Something new is on the horizon

Greetings everyone,

It’s been a while since we last checked in, and we know how much anticipation has built up. While the team focused on development, the community filled the space with extraordinary creativity, no shortage of speculation, patience we don’t take lightly, and genuine curiosity about what’s brewing behind the curtains. Version 0.39 (coming later this year) is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious updates in BeamNG’s history, and we hope it earns the wait. Here’s a first look at what to expect.

A considerable part of the upcoming v0.39 update is dedicated to a graphics overhaul that’s been in development for quite some time now.

There are way too many technical terms to explain in detail, but here’s a concise list of what we’re cooking:

• Atmosphere and sky: volumetric clouds with shadows, multi-scattering sky, improved atmospheric fog, and a new altitude-based fog
• Rendering tech: a new Direct3D 12 renderer, support for HDR (for compatible modern displays), and a new natural tonemapper that improves both SDR and HDR
• Lighting and shadows: global and local exposure to simulate eye adaptation, improved dynamic reflections, fast screen-space shadows, improved shadow quality and stability
• Surfaces and textures: subsurface scattering and an extended texture detail mapping system
• Night-time rendering: vehicle lights with realistically calibrated intensity, temperature, and light cookies – textures that shape projected light, allowing for realistic patterns and beam effects (based on technology and market region).

Just a small appetizer of the graphics improvements coming your way:

All of this comes paired with underlying optimizations and a fully revised set of graphics quality presets – carefully tuned for a better balance between visual fidelity and performance.

Speaking of performance – we’ve also put serious effort into improving memory efficiency. RAM and GPU prices have recently skyrocketed, and we hope our work can offset at least some of the impact. The new version brings meaningful reductions in both RAM and VRAM usage (depending on what content you’re running and which mods you have installed, of course), along with reduced peak memory consumption during loading screens, which can trim load times in some cases.

On the content side, we’re happy to confirm that a new vehicle is on the way too, together with the usual array of improvements to all existing vehicles, among which is a new orange peel paint effect.

The physics engine is getting some attention as well – the aerodynamics simulation has been expanded to include effects like slipstreaming, side drafting, and bump drafting. This should make racing more strategic and offer new ways to practice hypermiling, if that’s your thing. And the improvements don’t stop there – we’ve also added a new dynamic damping system that reduces force feedback oscillations for a cleaner feel at the wheel.

Beyond v0.39, there’s another topic we want to address – one the community has been asking about for as long as we can remember. So here it goes: official multiplayer is real (but not here yet), and we’re committed to delivering it.

Development on multiplayer has been underway for several years now, but is still far from what we’d call ready and likely won’t be for quite a while. And when it does land, it won’t arrive as a final, polished package. It’ll follow the same approach we’re taking with tire physics: ship an initial implementation as soon as it’s ready, then gradually improve it based on your feedback. Staying true to how we usually work, we don’t want to compromise development by promising an arbitrary date and then rushing the work to meet it. It’s not a simple project and we want to do it justice, so we held off on saying anything until the foundation had advanced enough to feel comfortable sharing. That milestone is finally on the horizon.

Last but certainly not least – a major next step for BeamNG.drive: the game is coming to PlayStation 5 later this year!

Wishlist now through PlayStation Store

Bringing BeamNG.drive to consoles has been one of the most complex challenges the team has ever taken on. It required extensive optimization and careful refinement across pretty much every system under the hood – performance, controls, interface, overall usability – all to make sure BeamNG keeps its soul intact on the way to the couch. These improvements aren’t exclusive to console and will reach everyone playing on PC when v0.39 lands later this year.

Before we wrap up, thank you to everyone in our community for sticking with us over the years – whether you bravely conquered the great wall of technical terminology to reach this far, or just scrolled to the bottom (no judgement). Your support, patience, and trust are a big part of what keeps us going. Through feedback, mods, videos, testing, or simply playing, you’re helping shape BeamNG.drive every step of the way. Stay tuned for the journey ahead!