New sand-tastic BeamNG.drive update boasts five new cars and Johnson Valley desert map 

Earlier this month we wrote a piece on BeamNG.drive’s proposed new update, reporting on numerous teaser images and videos released by the Bremen-based studio over the last few months. 

Well, today (13^th December 2022), a new 1.86GB update has been released for the superlative driving sandbox title, including five new vehicles and a new map. The main features of BeamNG.drive’s v.027 update are outlined below. 

Johnson Valley 

BeamNG.drive’s new Johnson Valley map is based on the real-world location in Southern California. In the Mojave Desert, which should give you an indication of the kind of landscape BeamNG players should expect. 

There are huge rocks, desert sands and sun-baked highways to negotiate, with new Tyrannos-branded petrol stations to visit – replete with Wrecksy, its novelty T-Rex ambassador. 

Measuring 10km² in size, Johnson Valley was researched by the developers in-person, with photos and videos contributing to the realistic ruts and sand dunes found in the new map. 

As described in our article last week, the area is famous for the Baja 1000 race, where competitors drive as fast as possible across the rugged desert terrain of the Californian peninsula. 

SP Dunekicker 

Speaking of the Baja 1000, the SP Dunekicker is based on the typical Baja vehicle – the trophy truck (or Baja truck). Featuring huge suspension travel, the Baja truck can travel at ridiculous speeds over rutted landscapes thanks to its big-block V8 engine and outrageously large tyres. 

Thanks to input from Baja racers, the SP Dunekicker realistically mimics bypass shock absorbers, which cleverly use valves to move damper oil around based on the severity of the forces acting on it – a new feature for BeamNG. 

SP Rock Basher 

The SP Rock Basher is a rock-crawling vehicle designed with articulated suspension to ensure the highest possible ride heights. The car comes in two forms; one with the articulated, long-travel suspension, and another with a solid-axle design. 

Johnson Valley has several rock-crawling lines to allow BeamNG players to test the strengths and weaknesses of both styles of suspension. The BeamNG team also finessed the way rocks an vehciles interact with each other, enhancing rock-crawling simulation further.

Autobello Autobuggy 

Based on dune buggies from the 1960’s, the Autobello Autobuggy uses the Autobello Piccolin as a basis thanks to its rear-engined, rear-wheel-drive layout. 

The car has limited suspension in comparison to the two vehicles above but is still a capable desert racing machine thanks to its lightweight construction and innate agility. 

Autobello Stambecco 

The Stambecco looks more like a van than anything else, but is a nod to the kind of support trucks found on the Dakar Rally. Coming in 4×4 or 6×6 configurations, the Stambecco is powered by diesel and petrol engines, with two race ready desert editions. 

The Stambecco also has two off-road fire engine configurations alongside more military-style transport versions. None of these is likely to be quick, but they will be rugged (and easily rollable). 

FPU Wydra 

Speaking of slow. The FPU Wydra is up there as the slowest vehicle in BeamNG. However, it is probably the most capable off-roader in the game, thanks to its tank-like handling and amphibious qualities. 

The Wydra has either four-wheel or eight-wheel-drive configurations available, with some versions boasting switchable low-range gearboxes to maximise traction on the steepest terrain. 

Are you looking forward to trying out BeamNG.drive’s latest Baja-themed update? Let us know in the comments below… 

…And look out for our extensive BeamNG v0.27 update hands-on article tomorrow! 

BeamNG.drive v0.27 changelog 

Vehicles 

NEW VEHICLE: SP Dunekicker 

• New extreme off-road desert racing truck featuring a fully custom tube frame chassis, long travel suspension and massive power 
• Powered by either a 5.7L or 6.5L V8, both torn from the beastly Bruckell Bastion 
• Advanced triple bypass shock absorbers on all 4 corners 
• Several versatile variants: 
• ‘TT1 Unlimited’ – All the power you could ever need, so long as you can keep it directed. 
• ‘TT2 Spec’ – A little more subdued, this less powerful configuration lets those new to desert racing get a feel for these machines 
• ‘ST2 Stadium’ – Designed more for short course racing and jumps than skipping over desert whoops, this configuration offers a very different style of driving 

NEW VEHICLE: SP Rock Basher 

• New mid-engine rock crawler/race truck hybrid machine with incredible off-road ability 
• Powered by the venerable Gavril V8 available in 4.5L and 6.9L variations 
• Rock Crawler – Designed for supreme slow speed crawling over any obstacle, featuring a solid front axle and massive torque 
• Rock Bouncer – Rock crawler meets high speed. No technical route-picking for this nitrous-injected animal; just mash the gas pedal and cross your fingers 
• Rock Racer – Featuring independent front suspension, front portal hubs and the right gearing to allow both high speed desert racing and low speed rock crawling. The jack-of-all trades of off-road racing 

NEW VEHICLE: Autobello Autobuggy 

• Added “Autobuggy” configurations with a custom tube frame chassis, lightweight bodies and long travel suspension sporting bypass shock absorbers 
• Class 5 Spec – A lower powered configuration featuring the Piccolina’s original flat-4 engine, providing an easygoing approach to desert racing 
• Unlimited Class 5 – The reins are off; the air cooled engine has been swapped out for a power 2.5L water cooled twin-cam engine from the Hirochi SBR and the body stripped away in place of fiberglass panels 
• Baja Extreme – No rules, no regulations. Twin turbo power with all the stops pulled. 

NEW VEHICLE: Autobello Stambecco 

• New utilitarian off-road vehicle featuring quirky swing-axle suspension, portal hubs as well as 4×4 and 6×6 drivetrains 
• Available in early configurations with an air cooled gasoline 6-cylinder engine, or modernized configurations with a turbocharged 6-cylinder diesel engine 
• The first vehicle in the game to feature Tire Pressure Management System allowing on-the-fly tire pressure adjustments 
• 3 body styles: van, pickup, and covered pickup 
• 20 configurations to choose from, including military, civilian, police, ambulance and fire service as well as a custom racing version 

NEW VEHICLE: FPU Wydra 

• New 8-wheel-drive skid-steer amphibious ATV 
• 7 Unique configurations 
• Fiberglass tub chassis holding a tiny 800cc i3 engine with optional turbocharger 
• 2 configurations featuring a big-wheel 4×4 conversion kit allowing for crossing of some of the most fearsome wetland terrain 

Bruckell Bastion 

• Fixed interior mirror angle 

Cherrier FCV 

• Fixed Vivace/Tograc production years 

ETK 800-Series 

• Fixed interior normal map 
• Fixed errors thrown by non config related inputs of the roller prop 

Gavril D-Series 

• Added D45 Off-Road Ambulance configuration 
• Added animated transfer case shifter 
• Added more spare wheel options for desert truck configurations 
• Tweaked shape of tube front bumpers 
• Updated off-road parts to PBR 
• Reduced Force Feedback Strength of the custom off-road configs 
• Updated off-road rear lights 
• Tweaked stability of off-road IFS steering 
• Improved off-road suspension tuning 

Gavril H-Series 

• Tweaked stability of off-road IFS steering 

Ibishu Hopper 

• Added Hopper Rock racer config, designed for quick traversal of desert and rocky terrain 
• Added Hopper Gecko config, featuring the biggest tires yet, it is slow but can climb over any obstacle 
• Hopper Crawler updated with better handling and new bypass shock absorbers code 
• Updated off-road parts to PBR 
• Improved off-road suspension tuning 

Dry Van Trailer 

• Added ‘Team Off-Road’ configuration 
• Common 
• Lights 
• Added generic halogen lights 
• Updated generic bumper rally lights on various vehicles 
• Wheels 
• Added ‘Faser High-tide Off-Road Wheels’ 
• Added ‘Alder Supertrail Off-Road Wheels’ 
• Added ‘UTR Impact Off-Road Wheels’ 
• Fixed width of 6 lug 16×7 steel wheels 
• Tires 
• Added more sizes of ‘Grip-All Screamer’ tires 
• Added off-road tires to 13×5 slot 

Levels 

NEW MAP: Johnson Valley 

• 10km² in size 
• Designed mainly for hard off-road vehicles 
• Includes an abundance of rock-crawling paths, dirt trails, and dunes 

East Coast, USA 

• AI road fixes 
• Gridmap 
• Fixed mesh that caused holes in terrain 
• Fixed gap in terrain within the handling zone 

Hirochi Raceway 

• Fixed terrain popping from asphalt 
• Fixed a couple of flying trees 

Italy 

• Changed Sicuro brand name billboard to Ce La Fai 

Utah 

• Fixed decalroads clipping through a bridge near the mountain 

West Coast, USA 

• Added quarry site and equipment 
• Updated movie studio zone 
• Updated and expanded dockyards warehouse 
• Added paths through the southern park and two new alleyways in the city area 
• Adjusted the reflectiveness of oak leaves 
• Improved coast road edging 

Missions 

2 new Mission types: 

• Collection Mission type: Collect markers in an area. Available in several modes (Time/Recovery Attack, Time/Recovery Survival) 
• Evade Mission type: Evade the police and arrive at your secret hideout. Available in WCUSA in freeroam 

31 new Missions: 

• Johnson Valley: 20 new Missions 
• West Coast, USA: 6 new Missions 
• East Coast, USA: 2 new Missions 
• Italy: 2 new Missions 
• Derby Arenas: 1 new Mission 
• Converted 23 existing Time Trials into missions 

Mission type changes: 

• AI Race / Chase: various AI improvements 
• Crawl: now has a mode without points 
• Delivery: refactored timer model to work the same way as all other missions 
• Dragrace: now shows detailed race statistics at the end of the race 
• Drift: refactored drift code and fixed a few minor issues 
• Improved the UI layout in several mission types 
• Improved Traffic setup for all missions. This will allow faster and smarter traffic spawning in the future 

Input and FFB 

• Changed behavior of the F7 vehicle teleport: It will now put the vehicle at the position and direction of the camera without resetting the damage 
• Added default configurations for Logitech Pro Playstation, Logitech Pro XBox, PXN V10 steering wheels, for Logitech Pro Pedals, and for the Leo-Bodnar adapter for various Logitech H-shifters 
• For keyboard users: the steering wheel position is now maintained until the vehicle moves, and will autocenter as usual when moving. This is especially helpful during parking, rock crawling and other kinds of low-speed driving, as well as for taking cooler screenshots in photo mode! It can be disabled in Options → Gameplay → “Hold steering at low speed” 
• Improved the behaviour of steering wheel softlock forces 
• Improved throttle controllability for most gamepads 
• Added helpful hints in logs when a modder develops a vehicle with vehicle-specific input events 
• All the A-function, D-function, and other similar bindings are finally removed (their deprecation warning has been visible since 2015). Any modders still utilizing the old system will be shown an error log with instructions on how to proceed 
• Added a log to record instances where a thruster is unable to be activated because it is tied to an invalid signal 
• Fixed an issue that caused FFB smoothing to not apply when the configuration was manually edited using a text editor instead of the in-game menus 
• Fixed the default throttle binding for Hitec Aurora 9 RC controllers 
• Updated blocked actions for many missions 

Vehicle Systems 

NOTE 

• We’ve changed how you interact with the vehicle’s ignition system. If you want to start the engine, hold the V key (by default) until the engine turns on. Pressing it once will toggle through different ignition states, but won’t engage the starter motor. 
• Revamped Ignition System 
• All ignition levels (0 – Off, 1 – Accessories only. 2 – On, 3 – Starter active) are now freely accessible 
• Press V (by default) to toggle between states 0-2 and hold V to start the engine 
• In-vehicle screens react to igntion level changes dynamically 
• Improved general UI messages about ignition levels and engine state 
• EVs now properly react to ignition levels too 
• In Arcade mode, the car will automatically enter the correct state to drive away if asked to do so 
• Improved stall warning and automatic restart 
• Arcade mode will select a matching gear when automatically starting the engine 
• Improved parking brake usage during engine start, for example to prevent the car from rolling downhill 
• Completely revamped EV control logic 
• The brake pedal will use only regenerative braking at first, until either the vehicle slows down too far or the regenerative brakes can’t provide enough braking power on their own 
• The blending of braking methods (regenerative brakes and friction brakes) has been improved so that the brake pedal feels more like a gas-powered vehicle 
• Added a new section to the Pie menu (under the “Powertrain” section) to adjust how strong the regenerative braking is when lifting off of the throttle (without pressing the brakes) 
• Added a “1-Pedal Driving” feature when the regenerative braking strength is at the highest level 
• This feature allows the car to come to a complete stop without needing to touch the brake pedal. The brakes are held automatically until the throttle pedal is pressed again. 
• Implemented dynamic tire pressure management system 
• Automatically equalizes pressure within the wheels of an axle 
• Axles can be connected to the air source either individually or multiple at once 
• Air pressure of connected axles can be raised and lowered 
• Reduced animation speed of automatic shifters 
• Improved shift behavior of manual transmissions when overriding the clutch and locking the wheels 
• Added new “manual close” latch type to advanced couplers for latches that do not latch automatically 
• Additional controls implemented for drive modes 
• Powertrain device control 
• Custom electrics values 
• Radial menu entries 
• Simple UI button support 
• Implement ability to control multiple powertrain device states together via drive modes (for example a combined rear differential lock for two rear axles) 
• Improved DCT downshift behavior under heavy braking 
• Automatically reduced maximum upshift RPM based on potentially installed rev-limiter 
• Improved unicycle/player vehicle transient stopping behavior 
• Fixed beacon spin controller to work with multiple independent lights 
• Added support for vehicles that steer via differential braking 

Powertrain 

• Added support for centrifugal clutches 
• Cold engine takes longer time to start 
• Fixed ABS not working on non-wheel rotators with brakes 
• Updated energyStorage physics constants to be a little more precise 
• Fixed differentials and shafts not checking for allowed modes when changing modes via code 
• Enabled non-wheel rotators with brakes to have brake thermals 
• Made water cooling coefficient of brakes adjustable to allow for non-submersible brakes 
• Added a guard against wrongly configured electric radiator fan settings 

Gameplay 

• Reloading vehicle ctrl+R, after user changes vehicle visibility manually using the “Increase/Decrease Mesh Visibility” key bindings will retain previous transparency 
• Added Fuel Stations in freeroam to West Coast USA and Johnson Valley: 
• Stop next to a fuel pump and click on the Fueling prompt. Your Vehicle will be refueled completely 
• This feature is only available if “Show Mission Markers” is enabled. (Options → User Interface → Show Ingame Mission Markers) 
• Added a bunch more beam debug modes 
• Also fixed UI displaying wrong mode for deform and break groups 
• Updated the “Drop player at camera” action to keep all the damage 
• Added new input action “Teleport to last road” 
• Recovering on top of water will put the vehicle on the water surface now 
• Improved recovering, so it should never put the vehicle under the terrain 
• Any “safe teleports” will now always fix broken vehicle meshes 
• Overview Map now remembers the camera position when going from free cam to map 

UI 

• Added universal latch open/close control in the Pie menu 
• Added Cruise Control interaction in the Pie menu 
• Added dually and hydraulic pump icons in the powertrain debug app 
• Revamped how the simple powertrain control buttons are created, they are now sent from the vehicle to the app 
• The Powertrain UI app (start/stop button) is now visible from cockpit by default, so people can control differentials and other functionality regardless of the chosen camera 
• Improved Pedals UI app: its numeric rounding is smarter, only displaying 0% and 100% when the pedals are at the very limits of travel. The visuals will highlight those cases too, helping notice a misconfigured deadzone 
• Added a force feedback clipping indicator to the Steering UI app 
• Added some tips to Force Feedback tab, to educate people on safer usage of steering wheels 
• Added several helpful tips in Options → Force Feedback tab, for users of Logitech Pro wheels and for users of Logitech F710 and F310 gamepads, guiding them to properly configure their drivers and physical switches 
• Minor cleanup and optimizations to the Force Feedback menu 
• Improved the bottom buttons of  
• Ctrl +W Parts Manager and Tuning menu, to avoid accidental clicking on the wrong one and losing your changes 
• Improved FPS Limiter label and fixed some related UI coloring issues 
• Fixed the Force Feedback menu sometimes requiring an exit and re-enter before it could reflect some changes 
• Fixed the Steering UI app using an incorrect scale for FFB when using XBox devices 
• Removed several outdated unused UI files, reducing the game download size 
• Fixed non-wheel rotators with brakes not being displayed in the wheel debug app 
• Forcefully reset the “Menu” UI layout to ensure that everyone has the Messages app in it 
• Inside the Vehicle Config → Debug UI 
• Added scaling nodes and beams 
• Added changing nodes transparency 
• Fixed the issue with the vehicle transparency changing while hovering over the Vehicle Parts Selector 
• Some buttons in the radial menu will now be hidden if the corresponding input action is blocked 
• Added bloom adjustments to photomode 
• Created Police Info app, useful for freeroam and for police evasion missions 
• Improved Hotlapping app; added buttons for Start AI, Stop AI, and Toggle Markers 
• Various Powertrain app improvements 
• Many icons have been updated 
• Various minor UI bugfixes 
• Lots of background work building a foundation and set of components for the transition to the new UI framework 
• Implemented a minor improvement to color and transparency behavior of the vehicles’ clickable 3D triggers 
• Fixed visibility of all in-game vertical markers, particularly at long distances or at low game resolutions 
• Fixed the ordering of vehicles in the selector. It will now be based on the full displayed name (including brand), instead of just the vehicle model 
• Improved vehicle selector categorization: trucks, boats and planes will now be shown near cars at the top; and these splits are now visually conveyed with a subtle color tint 
• Updated official translations 

Audio 

• Improved the audio filtering system. Previously, regardless of cabin type, the audio would be muffled, but now the audio will respond appropriately while driving a vehicle with an open cabin, such as an ATV. Please note that this feature is still work in progress and not yet available for all vehicles and under all conditions 
• Fixed radiator fan sound getting restarted constantly 
• Improved hydraulic sounds for dump truck 
• Added new V8 engine sounds to Bruckell Bastion and SP Dunekicker 
• Added new sounds for race handbrakes 
• Added new impact sounds for non-vehicle props: Steel Barrel, Ball, Saw Horse Barrier, Wood Crate, Wood Planks, Gate 
• Added additional gear shift sounds for more variation 
• Added ambiences and reverb zones for Johnson Valley 
• Added new UI sounds for fueling system 
• Added Bypass Shock sounds 
• Upgraded FMOD to 2.02.10 

Render 

• Improved bloom method to produce a more authentic and visually appealing effect  
• Particles emitted by the vehicle (such as dust, smoke, fire, dirt, etc) are now correctly affected by wind physics. For modders: windCoefficient field in particles has been deprecated, now only dragCoefficient has to be used to tune this effect 

Replay 

• Added a new option (Options → Other → Enable lossy compression) that allows users to disable compression of replay files. Disabling compression will significantly increase replay file sizes, but will also eliminate noticeable jitter in node positions. This issue was most visible at high speeds while in cockpit view and is unrelated to the type of jitter suffered by loose parts (and which still benefits from higher FPS and slowmo) 

Mod Manager 

• Added support for Zip64, mods bigger than 4GB packed or using files bigger than 4GB will mount properly now 
• Scenarios 
• Fixed issue where suspect would do a U-turn at the bridge in East Coast Chase #4 
• Made waypoint marker colors sharper, to improve their visibility 

AI 

• AI can now race with you after you set up checkpoints with the Hotlapping app; simply spawn some vehicles, place them at the start, and click on Start AI in the app 
• Refactored AI navigraph generation 
• Use mailbox to transmit map data to vehicles 
• Optimize AI memory use 
• Refactored AI Lane logic 
• AI chase fixes 

Traffic 

• Improved police spawning logic and roadblock placing logic 
• Improved and optimized parked vehicles spawning logic 
• Added some parallel parking spots, and added more general parking spots for some maps 
• Traffic and parked vehicles now have more realistic paint randomization, so that common colors are more likely and rare colors are less likely 

World Editor 

• Added Lasso Selection for Forest editor 
• Freehand and Polyline lasso selection styles 
• Added snap to grid on drag from Asset Browser 
• Added groundmodel for terrain material editor 
• Forest Editor: Added mesh preview for ForestBrushElements, Forest Meshes and for selected mesh in inspector 
• Fixed Forest Editor ForestBrushItem deselected when selecting a ForestItemData object 
• Fixed Forest Editor ForestBrushItem mesh preview not updating on field change 
• Fixed roads are editable when in packed prefabs 
• Added showing current action names for selected tool & toolmode in Shortcut Legend window 
• The level validator now also detects duplicated forest items 
• Cam Path Editor: Fixed camera preview position being incorrect when the path was linked to a replay 
• Created Object to Spline Editor; it allows you to automatically copy and align an object along a selected DecalRoad or MeshRoad, such as placing barriers for prefabs 
• Improved usage of Experimental tool: AI Route Test 
• Improved a few debug shape visuals for the road and navgraph visualizations 
• Fixed bugs in the transform utility and the editors that use it 

Flowgraph 

• Fixed reset behaviors for a few nodes 
• Created a node that can teleport a group of vehicles 
• Fixed an issue where the map navgraph would not generate some segments properly after running a flowgraph that uses a Load Level node 

Game Engine 

• Further settings system cleanup 
• Improved default Steam Deck graphics settings 
• Implemented improvements to the way graphics settings are applied 
• Fixed the settings system not applying Steam Deck-specific configuration, getting the regular PC-oriented configuration (which is not optimized for power consumption among other things) 
• Fixed the settings system not detecting changes on the fly when edited with an external file editor 
• Fixed the settings system sometimes crashing on native Linux version 
• Exposed getItemsPolygon for ForestData 
• Improved error message for DirectX11 running out of memory 
• Added functionality to make vehicle spawn with certain transparency via vehicle:setSpawnMeshAlpha(alpha) function 
• Implemented improvements to the Flexmesh vertex/node picking algorithm 
• Fixed an issue with incorrect being color being used for debugDrawer:drawLine() and debugDrawer:drawTri() 
• Fixed an issue where some vehicles could not be set as the default vehicle 
• Cleaned up more Torque Script files that were used during the game startup 
• Fixed JSON serialization for default values in arrays (previously, the array’s size would shrink if it contained default values) 

Vehicle Editor 

• Added Flexmesh Debug App 
• Allows you to visualize vertices per flexmesh 
• Allows you to see the relationship between nodes and vertices 
• Can pick a vertex to see its associated 3~4 locator nodes 
• Can pick a node to see all its associated vertices 
• Allows you to analyze where nodes are lacking in areas of the mesh and will output suggested node coordinates 

JBeam Picker 

• Now picks nodes and beams with the current node/beam debug mode ctrl+M/ ctrl+B 

Jbeam 

• Added ability to overwrite break, impact, scrape and wind sound events from jbeam 
• Added prop property translationGlobal (prop translation takes place with respect to vehicle coordinates axis) 

Lua 

• Added obj:queueOtherObjectLuaCommand(cmd) to vehicle Lua. It sends a Lua command to all other objects 
• Added obj:getGraphicsStepCount(). It returns a counter that increases with each graphics step 
• Added onTireDeflated vehicle Lua extensions hook 
• Added tableRoundRobin(table, lastKey) Lua utility function. It returns the next key of a Lua table in cyclical fashion 
• Added vec3:setCross(v1, v2) Lua vec3 method. It sets a vec3 into the result of the cross product of two vectors 
• Added quat:toDirUp() Lua quaternion method. It returns two vectors that represent the rotation of a quaternion 
• Added lua debugger: VSCode extension – to enable it – start the game with -luadebug 
• Fixed Standard PID post-init settings change not applying correctly 
• Improved runtime controller loading support 
• Added ability to set the Cruise Control target acceleration from code 
• Normalized API names across the existing smoothers, temporal smoothing functionality change: get() now behaves as getUncapped(), the previous capped behavior can be used with getUncapped() 
• Implemented highly detailed bypass damper simulation based on professional input 
• Gearbox logic files now can serialize/deserialize their own state across reloads 

Images courtesy of BeamNG.drive