Improved license system and automatic annotation.

In this series we are going to describe BeamNG.tech specific changes for every release. Of course every BeamNG.tech release also contains the updates for the BeamNG.drive release, so we encourage you to check out the BeamNG.drive changelog! The game features you might look the most forward to are:

  • the trouble shooting guide for connecting input devices
  • the FlowGraph editor now provides examples on how to use individual node types
  • the FlowGraph editor now has a state system, where graphs can be subdivided to increase the ease of use and simplify the management of your projects

On the BeamNG.tech side we restructured our license system. From now on it is possible to just add the license into either the user path or directly to the install directory to pass the license check. We have unified BeamNG.tech and BeamNG.drive, and by adding the license file we dynamically select the user interface and en- or disable BeamNG.tech features.

The more exciting feature is the automatic annotation extension that helps to improve our ground truth generation. Before, most objects only implicitly had the information available for generating the ground truth. With our new heuristic, we are now able to extract that information from level objects.

Linux support has unfortunately been postponed to improve performance and stability of the port. As of right now, the core functionality of the game is supported, but several of the development tools used to create custom scenarios and sensor simulations are still not reliable enough. Linux also requires Vulkan-based rendering, which is also not mature enough for production yet. The release of BeamNG.tech’s Linux port has therefore been postponed to a later date.

Here is our changelog:

Game Engine

  • Added BeamNG.tech license verification at startup of the game (in userpath or install dir)
  • Lidar API is now shipped with the game, gated behind a license check
  • Camera sensor API is now shipped with the game, gated behind a license check
  • Shared memory communication is now shipped with the game, gated behind license check

Lua

  • Add utility extension that automatically tries to classify annotations of various
  • SceneObjects (for now, TSStatic, ForestItem, and GroundCover)

UI

  • Add AngularJS service to check for valid BeamNG.tech license
  • Switch UI to BeamNG.tech branding when license is present (different logo and background)