BeamNG Receives Biggest Update to Date

BeamNG 027 Update 01.jpg
BeamNG has been updated to version 0.27, which adds new content and several gameplay and physics improvements.

BeamNG's 0.27 update is touted as its biggest to date. There is a bias toward off-road driving in this update, with no fewer than five new off-road vehicles on offer, and a mountainous desert map known as Johnson Valley to explore.

The perception of BeamNG as a legitimate driving simulator and not just a crash simulator has increased significantly in recent updates. The relentless dedication to vehicle physics established early within the title has served as a perfect platform to create a realistic driving feel for its growing list of content.


Unsurprisingly, a number of physics and gameplay updates also await players as part of the 0.27 build. Customizable bypass shock absorbers, revised EV modelling, 31 new missions, refueling in the Johnson Valley map, and improvements to audio filtering and the bloom effect.

Let us know your thoughts on this update, or anything else BeamNG related, in the comments below. What is your favourite thing about this title? What do you hope they improve in the future?
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About author
Mike Smith
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

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Comments

S
Sometimes I'm left with the impression that some of RD's general sim articles reaching out their readers' opinions are just warm-ups for either news breaks or release update the coming days.
Again, the update news here, personally follows in direct footsteps of previous article that got me going in BeamNG again, with fresh eyes.
And I observe that I'm not alone with FFB struggles, so thanks for the tip, @Formula24 :)
 
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passenger
This is an awsome car/driving simulator with the best physics available anywhere.
And the improved graphics look great, pretty realistic desert with very detailed
rocks and nice 3D vegetation and trees in some tracks. The interior of some
cars look realistic too, so great immersion.

If you sill didn't buy it, go get it now, it's an incredible simulator, and maybe the
best, yes.
 
N
Formula24 said:
1. Under Force Feedback tab in controls, click on your wheel, set the 1:1 type to quicker if needed and then set the second number to your wheel degrees.View attachment 623440
2. Under the same tab scroll down and you should find dead zones
3. Yes in the gameplay tab, you can choose realistic transmission type. (As well as no transmission assists and realistic ABS and some other steering aids that I would recommend turning off for wheel users)View attachment 623441

4. I love driving the gravel Bolide on rally stages, Italy in particular. But all the rally cars are good fun and so is the new off-road content at the new map.


Fun fact the Amphibious car mod was made by a dev in their spare time in the first place. Infact that dev has a decent amount of mods that are quite fun including a class 10 buggy, a Caterham and a Ariel Nomad
Click to expand...
Metla and Formula24 - Thanks for your responses to my questions! I'm making progress in sorting things out now..

However......(There's always a "however" ;) ) I agree that the UI is confusing (to be kind), so I still have trouble finding certain basic functions like.....

- Where do I assign a button to simply look left and look right?
- Why can't I adjust FF strength etc in-game? (It's greyed out.) FWIW, I'm using a Logitech G Pro DD wheel.
- I also enjoy rally (gravel and dirt) driving, but I can't find that car you suggested ("gravel Bolide")? Does it come in-game or does it need to be downloaded?

Thanks for all your help!
 
TShrimp
I admit, this game confuses me. Is it a racing sim game, or a physics sim as most videos are of people crashing and showing how the vehicle reacts.
 
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S
newbert said:
Metla and Formula24 - Thanks for your responses to my questions! I'm making progress in sorting things out now..

However......(There's always a "however" ;) ) I agree that the UI is confusing (to be kind), so I still have trouble finding certain basic functions like.....

- Where do I assign a button to simply look left and look right?
- Why can't I adjust FF strength etc in-game? (It's greyed out.) FWIW, I'm using a Logitech G Pro DD wheel.
- I also enjoy rally (gravel and dirt) driving, but I can't find that car you suggested ("gravel Bolide")? Does it come in-game or does it need to be downloaded?

Thanks for all your help!
Click to expand...
Quick tip for bindings - you can use the search field. For example, type "camera left" and expand the results.

As for your questions:
- Bind "Rotate camera left" and "Rotate camera right"
- To quickly test FFB changes, you can use "Temporarily increase FFB" and "Temporarily decrease FFB" bindings. To make those permanent, use the normal Options > Controls > FFB menu.
- The Civetta Bolide contains 20 variants, some are rally oriented. You need to single-click the car to view them all, which includes the "390 GT Group 4 - Gravel - Manual" variant among many others. Those 20 variants of the Bolide are official content, but I'm sure there's plenty of mods with tons more.
 
S
TShrimp said:
I admit, this game confuses me. Is it a racing sim game, or a physics sim as most videos are of people crashing and showing how the vehicle reacts.
Click to expand...
It is a driving physics simulation first and foremost, no compromises. You can use it for hotlapping, for rock crawling, or if you're into that sort of things, for crashing (which appears to be quite popular on youtube, even though it was never our main intention, just a byproduct of how our physics simulation works). Or anything else that relies on real world physics to be doable.
 
D
TShrimp said:
I admit, this game confuses me. Is it a racing sim game, or a physics sim as most videos are of people crashing and showing how the vehicle reacts.
Click to expand...
Physics sim. It just happens that as the physics get better the racing part also gets better. FFB has been getting better and once that the camera feeling odd with the soft body physics of the cars and the FFB gets even better it can easily become a pretty good racing sim.
 
D
grirvan said:
So........I also am tempted to buy this game. Been looking on You Tube at the Nascar mods and wondered if anyone has tried them? There are lots of other series mods (F1, etc.) as well. I wondered if the AI are configured for single player races? It looks really good and there are track mods as well.
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AI is not a strongpoint of the game, this game isn't focused as a racing sim but rather as a physics sandbox with really good driving physics.
 
azaralamouri
I hoped BeamNG was going to be in Sim Racing Expo.
It was only F1 and GT3, bucket seats, expensive rims and no stick shifters. Esports fast boys everywhere.

Maybe I understood it all wrong?
Maybe sim racing expo is only about racing (as the name implies)?
Maybe driving sims aren't included?

Not only SR Expo, but also all my Youtube feed for example is only racing, and all the people I know are only interested in racing sims... etc

(I mean Assetto Corsa or pC2 sometimes try to fill this gap, where it has some city maps but only fictional/ imaginal.
ETS2 can give you that relaxing drive experience, through European countryside or touristic landmarks, while listening to local radios, but honestly the physics and the driving felt so childish and arcade to me and it's too far from being a real truck simulator IMO, ETS2 needs BeamNG engine to fix the physics aspect).

My dream is the physics of BeamNG Drive combined with photo-grammetry and real Googlemaps maps. Imagine a project like MSFS for vehicles instead of airplanes.

Back to the first question now,
If the answer is that cars-simulators aren't so interesting to racing-sims-enthusiasts (again, talking not only about racing cars, but also all cars on earth, both new and old), I wonder then, where are the fans of virtual cars and virtual driving, for example are there separate communities for them? or are their numbers too little to be noticed?
 
autobot9919
Always been a little intimidated by BeamNG as it appeared to be something of an investment to get the best out of it - the mods. That said pairing it up with Automation (Steam Link) looks gravy. As a slightly uneducated (I can check oil and I know what a dipstick is as I have been identified s one by many people in the past) casual automobile fan would I drown in my quest to create a 3 wheeled 600bhp monster?
 
S
azaralamouri said:
I hoped BeamNG was going to be in Sim Racing Expo.
It was only F1 and GT3, bucket seats, expensive rims and no stick shifters. Esports fast boys everywhere.

Maybe I understood it all wrong?
Maybe sim racing expo is only about racing (as the name implies)?
Maybe driving sims aren't included?
Click to expand...
I was there together with a BeamNG colleague - if you heard about the guy with "turbocharged crocs"... that was him. But no booth or anything, just checking it out for now. Being the first time, I was also a bit surprised by the lack of presence of the software side of things. I wish this can improve in the future!
Boby Kim said:
BeamNG, u have a New customer. Im very intrigued by this update!
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Sweet, enjoy it! Any questions, just ask :)
Dr. Death said:
AI is not a strongpoint of the game, this game isn't focused as a racing sim but rather as a physics sandbox with really good driving physics.
Click to expand...
Yes, at the moment most of our AI efforts are in the autonomous driving side (including traffic), not an easy task. And we want to tackle the racecraft aspect at some point, but impossible to estimate when that can happen.
 
A
TeddyBearx said:
this is what Dakar desert rally should have been
Click to expand...
Noob question. Is there actually anything rally-raid-like for the game, different from garden-variety rally stages?

I'd imagine that with the arbitrarily-programmable mods, it's possible to even make some mechanics for repairing the car on the go, in the spirit of ‘Jalopy’. But so far I haven't seen stuff like this—not that I looked through the entire catalog of mods, though.

Edit: perhaps I should first see the new map before asking this.
 
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H
autobot9919 said:
Always been a little intimidated by BeamNG as it appeared to be something of an investment to get the best out of it - the mods. That said pairing it up with Automation (Steam Link) looks gravy. As a slightly uneducated (I can check oil and I know what a dipstick is as I have been identified s one by many people in the past) casual automobile fan would I drown in my quest to create a 3 wheeled 600bhp monster?
Click to expand...
You can find plenty of tutorials by automation developers about how you should set up your car or engine, it's realistic, but also simplified enough that if you only care about exporting to BeamNG, and not about the actual automation gameplay, you can make good road and rally cars. Race cars are a bitt more difficult and may require modifying some files manually.

Anyway, BeamNG is great even without any mod, and most (I'd say all) the good ones are available in the ingame mod repository or on the official forums. Just make sure to have a good PC if you're someone who likes to have them all. Loading times and RAM requirements may get high when using traffic (I got 600+ mods but on an M2 disk with 128Gb of ram and a ryzen 3900x).
 
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M D Gourley
Premium
Been a while since I fired up BeamNG, but this update persuaded me to do so.:)
First thing I would have to say the Menu for setting up everything is definitely a learning experience:confused: and might take a while to get a feel for how everything works.

Managed to get some things working, enough to get a feel for the 'Photo Mode' and get some basic Screen Shots anyway:redface::rolleyes:...still a lot of learning to do.:geek::geek:
Absolutely love the 'Time of Day' slider:inlove: as you can compose a shot and change the lighting in the shot to give it a different feel, AWESOME

3a BeamNG 027 update SP ROCK BASHER copy.jpg
3b BeamNG 027 update SP ROCK BASHER copy.jpg
3 BeamNG 027 update SP ROCK BASHER copy.jpg


Graphics in the Johnson Valley Map look fantastic
6 BeamNG 027 update SP ROCK BASHER copy.jpg
1a BeamNG 027 update SP ROCK BASHER copy.jpg
4 BeamNG 027 update SP ROCK BASHER copy.jpg
 
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M D Gourley
Premium
Trying out some of the other new vehicles:inlove:...and managed to set up Triple Screen for the wide screen shots:thumbsup: which I feel shows the grand scale of the Johnson Vally map nicely
0 BeamNG C2 RALLY STAMBECCO at JOHNSON VALLEY copy.jpg
2 BeamNG C2 BAJA EXTREME at JOHNSON VALLEY copy.jpg
3 BeamNG DUNEKICKER at JOHNSON VALLEY copy.jpg
4 BeamNG DUNEKICKER at JOHNSON VALLEY copy.jpg


Fantastic Tire deformation
1 BeamNG C2 RALLY STAMBECCO at JOHNSON VALLEY copy.jpg


...very excited by this update, BeamNG is coming along nicely:)
 
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