We’re artists and CGI nerds here at Darkain Arts Gamers. When something like BeamNG.drive came along promising soft body deformations of vehicles, we wanted to check it out! Within my first few moments, I’d loaded up an east coast roadway and was cruising along in a pickup. Needless to say, when I drove up to a bridge spanning a river below, I turned straight into the right side barrier.
The front right end of the pickup buckled inward, the hood bending with the impact. It really looked like footage from a crash test. One button press and the pickup was reset and I was barreling down the roadway again. Left hand side this time! More deformation to the poor polygonal pickup, and noticeably different. In no time I was pitching the vehicles off cliffs and watching as they fell to the rocks below like a cliché movie (without the explosion of course, after all, how can you see what happens to the car otherwise?)
BeamNG.drive is cool in the sense that it feels like a distant cousin of Skate. You can set a session marker of sorts, and just keep resetting till your hearts content! I recall pitching a car off a dangerous jungle road over and over. Finally it plunged through the tree canopy, instead of getting caught up on it which can happen, and wrapped itself neatly around a tree. Like literally, the car was a V shape, slammed into the trunk. Even the muffler was hanging off at a precarious angle, obviously almost torn free. The windows of course were smashed out as well.
As a simulator alone, BeamNG.drive is a fantastic product. We’ll be checking out more of it as time goes on, and the cool thing is this is only in early access still!
