Well, 2013 has been a pretty exciting year in the development of Automation, and we've got a lot of aspects of the game working even better than we expected. 2014 should see a "Feature Complete" version of Automation, complete with Tycoon/Business aspects released, which we're very much looking forward to releasing :)
And now a bit of an update on what we've been working on lately. The focus of the past few months has been on car statistic simulation. Thanks to the excellent work of our Germans (Robert "Killrob" Hoischen, and vehicle dynamics guy Martin "Der Bayer" Hermann) we've got some quite sophisticated simulations of various handling tests such as a constant circle G test, slalom and "Moose Test" all taking account of tyres, suspension and wheel alignment, roll centres, weight transfer and lots more.
Similar work has also been done for fuel economy simulation, braking, aerodynamics and even suspension comfort, with all these statistics being based on quite realistic simulations of the car's behavior. Currently there are no animations or visual representations of the testing taking place, but the whole system is designed to be able to output to a visual test eventually, and we'd love to have graphical versions of as many tests as possible.
The next major update (Released some time in January) should include most of the mechanical aspects of car design, with the main things still left to add being related to interior parts, luxury featuresAnyhow, enjoy your New Years Celebrations :)
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