Roadwave puts a music player inside the car you are driving. It is a screen in the cabin, placed and sized where you want it, playing files you already have on your disk. The sound comes from the car, not from you: it goes quieter and duller with distance, the way music from a parked car actually does.

Nothing is built into any vehicle, so it works in every car in the game, including modded ones. Install it once and every car you download gets the player.

NO MUSIC IS INCLUDED. You bring your own files. That is the point: it plays your library, not a soundtrack somebody chose for you.

No music files? Roadwave Advanced, an optional paid add-on, plays Spotify, YouTube or any player on your PC through the car, with the playlist controls right in the game. Internet radio too: roadwavemod.github.io

This mod is free and complete on its own. Everything listed below works without paying for anything, and always will.

THE PLAYLIST WHEEL

Hold Shift + T on the keyboard, or LB + D-pad left on a pad, and your playlists sit in a ring round the screen. Point at one with the mouse or the right stick, or step round with the mouse wheel, then let go of the key to switch to it; a click, Enter or A switches too. Off is on the ring for silence, and time nearly stops while it is up, as in the game's own radial menu. 

INSTALLATION

1. Add the Roadwave Browser: pause menu > HUD Apps, search for Roadwave Browser. It is the app you play and add music with. Roadwave Player, a compact player for the corner of the screen, is optional. HUD Apps shows the Browser fully open, never collapsed or hidden, so set its size there: big enough to read the playlist list.
2. Back in the game, open the Roadwave Browser and press Open music folder. The mod makes the folder and Explorer opens in it: mods\unpacked\rw_music\rw_music in the game's user folder. The button shows only while the library is empty.
3. Make a folder in there named after your playlist and put your music files in it. The folder name becomes the playlist name.
4. Press Rescan in the browser. The playlist shows up and plays, no restart. Rescan also picks up anything you add, rename or delete later, with the game running.

No music comes with the mod, and that is deliberate: your library sits outside Roadwave, so updating the mod can never touch it.
No music files? Roadwave Advanced, an optional paid add-on, plays Spotify, YouTube or any player on your PC through the car, with the playlist controls right in the game. Internet radio too: roadwavemod.github.io

Name your files the way you already name music: "01 - Artist - Title.mp3". The separator is a hyphen with spaces around it, so AC-DC and Jean-Michel Jarre survive it. Keep the leading zeros or track 10 sorts before track 2. A cover.jpg, cover.png or folder.jpg in the folder becomes that playlist's cover art.

Optional, for a large library: instead of copying files, make a folder junction in PowerShell.

New-Item -ItemType Junction -Path C:\Users\YOU\AppData\Local\BeamNG\BeamNG.drive\current\mods\unpacked\rw_music\rw_music\MyMusic -Target D:\Music

Replace YOU and D:\Music with your own paths, wrap them in double quotes if they contain spaces, and press Rescan afterwards.

FEATURES

• 3D positional audio. Full volume within two metres of the wheel, falling off with distance, and coming from the car's direction when you look around. Inside the car it comes from the middle of the cabin rather than from one side. One button turns it off if you would rather have it flat.
   
• Muffled audio. The music goes dull when you step out of the cabin, more the further away you get. An open car lets it out: a roadster with the top down, an ATV, a motorcycle, and a crash that breaks the windows or tears off a door. Open a door and it gets clearer. Two buttons on the gear panel's Outside row set how loud it is from outside and how muffled.
   
• A customizable in-car screen. Drag to move, scroll to resize, Shift + scroll to push it away or pull it closer. Every vehicle model remembers its own placement, and left- and right-hand-drive versions remember separately. Pick 1-DIN or 2-DIN per car, and the reflection, on the gear panel's Look row. Shift + H shows and hides it while you drive.
   
• Two HUD apps. A compact Player for the corner of the screen, and a Browser for picking playlists and tracks.
   
• Bass. A lowshelf under 120 Hz in four steps: off, +4, +8, +12 dB. Saved with the rest of your settings.
   
• Balance. L, Bal and R in the gear panel's Sound row, ten steps each way. It turns the far side down rather than moving the sound across, the way a car's head unit does, and it is saved. The middle button shows where it is set and puts it back in the centre.
   
• Mute. Silences the player without losing your volume level; press it again and the music comes back where it was. Deliberately not saved, so the game never starts up silent for a reason you cannot see.
   
• One collapse. The browser shrinks to a single line with the track name, previous, play, next, the volume and a gear. Shuffle, Repeat and the settings are behind the gear, one row per subject: Play, Outside, Sound, Browser, Player, Look and Car.
   
• Hide the Browser. Hide on the gear panel's Browser row puts the app away, for driving with the in-car player or the keys alone. Shift + J brings it back.
   
• Seek. A thin line along the bottom of the browser shows where the track is; click or drag it to jump.
   
• Louder with speed, optional. The music comes up over the engine and wind noise as the car goes faster. Off by default.
   
• Playlists from folders. One folder is one playlist, and the folder's name becomes the playlist's name. Shuffle, repeat all and repeat one.
   
• Static. Switching playlist tunes over with a short burst of static, as loud as the music. Static in the gear panel's Play row turns it off.
   
• Damage. The car radio breaks with the car: after a hard crash it cuts out, and in a wreck it goes dead until you reset the car. On by default; Damage in the gear panel's Sound row turns it off.
   
• Parking sensor. Reverse slowly toward a wall or another car and the car beeps from 1.5 m, faster as it gets nearer and steady under 30 cm. Newer cars (2005 or later, the default), All cars or Off, on the gear panel's Car row.
   
• Bindable controls, keyboard and gamepad, so you can change track without leaving the wheel.
   
• Your settings survive a restart, and playback resumes where it stopped.
   
• The music follows you between cars. Switching vehicle does not restart or interrupt it.
   
• Optional ignition control. Turn the key fully off and the music stops; turn it back and it picks up mid-song. Off by default.
   
• Formats: mp3, ogg, wav and flac.

THERE IS ALSO A PAID COMPANION: ROADWAVE ADVANCED

The mod above is free and stays free. Advanced is a separate optional purchase that adds two Windows programs alongside it. You do not need it for anything on this page.

What it adds:

• Play what your PC is already playing, through the car. Press play in a browser, a music player, a livestream - anything the machine is making sound with - then press This PC in the game's Radio tab, and the sound comes out of the car instead of your speakers, with the same distance fall-off and muffling as your own files. The car's own next, previous and play buttons control that program too. No folders, no converting, no packs.
   
• Internet radio in the car. Real stations, searchable by name or tag, filterable by country, with station logos on the in-car screen. The list opens on the country of the map you are driving, and stations of your own sit at the top. Optionally imports the stations from your own ETS2 or American Truck Simulator install.
   
• Car tone. Your music takes the sound of the car you are driving. Roadwave reads the price the game publishes for the configuration you are in and shapes the music to match the stereo that car would have: thin and boxy in a cheap one, a factory stereo in the middle of the range, and the dearer the car, the closer it stays to the music as it was recorded. The button names the tier it picked, so you can hear the difference and see why. The price is what the game lists and not a verdict on the car, and it is a tone curve on the music rather than a second set of speakers. With Car tone on, the music also dips while the starter turns, and a tunnel gives it a short echo you hear with the top down or the camera outside.
   
• More looks for the in-car player. Glass + spectrum adds a spectrum analyser that moves with the music, and Classic is an early-2000s head unit with amber text and a full-width analyser. Corners go round, small or square, and the bezel full, slim or none. The looks need Advanced's Link program running; without it the player keeps the free look.
   
• A playlist builder. Paste a Spotify or YouTube link, or just type artist and song names, and it builds a playlist folder this mod reads. Your own music folders are searched first, so anything you already own is copied rather than downloaded. Or point it at a music folder you already have, on any drive: it plays in the car and nothing is copied.

Worth knowing before you buy: to give the car the sound to itself, Roadwave moves the program you are listening to onto another output on your PC while it plays, and puts it back when you stop. That needs a second output to exist. On a PC with only one, the music comes out of your speakers as well as the car. Everything else works the same either way. Windows only. No licence key, no activation, no phone-home.

Tested in game with Chrome, the Spotify desktop app and VLC. Other players appear in the list; those three are the ones verified personally.

What it is, what it costs and what it does not do, on one page:
https://roadwavemod.github.io/

CONTROLS

All controls are in Options > Controls, search for "roadwave". Defaults:

• Play / pause: Shift + M
   
• Next track: Shift + .
   
• Previous track: Shift + ,
   
• Volume up: Shift + Numpad +
   
• Volume down: Shift + Numpad -
   
• Mute: Shift + N
   
• Next playlist: Shift + B
   
• Previous playlist: Shift + V
   
• Playlist wheel: Shift + T
   
• Show / hide in-car player: Shift + H
   
• Show / hide Browser: Shift + J

Gamepad bindings ship for play/pause, next and previous track, mute, playlist switching and the playlist wheel (LB + D-pad left). While the wheel is up, point with the mouse or the right stick, step round with the mouse wheel, and switch with a click, Enter or A.

KNOWN LIMITS

• No track times on a loose folder. The mod reads filenames, not tags, so titles, artists and order come from the filename and length cannot.
   
• No m4a or aac support.
   
• The in-cabin screen needs the interior camera. From a chase or orbit camera there is no cabin to draw in, and the HUD apps cover that case.
   
• Not tested with BeamMP.
   
• I make Roadwave on my own and cannot test every car. If something does not work in yours, please tell me which car, in the forum thread or by private message, whichever you prefer. I add and test cars as the reports come in.
   
• Built and tested against BeamNG.drive 0.40.

CREDITS

Villahousu

Not affiliated with or endorsed by BeamNG GmbH.