Update Speculation thread

It looks like that certain trims where discontinued in middle of production, which isn't that unrealistic, but I do agree that it needs a proper facelift, even if only a few things change visually. Hear me out:

There is one really weird thing about Hopper that really stuck out to me, and that is 4 and 6 cylinder engines lacking any kind of EFI options despite its last production year being 2001. Now, carburetors held on a bit longer in some markets, but Hopper seems to be USDM vehicle (MPH gauges, side reflectors, red rear indicators) and by mid 90s there were no new cars with carburetors there. Now this may seem like a minor thing, but 4.1 6 cylinder found in D series gets fuel injection after its first facelift, and Covet also has choice of both carburetor and EFI depending on its trim (DX and DXI).
Another thing is, Japanese manufacturers often used same 4 cylinder engines in their RWD sports cars and trucks/SUVs. For example, KA24DE was found in S13/S14 240SX as well as in D22 Navara and first generation Xterra. So instead of 2.5 OHV 4 cylinder getting fuel injection, it could be replaced by 2.4 DOHC engine from BX in facelifted models.

Besides that it would be nice to have Hopper-based traditional pickup/SUV or at very least LWB and pickup versions of Hopper. And a diesel engine.

 

Crying in 128px textures of like half of aftermarket wheels in this game

 

Completely Agree. Wheels are my favorite thing on a car and having these remastered or just paid attention to would be really nice. I would also love more aftermarket wheel options in general.

The wheels on my sunburst are based on a real life wheel which I love very much, and it would be cool to see more like it.

 

The resolution of some old wheel textures is a disaster.



The following pictures are all rough old wheels on vehicles that have been remastered.



These vehicles that have been resmastered still have low-resolution wheels attached to them, which makes me feel sad.I just listed a small part, and there are many, many wheels that need to be remaster like old vehicles.

（All the screenshots above were taken under the setting of "High Texture Quality"）
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The model and texture of brake calipers also need to be remaster, and they almost all rely on rough normal map and old texture to express the sense of reality.（Their textures really reminds me of half-life in 1998.）


In view of the fact that the developers added light to the brakes in the update of 0.37, and the brake calipers are a part of common parts, the developers may completely remaster them in the future.

 

If they remastered the TE37 and CCW Classics and called 0.39 the race update, I wouldn't be mad

 

Honestly I wish the devs would go back to adding some small stuff between updates, I hate that the devs basically go dark for 2 months between updates. I also think it would help keep interest in the game.

Micro update to finally finish the Simplified traffic? I see all the half finished stuff in the files. If you look at the simplified traffic configs, theres a very clear divid in how many configs there are between vehicles. For example the LeGran has like 10 traffic configs (not including parked configs) but the roamer has a grand total of 4 configs (not including parked) I see the taxi ads in the files of some of the vehicles. Come on devs, it takes me five minutes to add 4 more factory configs to the Roamer, WITH PARTS ALREADY IN THE FILES, like brooooo. My bad for caps, but still. Love you devs. Pleaase update the traffic. Also the spawn ratios are very unrealistic. Most of the traffic are sedans and coupes in a world where I should be seeing mostly SUVs and Trucks!
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Aaaand another thing. Do we think this will happen? Its over a tear since this leak.

 

i wonder if they ever update the rain and snow particles for vulkan ?
or even better add proper weather but thats far in the future

 

Honestly, the big peaks have statistically been more effective at keeping interest. It gets a lot more people interested in the game per update, and while some of those people might dip, a solid percentage of them stay around. For instance, in the five months after our first huge peak (0.23, June 2021), the peak player counts never dipped below 10K (the lowest was August 2021, at 10,446 players - just 532 less than 0.22's peak). October 2021 almost out-did June 2021 (13,275 vs. 13,572), despite there being no patches for that month. (There was the Bastion teaser that dropped in the 8th of that month - that probably had some effect.)

Same thing happened between 0.24 and 0.25 - not a single month dropped below 10K peak players, and there hasn't been a month in the four digits for average players since 0.29. There hasn't been a month with less than 15K peak players since 0.27, less than 20K since 0.31, and less than 25K since 0.33. The average has also held above 15K since 0.34. These are numbers which would be crazy as overall peaks for many games, let alone averages.

Yes, there are fewer videos and posts about the game between updates, but there's still plenty of players and mod releases.

I agree that the traffic could use an update - hopefully, that comes with 0.39. I wouldn't be surprised if the traffic vehicle update was cut for time in 0.38.

I don't think that's going to change in the near future, since there are so few SUV and truck models in the game. I think that the traffic could lean more towards the newer cars, but there aren't many of those at the moment, either.

On the player count side, 0.38 just shattered 0.27 for peak player count increase (6,455 vs. 4,618), and has almost doubled its overall peak (38,755 vs. 20,691). 0.38's also beaten 0.33 for player count increase over the previous month (9,159 vs. 8,118). It's also well on its way to breaking 0.27's average increase record (3,025 players) - currently, the average is at 20,483, which is ~2,880 players over 0.37 (17,619). On top of that, I believe that Beam broke into the top-30s for top sellers today - and maybe even into the top-20s. It's usually in the lower end of the top-100. That might also be a new record.

 

They've talked about the update schedule, and having more frequent updates was more challenging and slowed down their progress. Every time they release an update, they have to perform numerous checks to verify that the game is in a stable and playable state.
Also, two new all-time peaks from one update, absolutely shattering the previous record is great news for Beam going into the new year. Hope the team comes back proud of what they've accomplished this year

 

Yeah, especially now that they gotta do a bunch of backwards-compatibility checks for mods. There's many reasons why an update like 0.21.3 hasn't really happened again (and January 2021 still had 662 fewer players than December 2020).

What's particularly telling is that the 0.4-0.8 period, despite having a huge number of cars and maps released in a short period (May 2015 - December 2016) only moved the overall peak by 1,350 players (915 - 2,265). That's quite a lot, but it's less than 0.11 alone (1,586 players), and if it were to be a single update, it'd rank 12th (just ahead of 0.21 (1,305 players)). It made sense to do smaller, more frequent updates back then because at the time, the game was a lot simpler and 300 or 500 extra players were a lot. Even then, four updates in that period (0.4.1.1, 0.5.3, 0.5.6, and 0.7) had lower peaks than their previous updates, and 0.5.3 had 73 fewer players than 0.5.2.

300 extra players is absolute peanuts now - the only two updates since 0.15 that have had such low peak increases are 0.26 (262) and 0.29 (303). However, 0.29 had more players over the previous month than 0.17 had total players (5,621 vs. 5,167). August 2025 had almost that many more players over 0.36 (29,144 vs. 28.789, +255) and about half 0.17's peak over July 2025 without having an update release, just because of how many teasers the devs were pumping out for 0.37.

And we'll very likely get a third record broken today - as of right now, the average is currently at 20,586 players, 2,964 more than 0.37. We just need 61 more for 0.38 to pull a hat trick on 0.27. It would be funny for it to happen today, on my 10th Beam-iversary. Four days after I bought the game, 0.5.1 would set a new peak of 1,528 players. To think that this game now gets 13 times that on average is just wild to think about.

 

The problem with the lack of SUVs can be somewhat fixed by adding the Hopper to the traffic. And adding more facelifted configs to the traffic D - Series. And for the spawns to lean towards vehicles produced past 2000, as way to many old vehicles spawn.

I was recently watching footage of the old Matrix Awakens Unreal Engine 5 demo, and looked at its traffic. The demos traffic is very dense, and the vehicles that spawn are very realistic despite the lack of variety. BeamNGs current traffic is in the uncanny valley, it looks right but feels wrong. The colours are wrong, they are too happy, and awesome 80s and 90s icons can be spotted everywhere. To be realistic it should be a depressing sea of blacks, grays, and whites. There should be an overwhelming amount of boring SUVs and Pickups. My bright blue LeGran should stand out in the traffic.

 

I agree. The world is increasingly seeing cars with rather dull colors like white, gray, and black. The problem with traffic is that bright colors can ruin the atmosphere of the era. It would be cool to divide the car class by year, so that when traffic spawns, specific cars would appear—for example, from the 90s (Soliad Wendover, Bruckell LeGran, Gavril D-Series, and others)—with specific color settings, bright or dark colors. In the modern class, cars from 2010-2020 will appear mostly in gray, silver, black, or white.

 

The devs added a feature for the traffic to limit the colours individual configs can soawn with, though its yet to be implemented to the traffic cars, besides the H Series box truck limited to only be white. It was implemented in v0.37, likely the traffic was supposed to be updated but it was delayed.

https://documentation.beamng.com/modding/vehicle/vehicle_paints/paint_distribution/
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Here is an example of what I mean by the traffic spread in BeamNG. These are both images taken in the same spot, and placed by me in a natural way.

Here is the first one, 10 traffic cars spawned in through the traffic app. Only one large truck spawned in, the rest where old sedans and coupes, very unrealistic. An the colours are also uncommon. The games choices of vehicles here are very much in the uncanny valley of traffic. It looks like traffic, but not the traffic you would see out your window.



This is the second one. I handpicked each vehicle using statistics, changed the colours according to statistics online. You can see it looks a lot more normal, like something you would see out in the real world. I also added in the hopper here to sell the variety of the traffic. Devs please add the hopper to the traffic.



Second angle



See what I mean? So much more normal.

I have found many signs that the traffic may be updated.

 

I disagree. I'm not sure how to articulate my disagreement, but I nonetheless disagree. Lemme try:

Yes, modern traffic (at least here in the US) strongly skews toward vehicles that are 10, maybe 15 years old, with some outliers from the late 90's or early 2000's in usually rough shape. Yes, most of those more recent vehicles are presented in colors that are, shall we say, modest: neutrals or off-neutrals (such as beige or navy), often with little or no metallicity. And yes, most of those vehicles are crossover SUVs, fullsize SUVs, or fullsize pickup trucks.

I guess my issue is that I see BeamNG's variety as a feature, not a bug (if anything, IRL is bugged lol). BeamNG is creating a more varied experience, while using more of its limited content, to create a more vibrant world. BeamNG's environments, for reasons both technical and development budget/priority-related, often feel stale and lifeless, so it seems reasonable that the devs would attempt to compensate for this issue in any way they can. Additionally, the Matrix Demo works as well as it does visually because... well... it's a fucking Unreal Engine demo! It's already showing off the bleeding edge of how busy, lively, and beautifully-rendered a video game city can be. BeamNG can't compete with that kind of scale and fidelity right now, so they'll use whatever arrows are left in their quiver. There's no GI, the AO is fuzzy and unstable, pedestrians may or may not be truly possible, and most players struggle with more than 8 cars on their screen. So by gum, there are going to be two or more primary colors on your screen, mister!

And, also, in case it needs to be said: while BeamNG is a simulator, and it's reasonable to expect it to be realistic where possible, that's in terms of vehicle physics. Not everything else tangential to that needs to be the most realistic, dry echo of reality in order to create a worthwhile experience. Read: Lightrunner

 

I personally think it makes more sense to have a realistic traffic roster. BeamNG is very set on the realism side of things, an it fits the game better to make the traffic realistic. To get the best of both worlds though, I think there should be a slider for what years of vehicles are included in the traffic. Lets be honest, it makes no sense to see an 80s LeGran in 2025, let alone in mint condition AND not being the only one.

 

On the topic of traffic, I think that AI should we entirely or partly disposed of, as AI needs a lot of fine tuning to work as regular traffic does. Perhaps, using predefined paths for traffic would be a better approach: vehicles like the T-Series could be used, with it’s paths being only on highways or wide roads, and using predefined paths would significantly lessen the load on load end PCs. Sorry for the long post, Zoidberg.

 

Thats something I have thought of, making different roads that large vehicles spawn on. I dont think the Ai needs that much if a rework, just some tweaks. The ai has been updated and I find it works pretty well. Its a little buggy here and there but I have certainly seen improvements in collision avoidance.
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One way it could be optimized is one many games use, have super low detailed vehicles far away in the traffic. GTA uses this and many other games. These dont have any actual Ai, and just slide along the ai paths. It makes the far away areas seem more full of life and makes the city streets better in general. Also, cars far away can have collisions turned off.

 

I like to view the traffic variations as an alternate reality, where Cash for Clunkers never happened. Now i do agree that mint condition 40+ year old cars is a bit of a stretch, but that could just be a limitation of the game.

 

One way it could be optimized is one many games use, have super low detailed vehicles far away in the traffic. GTA uses this and many other games. These dont have any actual Ai, and just slide along the ai paths. It makes the far away areas seem more full of life and makes the city streets better in general. Also, cars far away can have colidions

its not a limitation, just that the devs haven't implemented some features they already made in the traffic yet.
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This could be what fake traffic vehicles in the distance could look like.

 

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