Hello, drivers, and welcome to our Version 0.37 Fall Update! We've got a bunch of features, improvements, and fixes for you this time. Let's dive in!
Important - User Folder Changes
First up, we have an important announcement regarding changes to the User Folder.
The main thing you need to know is that the default User Folder location has been slightly changed (from appdata/local/BeamNG.drive/0.36/ to appdata/local/BeamNG/BeamNG.drive/current/), but you will be able to open it using the Manage User Folder option from the Launcher, as you've always been able to.
For more information about the changes, the motivation behind it, and what effects it will have, please check this announcement.
New Vehicle - The Limousine by Gavril
Yes, you read that right - the epitome of luxury has finally arrived to BeamNG in the form of the new Gavril Grand Marshal Limousine.
The Gavril Grand Marshal Limousine features a coachbuilt stretch limousine body with classic exterior styling, offering five configurations for every type of explorer, and complete with a luxurious interior that includes fancy lights, a bar, and even a TV!
And if this is not enough - we've also included a number of parts for further customization: the boomerang antenna, bull horns, fender flags, tinted glass, and vinyl roof that will also be available for the standard Grand Marshal body.
Brake Glow
But wait, there's more!
We've added brake glow to all official vehicles with disc brakes!
Check out the shiny new brake glow on your favorite vehicle - just note that this will naturally display better in less-than-full-light conditions.
User Interface Improvements
In the meantime, the UI team has been hard at work to bring our UI into the modern era.
We were finally able to to identify a number of issues that resulted in poor performance and lag across the UI. While we're continuing investigating this further, some of fixes were already implemented in v0.37, and we expect to deliver more soon.
The default Vehicle Selector screen (Menu → Vehicles) has been overhauled and ported over to Vue, with the addition of several new features, UX improvements, and fixes. It now supports controller navigation, allows saving configs as Favorite, has better search and filtering functionality, and brings modern styling with customizable tile sizes. Please note that the updated selector is not yet available within Garage, Time trials, Bus Routes, and Level selection.
We've also done some work on the UI that should improve the initial loading time as well as the time it takes players to load assets such as image previews, with the aim of reducing UI lag for most players. If you still experience performance issues, please let us know in the UI feedback thread.
New & Remastered Props
We've been busy with props as well! Version 0.37 offers several new and remastered props that will undoubtedly bring joy to your inner child.
The brand-new Spike Strip prop comes a choice of 4 different types of spike strips, all equally as capable of puncturing tires of the vehicle daring to cross them. This prop can be carried with the node grabber while in walking mode.
Another newcomer to the lineup is the new Pressure Ball prop. Filled with pressurized gas, it's available in several configurations with selectable gas type (which affects its mass, and in turn the buoyancy), and customizable size, weight, and even paint design.
Next up, we have the new Trampoline prop. Equipped with a ramp slot, and featuring adjustable mat size, frame height, spring strength and rate, this prop is a perfect companion for a broad range of destructive testing.
The Large Spinner has been remastered to bring it in line with the newer props. We've redone the 3D model, materials, and textures from scratch. Several parts of the spinner are now colorable, and we've included a few paint presets to get you started.
The spinner comes with several new variants as well: The two-arm variant has options to attach tow hitches for vehicles or trailers (for destroying them with the awesome power of centrifugal force), as well as a mobile variant that can have either two or four arms and can be attached to a semi-truck like a trailer. Beyond that, the spinner is now powered by an industrial electric motor with realistic performance, which offers lower acceleration but better inertia.
We've also remastered the Large Hamster Wheel prop nearly from scratch with new 3D models, updated physics, materials, and controls. The reworked weight, inertia, air drag, friction and geometry deliver a more realistic behavior to the barrel. And the updated prop is powered by the same industrial motor as the spinner. The new hamster wheel comes in three configurations – powered, unpowered, and barrel-only.
Naturally, this is not all we've been up to with props, several new rally props were included in the lineup as well, and you can see the full list in the release notes below.
Vehicle Improvements
Of course, we've also given some love to other vehicles.
The Ibishu Miramar has gotten new engine meshes and textures, as well as adjustments to gauges and fixes to the behavior of the tail lights.
In addition, the vast majority of the remaining old-format materials that have been missed over the years have now been converted to PBR.
We've also performed a large-scale cleanup of most materials and textures, while applying fixes and improvements where necessary, to ensure that everything is set up properly for modern standards and to keep on top of technical debt.
Have a look at the release notes for the full list of vehicle changes coming in this update.
New Experiences & Freeroam Crawl System
On the gameplay side, we've added the new Freeroam Crawl system. This brand-new system will allow drivers to initiate trail crawl experiences directly from Freeroam, with no mission loading required!
All you need to do is drive to a trailhead and press the on-screen button to activate the trail. Active trails will display small flag markers to show boundaries and checkpoints, and guide your progress.
The scoring system will reward clean driving, and will deduct points for reversing, rollovers, damage, and leaving the boundaries of the trail. At the end of each trail, the game will show you your score, damage, and completion time.
We've added 26 trails in Johnson Valley and 7 in Utah, and some trails start where others begin, allowing you to execute chained trail crawls.
This feature is a work in progress, and we will continue to improve it as time goes on.
To top that off, we've added several new missions. The Very Important Parking is a precision parking challenge starring the new Grand Marshal Limousine. Also, 3 new missions are now available on Gridmap v2, featuring gameplay with the remastered Large Spinner prop. The Villa VIP and Platform Jump missions have been updated.
New & Improved Tools
For the creatives among you, we're happy to reveal that Version 0.37 brings several important changes that should ease the modding and content-creation experience.
First up, the World Editor has received a comprehensive suite of modular spline-based tools for procedural content creation. If map-making is your thing - please check the release notes to learn more.
We've also centralized all shared map assets under the new /assets folder, eliminating duplicates and outdated resources previously found in game/art. This will improve organization, reduce the total game size, and increase asset management efficiency. Additional information can be found in this forum thread.
Vehicle modders should note that we've done a major cleanup of DeformationTriggerRatio across all official vehicles, trailers, and props.
Furthermore, Replay, Camera Path Editor, and Particle Emitter list received a number of quality of life improvements.
Optimization
And last, but certainly not least, we've been working on performance improvements and optimizations, and are happy to be able to bring you a number of changes that should have a noticeable effect on how the game feels to play. Some of these optimizations have been in the works for years, and while there is still more to come we wanted to release what was ready.
This includes storage optimizations - we've managed to decrease the amount of space the game needs by quite a bit, mostly through optimization of level textures. This reduces the memory consumption of Johnson Valley from 2.3Gb to 1.5Gb and West Coast from 190Mb to 150Mb. We've also been working on reducing the amount of RAM the game uses, and we're finally able to show results there, as well as having been able to optimize VRAM usage when running on Vulkan. The changes should increase stability when the game is running in Vulkan. This is still a work in progress, so we would appreciate feedback about your experience with these optimizations.
In addition to all of the above, we've made a host of fixes and improvements to the Track Builder, Flowgraph Editor, Launcher, and a whole lot more.