Hey BeamNGuys, In my very first post, I want to thank you for your work. It's great and I think there will be a future for BeamNG. Generally: The program is very lucid and even the editors-mode contains no unnecessary buttons and functions. Suggestions: I think many people know the efford you have to expend on creating a working scene for a video. A more complex scene. I 'm interested in crashing cars on the computer for years now (who isn't) and tried many engines/tech demos/bad engines/programs.. Those programs has always some pros and tons of cons.. often it depends on what you want to do. For example: Vcrash (Virtual Crash http://www.vcrash3.com) has one of the most ergonomic control of the vehicles like no other program [useful for video creating], because: -Full control over the vehicle and it's mass/engine/tires/brakes on every frame. (toogle) -You see where the vehicle will be before the computers calculates the crash/deforming.. VirtualCrash's Physics are weak and shitty and too realistic (*caugh* just a bad engine). That's the biggest con.. VCrash is not ment for real time play. On the other side, you can calculate scenes with a mass of vehicles and "export" as a video. Hard to explain, easy to learn. I recommend you to try it and you will fell in love with the CONTROL. So I think a mix of both; a virtualcrash vehicle control controlled BeamNG.drive engine with soft body baking function for baking/calculating/rendering massive scenes with video output in Editor-Mode., would be awesome. Please think about it. It would be a big project and I think this totally goes in opposite direction with your goals like real time game play (derby and so on), but would be awesome for the video creators. Some other things I miss in BeamNG.drive: Rigid-Body Physics of heavy things like stones , Animatable Ridig-Bodies, Soft-Body Physics of things like containers (without passing vertices), Animation (manual and automatic) of the camera, integrated video output, more controll over the actual playing speed | friction of wheels (or does it depend on the underground?) | engine editing, force function that will move objects with a specific starting force, more like throwing (.. stones against a car? yay.), rigid-body shattering objects like wood and glass, MASS Settings of all soft- and rigid-body objects if they will be implemented,and ragdolls. (Would be awesome to see the morphine and euphoria engine implemented in yours. That would be all for today Bought it yesterday.
At present, the program is being geared toward actual gameplay. I can see the merit of a near-realtime vehicle physics system, similar to OctaneRender's or Cycle's near-realtime path tracing, just geared toward vehicle animation. However, if such a system were to be created, it'd not likely be soon. Probably not until at least 2015 (there's a lot on the Dev's plate). Prescient calculation is probably impossible, or at least difficult due to the many variables. You'd be best off using capture software (if your computer can handle it) alongside AI vehicles to create crash scenes. Just FYI, there has been a little talk about bringing back the replay feature from ROR, so there may be some hope yet for machinima types. [Deep Inhale]... -Dynamic rigid body physics alongside the softbody physics have been discussed a few times. So far, no dev response, and many users have asserted that softbody physics can be satisfactory for these purposes anyway. I don't know that I agree with them, but once sleeping is implemented, that point will probably be rendered moot. -Animated rigid bodies have been discussed at least once. Unfortunately for anyone wanting to recreate many a drawbridge jump scene, Torque3d (BeamNG Drive's game engine) doesn't update physics bounds on every frame. Don't know that there will be a fix for this. -The current vehicles, even the ones that would be used for cargo hauling, don't have inward facing collision, which results in cargo loads clipping through the sides of the vehicle. The devs say they'll fix this in the long run. -Simulation time can be edited using the Alt-arrow keys. -Elements like friction and power can be changed using values in the vehicle files (and possibly the world). -Engine editing is on the long-term to do list. You'll be able to fully customize your car as you see fit. -It's currently impossible to tear cars or their individual parts up, but it was once possible before Beam moved from Cryengine to Torque. The devs say they'll bring this back eventually. -Ragdolls are not going to be included in the base game. The game is geared toward vehicle physics, though some community members could certainly, theoretically, try to make ones themselves. And FYI, Euphoria is not all it's cracked up to be, nor is it in any way cheap. There's a blog post on the Overgrowth game site that gives more details. Also, try searching before you post. All of these have been mentioned before in one form or other, and the community members get a little touchy around repeat topics. Welcome to the community.
I'm just gonna answer this part, all the rest has been answered before: You can't just change mass settings on these cars in BeamNG. The whole engine is based around a spring/mass system, if you start making things lighter or heavier, you'll have to change the springiness and damping too... Manually. Otherwise things will either explode(if you make it too light) or be too flimsy(if you make it too heavy). It's a very time consuming "art"(almost) to fine-tune the spring/damping on anything you make in this engine so it behaves properly. Randomly having the computer decide all that for you(because I'm sure someone would mention this as a solution) would just result in things exploding, because the computer can't decide properly wheither or not something should be stiffer or less stiff...
The "Crash Control" will be possible to recreate in the editor if the AI is done so far. I'm sure you just need to wait for this.
