Update Speculation thread

Wow, you crate theses tracks ?

 

Please! Do this for Pessima MK1, I want Taxi from Taxi 3 !

 

I did... several years ago actually... but the main issue has been traction and flotation in soft terrain. Normally a track works by spreading out the load of a vehicle across a large footprint allowing very soft surfaces to hold up lots of weight due to the reduction of surface pressure. In Beam however, this trick doesn't seem to work at all. The tracks just sink in everything unlike tires which actually have some floatation to them. Ontop of that, once the tracks are in the fluid, because of the way that traction is calculated on tires, it basically calculates no fluid drag on tracks. This, as explained to me, is because the current traction in fluids is calculated from the change in direction of nodes in a fluid... well my tracks don't change direction of nodes in a fluid, they just drag them in a straight line, so it ends up calculating 0 traction no matter what coef of friction I use.

So yeah... if they are making improvements that will help tracks... I am all for it.

 

Oh so if I understand, your tracks don't really work ( they do but not like real track ) ?

 

Precisely... they function just like real tracks in every way... no fake wheels floating about to fool things or anything like that. They are global as well, so as long as a vehicle uses the same hubs, you can slap these tracks on it.

But yeah, due to how flotation and traction in fluids are calculated, they don't function properly right now.

 

oh yeah i see, can i try it ?

 

Well they currently don't function right now due to some of the more recent updates. I haven't been working on them lately as... well... my limitation was the physics engine itself. But if they are going to be improving fluid traction then I will have a reason to fix them again.

 

Oh yes, I really want have some real track in this game.

 

I don't know anything about modding but I may have a fix
Take a custom tire and wrap it around the track, and make it so the track drive drives the wheel
Now deflate the tire to where it is completely the right width and thickness and you have your track
Again, I do not know anything about modding, but maybe it will do something

 

I am just giving an idea

 

The real thing is usually either hard plastic segments, or a continuous strip of relatively thin rubber. They're fairly lightweight in comparison to most other tracks - even the heaviest track option for the 8x8 weighs a little under 300 lbs for a set of two, with the lightest set weighing only 175 lbs.

 

That's virtually what it is now... its basically just a custom tire at this point. It uses the same nodes as a tire for traction, it uses the fully enclosed geometry just like the tires for floatation. I even installed paddles into the tracks to help with the traction issues to no avail. It is all down to the geometry of the tracks that causes the friction calculations in fluids to be calculated so low.

Anyways, if anyone would like to further discussion on this, I will point you all to this thread instead.

https://www.beamng.com/threads/guys-come-to-talk-about-tires.58720/page-5#post-999706

If anyone has any proper ideas about the tracks (or just tires in general) feel free to further the discussion there (yes, I know there is a warning for it being an old thread, but if your post has proper information, a bump on an information thread like that is alright... just make sure to read the information that is already there first before making a post)

Back to your regularly scheduled program.

 

What could this mean?

 

Deformable terrain confirmed!
tracks, terrain, and stuff? Another offroad update?

 

Maybe it has something to do with loose rocks? I imagine they would maybe make certain rocks loose which would be cool for crawling

 

rocks for wheels

 

driftin rock

 

Possibly confirmed in a thread where TDev replied about excavators and deformable terrain

Plus with the addition of the new Quarry it could hint at digging and terrain manipulation