Something is missing in every racing game and no one is talking about it. Almost every racing game has some form of drag racing, albeit it is very basic and bland. Heads up race, 1st person to the finish line wins. Now, beamng does have a more refined drag racing experience, including drag upgrades for vehicles, manual staging, nitrous, two-steps, and transbrakes. But that's just the cars. There's another feature of drag racing that no other game has touched. Bracket racing. Bracket racing is a form of drag racing that allows for any car to win, regardless of how slow the car is. Bracket racing works by each racer putting in something called a "dial-in". The dial in is basically an estimate of a time the car will not go faster than. For example, if I run 2 practice passes, and my times are 13.05 and 13.10, I would set my dial in to be 13.00. The point of the dial in is to be as close as possible to what the car actually runs, and I'll explain why that's important soon. So my car is dialed in at 13.00. And let's say my opponent is dialed in at 11.50. When both of us are fully staged, my side of the tree will come down first, and his will wait an extra 1.5 seconds, to accommodate for the difference in the dial ins. The idea is so that each car gets the right head start so that, in theory, if both cars cut a perfect light, and run exactly their dial ins, they would cross the finish line at the same time. Now, a common question I get once I am this far into the explanation, is "well why can't I just dial in my car at something unreasonably slow, and get a massive head start so my opponent never comes around me?" And here's the answer. If a car runs a faster time than their dial in, for example me running 12.96 on a 13.00 dial, that is called "breaking out" and that car loses. And if both cars break out, whichever car was closer to their dial in wins. So that is why the dial in must be as close to the cars times as possible. This also works the other way, of if you put your dial in too fast, example me putting a 12.00 on my car that does low 13s, I wouldn't get a big enough head start before the faster car comes around me, or I wouldn't be able to catch the slower car if I was faster. So to close, I am suggesting a "bracket race" mode in the drag missions, where players can race against the ai with dial in inputs and bracket racing. Thank you for your time.
Because beam servers rely on clientside assets, bracket racing is not possible in beam, in a true competitive multiplayer sense anyway. They might be able to get it working for single player missions, but it would never work for BeamMP because of how BeamMP's pull data. The christmas tree on the client's computers drop at different times for different people... which is why no one in the no prep scene goes off of a christmas tree, and instead uses a player flashlight or just using cobalt essentials. Roblox Bracket Racing is by far the best as far as bracket racing is concerned.
yes, i understand that this is impossible in multiplayer but even in singleplayer this would be pretty dope. The ai is usually decently consistent with ET so it'd still be fun
