I was thinking about how the D Series has a "short bed" and a "flatbed" option, and why it doesn't have an extended bed like on the Ford F series trucks. Their beds are 6' or 8'. It would be great if you thought about adding an extended bed or an 8' bed. Thanks!
This idea has been suggested before, a lot of people like the idea and a lot of people think it is a bad idea, regardless, I agree that it should be added to the game.
Well, Beamng is a simulation, so it should have all variety of customization options for all it's vehicles in order to simulate real vehicles. On real pickups, there are long beds, so it only makes sense, just as with the extended cab, to add an extended bed. We have an extended cab, even though there are no Beamng passengers, and we have skins, even though those do not actually change vehicle handling and performance. Why not add a long bed? Some people like the look better, it also opens up a wider range of accessories that could be made for the D-series, including performance, and ascetically pleasing accessories. A long bed actually gives the consumers of Beamng more ways to exploit the physics engine as well, more rocks/pigeons/covets could be put into an 8ft bed, and having more bed and less cab will create slight changes in weight distribution, and thus slightly change the handling and crashing of the vehicle. So some of the reasons are: + appearance + greater capacity + possible accessories not possible in a short bed + different weight distribution + increase in variety + simulation of real pickup product lines + sweet style!
I'd like to see a long bed... but I'd rather see a bobbed bed first. FWIW both suggestions require new frames as well AFAIK. The extended cab already has it's own frame, so that's two additional frames now for EXT-CAB+EXT-BED and REG-CAB+EXT-BED... just to implement the extended bed. For a bobbed bed we're talking about 4 new frames. This stuff adds up quickly. (If anyone creates a bobbed bed they may as well go ahead and do a dovetailed bed while they're at it! Dovetailed should sit on the same frame as bobbed I think.)
couldn't they just put a longer bed on the extended frame and only have it as an option with the single cab by default?
Possibly. I've been out of the loop for a little while, so I don't know for sure. In the past the game did some kludgy things with how vehicles are "assembled" from parts. Assembly did not work the way a lay person would expect. Some of that has probably been fixed since I think that cascading node offsets have been added (sweet!), but other stuff may still be a problem. The node/beam structure used by the game can be somewhat arbitrary. With that said... yeah, probably - I didn't think of that. ;-)
https://www.beamng.com/threads/gavril-d15-d25-d35-stepside-etc-v0-5-1.6538/ It has been done before but the mod is outdated.
