Even more sexily rendered head-on collisions

Image credit: BeamNG

BeamNG.drive's long been one of the easiest games to reccomend to a car lover cruising the streets of Steam. As Graham wrote in 2017, it's a moddable sandbox dedicated to vehicular destruction physics, in which every bump, crumple, and slam results in a glorious bending of metal and smashing of glass. BeamNG's been growing via updates for ages, and its devs say the latest is the biggest yet.

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Version 0.39 of BeamNG starts off with a substantial graphical overhaul. Shadows should be less prone to floating away from the objects casting them, sunlight should be less flickery, HDR output support on Vulkan and Direct3D 12 should improve colour rendering on suitable monitors. It's also now worth looking up once in a while. "Not only have we added volumetric clouds, but we’ve also added a physically-based night sky," the devs wrote. "The sky is based on real astronomical values, including Milky Way rendering and a constellation database, fully synchronized with latitude, longitude, date, and time of day."

Interface-wise, BeamNG's clunky old pause menu's been revamped to make it easier to navigate using a controller and easier for modders to make tweaks to, with the photo mode also having gotten its own UI revamp.

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As ever with BeamNG updates, there's a new car. The Cherrier Ardente's a sporty coupe ideal for rallying or drifting. BeamNG's devs have dubbed it "a solid contender for the best-looking vehicle we’ve ever done", though the retro military stylings of the Stambecco and elegant visuals of the three-wheeled Pigeon are still the top dogs in my book. Those, along with the rest of the BeamNG fleet, have gotten movable sun visors as part of this update, improving the view from behind their wheels.

Rounding out the update are some new gravel rally stages in Utah for BeamNG's rally mode, improvements to the West and East Coast American maps, and a new aerodynamic physics system which ensures the air flow from one car can affect others nearby, as in the real world. So, you can bump or side draft during races, which I'm sure will go well when I try it with the already tricky-to-control Pigeon.

To round out, here are some more of Graham's BeamNG musings from 2015.