Released Central Europe Plates 1.2

It's g-man? you know?
--- Post updated ---
his pfp?

 

No I haven't played Half-Life

 

ah forget it

 

To get back to topic: Thank you very much to rukatsunderi, great work so far!

boyanzh has already mentioned in his review he'd like to see small German plates added. I'd like to join him on this - your small Polish plate already shows that it's possible to create short European licence plate styles, and Germany's one is direly needed, because so far it can't even approximately be replicated in BeamNG at all. The ability to combine the Engschrift font with shorter than standard (520 mm) plates, like 380 mm or 420 mm, allows for some visually very pleasing results... which are highly sought after! Many Germans who modify their cars try to get permission for those small plates. It'd be very nice to have the option in BeamNG as well.
Thanks in advance for considering it!

 

Big thanks to you and boyanzh for another update idea!

For Polish plates, it was easier to make small plates, because for cars there are only 3 possible plate sizes - standard (52.0 x 11.4 cm), double-row (30.5 x 21.4 cm) and small (30.5 x 11.4 cm). The last of them can fit on an US plate without a problem, but I had to fill empty areas above and below the plate with a dark gray color (similar to the color of plate holder).

I know that in Germany it's possible to choose any desired plate width, from 28.0 cm to 52.0 cm, in 1 or 2 cm intervals, providing all characters will fit. It will be harder to recreate in BeamNG.drive, because I don't have an idea how to create a custom plate size (any help will be appreciated). So for now I have to use existing plate sizes, including those added with -Smaen-'s Norwegian Plate Pack - that is 30.0 x 15.0 cm, 33.0 x 11.0 cm and 47.0 x 11.0 cm. I've created an image on how smaller German plates can look:

- for US plates and 33x11 plates: max. 3 characters (or 4 with narrow font)
- for 47x11 plates: max. 6 characters (or 7 with narrow font)

In the next version, I'm going to add a small German plate design (with 3-4 characters) for both the US and 33x11 plates.
Also, I'll add 1976-2000 Polish plates (I'm currently working on them) and 2000-2006 versions of other Polish plate types, as themanhacc proposed.
Fun fact: did you know that a Polish norm for 1976-2000 plates (BN90/9400-01) had 14 pages of kerning tables (spacing between letters on standard single-row plates)?

 

Wow, thank you very much, didn't expect you to pick up the suggestion so quickly! Result looks very promising! If you're interested, I could provide a real life example of the odd German 42 cm size, filled to maximum density of letters/numbers in Engschrift mounted on cars that resemble the ETK 800 and Vivace, to visually compare the IRL vs BeamNG appearance to.

 

Small update: I actually figured out how to make new plate sizes. I wrote a script to generate new license plate 3D models with any given dimensions. I started with 52x12 cm (for Austrian plates and 1976-2000 Polish plates).

It worked perfectly, so I decided to create more models:

• 30x20 for double-row Austrian plates
• 34x20 for double-row Czech plates (wider variant)
• 28x20 for double-row Croatian and Czech plates (narrower variant)
• 32x16 for US-size Czech plates

When I made first 3 of them, they were working great. But the problem started with 32x16 plates. I tried to make separate models for front and rear plates, but there were a lot of problems with them, so I decided to remove the 32x16 rear plate model, leaving the same model for both front and rear plate. And suddenly, out of nowhere, 28x20 rear plates stopped working, now they're fully gray. And 32x16 plates plates display the orange "no texture".
But, when I select a 32x16 plate as a front plate and a 28x20 one as a rear plate, the image that should be displayed on the rear plate is shown on the front plate, rear plate remains gray.

No error messages are being shown in the console. I have no idea, why it happens (clearing the cache didn't help). Did someone of you have this trouble before? I can share a ZIP file with my current progress if you want. I would be very happy if you helped me with this!

Edit: In the material editor I found something interesting: material with number -48 is mapped to 28x20 plate, but the directory is from 32x16 plate. And there is no material that is mapped to 32x16 plate.
I tried like 3 times to copy a 34x20 plate that works perfectly and change every instance of 34-20 in the new directory to 28-20 or 32-16, but I can't make it work.

Edit 2: Probably found the reason: the name of custom license plate material is a sum of its width and height, with a minus sign. 28+20 and 32+16 both add to 48, this is why I had a problem with these sizes in particular. Probably I'll have to name the 28x20 plate 27-20 or 29-20, use dimensions in millimeters for naming purposes increasing them by 1 in case of duplicates or add a letter to the name.

 

It will take me some time to release the next version of the mod, so here's some progress update.
Next version of the mod will feature 14 different plate sizes, available plate dimensions can be seen in the table below:

For Czechia, Germany, Hungary and Slovakia, front and rear plates (standard and small/US size) will have different designs, due to only rear plates having validation/technical inspection stickers. Double-row plates will be available only as rear plates.
Here are some images of new license plate models (tested on Autobello Piccolina):

After all models are finished (all plates besides some Slovak and Polish are done), I'll start putting them on cars (including some modded ones), it might take a lot of time with such a number of different plate sizes - at this moment I think it will be released in June, so please be patient!

 

Looks incredible, really looking forward to it! Thanks for your hard work!

 

Fun Fact, the Polish 1976 - 2000 (wzór 1976) registration plates usually have stamps between the county code and the numbers, usually having the name of the company and year of production.
(e.g this one from 1998)

 

pawelpuc, I didn't forget about this detail. Because I'm from Poland (and I've seen a lot of these old plates by myself), I pay a lot of attention to details of Polish license plates.
It's probably visible only after you zoom this image, but you can see that my Polish 1976-2000 license plates have the stamp.

It's inspired by stamps from real-life license plates from my region (I've included a photo of an example plate produced in 1998 and issued in June 1999). They had many different designs - for example plates issued in Warsaw had the coat of arms of the Polish capital city on the stamp.

In my area, earlier plates issued until late 80s didn't have a stamp at all, it was introduced probably somewhere around 1988-1990 (but it was round and smaller than what can be seen in the photo). The plate producer changed probably in 1993-1994 (with the stamp that can be seen in the photo above) and remained like this until 1999, when last black license plates were produced (they were issued until the end of April 2000).

 

While you're talking about such really minor details, I've had an idea for an ultimate rivet counter pleasing feature:

All license plates in BeamNG seem to be attached to the cars by magic - by default, there are no plate holders. IRL, a plate without holder behind it would be attached by screws. Since you apparently can map special characters to put stickers and what not on plates... How about introducing a special character that would place a minimal width (so the spacing of the font doesn't get messed up) screw head "sticker" on the plate? Maybe even in two variations, one for 2 central screw heads, one for 4 on the edges? The screws could be slightly rusty, as they often are in reality, which would make them stand out a little visually to subtly highlight that feature in your mod, because nobody else (afaik) has done something like that before.

 

Would this mod help?
https://www.beamng.com/resources/european-plate-holders.23564/

 

Thanks, but I'm aware of that mod and even use it. I just stated that by default BeamNG has neither plate holders nor any other mounting method (like screws) visible, hence the idea.

 

Looks nice. My favorite mod in the last time.
Will you update it soon, and will you add DIN-1451 Plates to Germany? And maybe the Czechoslovakian plates.
As the year is ending soon, we will also need new TÜV/Inspection decals for Germany. Would you add the 2025, 2026 or the 2027 decals or will you make a randomized system like in beamng?

Thanks for this great mod, and good luck with the work on it!

 

Hi! I'm very happy that you like my mod! Also, thank you for reminding me that I need to update it soon, because during the mod approval break, I actually forgot about this game and rarely played it since then. The main feature of the new version will be support for more license plate sizes. I've almost finished placing plates on game's default cars - only these updated recently, like Gavril MD-Series are left. I'll release the next mod's version probably in December. I'll also update stickers on German plates to 2026 in this release.

Czech pre-2001 and German pre-1994 plates will be done in the future, but not in this release. However, it will be possible to make pre-2001 Czech plates using 2001-2004 ones: the format of number is ALX-12.34 (you use the dot in the place where the dash is on the real plate), but the number will be off-centered, so you'll need to wait for me to add 1992-2001 plates separately if you want them to look more realistic.

In the future, it's possible for me to rework some plates (as I've found some higher quality fonts), that may include increasing the font quality and, as you proposed, a randomized technical inspection sticker generation.

 

Nice to know. Also, on german plates, did you work on all the sizes or only added some? Cant wait to have some extremely short plates with Engschrift font.

Also, when you work on the Czech pre-2001 plates, you could try adding the trapezoidal version of the two-row plate, these are mainly for motorcycles but i see them on cars too.

Can't wait for the update though, and luckily its the 2026 sticker. I hate the 2025 and 2027 stickers

 

New sizes of German plates added with new update will be:
- more narrow versions of standard plates: 42x11 cm and 33x11 cm
- double-row plates: 34x20 cm, 30x20 cm and 28x20 cm
- small plates: 25.5x13 cm
Images of them can be seen in post #48.

Regarding old Czech plates, it might be difficult for me to create plates of this shape, as models included in my mod are modifications of a default EU (52x11 cm) plate, that I created by writing a JS script to transform coordinates of the model. But it's not impossible to do.

I decided to choose a 2026 sticker, because in most cases they're valid for 2 years. At least in Germany their color is already known, as it's a 6-year cycle. But I don't know yet, which color Hungary will choose for 2025 temporary plates (maybe some Hungarian license plate enthusiasts know it?)

 

Hey man, nice to see you back!
In the background I've been working on updating all of my mods as I have learned far better ways of making license plates. I will rework all of my mods with new fonts, normal maps and more accurate designs and I just wanted to let you know that I have also gotten into 3D modelling and I am planning to soon release a common pack with various different license plate sizes. Since I'm also working on Soviet plates at the moment and those also have such a trapezoid format, I will also be modelling that. If you want to, I can give you early access but I'll probably release the size pack soon anyway

 

Alright, One question left, will you also add Green/red plates to germany, and the other variants of Czech Republic? like the dealer plates. Also you should remove the green stickers from the 2001-2004 plates, they arent used today anymore, even on the old ones