Draco's Detector v1.1

DRACO'S DETECTOR

A police radar detector for BeamNG.drive that actually tells you where they are.

COMPATIBILITY

Freeroam, Vanilla career, RLS Career Overhaul, Traffic turned off (hand spawned)

RLS Career Overhaul replaces the police system and the police traffic role. Both overrides keep the interface this mod uses, so there is one code path for freeroam, vanilla career and RLS career - no RLS detection and no branching. RLS's extra wanted level is used when it is there and ignored when it is not.

Career and RLS both pool traffic hard, and a pooled cruiser sits off-scene at its last known position. Contacts are filtered so the detector never screams about a cop who is not actually in the world.

Police are found two ways, because neither alone is enough: the traffic system's own list of tracked cops, which carries the role and pursuit state, plus a sweep of every vehicle in the level for hand-spawned cops, scenario cops and traffic-off maps.

Classification copies the game's own rule, so the set of cars this mod calls police is exactly the set the pursuit system would. That includes unmarked cruisers, which is correct an unmarked car still runs radar.


WHAT IT DOES

Real detectors tell you one thing: something is out there. This one tells you which way to look.

Band and frequency X, K, Ka and Laser, stable per cruiser
Signal strength 8 segments, with peak hold
Range live, metric or imperial
Bearing arrow and plan-view compass locked to your car
Closing rate is the gap opening or shutting, and how fast
Line of sight a real raycast, so blocked contacts read attenuated
Threat list every contact, sorted, with what each one is doing
Pursuit alert knows when one of them is chasing you

THE READOUT

Straight up is where your bonnet points. No mental rotation, no north, an alert at the top of the dial is in front of you, an alert at the bottom is in your mirrors. Blips are coloured by band and drawn hollow when the contact has no clear line of sight to you.

The panel shows the band letter, its frequency, an eight segment signal bar, the range in large type, and a line telling you whether the gap is closing, whether the cop is above or below you, and what it is doing right now.

MINIMIZED

Collapses to a small bar that is still a working detector - dot, band, rotating bearing arrow, range and a compressed bar graph. It flashes red on a laser hit or an active pursuit.

A minimized detector that only said "something" would be a reason to keep the big one open, so it does not do that.

BANDS

Every police car transmits on one band for as long as it exists, derived from its vehicle id so a given cruiser always reads the same way, and you can tell one alert from another.

X 10.525 GHz full range Old, loud, leaks around corners. The earliest warning you will get.
K 24.150 GHz 86% of range The middle ground.
Ka 34.700 GHz 72% of range Modern and tight. Less time to react.
Laser 904 nm 260 m, LOS No warning creep. Full scale

Laser only fires when a cop could genuinely be painting you: clear sight line, close, and either already chasing you or aimed at you. That is what keeps a laser alert meaningful.

Terrain does not mute radar, it attenuates it. A cop behind a building still registers faintly, which is exactly the warning you want before you crest the rise and find them sitting there.

IGNITION

The detector is a box wired into the car, so it only runs with the key at accessory or beyond.

Off detector is dark, reads NO POWER
Accessory live
Ignition on live
Starting live

It arms itself. Turning the key from off to accessory switches the detector on, exactly like a real one wired to the accessory socket, so you never reach for POWER just to get going. Getting into a car that is already running counts too. Switching it off by hand still holds for the rest of that drive - it is the next key cycle that arms it again. Getting out and walking switches it off on its own.

THEMES

Six colour presets, each a full palette - chrome, text, band colours and the threat ramp:

Amber the default, warm orange
Ice cold blues and cyan
Viper classic green on black
Crimson dark red
Mono greyscale, minimal
Synth purple and magenta

Pick one from the chips in the settings page. Each chip is painted in its own accent, so the row reads as a palette rather than a list of names you would have to try one at a time.

The threat ramp stays a three step low, mid, high in every preset, because that is the part of the app that actually means something, ignore, lift, brake.

SOUND

Alerts follow a Geiger cadence. The gap between beeps closes as the signal comes up, so you can read the threat without looking at anything. Laser and active pursuit drop the cadence entirely and go to a continuous warble, because by then the information is no longer how far, it is now.

SETTINGS

Everything lives in one file in your user folder, so it survives a UI cache reset, a level change and a restart.

Range 200 - 2000 m default 1000 m
Sensitivity 50 - 150% default 100%
Volume 0 - 100% default 60%
Mute below 0 - 60 km/h default 0
Contacts shown 1 - 8 default 6
Bands X, K, Ka, Laser all on
Units metric or imperial metric
360 degrees rear detection on
Line of sight only hide attenuated off
Ignore parked hide stationary cops off
Theme six presets Amber

PERFORMANCE

The detector is built to be invisible on the frame budget.

Idles completely when the app is not open.

Scans at 15 Hz, smoothed to display rate in the UI, so the arrow tracks instead of stepping.

Cheap pass first: distance only, no raycasts. Sight lines are budgeted to eight per tick, spent nearest first.

Deciding whether a car is police is cached per vehicle, not redone per tick.

No per-tick memory allocation in the scan.

No Angular digest while driving. The app only digests when you click something.