Huge BeamNG.drive v0.23 Update Released

We’ve seen some pretty length build and patch notes in our time, but the latest BeamNG.drive v0.23 update must be one of the biggest for some time. Some of the highlights include a complete revamp of the popular Ibishu Pigeon, and a new vehicle with sportier lines in the shape of the Ibishu Wigeon.

Lots of other cars, trailers and more have also been tweaked, along with the maps in the driving physics game. The biggest change is a revamp for the Gridmap location with 11 different zones for different types of terrain and purpose. The graphics also benefit from new physically-based rendering, and the audio has been tweaked, along with the user interface.

The game engine, world editor and physics have also been improved, and there are some new challenges to take on. Plus you’ll now have to deal with traffic signals and improved oil simulation, including minimum and maximum levels which shouldn’t be exceeded, including when you’re taking corners or jumps.

BeamNG.drive v0.23 Update Release Notes:

Vehicles

NEW VEHICLE – Ibishu Wigeon

• A lightweight sporty microcar based on the Pigeon chassis
• Available in 3- or 4-wheel models
• Choice of a 550cc I3 or 1.3L i4 engines
• Features a unique lift up canopy

REVAMPED VEHICLE – Ibishu Pigeon

• Total visual overhaul with a brand new highly detailed 3d model and new textures
• Redesign of the chassis and mechanicals to be more realistic
• New 4 wheeled “plus” models with independant front suspension
• Adjusted vehicle proportions and mass for greater authenticity
• Completely new Jbeam built from the ground up, with improved stability, better deformation characteristics and a higher level of detail
• Engine options refined, replacing the old diesel with a 550cc i3 petrol engine, and the old 600cc engine with a new 1.3L i4 DOHC engine
• New 4 link rear suspension option for improved handling
• New alternate steel wheels and hub caps, as well as new Ibishu Magtech wheels and Tims Kodaira wheels in 10×6 New racing slick and mud-terrain tires
• New customization parts and configurations
• Updated ‘Street Cleaning’ skin and made it colorable
• Added ‘Two-Tone’ skin

Autobello Piccolina

• Fixed collision issue between tubular offroad rear bumper and engine
• Fixed tubular offroad rear bumper being too flexible

Bruckell LeGran

• Improved brake fade resistance, added heavy duty sway bar for wagon configs, reduced boominess of v6 engine sound, suspension sound tweaks

Bruckell Moonhawk

• Increased tie rod strength

Burnside Special

• Improved strength and rigidity of leaf spring mounts

Cherrier Vivace/Tograc

• Fixed instability in front bumper caused by accelerating and braking hard with the steering at full lock

ETK 800 Series

• Fixed html error on the screen
• Added new interior color options

ETK I-series

• Improved underbody textures

Gavril Barstow

• Improved underbody textures

Gavril D-Series

• Fixed instability when off road dampers set to max damping, moved solid front axle shaft devices into separate parts
• Cleaned up engine jbeam files and part names for easier reading
• Added reverse beeper for D45 trucks
• Fixed front door limiters not allowing free movement of the doors
• Fixed weak/unstable transmission mount
• Fixed collision between bullbar and bumper causing the bumper to bend strangely when landing jumps
• Fixed collision fighting between bumper and utility bullbar
• Pickup
  • Fixed texture leak issue on the radio
  • Fixed RS V8 lettering on the stepside bed

Gavril Grand Marshal

• Increased tie rod strength
• Cleaned up engine jbeam files and part names for easier reading

Gavril H-Series

• Moved solid front axle shaft devices into separate parts
• Cleaned up engine jbeam files and part names for easier reading
• Added reverse beeper for H45 trucks
• Added roof bars
• Added mattress loads for cargo area
• Fixed nitrous beams not breaking, permanently fixing the body to the frame
• Fixed ambulance light flares
• Fixed ambulance body breaking issue that could lead to a node flying from the vehicle while still attached, causing strange vehicle handling

Gavril Roamer

• Fixed minor default two-tone skin issue

Hirochi SBR4

• Fixed issue with adaptive brakelights
• eSBR: Fixed an issue with gauge map breaking when terrain ends

Hirochi Sunburst

• Upscaled texture resolution and improved windshield wiper meshes
• Increased front half shaft travel

Ibishu Hopper

• Added 6.9L V8 engine
• Set tire pressure of crawler config to 10psi
• Fixed instability when off road dampers set to max damping
• Moved solid front axle shaft devices into separate parts

Ibishu Pessima

• (80s) Added ultra high performance radiator to Hillclimb and Drift configs, switched GTz to high performance radiator
• (90s) Reduced boominess of v6 engine sound

Soliad Wendover

• Improved brake fade resistance
• Reduced boominess of v6 engine sound
• Suspension sound tweaks

Trailers and Props

• Dry Van Trailer
  • Fixed BeamNG skin not working properly with the loading ramp door
  • Adjusted torsional rigidity and improved deformation
  • Cola load jbeam structure split into separate blocks for each crate, tweaked deformation
• Box Utility
  • Updated textures

Trailer Bogie

• Added more damping to tires and suspension
• Added collision triangles

Bollard

• Fixed slidenode rails being misnamed causing base mesh to deform when spawned

PBR texture update on the following assets:

• Caravan (Travel Trailer)
• Dry Van Trailer
• Flatbed Trailer
• Small Flatbed Trailer
• Ball
• Bollard
• Cardboard Box
• Cinderblock Wall
• Concrete Barrier
• Concrete Retaining Wall
• Cones
• Flip Ramp
• Tire Stacks
• Mattress
• Giant Flail
• Inflated Mat
• Kick Plate
• Large Bridge
• Large Cannon
• Large Roller
• Large Spinner
• Metal Box
• Metal Ramp
• Cannon
• Roadsigns
• Rocks & Boulders
• Rollover Sled
• Saw Horse
• Shipping Container
• Steel Barrel
• Street Light
• Suspension Bridge
• Tire Wall
• Traffic Barrel
• Traffic Tube
• Upright Piano
• Weight Pad

Tires

• Increased the cornering stiffness of smaller off road tires
• Updated materials on bias ply vintage tire
• Updated materials on rally tire
• New PBR textures on the following tires:
  • Grip-All ATR
  • Grip-All Trial Ace
  • Grip-All AD82T
  • Grip-All Radial T/A
  • Grip-All Drag
  • Race slicks
  • TR800 Transport tires
  • Grip-All MuckMaster

• Wheels
  • Updated several materials to PBR
• Misc
  • Added odometer measurement to vehicle electrics
  • Engine deform groups tweak
  • Added stock and race oil pan parts to all cars (excluding Gavril T-Series and Wentward DT40L)
  • Adjusted headlights and taillights flares for all vehicles
  • Added newly introduced friction values to all vehicle’s powertrain devices
  • Fixed Test-Rollers throwing errors when no other vehicle was around
  • Note: Not all vehicles have been fully converted to materials 1.5 (PBR).

Levels

• REVAMPED MAP – Gridmap V2
  • Created a newer visual style for the map while respecting the original with improved textures
  • Split the map into 11 different zones, each with a different purpose such as Offroad, Suspension, Handling, Rivers, Terrain Types etc
  • Expanded the map to be over four times the area of the original to accommodate the new zones and also so there is some empty space between them
  • Added “landscape” elements but also opened up the map so you can drive outside

• Original Gridmap level is available for download here

Rendering

• New Physically-Based Render
• New material system based on metallic/roughness workflow documentation is available here
• Improved Graphics presets, added Ultra option:
  • Ultra preset enables Fresnel for direct specular lighting
  • Ultra preset enables specular color for direct specular lighting
• Improved ambient diffuse lighting
• Improved direct specular lighting
• Vehicle Paint type added to make use of new material system. Old vehicle colors will be upgraded to paints with default values for new fields during loading
• Experimental implementation of Vulkan renderer. At this moment is unstable but x2 as fast on the CPU compared with DX11.
  Please read this announcement for further info
• Added option to test the work-in-progress support for Vulkan renderer, available from the Launcher → Support Tools submenu

Powertrain

• Added flywheel torque to tracked controller data, engine dyno now displays flywheel torque rather than raw combustion torque
• Fixed wrong gearbox torque readouts for all transmissions
• Slight math optimizations
• Fixed an issue where over-revving an engine after running out of fuel would deliver usable torque
• Tweaked ICE overrev damage slightly
• Fixed an issue where reduced coolant mass wouldn’t apply correctly to thermals math
• Fixed an issue where turbochargers were rapidly bleeding pressure even if no BOV was present
• Improved turbocharger BOV behavior
• Added gearwhine support for DCTs
• Fixed brake squeal staying audible after breaking off a wheel
• Slightly adjusted how temporary rev limiters sound
• Implemented better oil simulation for combustion engines:
  • Oil is now simulated as a variable mass that can change over time due to external factors
  • Implemented support for breakable oilpans and oil radiators, damaging them will cause oil to leak
  • Completely reworked oil starvation logic, added support for oil starvation during cornering and jumping
  • Oil now has a safe minimum and maximum level that should not be exceeded
  • Updated engine thermal debug app to show various oil system related things
• Added rpm and torque sensitive friction losses to relevant powertrain devices
• Fixed sequential gearbox not adhering to gearbox safety option when using H-Shifter inputs

Controllers

• Fixed drive mode default forward mode being stuck in M
• Fixed missing mandatory mainController API in dummy.lua
• Reduced garbage collector load in Vivace gauges
• Made two-step launch inactive by default again
• Added ability to configure two-step launch via drive modes
• Fixed input action “Previous drive mode” not working

Scenarios

• Added Goliath scenario
• Added King Size scenario
• Added Collect Mountain scenario
• Added Garage to Garage Scenario: A procedural vehicle-delivery scenario, where you only have one attempt per vehicle
• Remastered Jump Course scenario
• Remastered Port Escape scenario

• Fixed missing translations in Barrel Knocker scenario
• Removed old scenarios that already exists as Time Trials

Input and Force Feedback

• Note: Logitech G923 for PS4 and Logitech G29, in combination with certain Logitech G-Hub versions, can result in the inability to launch BeamNG.drive. This known issue will be fixed in a future release of Logitech G-Hub. In the meantime, please plug those particular steering wheels only after the game has started
• Improved Options menu for configuring USB steering wheel lock angle and type, should be more intuitive now to choose the right settings
• Fixed Logitech G923 for XBox not being correctly detected
• Fixed duplicate parking brake binding in Logitech G29 steering wheel: it now switches camera instead
• Fixed several scenario dialogue menus appearing only when certain input controls have been assigned
• Fixed some tiny memory leaks during initialization of newly plugged controllers
• Improved readability of some DirectInput error logs
• Tweaked some DirectInput log messages which looked scarier than they really are
• Limited maximum vehicle specific FFB multiplier to 150%
• Added default bindings for the following devices:
  • SHH Newt H-shifter
  • Sim-plicity SW20 V3 steering wheel
  • Logitech G923 Racing Wheel for XBox One
  • Logitech G923 Racing Wheel for PlayStation 4
  • SimRacingCoach button box for steering wheels
  • Heusinkveld Sim Pedals Sprint

Walking Mode

• Reworked position holding to be more physical via locking the rotation of the ball
• Converted external controlling force to internal ones
• Converted propulsion from applied force to a torque on the ball
• Reworked jumping mechanism
• Implemented a ball rotation speed sensor that can measure the speed of the unicycle over its currently touching surface
• Walking Mode character will stay where it is when using “Tab” to switch to another vehicle
• Walking Mode character now has a mesh by default
• The crash when activating Walking Mode should be resolved now

Physics

• Static collision improvements
• Fixed couplers not triggering detachment events when an object is deleted
• Changed coupler events to only be forwarded to game engine, when they are inter-vehicle
• Added guard that detects and ignores degenerate dynamic collision triangles
• Fixed drag force calculations of node grabber
• Added support for the inter-vehicle node grabber. It is used when the player character grabs other nodes
• Fixed huge frame spikes caused by Lua command queue processing of inactive vehicles
• Exposed be:getTerrainDrivability to game engine Lua
• Improved physics core’s thread scheduler smoothness

Traffic

• Created traffic signals system, including functional intersections and signal controllers
• Converted the traffic lights in East Coast USA to work with AI! (West Coast USA intersections are a work in progress and will take more time, sorry!)
• Reduced the amount of duplicate vehicles spawned with the Smart vehicle group mode
• Improved the vehicle pooling system logic
• Improved a few police actions

AI

• Added new aggression mode, “manual”, to override the basic aggression value for Flee & Chase AI modes
• Added bridge to map manager and AI to enable interactions with traffic signals
• Throttle/brake control improvements at very low targetSpeed (ex. coming to a stop at intersections, traffic lights)
• Preserve AI mode in traffic when a closest road is not found

Audio

• Fixed excessive sound volume during replay playback (could be noticeable during crashes)
• Fixed Pickup suspension volume
• Fixed Vivace stage 3 bov volume
• Rebalanced transmission whine load curve
• Added surface sounds for ice and wet asphalt
• Added tread hum to asphalt, metal, and wood surfaces
• Added electric motors for Large Spinner and Large Roller
• Added generic ambience for tunnels and sky
• Performance and memory improvements
• Improved rumble strip contact smoothing
• Optimized wheel skid calculations
• Stopped engines do not keep playing with a small residual sound

UI

• Added sliders to manipulate the new paint values in the paint menu

Fixed behavior of Simple Damage App Added a new external UI mode – WARNING: not finished yet, experimental! Updated and cleaned up JS code to ES6 Fixed a significant number of JS errors Migrating from AngularJS to Vue 3 – work in progress Improved UI App / layout system:

• Added support for subfolders
• Improved editor
• Improved layout file saving: now only saves basic info so the file format is future-proof

Fixed Tacho and other apps flashing or flickering when switching vehicles, also added fading Improved and fixed errors with Messages and Countdown apps Improved CEF event digestion, now only collects as much data as needed. Should prevent CEF from getting overloaded with data Various bug fixes and improvements Options → Graphics → FPS Limiter slider range has been increased to 1000Hz Created UI overlay that fades the screen to and from black (intended for scenarios and cinematic scenes) Scenario Start Screen now correctly parses bbcode and bindings Select Buttons now correctly parses bbcode and bindings, improved visual cues when hovering and clicking a button Vehicle’s color selector now allows for finer steps Adjust selection colors for Vehicle, Level and Scenario selection menu Improved Vehicle Selector’s Search Bar, added ability to show configurations by double-clicking the search bar Minor tweak to vehicle selector: it now displays the amount of variants for each vehicle

Fixed several broken URLs in the message that informs when a vehicle instability has occurred Fixed the Performance Graph menu attributing all ‘physicsState’ cost to the replay subsystem Removed an error dialog that appeared when the logging system was unable to work correctly Added deprecation warning to thumbnail CEF app, added button to redirect to imgui one Improved Navigation app:

• This app should now cause drastically less lag, especially on maps with a lot of roads, like Italy
• Now shows the Groundmarkers route
  

Improved how default spawn points are displayed in the UI Improved translation support of credits screen (only a handful of credits are translated so far) Updated list of credits, former employees are now being listed under a dedicated section instead of the “Special Thanks” Fixed graphics preset button order, they are now shown from Lowest to Ultra Minor improvement in the selection of UI apps shown during Time Trials Fixed an issue where Graphics preset were not correctly choosing between FXAA and SMAA Revamped Ctrl+F panel statistics: now it’s also showing instantaneous FPS, maximum/minimum values, as well as 1%, 5% and 10% values. These new stats are calculated based on the past second of gameplay

• Fixed Ctrl+F and Performance Graph reported framerate values: they used to be an inconsistent average over the past handful of frames, rather than the real-time value
• Fixed launcher restart message box showing inverted title/description
• Revamped nodegrabber behavior while in walking mode: it’ll now use a more physically accurate system, simulating human strength and proper action/reaction. Objects will reachable and held at around an arm’s length when possible, with some leeway to allow picking up objects from about as far as the ground
• Resolved an issue with fixed nodes staying in place even after replacing the car with a different one

Cameras

• Players can now switch from a forced point of view back to the regular camera in almost all situations. Modders who want to enforce certain camera can use binding filters to disable it when desired
• Camera mods should now work without reloading LUA or the game, and without needing an equivalent LUA workaround
• Added ability for modders to more easily modify existing camera behavior: you can now add custom steps in the middle of the camera processing pipeline. For example, the existing official TrackIR support, as well as the camera transitions, have been migrated to use this new pipeline

Replay

• Improved the way replay attempts to restore the situation previous to a replay playback: it will now focus the camera back on the right vehicle when possible
• Fixed issues when inactive vehicles were recorded (such as those used by traffic system)

Game Engine

• Improved performance when using traffic with vehicle pooling active
• Improved flexmesh normal inversion on deformation: no more inverted/dark spots on thin meshes upon deformation
• Improved traffic performance when a traffic vehicle is repositioned
• Completely revamped behavior of the FPS Limiter and the Background FPS Limiter: they should work more consistently now across almost all computers even when VSync is enabled
• Fixed issue where the game could sometimes switch to an inactive vehicle
• Fixed some cases where vehicle mouse triggers were visible when they shouldn’t
• Vehicle Recovery: Reset on “key up” instead of “key down”
• remoteController: fixed QR code generation
• Updated confetti particles
• Updated ground markers texture
• Added onVehicleActiveChanged hook
• Fixed texture extension across Game Engine and official content
• Removed drawArrow from vehicle DebugDraw
• TextureCooker: fixed crash on exit
• Fixed unloading extensions that were loaded with loadAtRoot
• LuaApi FS mountList: return type changed to bool
• Environment: fixed sky on maps that were saved with time different than startTime
• Environment: fixed reloading of ground model in wrong map loading event
• Added material name in error message of processedMaterial
• core_online: fixed exception upon connection timeout
• debugDraw: Tri & Quad not using ztest property
• Fixed some environment resetting to default values when starting scenario
• Mod Manager
  • Fixed modActivateAll & modActivate not running modScript files
  • Fixed modActivate, Delete, Deactivate not triggering FileSystem notification for zip without manifest
  • Fixed trying to mount invalid zip, added error message
• Users with significant number of active mods should experience slightly improved loading times
• Improved map navigation arrows

World Editor

• Created Traffic Signals tool, which allows for the placement of intersection objects with signal controllers to control the flow of traffic on the map
• Added material debug visualization options to editor’s ‘Visualization Settings’ menu
• Material Editor:
  • Added support for PBR materials
• Asset Browser:
  • Added type-based color-coded bars to assets
  • Added additional information to assets of type ‘image’ such as GFXFormat
  • Fixed crash when trying to display tooltips of 1DTexture
• Forest Editor
  • Fixed “Add new mesh” and “Delete mesh” buttons
  • Fixed crash in forest editor when switching level
• Level Validator
  • Renamed “Level Log Tool” to “Level Validator”
  • Added check for duplicate objects in the level
  • Added spline object check to level validator to check for objects with less than two nodes
  • Improved floating object detection by removing some false positives
• Scenetree
  • UI overhaul of items in the scenetree for clarity
• Added text window when editing a lua function of an object
• Fixed shift click selection when in search mode

Flowgraph Editor

• Created a new folder with nodes for the traffic signals system
• Fixed some issues with the Xor node
• Added Distance from Ground node
• Added Random Number node
• Added alternate mode to Select Buttons node
• Added Set License Plate and Generate License Plate nodes
• Improved overall Node visuals: Icons, Grid-snapping, Colors, Spacing, etc.
• Lots and lots of Node fixes and improvements
• Added project navigation bar
• Added debugging viewmodes: Default, Heatmap and Simple
• Improved detection of invalid link connections
• Added Flowgraph Modules: Under-the-hood improvements that makes reusing code easier and leads to better Nodes
• Added grouping and ungrouping for stategraphs/nodes
• Added “Impulse” flow-type: This will show you which pins will only let flow through for one frame, or are intended to only receive flow for one frame
• Added Formatting options for number pins
• Improved text-input for big strings for string pins
• Improved hardcoding for boolean pins, now enabled by default
• Improved comment generation in projects
• Flowgraph projects can now be directly saved as a scenario. They need to be saved inside a levels /scenarios/ folder and have a property in the Project Settings enabled
• Flowgraphs can now save persistent data to use between runs
• Improved Node behavior: Various nodes can now be toggled between a once-mode and a repeat-mode:
  • Once-mode-nodes have to be reset but can receive continuous flow and thus be chained more easily
  • Repeat-mode-nodes will execute their action every frame and don’t need to be reset
• Various new/improved Nodes:
  • Added a set of easy-to-use Timer nodes
  • Added a set of Button-Nodes, to display buttons in the game UI
  • Added improved Camera Path nodes
  • Added Fading nodes, to fade the whole screen to and from black
  • Added Align-To-Couple node, to easily setup coupling for two vehicles
  • Added Raycasting node, for simple in-game raycasts
  • Added nodes to save/load persistent data
  • Added nodes for procedural campaths
  • Added node for retrieving the distance of the currently active Groundmarkers
  • Added nodes to support the “Sites” system
  • Added node for custom UI layouts (WIP)
  • Added node to convert Units based on the users preferences (meter, kilometer, feet, miles, also as velocities)

Lua

• Improved performance of JSON decoder
• Fixed JSON encoder to correctly escapes strings
• Improved performance of Lpack’s encoder and decoder
• Deprecated the openFile() API, which will now redirect to openFolder() and explorerFolder() for TorqueScript and Lua respectively, and warn about it in logs
• New MissionInfo system to manage Mission Information UI and its button actions
• Fixed license plate regeneration bug where wrong format for the loaded level is used
• Improvements to groundmarkers for better performance
• Vehicle spawning interface improvement – added options parameter to enable more data to be provided
• Fixed bug where mission path persisted after the level has been unloaded
• Always send object data to vehicles in map.lua updateGFX. This corrects a bug whereby if only two vehicles exist and one of them is removed, mapmgr.objects does not get updated since there are no inactive vehicles left (special thanks to angelo234 for pointing this out)
• Improved performance of “point to point” and “point to node” and traffic AI mode path finding
• Improved performance and accuracy of surface normal calculations
• Transmit exported graphpath and quad tree data directly from game engine Lua to vehicle Lua to avoid having to reconstruct those data structures from map data on the vehicle side
• Fixed duplicated module method export in partmgmt.lua
• Improved Lua command queue processing to be more robust
• Added slipVec attribute to particle data which contains the node slip vector
• Changed obj:getNodeForceNonInertial(nodeId1, nodeId2) to also return the perpendicular to the beam force component
• Added obj:get3nodeAngularVelocity(axis, nodeId1, nodeId2, nodeId3) API. It returns the angular velocity of the 3 nodes around the axis vector
• Added obj:getNodeForceVectorNonInertialXYZ(nodeId) which returns the full non inertial force vector
• Fixed core_camera.getDriverData() returning the first node of the vehicle when no driver node is defined in the vehicle jbeam (‘nil’ will now be returned instead)
• Replaced Lua websocket with c++ implementation for speed, reliability, and safety
• Removed creatormode – superseded by external UI
• Rewrote UI data streams: now faster, more generic and versatile
• Improved how the UI works together with the game. Hooks and streams are now the only ways to enable external user interfaces and alike

ConsoleNG

• Lists only active vehicles, refreshes list once vehicle changes active state
• Increased default font size

Telemetry

• Fixed how load screen time is measured
• Fixed not properly writing out report onExit

You can buy BeamNG.drive for the PC via Steam, or through Humble Bundle. Keep up with all our latest BeamNG.drive news and coverage, here. Or check out our full BeamNG.drive car list for all the officially released vehicles for the game.