Over the past year and a half of my time playing this game and looking at the forums, I've been noticing something rather peculiar about the differences between the mods and the official content: *Official stuff often has more top-notch quality (like vehicle deformation, map driveability, app usability, and so forth). *Modded alternatives can potentially have (in the best versions, that is) whole new ideas and methods of doing things which would make the standard content so much better than it already is. Crashmaster's Hirochi Prasu mod (https://www.beamng.com/resources/hirochi-prasu.2251/) is an example of what could be done with customization of vehicles in the full game. Not only can things like bodykits and wings be swapped, but also drivetrains and minor engine parts like air filters and valve covers. Also, the engine parts actually move around in the car (like the pistons, belts, gears, and so on) without affecting the performance of the car or the game particularly much. If this sort of customization was added to the standard vehicles, I'm pretty sure that the game's support from tuners would increase MASSIVELY. Mike94's Satsuma mod (https://www.beamng.com/resources/satsuma-210-58.2009/) is a great example of more features that could be included in standard vehicles: things like moving odometers, opening hoods and cabin doors, and several bodystyles and engine swaps for a single vehicle. If some standard cars had, say, the ability to swap in a V8, a more powerful I4, a couple I6s, or a rotary (each from different vehicles), then I'm quite sure that the excitement that most Forza fanboys show over their game will spread to BeamNG. What I'm getting at here is that mods (and their creators) could actually help develop the standard game to be better than it is (of course, they won't actually create the content by themselves, but they could help out in making the official stuff in these areas). That's just my two cents on how to improve the game, but then again, I can understand that BeamNG devs and modders likely wouldn't want to participate in this, and that's fine with me. EDIT: Removed VEP from list after people complained that it was bogus compared to the standard graphics.
Visual Enhancement Project: https://beamng.com/threads/beamng-drives-visual-enhancement-project-vep-official-thread.21488/
It's some sort of "graphical enhancement" ReShade preset to make the game look "better" because Torque3D is absolute crap.
The game doesn't look THAT bad with dynamic reflections on, and all VEP does seems to just add filters and bloom. The shading is nice but the rest is just a way to cover up for the actual game graphics. The models are nice, the textures are nice, illumination and shadows could be better but i dont think the game looks ugly. Dont fall for the trick of Frostbite of having so much shit covering the models and textures that you mistake gloom or blur with actual good graphics. Its an easy thing to fall for.
@Everyone who thinks that VEP is useless and doesn't serve a purpose for 99.9% of users: I'd have to agree with you. As much as I love the idea of having a more beautiful BeamNG, the fact is that VEP is sort of like giving a stock Civic a bodykit and a wing: You might impress some people, but overall, you're just losing performance and usability for a major loss in looks. However, I did notice that there were some small bits here and there (like the better illumination and such) are excellent and improve the game massively. And by the way, I don't see what's so bad about Torque3D (in reply to TheOne's comment). I mean, sure, it was open-source, but it's worked excellently so far for BeamNG.drive; even my stock Dell Inspiron laptop (which has only an i3 processor and a relatively standard-fare CPU/GPU) doesn't have too many issues running one car at low graphics at about 40-50 FPS. I expect that the physics end of the game will be improved massively in the next updates as we get more and more content. @Dr. Death: You have an EXCELLENT point here. Need For Speed 2015 is an okay example of what sort of problems Frostbite has at night. Seriously, BeamNG's night experience is about a quadrillion times better-looking than the junktasticness that is the NFS15 graphics.
I've listed my issues with vep before and got accused of trolling and hate, then I actually trolled with it in future and got a telling off from mods. But here we go again. Complete washout of colours Insane contrast settings leading to extremely poor lighting in dark areas and poor transitions from light to dark Bloom, bloom everywhere, just open your eyes, do you see bloom everywhere? I certainly don't, if you do then you should probably get your eyes checked. Overall these 3 points lead to very poor colour reproduction and a plain ugly experience
I think that as it stands right now, for BeamNG, graphically there is just a need for more particles, better performance on dynamic reflections, maybe more contrast, and the illumination should get an overhaul. During the night there seems to be no illumination from the moon or stars at all. But yeah VEP is just TRICKING you into thinking that a game looks nice.
Well it would've been absolute crap if the devs had not worked their butts off making it work properly.
no. Mods already take a long time and they are MODS for a reason. So what your saying is making the people that make mods work for free to make stuff for the game? Beamng is still a "small" company and does not have money to employ every modder. I would like to see more official content but there is only so much the developers can do with a set amount of money. Dont say "IF" they want to..............they dont.
A number of the devs are ex-modders. If a modder really wants a job, they could probably get it if they were of use to the company and extremely talented.
Are they going to do that thing where they release a car before it's finished again like the Hiroshi sunburst.
