What Do You Like to Do Most in BeamNG.drive?

What-do-you-like-to-do-in-BeamNG.jpg

What is your favorite activity in BeamNG.drive?

  • Crashing

    Votes: 77 32.4%
  • Racing

    Votes: 74 31.1%
  • Rallying

    Votes: 95 39.9%
  • Scenarios

    Votes: 50 21.0%
  • Exploring

    Votes: 81 34.0%
  • Other (please comment!)

    Votes: 23 9.7%

  • Total voters
    238
BeamNG.drive is a wide-open sandbox with lots to do. We want to know: What are your favourite activities in the soft body crash-a-lot game?

Image credit: BeamNG

Each month, BeamNG.drive is one of if not the most popular games on Steam. In fact at OverTake, we keep a regular eye on the charts. This sandbox title always appears at the top end of most-played list. But why exactly is it so popular?

Well, the simple answer is that there is just so much to do in the game. Offering a variety of open-world maps, each with their own challenges, races and easter eggs, there is a lot to explore. Furthermore, the car list is vast, with each model featuring a plethora of modifications and unique characteristics. Finally, third party mods available for the game provide a whole other dimension to the title.


With so much to do, it sometimes seems difficult knowing where to start. So we are asking you, the community, what you enjoy doing most in BeamNG.drive. You can get in touch via the comments section, on our social media channels, or in our Discord community. Let us know what you enjoy doing. Tell us what your favourite maps, car and mods are. Above all, let us know why you keep coming back to this hidden gem of a title.

What I Do in BeamNG.Drive​

Personally, I was always intrigued by this sandbox crash-tastic title. However, it was only recently that I made the plunge and purchased it. In fact, I believe I got it for a reduced price in the last Spring Steam sale – that certainly felt like a good deal.

In fact, that good deal felt even greater as time went on, and I discovered what the title truly offers. Originally seeing BeamNG as a simple soft-body crashing title in which all you do is spend a few hours pretending to crash, I soon found out it is so much more. Upon loading it up, I realised that several maps are available to explore freely, each with different activities.

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BeamNG.drive is far bigger than I ever imagined. Image credit: BeamNG

Rock climbing, top speed runs, rallying, circuit racing and deliveries. I have spent a lot of time taking part in these challenges, always trying to improve my time. What is so great about the title is that these challenges are far from easy. Unlike other games releasing in recent times, one must work hard to get even achieve one out of three stars, let alone get a full bag.

The off-road driving challenges and rally courses are certainly my favourites. In fact, I see the game as a brilliant rallying simulator. A few months ago, I even pointed out that BeamNG.drive is the perfect base for a Dakar Rally simulator; far better than the actual title, Dakar Desert Rally. The off-road physics feel very understandable whilst the tarmac feel is very smooth.

My favourite map of the game has to be the most recent Johnson Valley location. A wide open desert with very few tarmac roads, it is what inspired the Dakar motivation. This is a map that provides many surface types from deep sand to bolder-filled rock fields and gravel paths.


However, the thrill of diving through the narrow roads of Italy is also very fun. In fact, simply driving around any area of any map in BeamNG.drive is enjoyable. The driving physics are very pliable and make you want to keep going. Any time I can treat a road like a rally stage, I will continue driving that same stretch for hours.

I am yet to dive into the third party content. However, that is certainly something I will have a look at soon.

I know there is so much I am missing out on in this game. But with the shear size of it, it is impossible to truly touch everything. Therefore, what would you advise I focus on next time I boot up the game?

What do you do most in BeamNG.Drive? Tell us on Twitter at @OverTake_gg, the poll attached to this article, and in the comments down below!
About author
Angus Martin
Motorsport gets my blood pumping more than anything else. Be it physical or virtual, I'm down to bang doors.

Comments

I find the UI impossible and the absence of action replays a big barrier. It's damn good fun when you get something appealing going on. The crashes can be superb and as folks have said the crawling stuff is rather top notch. It still feels pretty shonky though.


Sounds as if you'd like it. It's improved a lot over last few years. It has a mod manager so you can D/L mods from within game and it handles the install etc. So, there's not much messing about. And you don't need mods to have plenty of fun in it. It's a nice escape from the grind of racing to be as fast as possible which, I agree, gets FFFFuuuuuuuu
Ok. Sounds reasonable, considering.. It has been a looong time on my steam wishlist and it is hounting me there.. Maybe i soon have to try it and see myself what it delivers these days. I loved the damage model back in the days when i tried it, seemed unbelievable for a game. Always loved wrecking, toy cars as a kid, games, movies, russian traffic from youtube.. (oh wait lol) Well see...
 
I'm still trying to find that out... what "I like to do the most in beamng".
Kind of difficult because there's much to dislike:

- The graphics look absolutely horrible and it's impossible to get a stable framerate even with a 4090 and everything on lowest in VR. iRacing looks outdated but compared to this iRacing looks amazing.

- The game is filled with bugs; AMS2 is superstable compared to this and BeamNG is already founded in 2013. And my single biggest complain about AMS2 is the amount of bugs.

- The FFB is probably the worst of all titles that I ever played.

This proves to me that the average gamer is clearly not looking for sim racing titles, but more for roaming/crashing/exploring/fooling around kind of race titles.

BeamNG is not a real race title to me. It's just a bit more a race title then GTA V is but it's closer to that game than to any serious race title, that's probably why it's played so much because of the roaming around for fun factor.
 
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Its got VR, and its very good experience if you have PC to push it along.

Tends to crash when the system runs out of v-ram, and the game loves to use all that v-ram.
A very good experience in what way? The skies don't even work, the game crashes constantly. With everything on lowest(example: tree textures are 5px x 10px textures or something, massive LoD pop in, horrible graphics) I still get massive framedrops with my 4090.

This while I run all sims except ACC in VR at 1.0 render resolution(4315x5100 per eye)+high/ultra settings+2x/4xMSAA with 90fps/hz locked(zero framedrops) on my system.
HIGHLY experimental. I advice everyone that wants to buy BeamNG for VR to wait, then they maybe won't have the disappointment that I just described.
I doubt it. I like the physics fine. The ffb is terrible for what I expect. I mean I drive just as much as anyone irl so I don't feel anyone else's opinions are any more or any less valid than mine. For a race car game sure but knowing my truck is pretty much in the game I can say the ffb is way off from what my Silverado feels like irl. I wonder sometimes from comments how many sim racers actually own and drive a vehicle truthfully.
Agree, the physics are fine. Nothing to complain about that, the damage is okay too but I fully agree with you on the FFB. A good driving experience is in 2023 not only physics, it's FFB+physics+handling+tires. BeamNG is simply lacking when it comes to FFB, it's very obvious.
 
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Premium
Pretty sure
A very good experience in what way? The skies don't even work, the game crashes constantly. With everything on lowest(example: tree textures are 5px x 10px textures or something, massive LoD pop in, horrible graphics) I still get massive framedrops with my 4090.
I'm running everything on high using my 4090 and reverb G2, Looks pretty good, not great, and not stunning, but pretty good for what it is. Have had it crash probably 3 times in 20 hours so I'm fine with that. Had a couple of frame stutters but few and far between.

However, the driving experience and immersion is quite stunning, especially when paired with a motion sim, doing laps around little island with all the jumps over the waterways in VR is quite an experience. No issue with the skies that I have noticed though the water is borked and any onscreen elements need to be disabled. Trees definitely need work though they seem pretty good on some maps (weirdly in heavily vegetated areas) Pop-in is bad.....
 
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I'm still trying to find that out... what "I like to do the most in beamng".
Kind of difficult because there's much to dislike:

- The graphics look absolutely horrible and it's impossible to get a stable framerate even with a 4090 and everything on lowest in VR. iRacing looks outdated but compared to this iRacing looks amazing.

- The game is filled with bugs; AMS2 is superstable compared to this and BeamNG is already founded in 2013. And my single biggest complain about AMS2 is the amount of bugs.

- The FFB is probably the worst of all titles that I ever played.

This proves to me that the average gamer is clearly not looking for sim racing titles, but more for roaming/crashing/exploring/fooling around kind of race titles.

BeamNG is not a real race title to me. It's just a bit more a race title then GTA V is but it's closer to that game than to any serious race title, that's probably why it's played so much because of the roaming around for fun factor.
BeamNG is quite heavy on the CPU, try to reduce the number of cars and also manually set a lower FFB frequency, which can both increase framerates with some wheelbases and help reducing oscillations
 
BeamNG is quite heavy on the CPU, try to reduce the number of cars and also manually set a lower FFB frequency, which can both increase framerates with some wheelbases and help reducing oscillations

I got a fast 12th gen i7 CPU and no other cars spawned, it happened on 3 different locations. It was clearly the GPU that was the bottleneck(because of the bad programming/bad vr implementation of the game). The amount of visual bugs also made it quite unplayable in VR. Everything was flickering, the game crashed multiple times and the skies only rendered correctly on one eye. It's also stated on their website that it still has all these bugs in VR so I don't understand how people can enjoy this in VR.
 
I think that's what this game is all about, to be able to drive any cars cars that aren't perfect at all on any type of terrain, like a madman, and do a lot of stupid things with them.
Take the completely inadequate regular cars out to places where they don't belong, to use them for what they never intended and see when they will die.
Put tiny wheels on the back of heavy rwd cars with old tyres and drifting in 4th (tyre thermals and wear mod is a must have), or put bicycle wheels on it.
screenshot_2023-02-19_13-59-44.png
screenshot_2023-10-10_19-42-39.png
 
Off roading and rock crawling is great in this game, but drag racing is what I love about Beamng the most. No other sim allows complete car customization plus having simulated a trans brake and realistic nitrous its fantastic. Going to the drag strip on west coast doing pass after pass. The only thing that is missing is a proper parachute.
 
Mr Martin, I don't want to sound like a hater, but you really need an editor, or at least a proof reader. I'm guessing you're better at driving than writing? Several of the sentences / paragraphs , let's say could be a little better written, there's at least one typo, and you probably mean 'sheer' not 'shear' at the end. Probably.
I appreciate you creating these stories for RD, but the last few I've read could really have done with a little more polishing.
Happy to help out if needed :)

Really?!
Is that all you can think of about this article?
Quite embarrassing act.

I hope I wrote everything correctly Sir :laugh:.
 
Off roading and rock crawling is great in this game, but drag racing is what I love about Beamng the most. No other sim allows complete car customization plus having simulated a trans brake and realistic nitrous its fantastic. Going to the drag strip on west coast doing pass after pass. The only thing that is missing is a proper parachute.
My hope is that more molders into drag racing find their way here. To this sim. My understanding is that is unlimited when it comes to things like tire model, physical shaking of the car at idle, etc., etc.... I like the idea of having a working chute too. Would be even better if full animation gets in there as well... BUG anyone?
 
My hope is that more molders into drag racing find their way here. To this sim. My understanding is that is unlimited when it comes to things like tire model, physical shaking of the car at idle, etc., etc.... I like the idea of having a working chute too. Would be even better if full animation gets in there as well... BUG anyone?
BTW, this is a BUG in case any of you were wondering...
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/jungle-pam-hardy-legendary-bug-at-fremont--319896379764842831/
 

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Angus Martin
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Shifting method

  • I use whatever the car has in real life*

  • I always use paddleshift

  • I always use sequential

  • I always use H-shifter

  • Something else, please explain


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