly less realistic as Hirochi

- would either have to develop a Diesel Flat 4 - which would be a really quirky, if certainly interesting concept but due to lack of popular demand outside Europa is hard to justify from a (virtual car manufacturer) economic standpoint
- Or use an Inline 4 Diesel which however might have issues fitting inside a chassis meant for a flat 4 engine which again raises cost to a level hard to regain on the target market demographic.


On the other hand, you could just call it a prototype and be done with it.


One final small suggestion regarding better ingame information:

The´differentials on the ETK-800 and the ETK K-Series could benefit from having an explanation of their behavior in () added behind their marketing name.

E-Diff = Open Differential with brakes engaging on the spinning wheel to increase torque on both wheels on the axle, hopefully to a value that is high enough to make the stationary wheel rotate and move the car.

Old Name = New Name

Open Rear Differential = Open Rear Differential (with E-Diff)

ttSport Rear Differential = ttSport Rear Differential (activeDiffLock)

ttSport+ Rear Differential = ttSport+ Rear Differential (activeDiffBias/TorqueVectoring)

Do Limited Slip Differentials use E-Diff? If yes, they should be named
Limited Slip Differential (with E-Diff)



Thank you for your time.

 

Man, I'd love to see the Sunburst switch to Flat-4 engines. We already have a myriad of transverse-I4-powered FWD/FWD-based AWD vehicles in BeamNG, so the Sunburst could make a big difference. I'd also love to see it having the diffuser rear spoiler with the multiple fins, found on the rear windshield of one of its sources of inspiration (plus I'd love it to keep the wavy side sills, on which you can put a carbon fiber side lip).
Tbh, the Sunburst needs a smaller F4 engine because the average European doesn't go for engines with more than 2 liters to just get around. A 1.5 F4 to complement the existing 2.0/2.5 F4s would be very nice, especially when we consider the fact that the existing F4s are available in both NA and Turbocharged versions, so the choices cover a large part of the enthusiast group.
As for a diesel (and an F4 diesel, for that matter), I don't think it needs one because it's a small and light car, so the base 1.5 F4, coupled with either a 6-Speed Manual or a CVT, is just fine. An F4 diesel, along with an F6 gasoline engine of course, would be better suited to larger cars, like a Midsize Sedan/Wagon/SUV and even a Pick Up Truck.

For closing, here's the variant range from my eyes:

Base
1.5l NA F4, 115hp, 6-Speed Manual or CVT, FWD

S
2.0l NA F4, 175hp, 6-Speed Manual or 6-Speed DCT, FWD or AWD

RS
2.5l NA F4, 210hp, 6-Speed Manual or 6-Speed DCT, AWD

Sport S
2.0l Turbocharged F4, 300hp, 6-Speed Manual or 6-Speed DCT, AWD

Sport RS
2.5l Turbocharged F4, 350hp, 6-Speed Manual or 6-Speed DCT, AWD

edit: Just found out that there could also be a Sport RS2 variant, in the style of the SBR4 TTS2 one, with the 2.5 Turbocharged F4 churning out 450hp!

 

i could certainly see this as a good change we could have

 

Definitely. Hirochi could become the ambassador of the Flat engines in BeamNG (with the obvious exception of the Aurata) just like Cherrier is for the I5 and ETK is for the I6!

 

1) Has anyone noticed that the cylinders on a dump trailer don't extend quite right? I've noticed that the hydraulic cylinders don't extend fully, but the top cylinders start to extend, then as the top cylinders extend, the middle cylinders start to extend some more, note this, can anyone with experience confirm this?

2)Another small drawback is that the rear container doors open one at a time, first the right, then the left, and close first the left, then the right. If you close the right one and then try the left one, it doesn't work, but if you press the right one and have time to press the left one before the left one closes, it works! What shouldn't be happening, to solve this, you need to add a collision to the right sash jumper so that the right sash hits it and can't close

3) The retractable part has a collision where visually there is a hole

 

Are spring brakes simulated? when you lose too much are the handbrake won't release.

AFAIK the current arcade ABS just enable the ABS on vehicles w/o ABS installed, and I don't seem to find any code related to airspeed or ground speed. I don't fully understand why airspeed since wind can and will mess the ABS up.
There are still ABS bug, mostly when pressing the brake mid-air the brake might fail(only 0.2G deceleration), and if you full brake right after full throttle with wheel spinning, the ABS might also fail in a dangerous way(no brake instead of locking up the wheels). IDK whether that's realistic or not. According to my driving experience I don't seem to find the difference between realistic ABS with vehicle installed with ABS
and arcade ABS, are there any specific driving techniques to differentiate between the two?

AFAIK there are two pieces of hardware and three pieces of software involved. For activeDiffLock software, diffType must be activeLock. For activeDiffBias, diffType must be activeBias. However electronicDiffLock can be used with open, lsd, viscous and locking differential. Therefore it's possible to put the E-Diff into a locking differential, braking the slipping wheel when the diff is open.

In addition to that, there should be options for the open diff in the electric FCV to have e-diff.

Europa has a temperature of −171 °C and it's atmo pressure of 10^−12 bar so vehicle cannot be driven there given the current technology, so we are all driving outside Europa. (j/k)

 

For anyone confused, Europa is one of Jupiter's moons

 

Same for me, also if you have AI cars during yhe replay some cars colors are flickering (red/white, black/white).

 

О так, це було б добре, панеOh yeah, that would be nice, plus it made sense for the hood scoop on the hood .

 

Exactly! Since Flat engines are lower than Inlines and Vs (plus the Sunburst's narrower width compared to the SBR4, which uses twin intercoolers for its twin turbos), this intercooler mounting can definitely be used!

 

There is no tank when selecting this vehicle modification «Fuel tank! It's not there by default, you have to install it yourself»

 

what modification even is that?

 

Looks like the derby Pessima Mk2

 

Yeah I know what car it is, but what is he trying to put on? Huh indeed there is no fuel tank by default.

 

Fuel tank! It's not there by default, you have to install it yourself

 

Wonder when that broke...

 

I often come across things like this that break on their own for no particular reason, maybe there is a pest in the development team? Maybe it's sabotage?)

 

“haha, removing the fuel tank from this config 1 person has ever used will surely make them go bankrupt”

 

or they just touched something and forgot to check the config, happens a lot in large codebases.