I really wonder if they managed to get the car dynamics right. The cars are extremely difficult to drive, they under steer and starts to skid too easily. I often get that total 180 degree skid at 30 km/h, that's outside school speed.
Especially the cop car is like driving a bar of soap, it has no grip at all and can start to skid for nothing. Also the suspension is like it wouldn't have any dampers at all. If you come into a curve at 70 km/h it is almost impossible to keep it on the road because there is no grip. If you would put this car in real life it would be deadly and forbidden on the market. Luckily this is not how it is in real life. I have driven in 160 km/h in quite sharp turns and the car can handle it. In 70 km/h real cars don't suddenly loose grip on a dry day and at that speed is like a soft Sunday driving.
Just for comparison take the Youtube channel 77km/h. https://www.youtube.com/user/km77video
and you'll see that most cars can handle sharp turns and pretty impressively too.
Also for computer games they have to augment the driver dynamics in order to make it more user friendly. Try drive your real car with the arrow keys.
Thumbs down for the driving dynamics in this game.
I really wonder if they managed to get the car dynamics right. The cars are extremely difficult to drive, they under steer and starts to skid too easily.
BS answers from the developers I would say. You really have to augment the handling for PC games as well as tuning the controls. If you have a 600 hp car you usually don't floor th gas pedal because that would make the wheels spin and you have to buy new tires all the time. This is what the up arrow does and the car lose the grip.
The 1963 Gavril Bluebuck joins our growing, diversifying list of vehicles including 33 variants to drive and customize, along with a wealth of mod parts and our first-ever hydraulic suspension.
In addition, we have extensively improved the deformation behavior of most of the vehicles in the game.
You'll be able to enjoy the improved deformation more easily than ever, with seamless dynamic traffic now just a click away in the radial menu.
There is also now a drag minigame at the West Coast drag strip, and the AI might just give you a run for your money.
East Coast, Hirochi Raceway, and the Derby map have received extensive overhauls to improve visual quality, gameplay, and performance.
We are also proud to have achieved some serious performance improvements on both the CPU and GPU side, massively optimizing vehicle rendering and significantly improving level rendering.
New extreme off-road desert racing truck featuring a fully custom tube frame chassis, long travel suspension and massive power
Powered by either a 5.7L or 6.5L V8, both torn from the beastly Bruckell Bastion
Advanced triple bypass shock absorbers on all 4 corners
Several versatile variants:
‘TT1 Unlimited’ - All the power you could ever need, so long as you can keep it directed.
‘TT2 Spec’ - A little more subdued, this less powerful configuration lets those new to desert racing get a feel for these machines
‘ST2 Stadium’ - Designed more for short course racing and jumps than skipping over desert whoops, this configuration offers a very different style of driving
NEW VEHICLE: SP Rock Basher
New mid-engine rock crawler/race truck hybrid machine with incredible off-road ability
Powered by the venerable Gavril V8 available in 4.5L and 6.9L variations
Rock Crawler - Designed for supreme slow speed crawling over any obstacle, featuring a solid front axle and massive torque
Rock Bouncer - Rock crawler meets high speed. No technical route-picking for this nitrous-injected animal; just mash the gas pedal and cross your fingers
Rock Racer - Featuring independent front suspension, front portal hubs and the right gearing to allow both high speed desert racing and low speed rock crawling. The jack-of-all trades of off-road racing
NEW VEHICLE: Autobello Autobuggy
Added “Autobuggy” configurations with a custom tube frame chassis, lightweight bodies and long travel suspension sporting bypass shock absorbers
Class 5 Spec - A lower powered configuration featuring the Piccolina’s original flat-4 engine, providing an easygoing approach to desert racing
Unlimited Class 5 - The reins are off; the air cooled engine has been swapped out for a power 2.5L water cooled twin-cam engine from the Hirochi SBR and the body stripped away in place of fiberglass panels
Baja Extreme - No rules, no regulations. Twin turbo power with all the stops pulled.
NEW VEHICLE: Autobello Stambecco
New utilitarian off-road vehicle featuring quirky swing-axle suspension, portal hubs as well as 4x4 and 6x6 drivetrains
Available in early configurations with an air cooled gasoline 6-cylinder engine, or modernized configurations with a turbocharged 6-cylinder diesel engine
The first vehicle in the game to feature Tire Pressure Management System allowing on-the-fly tire pressure adjustments
3 body styles: van, pickup, and covered pickup
20 configurations to choose from, including military, civilian, police, ambulance and fire service as well as a custom racing version
NEW VEHICLE: FPU Wydra
New 8-wheel-drive skid-steer amphibious ATV
7 Unique configurations
Fiberglass tub chassis holding a tiny 800cc i3 engine with optional turbocharger
2 configurations featuring a big-wheel 4x4 conversion kit allowing for crossing of some of the most fearsome wetland terrain
Bruckell Bastion
Fixed interior mirror angle
Cherrier FCV
Fixed Vivace/Tograc production years
ETK 800-Series
Fixed interior normal map
Fixed errors thrown by non config related inputs of the roller prop
Gavril D-Series
Added D45 Off-Road Ambulance configuration
Added animated transfer case shifter
Added more spare wheel options for desert truck configurations
Tweaked shape of tube front bumpers
Updated off-road parts to PBR
Reduced Force Feedback Strength of the custom off-road configs
Updated off-road rear lights
Tweaked stability of off-road IFS steering
Improved off-road suspension tuning
Gavril H-Series
Tweaked stability of off-road IFS steering
Ibishu Hopper
Added Hopper Rock racer config, designed for quick traversal of desert and rocky terrain
Added Hopper Gecko config, featuring the biggest tires yet, it is slow but can climb over any obstacle
Hopper Crawler updated with better handling and new bypass shock absorbers code
Updated off-road parts to PBR
Improved off-road suspension tuning
Dry Van Trailer
Added ‘Team Off-Road’ configuration
Common
Lights
Added generic halogen lights
Updated generic bumper rally lights on various vehicles
Wheels
Added ‘Faser High-tide Off-Road Wheels’
Added ‘Alder Supertrail Off-Road Wheels’
Added ‘UTR Impact Off-Road Wheels’
Fixed width of 6 lug 16x7 steel wheels
Tires
Added more sizes of ‘Grip-All Screamer’ tires
Added off-road tires to 13x5 slot
Levels
NEW MAP: Johnson Valley
10km² in size
Designed mainly for hard off-road vehicles
Includes an abundance of rock-crawling paths, dirt trails, and dunes
East Coast, USA
AI road fixes
Gridmap
Fixed mesh that caused holes in terrain
Fixed gap in terrain within the handling zone
Hirochi Raceway
Fixed terrain popping from asphalt
Fixed a couple of flying trees
Italy
Changed Sicuro brand name billboard to Ce La Fai
Utah
Fixed decalroads clipping through a bridge near the mountain
West Coast, USA
Added quarry site and equipment
Updated movie studio zone
Updated and expanded dockyards warehouse
Added paths through the southern park and two new alleyways in the city area
Adjusted the reflectiveness of oak leaves
Improved coast road edging
Missions
2 new Mission types:
Collection Mission type: Collect markers in an area. Available in several modes (Time/Recovery Attack, Time/Recovery Survival)
Evade Mission type: Evade the police and arrive at your secret hideout. Available in WCUSA in freeroam
31 new Missions:
Johnson Valley: 20 new Missions
West Coast, USA: 6 new Missions
East Coast, USA: 2 new Missions
Italy: 2 new Missions
Derby Arenas: 1 new Mission
Converted 23 existing Time Trials into missions
Mission type changes:
AI Race / Chase: various AI improvements
Crawl: now has a mode without points
Delivery: refactored timer model to work the same way as all other missions
Dragrace: now shows detailed race statistics at the end of the race
Drift: refactored drift code and fixed a few minor issues
Improved the UI layout in several mission types
Improved Traffic setup for all missions. This will allow faster and smarter traffic spawning in the future
Input and FFB
Changed behavior of the F7 vehicle teleport: It will now put the vehicle at the position and direction of the camera without resetting the damage
Added default configurations for Logitech Pro Playstation, Logitech Pro XBox, PXN V10 steering wheels, for Logitech Pro Pedals, and for the Leo-Bodnar adapter for various Logitech H-shifters
For keyboard users: the steering wheel position is now maintained until the vehicle moves, and will autocenter as usual when moving. This is especially helpful during parking, rock crawling and other kinds of low-speed driving, as well as for taking cooler screenshots in photo mode! It can be disabled in Options → Gameplay → “Hold steering at low speed”
Improved the behaviour of steering wheel softlock forces
Improved throttle controllability for most gamepads
Added helpful hints in logs when a modder develops a vehicle with vehicle-specific input events
All the A-function, D-function, and other similar bindings are finally removed (their deprecation warning has been visible since 2015). Any modders still utilizing the old system will be shown an error log with instructions on how to proceed
Added a log to record instances where a thruster is unable to be activated because it is tied to an invalid signal
Fixed an issue that caused FFB smoothing to not apply when the configuration was manually edited using a text editor instead of the in-game menus
Fixed the default throttle binding for Hitec Aurora 9 RC controllers
Updated blocked actions for many missions
Vehicle Systems NOTE
We’ve changed how you interact with the vehicle’s ignition system. If you want to start the engine, hold the V key (by default) until the engine turns on. Pressing it once will toggle through different ignition states, but won’t engage the starter motor.
Revamped Ignition System
All ignition levels (0 - Off, 1 - Accessories only. 2 - On, 3 - Starter active) are now freely accessible
Press V (by default) to toggle between states 0-2 and hold V to start the engine
In-vehicle screens react to igntion level changes dynamically
Improved general UI messages about ignition levels and engine state
EVs now properly react to ignition levels too
In Arcade mode, the car will automatically enter the correct state to drive away if asked to do so
Improved stall warning and automatic restart
Arcade mode will select a matching gear when automatically starting the engine
Improved parking brake usage during engine start, for example to prevent the car from rolling downhill
Completely revamped EV control logic
The brake pedal will use only regenerative braking at first, until either the vehicle slows down too far or the regenerative brakes can’t provide enough braking power on their own
The blending of braking methods (regenerative brakes and friction brakes) has been improved so that the brake pedal feels more like a gas-powered vehicle
Added a new section to the Pie menu (under the “Powertrain” section) to adjust how strong the regenerative braking is when lifting off of the throttle (without pressing the brakes)
Added a “1-Pedal Driving” feature when the regenerative braking strength is at the highest level
This feature allows the car to come to a complete stop without needing to touch the brake pedal. The brakes are held automatically until the throttle pedal is pressed again.
Implemented dynamic tire pressure management system
Automatically equalizes pressure within the wheels of an axle
Axles can be connected to the air source either individually or multiple at once
Air pressure of connected axles can be raised and lowered
Reduced animation speed of automatic shifters
Improved shift behavior of manual transmissions when overriding the clutch and locking the wheels
Added new “manual close” latch type to advanced couplers for latches that do not latch automatically
Additional controls implemented for drive modes
Powertrain device control
Custom electrics values
Radial menu entries
Simple UI button support
Implement ability to control multiple powertrain device states together via drive modes (for example a combined rear differential lock for two rear axles)
Improved DCT downshift behavior under heavy braking
Automatically reduced maximum upshift RPM based on potentially installed rev-limiter
Fixed beacon spin controller to work with multiple independent lights
Added support for vehicles that steer via differential braking
Powertrain
Added support for centrifugal clutches
Cold engine takes longer time to start
Fixed ABS not working on non-wheel rotators with brakes
Updated energyStorage physics constants to be a little more precise
Fixed differentials and shafts not checking for allowed modes when changing modes via code
Enabled non-wheel rotators with brakes to have brake thermals
Made water cooling coefficient of brakes adjustable to allow for non-submersible brakes
Added a guard against wrongly configured electric radiator fan settings
Gameplay
Reloading vehicle ctrl+R after user changes vehicle visibility manually using the “Increase/Decrease Mesh Visibility” key bindings will retain previous transparency
Added Fuel Stations in freeroam to West Coast USA and Johnson Valley:
Stop next to a fuel pump and click on the Fueling prompt. Your Vehicle will be refueled completely
This feature is only available if “Show Mission Markers” is enabled. (Options → User Interface → Show Ingame Mission Markers)
Added a bunch more beam debug modes
Also fixed UI displaying wrong mode for deform and break groups
Updated the “Drop player at camera” action to keep all the damage
Added new input action “Teleport to last road”
Recovering on top of water will put the vehicle on the water surface now
Improved recovering, so it should never put the vehicle under the terrain
Any “safe teleports” will now always fix broken vehicle meshes
Overview Map now remembers the camera position when going from free cam to map
UI
Added universal latch open/close control in the Pie menu
Added Cruise Control interaction in the Pie menu
Added dually and hydraulic pump icons in the powertrain debug app
Revamped how the simple powertrain control buttons are created, they are now sent from the vehicle to the app
The Powertrain UI app (start/stop button) is now visible from cockpit by default, so people can control differentials and other functionality regardless of the chosen camera
Improved Pedals UI app: its numeric rounding is smarter, only displaying 0% and 100% when the pedals are at the very limits of travel. The visuals will highlight those cases too, helping notice a misconfigured deadzone
Added a force feedback clipping indicator to the Steering UI app
Added some tips to Force Feedback tab, to educate people on safer usage of steering wheels
Added several helpful tips in Options → Force Feedback tab, for users of Logitech Pro wheels and for users of Logitech F710 and F310 gamepads, guiding them to properly configure their drivers and physical switches
Minor cleanup and optimizations to the Force Feedback menu
Improved the bottom buttons of ctrl+W Parts Manager and Tuning menu, to avoid accidental clicking on the wrong one and losing your changes
Improved FPS Limiter label and fixed some related UI coloring issues
Fixed the Force Feedback menu sometimes requiring an exit and re-enter before it could reflect some changes
Fixed the Steering UI app using an incorrect scale for FFB when using XBox devices
Removed several outdated unused UI files, reducing the game download size
Fixed non-wheel rotators with brakes not being displayed in the wheel debug app
Forcefully reset the “Menu” UI layout to ensure that everyone has the Messages app in it
Inside the Vehicle Config → Debug UI
Added scaling nodes and beams
Added changing nodes transparency
Fixed the issue with the vehicle transparency changing while hovering over the Vehicle Parts Selector
Some buttons in the radial menu will now be hidden if the corresponding input action is blocked
Added bloom adjustments to photomode
Created Police Info app, useful for freeroam and for police evasion missions
Improved Hotlapping app; added buttons for Start AI, Stop AI, and Toggle Markers
Various Powertrain app improvements
Many icons have been updated
Various minor UI bugfixes
Lots of background work building a foundation and set of components for the transition to the new UI framework
Implemented a minor improvement to color and transparency behavior of the vehicles' clickable 3D triggers
Fixed visibility of all in-game vertical markers, particularly at long distances or at low game resolutions
Fixed the ordering of vehicles in the selector. It will now be based on the full displayed name (including brand), instead of just the vehicle model
Improved vehicle selector categorization: trucks, boats and planes will now be shown near cars at the top; and these splits are now visually conveyed with a subtle color tint
Updated official translations
Audio
Improved the audio filtering system. Previously, regardless of cabin type, the audio would be muffled, but now the audio will respond appropriately while driving a vehicle with an open cabin, such as an ATV. Please note that this feature is still work in progress and not yet available for all vehicles and under all conditions
Fixed radiator fan sound getting restarted constantly
Improved hydraulic sounds for dump truck
Added new V8 engine sounds to Bruckell Bastion and SP Dunekicker
Added new sounds for race handbrakes
Added new impact sounds for non-vehicle props: Steel Barrel, Ball, Saw Horse Barrier, Wood Crate, Wood Planks, Gate
Added additional gear shift sounds for more variation
Added ambiences and reverb zones for Johnson Valley
Added new UI sounds for fueling system
Added Bypass Shock sounds
Upgraded FMOD to 2.02.10
Render
Improved bloom method to produce a more authentic and visually appealing effect
DISABLED
ENABLED
Particles emitted by the vehicle (such as dust, smoke, fire, dirt, etc) are now correctly affected by wind physics. For modders: windCoefficient field in particles has been deprecated, now only dragCoefficient has to be used to tune this effect
Replay
Added a new option (Options → Other → Enable lossy compression) that allows users to disable compression of replay files. Disabling compression will significantly increase replay file sizes, but will also eliminate noticeable jitter in node positions. This issue was most visible at high speeds while in cockpit view and is unrelated to the type of jitter suffered by loose parts (and which still benefits from higher FPS and slowmo)
Mod Manager
Added support for Zip64, mods bigger than 4GB packed or using files bigger than 4GB will mount properly now
Scenarios
Fixed issue where suspect would do a U-turn at the bridge in East Coast Chase [NODE="4"]Groups[/NODE]
Made waypoint marker colors sharper, to improve their visibility
AI
AI can now race with you after you set up checkpoints with the Hotlapping app; simply spawn some vehicles, place them at the start, and click on Start AI in the app
Refactored AI navigraph generation
Use mailbox to transmit map data to vehicles
Optimize AI memory use
Refactored AI Lane logic
AI chase fixes
Traffic
Improved police spawning logic and roadblock placing logic
Improved and optimized parked vehicles spawning logic
Added some parallel parking spots, and added more general parking spots for some maps
Traffic and parked vehicles now have more realistic paint randomization, so that common colors are more likely and rare colors are less likely
World Editor
Added Lasso Selection for Forest editor
Freehand and Polyline lasso selection styles
Added snap to grid on drag from Asset Browser
Added groundmodel for terrain material editor
Forest Editor: Added mesh preview for ForestBrushElements, Forest Meshes and for selected mesh in inspector
Fixed Forest Editor ForestBrushItem deselected when selecting a ForestItemData object
Fixed Forest Editor ForestBrushItem mesh preview not updating on field change
Fixed roads are editable when in packed prefabs
Added showing current action names for selected tool & toolmode in Shortcut Legend window
The level validator now also detects duplicated forest items
Cam Path Editor: Fixed camera preview position being incorrect when the path was linked to a replay
Created Object to Spline Editor; it allows you to automatically copy and align an object along a selected DecalRoad or MeshRoad, such as placing barriers for prefabs
Improved usage of Experimental tool: AI Route Test
Improved a few debug shape visuals for the road and navgraph visualizations
Fixed bugs in the transform utility and the editors that use it
Flowgraph
Fixed reset behaviors for a few nodes
Created a node that can teleport a group of vehicles
Fixed an issue where the map navgraph would not generate some segments properly after running a flowgraph that uses a Load Level node
Game Engine
Further settings system cleanup
Improved default Steam Deck graphics settings
Implemented improvements to the way graphics settings are applied
Fixed the settings system not applying Steam Deck-specific configuration, getting the regular PC-oriented configuration (which is not optimized for power consumption among other things)
Fixed the settings system not detecting changes on the fly when edited with an external file editor
Fixed the settings system sometimes crashing on native Linux version
Exposed getItemsPolygon for ForestData
Improved error message for DirectX11 running out of memory
Added functionality to make vehicle spawn with certain transparency via vehicle:setSpawnMeshAlpha(alpha) function
Implemented improvements to the Flexmesh vertex/node picking algorithm
Fixed an issue with incorrect being color being used for debugDrawer:drawLine() and debugDrawer:drawTri()
Fixed an issue where some vehicles could not be set as the default vehicle
Cleaned up more Torque Script files that were used during the game startup
Fixed JSON serialization for default values in arrays (previously, the array’s size would shrink if it contained default values)
Vehicle Editor
Added Flexmesh Debug App
Allows you to visualize vertices per flexmesh
Allows you to see the relationship between nodes and vertices
Can pick a vertex to see its associated 3~4 locator nodes
Can pick a node to see all its associated vertices
Allows you to analyze where nodes are lacking in areas of the mesh and will output suggested node coordinates
JBeam Picker
Now picks nodes and beams with the current node/beam debug mode ctrl+M / ctrl+B
Jbeam
Added ability to overwrite break, impact, scrape and wind sound events from jbeam
Added prop property translationGlobal (prop translation takes place with respect to vehicle coordinates axis)
Lua
Added obj:queueOtherObjectLuaCommand(cmd) to vehicle Lua. It sends a Lua command to all other objects
Added obj:getGraphicsStepCount(). It returns a counter that increases with each graphics step
Added onTireDeflated vehicle Lua extensions hook
Added tableRoundRobin(table, lastKey) Lua utility function. It returns the next key of a Lua table in cyclical fashion
Added vec3:setCross(v1, v2) Lua vec3 method. It sets a vec3 into the result of the cross product of two vectors
Added quat:toDirUp() Lua quaternion method. It returns two vectors that represent the rotation of a quaternion
Added lua debugger: VSCode extension – to enable it – start the game with -luadebug
Fixed Standard PID post-init settings change not applying correctly
Improved runtime controller loading support
Added ability to set the Cruise Control target acceleration from code
Normalized API names across the existing smoothers, temporal smoothing functionality change: get() now behaves as getUncapped(), the previous capped behavior can be used with getUncapped()
Implemented highly detailed bypass damper simulation based on professional input
Gearbox logic files now can serialize/deserialize their own state across reloads
I had to look it up. Apparently to enable Career mode you have to sextuple click the grayed out Career Mode panel.
It's a good sandbox but without some goal to shoot for I get bored after 20 minutes. Hopefully they make it so Career saves can transfer from one version to the next at a guarantee because they'll go between 2 days and 6 months between updates.