First Impressions

It's great! Here are my little issues.

The steering lock to lock is too many turns and too sensitive. Maybe I need to figure out how to desensitize it.
I don't want to say the suspension is bouncy, but it kinda is. Just a little. If I could just find the suspension settings I could test this out.

Even more realism would be great. Under hard accel, the truck in particular shakes the front wheels quite badly. Not sure what this is all about.

 

lol Whoa... easy there killer.

Being 33, yeah I've driven a real car and, I can appreciate the realism factor. But if you look at the thread title you might see that thought was my first impression. To give you some more perspective, I was driving with my controller from the cab view and on a couple different cars the wheel sure was busy spinning lots of turns.

I've raced autocross for years and my first two cars were trucks. Relax, I was giving my impression and from my experience, it doesn't turn that much. But hey, I still love the program.

Edit: Oh, one more thing. I noticed when I take the Bolide to top speed or over 100mph it veers off to the left or right pretty hard until it spins out. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

 

I do know that.

About when can we expect this next update?

 

Cant play, way too much lagging even after trying the posted helps

 

Gabester mentioned trying to have the update out around the end of the month.

"We are aiming to release this patch some time before the end of the month It will also contain a complete rewrite of the input/steering system with lots of improvements, as well as the ability to make hydraulic beams from a myriad of sources (i.e. pop-up headlights on the Bolide now work)"
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Awesome. Thanks

 

Cool, i alway6s wanted popups!

 

*Watches video from one of favorite youtubers and instantly finds the game appealing to play around with.
*Downloads TechDemo and waits a full of 5 minutes for the game.
*Sets up visuals a bit and then immediately notices there are no "controls" tabs
* "I'm sure I'll figure it out easily as I go along!"
*enters game and drives around for a minute before stopping to question what the slow motion button was. By pressing all the buttons on the keyboard in systematic order
*Unknowingly has turned on the Lights, the parking brake, and set the car to neutral, and found no slow motion like button in the process, now more focused on why I can't move
* "Maybe the debug menu will tell me something I could use to help my situation here"
*Finds out after a while of staring at it that it was in N gear and the Brake was on and goes through the systematic process to figure out how the hell to undo that.
*By this point, all the basic keys (except the F# keys) had been pressed 5 times. Figured out how to drive once more and just decided to deal with normal motion.
*As I line myself up along a path that goes down the simulated rough terrain, had set the car to neutral to get the camera in the right place
*Camera goes to some random position as I go back into drive...
* "Really Camera? You gonna be that way!?"
* Camera is so mocking me.. Anyway, fixes camera and drives down terrain.
*Likes the attention to detail with the skeleton as I admire the debug boxes and hit triangles and all that jazz.
* After some more fiddling about the camera goes into an endless spin which takes another 2 systematic presses of every key that hasn't done anything else yet to find that the camera likes being controlled by the keypad
* Finds that 5 auto centers camera
* "OH! This will be useful for lining up all those neat shots I was going for when I go down these little test bits."
* Goes into first person and finds whenever I press the parking break button, it zooms to look at about 5 random-esk objects before reverting to natural position
* "... Riiiight I think I'm just gonna go and check to forums for a list of controls."

Now I'm here.
So far I really enjoy the damage engine, but if you could make a little "help me" thing in a little corner of a screen for controls and such in the tech demo just so we know them, that would just be great. I found the controls in the forums after surfing around here for about.... 10-20 minutes.

 

Indeed, but lets be honest, thats hardly the most intuitive place to have a list of controls is it. Given that conventional game design/wisdom dictates a separate tab in the option screen or at the very least a list of controls on the loading screen, it can't have been beyond the wit of man to do this instead of the current system.

Now I love the game in all its core areas and appreciate its still Alpha, but in terms of UI and accessible design theres vast improvements that need to be made.

 

I thought I remember seeing the "press f1 for controls" somewhere, possibly in the read me file?

I understand that there are conventions that some games use for control information which beamng doesn't follow right now, but most software has a readme or support link..... which beamng drive does... which has the info available regarding controls. It only takes a bit of effort to look.

Personally my first impressions were that this alpha is going to get very interesting very quickly, but also I knew there would be a mass of negative critique... which has of course been in full swing for a little while now. Fortunately it all revolves around the feel of driving or miss educated assumptions about how physics actually works. The feeling of driving will only improve with the alterations within the game to better comply with a real physics model and the miss guided assumptions will either be educated or ignored.

I love its potential!

 

It shouldn't take any effort to obtain information about something as basic as the controls. They should be front and centre, not tucked away in a readme or less than obvious button press. If BeamNG Drive has even the slightest of pretensions to main stream acceptance then this is the sort of thing that needs to change on the course to beta and final.

 

See i said i saw it somewhere obvious, some people are just to damn lazy to make an effort!

 

Very awesome game!

 

Arf, good point.

My conscious mind managed to miss that somehow, but must have subconsciously noticed it as I knew to press F1 for controls in game. I just never knew where I knew it from.....I don't read that sign anymore, its just become part of the background image for me.

So obvious you couldn't recall where it was? Apparently wasn't just me that read it and then forgot where I'd read it.

Which might imply that its not the best place to have your controls prompt.....I suppose a percentage of people tend to look for menus first and foremost for settings (like me) as thats more conventional.

So I still think my point about UI stands, just not quite on such firm footing as I thought it did

EDIT: Actually, lets just note that there is no reference to the controls list on the Tech Demo menu screen. If you're coming from the Tech Demo as I did then chances are you might have discounted the background signage as a source of useful information, meaning you don't necessarily readily notice the button prompt for the controls.

Just making the case for a dedicated menu button....

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no.... because i read it and remembered F1, no need to recall its location!

 

Well naturally once you know where the controls are, its not hard to find them next time - my point is that neither of us could recall reading where the information came from in the first place, which sort of supports my point that its not quite obvious enough for users.

Anyway, I'm playing devils advocate a touch here and getting off the topic of first impressions of the software. Which remains awesome, regardless of how grumpy I sound