Update Speculation thread

Oh. I must be blind

 

that has been in the game at least since 0.21, I do not have access to developer versions anyways

 

Basically WCUSA but narrower streets and Right hand drive

 

With neons everywhere

 

If no pedestrians, I think it would still feel bit odd. However I think no pedestrians are in plans unless that has changed.

 

I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be an A6M Zero but it's really tiny for any fighter plane of that era and it has been there since the JRI revamp iirc.

 

The only new BeamNG content that matters

 

Lois, I'm in BeamNG hehehehehheheheh

 

and the most random family guy reference of the year goes to!

 

My saying. Praise with me bro.

 

Since this is such a hotly debated topic apparently I'm gonna put my whole JRI Japan theory in one post, with a few additional things I forgot to bring up earlier.

This could all very well be coincidence and not be indicative of anything so please do not treat this as fact.

Original Premises:

Spoiler: "japan_test" test town in the JRI Files

Remember how in 0.22, West Coast, East Coast, Utah, and Italy received new garages and dealerships? JRI never received any even though it is just as large as the former three. JRI also completely lacks any gas stations. This would mean that JRI would be missing three key locations likely needed for it to be a traditional "free roam" map for career mode like the four aforementioned maps.

However, there is something quite interesting located in the files of JRI, a mockup of a town called "japan_test". This completely lacks collision and is extremely low poly, obviously being just a mockup for reference. This has been present ever since the remaster was added.

It has what appears to be a garage and a gas station.


There is also what appears to be a car dealership.


As you can see, the main three locations that one would assume would be needed for career mode functionality are present.

Besides that, there is more to the town. Across the street from the garage and gas station is a canal with a bridge crossing over it. I would assume this would connect to a river of some kind.


The central part of town is mostly composed of small to medium sized houses/shops that have the shape of many newer Japanese buildings.


On the far side of town there is another garage and some building with multiple garages (maybe a fire station or something?)


The "town" is not very big, and besides the areas shown just has some docks.


This on its own is very interesting. A town in JRI would add a lot to the map, and a Japanese town at that would be extremely interesting.

I speculate that the town might have gone here. The canal would have hooked up to this river, and each road would have likely hooked to the roads of the corresponding colored arrows.

I also rigged the mesh to use visual collision. The roads are a lot tighter than you would think, and driving the D-Series around the "town" was quite a challenge. Clearly, a town like this would be better suited for more compact cars, especially the upcoming Wigeon.

Spoiler: Currently unused Japanese Traffic Country Key

There is this line of code in the traffic.lua.

Code:

local defaultCountries = {usa = 'United States', germany = 'Germany', italy = 'Italy', japan = 'Japan'} -- temporary country list

As you can see, Japan is listed as a country with its own traffic set. Sure enough, the game can actually be modded to spawn the Japanese traffic set, which prefers to spawn Japanese cars. For reference I have modified JRI to use this set, JRI uses the US set as of now.

How Beam handles traffic car spawning is that it prefers to spawn cars from the country that the map is set in. However, it does still spawn cars from other countries, just not as frequently.

Some screenshots of Japanese civilian traffic:





Each test run featured 9 Japanese cars spawning and 3 non-Japanese cars spawning.

However, police cars are handled very differently. The game will only spawn police vehicles manufactured within that country in traffic. This is why you will never see police Sunbursts, sheriff/park ranger Hoppers, or police 200BX's in American traffic, as they are not "made in America". The same applies to Italy, and is why only the Polizia Bolide and Carabinieri Piccolina spawn in traffic, because they're the only "Italian" police cars according to the game (as it sees the Carabinieri Hopper as Japanese and the Polizia Vivace/Tograc as French).

As expected, the Japanese traffic set handles cop cars like this, which means that you will see Park Ranger/Sheriff/Carabinieri Hoppers, Police 200BXs, and Police/Gendarmerie Sunbursts. This does mean that if a Japanese map is implemented, the way the game chooses police cars will need to be significantly improved or else you're gonna have American, Italian, and French police cars driving around.

Some examples:





However, one could raise the following point: "what if the Japan line is just referring to the fact that we have Japanese cars, and has nothing to do with a map?"

Well, we now have a French car, so let's modify JRI to be treated as France.

Well, in a nutshell, things get weird. France lacks a country key, so the game does not know what cars to spawn, therefore, it just randomly selects cars.


As you can see in the above image, it just selects cars randomly, including police cars (as you can see there are police cars of different nations of origin with the Hopper and H-Series). In fact, not a single French car even wound up spawning. If a French traffic set did in fact exist, and worked like the other ones, then we would have had 9 Vivaces/Togracs (french cars), 3 non-French cars, and then all the police cars would have been Vivaces/Togracs.

In a nutshell, you can't just plug countries in and expect the system to work, the country has to be defined. There are only four defined countries as of now, the US, Germany, Italy, and Japan. We have maps for the former three, but there isn't a Japanese map in the game yet. This is yet another suspicious discovery upon a mountain of others that just keeps on growing that a Japanese map could very well be a thing in the future, and JRI is a prime candidate.

Spoiler: JRI has road signs on the left side of the road.

Japan drives on the left, and Hawaii drives on the right. Another point supporting the former as a potential location.

Spoiler: WWII Stuff

Although license plates claim that JRI is set in Hawaii, JRI bears very little resemblance to Hawaii. There are also numerous WWII era Japanese military installations across the island (bunkers, AA guns, airport, etc), and even a wrecked Mitsubishi Zero bearing their livery. The Zero was parked in the hangar, so it's clear that even the airport was used by the Japanese as opposed to the Americans. Hawaii was never under Japanese occupation during WWII, so these would not make much sense.

Examples:
Wrecked Zero:

Real life Mitsubishi Zero:


Anti-Aircraft Guns:


Bunkers:

Spoiler: Removed Scenarios/Bus Routes

JRI used to have bus routes but these are now entirely absent after the remaster. While bus stops are still present on the map, the routes themselves are gone. Perhaps they are waiting on final locations/names to re-implement them? Many bus stop locations were updated, so it's not like the devs forgot they existed.

JRI also has lost all of its scenarios except two after the remaster. Most maps before then kept most of theirs after their respective remasters.

Spoiler: Ibishu Pigeon and Miramar

The recently remastered Ibishu Pigeon is a 3/4 wheel compact, JDM truck. We also have the Ibishu Miramar, which is a Japanese spec compact sedan. I find it very interesting that we have two vehicles for a market with no respective levels. The Pigeon may also be getting a remaster too. Both the Pigeon and the Miramar are compact JDM vehicles, which might be very useful for navigating the tight streets of Japanese settlements.

Spoiler: JRI's Absence in the PBR Trailer

Although this probably means absolutely nothing, JRI was completely absent from the new PBR trailer. The only other maps not seen were Cliff and ETK (which are both very dated), and Derby Arenas. Even Small Island and Industrial Site made appearances. I find it quite odd that the most recently released remastered map was completely absent from the trailer. One would think that the developers would want to showcase their most recent remaster in a trailer all about how good the game looks.

Spoiler: Hutch on JRI's inspiration

According to Hutch the original inspiration for JRI was "was a combination of some mountain roads from where I grew up, some roads in (I think) Taiwan and a bunch of tropical places.".

JRI was always meant to be a Pacific island off the coast of Asia. Hawaii is very much not this.

New Premises:

Spoiler: Non-Decrepit Things

There are some things around Jungle Rock Island that make little sense for a supposedly abandoned island.

Firstly, there are these pots with bamboo in them. They are very clean and organized:


Secondly, there are lights in the main tunnel that still work. It makes no sense for an abandoned island to still have power.

Lastly, the roads are in surprisingly good condition for the most part. The only problematic areas are where a few mudslides have happened, but other than that the roads are very smooth and free of grass. Compare this to Industrial Site where the roads are horribly bumpy and overgrown.

It seems like JRI might not be intended to be fully abandoned.

Spoiler: JRI's resemblance to Japan

I understand people being confused as to how JRI could possibly resemble Japan. When most people think of Japan, they think of this:


Or this:


Or this:


All of these pictures are from the main Japanese island of Honshu. It is understandable to just think of Honshu when you think of Japan, because many of the main cities are there (Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, etc), alongside other natural landmarks like the iconic Mount Fuji. However, there is a lot more to Japan than just the main island.

There are places like this:


Or this:




Don't these look a little familiar?

The first image is from the Yaeyama Islands, while the latter images are from Amami Ōshima. These are all areas in the far south of Japan near Okinawa. Okinawa saw heavy combat during World War II, and this whole region was temporarily occupied by the United States until the 1950s. JRI bears the marks of heavy WWII Japanese military presence as said earlier, so this is yet another interesting correlation. These islands are also relatively close to Taiwan, one of the original inspirations for JRI according to LJFHutch.

These islands are not abandoned, and have a number of cities, towns, villages, ports, airports and other inhabited settlements. They also have extremely tight roads and mountain passes similar to Jungle Rock Island.



Another thing to note is that BeamNG isn't the most traditional in its location choices. For example, when the developers wanted to make an East Coast map, they didn't choose New York, but rather the underrepresented state of Maine. When the developers wanted to make Italy, they didn't pick Florence, Rome, or Venice, but rather an island off of the southern coast. Honshu is usually what is seen when video games have Japanese locations, and I wouldn't be surprised if the developers choose to take a road less traveled instead.

In a nutshell, JRI could very well be turned into a Japanese map as there are locations that are quite similar to it in real life.

Spoiler: Development Time

All new levels take a long time to develop. West Coast, USA took roughly a year and a half to make, and then needed the 0.12 and 0.21 updates to fully polish and complete the map, the latter being three years after its initial release. Italy took even longer, taking over two and a half years, and it still needed an extra few months to be fully finished in 0.16.

It would make far more sense to repurpose an existing map as opposed to building a new map from the ground up. JRI still doesn't quite feel finished, with its empty peninsula, total lack of shops, houses or career specific locations such as garages, dealers, and gas stations, and reused industrial site assets. I wouldn't be surprised if the latter was simply a placeholder.

If JRI was repurposed into a Japanese map like I'm suspecting, they already have a good foundation. JRI has a solid road layout, a number of well crafted locations, and very good looking environments/foliage. All that would be needed are a few settlements, new buildings, a few revitalized areas, updated road textures, street signs, and some misc. props, clutter and such around the map.

I threw together a quick concept as to what the layout of a Japanese JRI could be. I preserved almost everything already on the map and the original geography, just adding places in areas in which they could fit. The only areas that would have replaced assets are those just reusing Industrial Site assets, anything with new, unique assets are left unchanged.



While this is just a concept, you can see that something like this wouldn't feel that out of place, and would flesh out currently empty and desolate areas around the map, and in terms of development time this would take far, far less time than building a new map from the ground up (a couple months as opposed to a year or two).

Conclusion:
It is quite possible that Jungle Rock island could be turned into a southern Japanese island in a future update.

Unless any more information comes out, this should be my definitive post on this subject.

 

Yes I know, that post was a response to Szymon's.

 

So thats why it shipped with the miramar that was made in Jdm spec

 

Unfortunately, this isn't the case. The Miramar was released in 0.5.4 alongside Utah, not Jungle Rock Island.

 

Maybe Jungle rock island IS Japanese already and we've just all thought it was the us or something. It would be strange to completely re-vamp it especially when they already remastered it not too long ago.

 

Well it still uses Hawaii license plates at the moment. What I'm talking about isn't a full remake, but rather think of the current remaster as "phase 1", sort of like how Italy released without a number of details and buildings, which were added in a later update.

 

Wasnt the bunker from the Pre-Remake version of JRI called "japanese_bunker" already?

Little bit off-topic, but:
I think ETK-driving-center map is going to be LOT bigger after its going to be remastered sometime. cuz it has like nothing for now.

 

It does seem to have the correct wingspan for a Zero

 

I didn't notice this until now, but apparently JRI has bamboo in planters at the observatory tunnel.



Nicely planted and organized, new with the remaster and definitely feels like it's being maintained, kinda strange for a supposedly abandoned island. Yet another sign that makes me suspect that something is going on.

 

maybe vietnam