Complaints I've heard about Beam

I have heard a few complaints, outside this community about why BeamNG is not the best driving simulator. (imo, it's pretty good)

1. Deformation
I heard someone say that the vehicles' bodies in this simulator are defined as hard plastic and not metal.
2. Tires
People say that the tires in BeamNG do not interact with the road as realistically as other games like LFS.

Are these claims true?

 

no.

 

Those are the complains that ive heard the most from my videos :
- Cars look too light
- Hard crashes look unrealistic
- Cars are too stiff or to weak.
- Door latches are too weak
- Hoods&doors are too stiff, sometimes they are able to hold the whole car in the air (i think thats why people say, that the cars look to light).

 

I can agree with last two, but just about every other complaint I've heard is down to people simply not having an understanding of physics and how they relate to video games.

 

The bodies of the vehicles definitely act more like metal than hard plastic, but the tires still need work

 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is 99% of the problem. People's minds have been warped by arcade racers and gaming sims for so long that they think they are experts on physics.

It always makes me laugh when people start arguments about the fantastic physics in GTA compared to the flawed physics in this game... Just stop right there... and go back to wherever you came from... there is no hope...

Seriously though... I don't even know why it is a question... whenever it is brought up... I just show them this video.

 

That video really only demonstrates the accuracy of the crash physics, and I feel that playing racing sims ARE decent enough credentials to notice some inaccuracies, maybe not enough to critique the finer details, but somethings like lack of tire heating is something almost anyone who has played a simcade will notice, or the transmissions not being accurate and the odd forcefeedback that either feels extremely stiff or next to nonexistant(may just be my settings).

 

That is a good point, the tire model is not 100% there, but give it time... its coming along nicely.

As for tire heat, it just hasn't been implemented yet. Everyone seems to get upset (not you, you just mentioned it and that reminded me) that there are no tire thermals... YET. Things take time and for some reason a lot of people seem to forget that this game is nowhere near being complete yet

But yes, to drive my point further home that I made above, it was meant at the collisions because, weirdly, most of the complaints about Beam that I run across are about how unrealistic the collisions are and "cars don't really deform like that" or "everything looks like jelly. Cars are made of metal, they don't wiggle" and other odd stuff of that nature.

And as far as the transmission simulation (at its current stage that has been released as of Dec. 15, 2016 as I know the new code is coming soon) I personally think that the automatic transmission simulation is above and beyond what any other game tries to simulate. No other game even comes close to getting an automatic transmission right because they don't try to simulate an auto at all. They just automatically shift a manual car. If RPM>Redline, upshift, elseif RPM>(2/3)*Redline, downshift, endif (not really how it works, but basically all they do in other games). There is no kickdown because the transmission is already in a lower gear to begin with, there is no upshift into overdrive when off the throttle because that isn't necessary in a racing game and would only slow you down, and as far a torque converters go... they don't simulate that either. They just rev the engine a bit, and let out the clutch automatically.

The fact that the transmission in Beam actually feels somewhat like an actual auto at all is good enough for me. Sure the cars bog down a bit off the line, but real (older) autos do that too. I have 3 autos (all pre 1990's except the F-150) and they all bog down like crazy on take off... doesn't matter how far your foot is in it, with as low RPM stall converters as they have, they all bog down. I also have a much more modern automatic as well along with 2 standards, and I can say for a fact that the newer auto does not have that problem at all (2013) so I can see where with the newer cars in the game, people would get a little grumpy... but it's not that bad

Boy, I kinda went off on a tangent there... sorry about that.

As for the force feedback... I have no idea about that... I play with a keyboard as I don't have enough money for a wheel at present.

 

Deformation: Perspective is extremely difficult to get across to many in a game like this. The cars do look small to us when in the reality of the physics, they are simulated correctly to their real world counterparts. Further, when cars crash in real life, they deform like a hard (if not a soft) plastic; there's so much force in action in such a small time. I guess another way to put that is: metal is not indestructible. It is very malleable and soft under the correct conditions. Just because we're not strong enough to bend metals by hand (most of them) does not mean that they cannot be crunched up like paper in a crash.

Tires: They've gotten miles better since the beginning of the game. I think the vast majority of people who play the game use a keyboard so it is extremely difficult if not impossible to get a tactile feel of a car. Using a steering wheel with force feedback is the only true way to test how the tires feel. Using a G27, my opinion is that the simulation is very very good, my only gripes would be that they generally get very unstable at high speeds.

idk. my two cents.

 

Tires: pretty good, but as Luke mentioned with a lack of wear and heating simulation, even a basic system they cannot be considered racing sim worthy, that being said deformation wise the tires are great, only being matched by top racing sims like rfacor 2 and so on.

A big problem why a lot of people criticize beam's handling is due to the controls. Cars in Beam do behave as they would if you were try to turn by steering lock to lock at every instant, which brings a simple solution to consider, one that other racing games have used: why don't we have speed sensitive turning? Assetto corsa does it and it works rather well for racing purposes; even with controllers in beam steering wheel movements can often be exaggerated, as 8-900 degrees of rotation on a small thumb-stick requires very precise movement, however with a speed sensitive system that limits extent of equivalent steering wheel rotation to thumb-stick movement (see Assetto Corsa's method) would allow for fine adjustments easily at speed, while still allowing high degrees of steering angle at low speeds. So far unless you have a wheel, and a 900 degree rotation one its difficult to actually feel how beam handles compared to other games, and since other games with a system using controllers in mind, regardless of whether they are better simulators, feel smoother the average consumer and as such the average consumer will assume they are better. For me it was a night and day difference once I got my wheel, the game went from being a twitchy but fun crash sim to a proper dynamic feeling driving sim, but no one can expect everyone to spend hundreds on a wheel for just this game to take advantage of what it has to offer; until the devs provide a better control system that responds well to the casual consumer's control inputs, the complaints again beam will continue.

 

That is a good point. The controls are a big BIG factor in this. Most other games just automatically sense the slip angle for a given speed and then don't let the wheel turn any further beyond that point and transition the entire throw of a joystick (throw... not sure if that is a correct term, but I am going to use it anyways) into just the small angle of steering between those two slip angles. While that is great for playability, it sucks in term of realism as you have to be rather skilled to find that slip angle by feel in real life with a wheel... never mind a joystick. And as far as keyboards go... in RoR they used to just slow the speed at which the wheel was turning... made it much easier to control a vehicle at speed even if it wasn't perfect.

I honestly also hadn't noticed anything in Assetto Corsa, but I would believe that it was there. When I first plugged the game in I was expecting BeamNG levels of difficulty to keep the cars on the road... but once I got driving... it wasn't hard at all. So needless to say I was rather confused by that experience.

 

The only problem I have with force feedback is that my wheel rattles a lot when if I don't change the centering suspension of the wheel from 10%. I currently have it at 50% to minismize the rattling but increasing that value also makes the wheel more difficult to turn. (not much but still). I'm comparing this to dirst 3s force feedback.

 

Sure, the autos will be good but what about the manuals? What if you try to shift gear without using the clutch? Will there be race transmissions that dont have syncros that you would have to rev match to shift? I'm not saying the new transmission update doesn't seem great, I'm just concerned how well they will do the manual transmissions.

 

Rattling... Like your just driving along and it feels like you're driving over rocks or something?

I don't think you will have anything to worry about. With what it sounds like, if it's not in there out of the box, you can put it in yourself with LUA coding. So you could get all of that and more if need be.

 

You can do something about this. Turn up the high frequency smoothing in the gamepad force feedback settings in-game

 

Sorta. It doesn't do that on smooth surfaces of course but in situation when the force feedback is sorta fighting against you it rattles and makes a lot of noise.

I'll look into it.

EDIT:I swear i can't figure something out if it's too simple sometimes. I found the settings but i haven't changed them yet due to not having any time to check.
Thanks for the tip.

OT: A long time ago before I even got beamng i actually thought that the cars were too soft and wobbly like mentioned here. I compared it to wreckfest (it was named "next car game" at the time) and I thought that wreckfest was more realistic (lol).

 

I know a lot of people that thought that... I always showed them this video and told them to turn to 30 seconds... it's amazing how wobbly something that seems so solid is...

 

Anytime man! I had the same issue but setting the smoothing up makes driving a whole lot nicer.

 

Just going to throw it out there and say I actually like the keyboard/controller controls, and as the devs said there is no good way to have steering setup for Bea

I find beamNG easier to drive in than AC

 

Really? Thats interesting... I think AC is actually really easy to drive in while Beam gives me a bit of a challenge. Not that I don't like a challenge, but I was just pointing that out.