Police Lightbar Illumination Mod Review

Have you ever tried creating an awesome realistic police chase in BeamNG.drive only to notice that the police lights aren’t very…. realistic? If you haven’t tried out the emergency vehicle lights in BeamNG.drive, you can activate them using the ‘M’ key. When activated, you’ll find that the lights ‘glow’ nicely and flash in a pattern like you’d see in real-life. However, when you think about driving in real-life and what approaching emergency vehicles at night looks like, you’re probably familiar with the overwhelming amount of red and blue flashing lights that consume the night.

Take a look at the below image of Grand Marshal Police Package with it’s default emergency lights activated. You’ll notice the ‘glowing’ police lightbar which gives you the idea of a police car with it’s lights activated, but look at the area around the vehicle. For a police car with it’s lights on, it seems a little dark, doesn’t it? Also, you can see the lightbar on the roof lit up, but where’s the flashing headlights and tail-lights?

This is where DesertCanine’s Police Lightbar Illumination Mod steps in. This mod essentially improves on all of the elements that are missing from the stock police lightbar. Check out the below image of the same Grand Marshal police vehicle using this mod.

Here you can see some of the missing elements from the stock lightbar have been implemented with this mod! Looking at the area around the vehicle, you can see the bright red and blue illumination from the lightbar as well as the flashing headlights. This more accurately represents what a police vehicle would look like in real-life giving your gameplay and videos that extra added but of realism. In just about every video that I post on my YouTube channel that involves police vehicles, I make sure I’m using the modded lightbar. You can see in the below “Utah Police Chases” video my use of the mod in both day and night scenarios.

Once you download the mod, it’s just a matter of opening the Vehicle Customizations menu (Ctrl+W) and looking for ‘Roof Accessory’. Under the dropdown, you’ll have a number of options including the use of both the standard lightbar or the flat lightbar as well as choosing whether the headlights, taillights, or both, illuminate.

This mod does everything that the stock lightbar should do. It makes you wonder if the devs at BeamNG will take notice of how much realism this adds to the police vehicles and if they’ll consider tweaking the stock lightbar. Until then, I highly recommend downloading this mod and using it every time you’re looking for realism in your police-related gameplay and videos!