0.18 Discussion thread | Use Safe Mode before reporting

Just a small addition I'd like to see added. The mineshafts in the new Utah could really use some ambient sounds. Water dripping, small pebbles tumbling and just general abandoned mine sounds

 

Abandoned mines are usually exceptionally quite, like listen-to-your-own-heartbeat quite, unless there are streams running along the walls (e.g. the mine is under the water-table). Sometimes you can hear the wind near the entrance. Also these are drifts, not shafts; shafts are vertical, drifts are horizontal.

Source; me, a miner.

 

This would be really cool!

Adding to this, maybe we could get some little mining lamps inside the abandoned mines that are light sources? It's very dark in there which can make reversing in some sections quite difficult.

Something like this maybe:




Also two things I noticed, not sure if these were always in the game or introduced in 0.18:

When you're using the inside/first person view in the hopper, the sound doesn't change if you take the roof off, and still sounds like you're inside.

If you're in a tunnel and its dark, the view in the cars mirrors are always max brightness.

 

When there is a skin on certain cars or certain parts are added they look like this. My sound for Beam.NG is also not working and it took 10 minutes to start Beam.ng Drive when it normally takes 1 minute and it took 10 minutes to load Utah which normally takes 5 minutes. All mods were disabled and nothing else was running.

 

edit: stop bugging me about this post

 

https://clips.twitch.tv/SquareResoluteShinglePJSugar I think I found a new config beamng has yet to release! Maybe we will se it soon?

 

Love The new update, so much to try out, and test, great work on this update

But The Roamer, Pickup and Van is explosivly unstable with the CrashHard dummy, it scared the crap out of me. (I know it is a mod) But this do not happen with any other car/truck in the game. tried
to lower the beam spring of my dummy, but it explodes if it hade contact with the inside of the pickup, roamer or van no matter what I do.

 

Spoiler: Issues

Spoiler: Transparent textures

Transparent textures are barely visible.

Spoiler: ETK 800 - Front Suspension

Ocasionally texture stretching occurs on front suspension.

Spoiler: Wentward DT40L - JATO Thrusters

Missing flame texture.

Spoiler: Gavril D-Series/Roamer/H-Series - Exhaust

Two visually separated parts are using the same piece of jbeam and can not be detached from each other.

Spoiler: Ibishu Hopper - Front Suspension

Texture stretching occurs on front suspension when wheels are ripped off.

Spoiler: Gavril H-Series - Texture

There is "imprint" of the frame on the bottom of Gavril H-Series body.

Spoiler: Autobello Piccolina - Indicators

Turn signals light up when lights are turned on.

Spoiler: Autobello Piccolina - Headlights

Texture of headlights is still glowing even after they are completely broken.

Spoiler: Utah Static Airplane - Inverted normals

There are some inverted normals on static airplane object on Utah.

Spoiler: Suggestions

After repositioning traffic cars could have an initial velocity. It would help especially on highways where currently it happens to pass almost stationary traffic car.

Sometimes during the pursuit police cars could reposition behind the player and try to catch up.

SPOILERS

 

New tire pet peeve : The sizes are weird. 36 and 38 tires aren't very common. 35s and 37s are. I'm sure no one would notice if you just changed the name of the size? Most tires are under rated (i.e. a 31 can be a 31 or a 30, depending on manufacturer) and true to size/oversized tires are becoming popular anyways, so it would be fitting to have the new 38 be labeled as a 37 since a real 38 would already be 37 inches tall. Blah blah blah. Even the old tires have weird sizes. 31s are generally a 31x10.50, rather than a 31x12.50.

Just a thought.

 

I would really like to see the new wings from the D-series and Roamer drag configs on the Barstow, Moonhawk, Bluebuck, and Grand Marshal.

 

Was the police AI changed? The police AI set to a risk of 2 is extremely slow and usually ends up crashing into a tree. Had one even drive off the cliff on Utah.

 

Alright Nadeox1, I pressed ALT+O for this screenshot. Please feel free to let me know if I did anything wrong.

 

I having lag, I have no mods active and yes I have cleared my cache. I have a gaming pc.
It only happens when I turn the cameras to the front

 

"You may notice a rock-crawler variation of the Hopper in some videos and screenshots. This variation will be released at a later date." -0.18 devblog post

Spoiler: High-quality image

 

one of the van wipers float in the air after a crash

 

Made electric motor torque curve linear instead of constant power

Could you please explain in a bit more details what this means and how it affects cars using an electric drivetrain?

 

Okay, I'm pretty sure I do not know how to properly use stuff like F11 and ALT+O for issue related things, so here are detailed and quick directions on how to get to this curve sign issue (I keep talking about on here) from the town gas station that is a spawn point on East Coast USA.

On the first shot, you will notice that there is a road with a guardrail on the left in this shot just a few feet away from the town gas station. It is on the left road after the dirt road that goes by the town gas station.

Step 1 (on how to get to the curve sign issue from the town gas station): Turn left on the road with the guardrail on the left.



Step 2: Keep going down the down the road with guardrail on the left by the town gas station until you get to the shot of the road where the yield sign is that is below this text.



Step 3: After you get to the yield sign shot just above this text, turn left and look out on the right for the curve sign issue. By the way, if you are driving thru an area that looks exactly like the 3rd shot just below this text, you are extremely close to the curve sign.



Step 4: Look out on the right for the curve sign issue. If you drive and if you see a curve that looks exactly like the curve on the 4th shot below and if you notice a right looking curve sign. Congratulations, you found the issue


--- Post updated ---
By the way, if you have something like F11 or ALT+O to suggest to me. Please go into details on how to use it

 

That's because the BeamNG police AI still isn't programmed correctly.

Rant time here, bear with me. I've been holding it off because I assumed these issues would be fixed in 0.18, but they don't seem to have been. These are my findings after doing a lot of experimentation with the police AI code back in 0.17, and none of these issues have been fixed in 0.18. @Gamergull , or whoever is in charge of the traffic logic, I'd take notes.

1. Higher risk values increase AI stupidity. BeamNG's police AI is currently designed to increase risk at higher "Heat" levels, which just makes them better at crashing into every single thing they shouldn't. I have done tests with modified Police logic and they are far better at pursuing at the 0.3 risk level (And yes, they will still ram you when needed, but they hit trees, cars, each other, and literally everything else far less often). Police AI risk needs to be set to 0.3 across the board (every heat level), no exceptions.
   
2. Another issue is the fact that BeamNG's police AI is set to pursue at a speed LIMIT of 100 mph. This means that the absolute maximum speed an AI cop can go is 100 mph at most, but usually they won't go anywhere near that. The AI needs to use a SET speed rather than a LIMIT speed. This makes the AI know that it must be going that speed, and thus they drive significantly faster to try to get to that speed as fast as reasonably possible. Next, two factors need to be taken into account for determining what speed each individual police car should be set to, suspect (player) speed and the speed limit for the road. If a police car is further away from the player (ie: catching up), then their speed should be SET and constantly updated to the safe speed for the road plus a heat level dependent amount (1 - 10 MPH, 2 - 25 MPH, 3 - 55 MPH, these numbers aren't arbitrary, these are the numbers that work best). When close to the player, their speed should yet again be SET and constantly updated, but this time to the player's speed plus a different amount (1 - 0 MPH, 2 - 15 MPH, 3 - 40 MPH) (this is to prevent large speed differentials causing the police AI to ram cars when they shouldn't be, for example at the Heat 1 "traffic stop" level and ramming slower cars at stupidly high speeds). Also, if a cop detects that it has passed you, then it will try to slow down rapidly in an attempt to take you down by brake checking you, and if that fails it can get behind you again.
   
3. There are still a number of critical errors regarding AI police spawning in pursuit mode. First and foremost, when the player has a heat level the police AI should not spawn coming at the player head on, which results in them acting like a NFS Most Wanted Rhino. No police force does that, it's annoying and unrealistic. Secondly, the second the player gets within range of a police car traveling in the same direction as the player, the cop jumps straight into chase mode. This means that the cop car detects the player behind them and so it determines that it must do a U turn in order to reach their target, which either results in the cop car driving backwards into something/off a cliff, or getting stuck in a 50 point turn which means that by the time they are finally turned around, the player is long gone. There are two solutions here. The first option is to make it so that AI cops continue patrolling and don't enter chase mode until the player has passed them, or the second option being that the AI police use the function that lets them spawn parked on the side of the road (not sure if that's enabled yet but that's definitely there), and then turn on their lights and chase once the player has passed them. A combination of the two would be ideal. And if the speed and risk is properly set up as mentioned in steps one and two, then trust me, they're gonna catch up, fast.
   
4. The police spawning system during a pursuit has another major issue. Losing them is difficult, not because the cops are competent (they're probably stuck in the nearest tree with the current police logic), but because the second you lose one the next one spawns directly in front of you. It's like how GTA V's police operate, and the only way to evade them consistently is to drive off road as far as possible, which is only possible with certain cars in certain areas of certain maps. First and foremost, police reinforcements should not spawn on dirt roads. They should be able to chase you onto dirt roads, but they shouldn't spawn there. If the player gets out of range of police units for a certain amount of time (relatively short), the police should enter a "search mode" where they kill their sirens, activate high beams at night (which would activate spotlights on the cops cars that have them), enter "random" mode at patrol speed (rather than automatically homing in on the player like they currently do, which is cheating) and only reengage when they are much closer to the player than their normal pursuit range, alongside longer respawn times during this "search mode" to prevent the existing issues with them constantly spawning on top of the player whenever you lose them. After another longer period of time, you "have evaded the police".
5. Another thing is that is a police vehicle is severely damaged, it should stop trying to chase you. A completely destroyed wreck of a cop car inching forwards at 2 mph is immersion breaking. Just turn the lights and engine off, set the AI to "Stopping" and remove it's ability to bust people.
   
6. More of an AI thing, but the AI needs to apply the brakes whenever it starts to fishtail. This is the one issue with high speed set cops.

I've made experimental versions of the 0.17 traffic scripts adding some of these features (which don't work anymore for obvious reasons), and the difference is night and day. If all these tweaks are made, trust me, the police will go from completely useless to a force to be reckoned with. These changes shouldn't take much time to implement either.
--- Post updated ---
EDIT: Made a few minor updates to the post.

 

D Series dove mod causes that

 

Updated post again because I am an idiot and forgot something important.