The creators of soft-physics simulation, BeamNG.drive, have released an update to their plans for the gridmap section of the game. The roadmap outlines some of their thoughts about its progression to the community but without committing to dates or final features just yet!
That said, this concept looks pretty cool. For those that aren’t aware, gridmap is essentially a proving ground (like a closed test ground where, IRL, manufacturers would often go to test their vehicles ahead of release). Within this proving ground, there are a number of ways to “test” your car’s speed, handling, stability, durability, and power. The current gridmap is about 1km square but that might be about to change.
The new proposal is to have a 2km square space filled with new and improved challenges. You can see the current thinking from the team below but, they do stress that it’s very likely to be different upon release!
Here’s some more info on the zones, taken directly from the forums:
- Suspension: various tests for the suspension, some more extreme than others
- Handling: realistic handling tests like slalom and moose, some realistic road, other setups for testing a car’s handling performance
- Off-road testing: mud, rock crawling, grade testing
- Collisions and destruction: rollover tests, a variety of crash test setups, if it’s designed for destroying cars it goes in this zone
- Groundmodel: this will be an expansion of the original Gridmap groundmodel test area which will also feature grade testing on different materials
- Spherical car pits: this is in the very early stages, but will do exactly what the name implies
- Skycurves: improved tracks similar to those on the original Gridmap
- Drag strip: for testing straight-line performance
- Pipes: the pipes from the original Gridmap will go here, along with some appropriate extras
- River testing: this area will be for testing water flow behaviour at various depths and speeds
- AI test: a small and basic set of roads with half-constructed “buildings” for testing AI
Currently, this is all info we have about where the project might lead but we can be certain that when it does get released John will give it a little test drive. If you haven’t done so previously, you can check out his BeamNG.drive series on our YouTube channel (or safely here on Traxion.gg)
There’s always a lot going on at BeamNG headquarters. We personally really enjoyed the recent update to Jungle Rock Island that we highly recommend you checking out if you have the time.
What do you think? Something you’re looking forward to? As always, let us know what you think on our social media channels and we’ll continue to bring you the latest Beam.NG news here on Traxion.gg.
