BeamNG.drive Setup: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started

Featured image: u/Sr_Tezan

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I’ve had BeamNG.drive installed for years and I keep coming back to it, usually when I want to feel a car move rather than chase a lap time. Nothing else simulates a chassis quite like it. You load up a battered old saloon, take it onto a gravel road, lift off mid-corner and feel the back step out in a way that maps almost exactly onto what a real car does. It’s the soft-body physics doing the work, and once you’ve felt it you start to notice how flat and “on-rails” a lot of other driving games feel by comparison.

So this is the page I wish I’d had when I first bought it. What it is, what’s changed lately (quite a lot – there’s a PS5 version coming, the price has gone up, and a big v0.39 graphics overhaul is on the way), how it behaves with a proper direct-drive wheel, whether VR is worth the hassle, and the question I get asked most: is BeamNG any use for sim racing, or is it just a sandbox toy? The short answer to that one is at the bottom. The rest is everything I’ve worked out along the way.

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What is BeamNG? · Release Date · Name Origin · Career Mode · Access Career · Vehicles · Mods · Multiplayer · Wheel & Pedals · VR Compatible · Price · Early Access · Console · Worth It For Sim Racers?

What is BeamNG.drive?

BeamNG.drive is a driving game built by BeamNG GmbH, sold through Steam Early Access. It’s been PC-only for its whole life, though that’s about to change with a PS5 version on the way. What sets it apart is the soft-body physics model – instead of treating each car as a rigid lump with a damage texture, BeamNG simulates the whole structure, so everything from a kerb strike to a head-on crash plays out for real. Around that sits an open-world sandbox: rock crawling, car chases, drift trials, off-road, and yes, actual racing.

When was BeamNG.drive released?

BeamNG.drive first saw the light of day back in 2013, when an early tech demo appeared on YouTube showing off the prospective game’s impressively detailed damage model. Off the back of this, the game landed on Steam Early Access in 2015. It’s currently on v0.38.6 (May 2026), and the developer still ships a major update every couple of months. The next one, v0.39, was announced at the end of May and it’s a big one – a new D3D12 renderer, HDR support, volumetric clouds and a complete overhaul of the night and headlight lighting. For a game that started life as a crash-physics tech demo, the visuals have come a long way.

Where does the name ‘BeamNG.drive’ come from?

The name ‘BeamNG.drive’ is a combination of two elements. ‘Beam’ alludes to the crash physics in the game, where, in simple terms, two mass nodes are linked by a horizontal beam. Every in-game vehicle has hundreds of these connections.

These beams have damping and rebound properties, cleverly allowing them to transfer and store energy based on external forces.

‘NG.drive’ stands for ‘Next Generation of driving.’ Each car is built from thousands of these beams and mass nodes, and that’s where the famous crash physics come from – panels crumple, chassis flex and bend, and a hard enough hit will leave a car driving like a banana. It’s not a canned animation. The car is deforming for real.

Does BeamNG.drive have a career mode?

Yes, and it’s had a lot of work lately. Career mode was heavily expanded across the v0.34 to v0.38 updates – there’s a proper garage and economy now, rally stages with AI pacenotes, and a lot more structure than the bare-bones version longtime players will remember. It’s still developing, and progress can reset between major updates, so don’t treat it as your forever save. It’s also not obvious how to even turn it on. Which brings us to…

How do I access BeamNG.drive’s career mode?

To access BeamNG.drive’s career mode, hover over the career mode icon on the game’s main menu and click on this six times in succession (be quick!).

Once you’ve created a profile, you will be able to purchase your first car from a dealership before. You can then choose from various missions on the in-game map.

Completing these missions builds up experience points in either Motorsports, Labourer, Specialized or Adventure categories depending on the activity.  Cash can be earned from missions too, with more vehicles available to buy, modify and customise.

What kind of vehicles can you drive in BeamNG.drive?

Loads. Trucks, supercars, ordinary road cars, vans, buses – the official roster is huge before you touch a single mod. The developer has also leaned hard into off-road content over the last few years, with the daft and brilliant Gambler 500 adventure race added back in the v0.29 update and a lot more rough-terrain machinery since.

The v0.27 release also saw the Johnson Valley desert environment added to the game, which arrived alongside stadium trucks and rock climbers for a Baja 1000-themed update.

Race, rally and drift cars can also be driven, with over-the-top and humorous vehicles included too; befitting the fun tone of BeamNG.

Can I install mods in BeamNG.drive?

Yes, BeamNG.drive’s official website has hundreds of mods available to download for free, with many more third-party offerings available elsewhere. These range from new environments to new vehicles, with incongruous additions such as aeroplanes and boats.

Mods are ideal for anyone looking to add longevity to their game, but will also appeal to anyone with Fiat Multipla-destroying fantasies…

Does BeamNG.drive have multiplayer?

Not natively, no – at least not yet. For years the answer has been BeamMP, a third-party mod that does a very good job of running BeamNG online without the lag you’d expect from a game this heavy. It’s still the way most people play together today, and I’d start there.

The bigger news is that BeamNG GmbH confirmed official multiplayer is now in active development, announced alongside the PS5 version at the end of May 2026, with cross-play planned. No date yet, and “in development” on an Early Access game means what it usually means, so don’t hold your breath. But it’s coming, which is a real shift after a decade of “use the mod”.

One thing worth knowing whichever route you take: BeamNG is heavy. Sessions can get unstable the longer they run, especially as players drop in and out of a busy server, because every car on track is being fully simulated rather than faked. That’s the trade-off for the physics.

Is BeamNG.drive compatible with steering wheel and pedal peripherals?

Yes. BeamNG works with pretty much every steering wheel and pedal set on the market, and you can map a handbrake and an h-shifter in-game too. But the more interesting answer is what the force feedback is doing, because this is where BeamNG is different from almost everything else.

In most games the force feedback is a calculated effect – the game works out what the wheel “should” feel like and sends that to your base. In BeamNG, the force is the direct mechanical output of the virtual steering rack and suspension reacting to the road. There’s no canned effect layer. So when you run a kerb, or load up the front end on turn-in, what you feel through the rim is the simulated suspension actually loading and unloading. On a direct-drive wheel it’s superb – you feel weight transfer arrive before you see it, which is exactly the cue you want for learning car control.

One serious warning, and I mean serious. Because the FFB is real mechanical output rather than a smoothed-off effect, a crash sends the full force of the impact straight to the wheel. Pile a car into a wall or a tree on a strong DD base and the wheel can snap round violently. I run mine with the peak torque dropped well below where I’d set it for iRacing, and a bit of extra damping added, specifically for BeamNG. It’s a sandbox – you will crash, often, on purpose – so set it up expecting to. A 15Nm+ base at full chat can hurt your hands or your thumbs if you’ve got them inside the spokes when it lets go.

The other thing that catches people out is Steam Input. If your wheel isn’t being detected, or the axes are behaving strangely, it’s almost always Steam trying to remap the controller. Turn Steam Input off for BeamNG in the game’s controller properties and the wheel usually shows up properly. The old line that “it works best with a gamepad” was fair years ago, but the wheel support is solid now once that’s sorted – the gamepad really only wins for the daft off-road stuff where you’re catching huge slides.

If you’re picking a base to learn on, the entry direct-drive bracket is the sweet spot for a game like this. Plenty of detail to feel the chassis move, not so much torque that a crash becomes a hazard once you’ve dialled it back.

Is BeamNG.drive VR compatible?

Yes, and the first time it works it’s jaw-dropping. BeamNG in VR puts you inside a car that crumples and deforms around you, and watching the bonnet fold up in front of your face in stereo 3D is something no flat screen gets close to. You turn it on in the options menu – the VR toggle lives in the display sub-menu – and your headset needs to support OpenXR, which almost all of them do these days.

Here’s the catch, and it’s a big one. BeamNG’s physics run at around 2,000 Hz, which already hammers your CPU before you’ve added anything. Bolt VR on top – which means rendering the whole scene twice, at high resolution, at a locked refresh rate – and a mid-range rig falls over fast. The VR mode is still flagged Experimental for a reason. To run it properly I’d want a 4080 or 4090, and you’ll want to keep the AI traffic count down (each extra car is a fully simulated chassis, not a sprite) and accept that this is the one part of BeamNG where the hardware bill gets steep.

Two settings to get right or it simply won’t launch into VR. The game should default to the Vulkan API – VR needs it, and if BeamNG started in DirectX you’ll have to pick Vulkan from the launcher before it’ll work. And budget for VRAM headroom; 10GB is the floor people quote, but with the physics load on top you want more breathing room than that on a busy map.

If you’re shopping for a headset that can take the resolution BeamNG throws at it, the high-end Pimax kit is the obvious match for the kind of GPU you’d be running this on anyway.

How much is BeamNG.drive?

BeamNG.drive’s current price on Steam is $24.99 / around £20.99. That’s up from $19.99 – BeamNG GmbH raised it, which is fair enough given how much the game has grown since launch. For the amount of driving you get out of it, it’s still one of the easiest recommendations on the whole sim racing games list.

Will BeamNG.drive ever come out of Early Access?

It’s still Early Access, and there’s no 1.0 on the horizon that anyone’s committed to. But “Early Access” undersells where the game has got to – this is one of the most polished, most-updated Early Access titles going, and the pace hasn’t slowed. The v0.39 update bringing a new D3D12 renderer, HDR and a night-lighting overhaul is hardly the behaviour of a project winding down. Full release feels almost beside the point: BeamNG ships like a finished game that simply keeps getting bigger.

However, the BeamNG team has consistently delivered quality content updates over the last few years – all free of charge – so the game still represents good value for money even if its future roadmap is unclear.

Is BeamNG.drive coming to console?

This one finally has a real answer. On 28 May 2026, BeamNG GmbH announced a PlayStation 5 version, due “later in 2026”. After years of “it’s too complex to run on a console”, that’s a genuine surprise – and a sign of how far both the engine and the PS5 hardware have come. There’s no Xbox version confirmed at this stage, so for now it’s a PS5 story.

How the soft-body physics scale down to fixed console hardware is the big question, and I’d want to drive it before saying it matches the PC version. But it does mean BeamNG is about to reach a much wider audience, and it lines up with the official multiplayer work, so the PS5 release clearly isn’t a one-off side project.

Is BeamNG.drive worth it for sim racers?

Here’s the honest answer, and it depends entirely on what you want from it. As a tool for learning real-world car control, BeamNG is a 10 out of 10. As a tool for practising competitive racing, it’s more like a 2. Both things are true at the same time, and that’s the whole point of this page.

The strong half first. There is no better piece of software for understanding what a car is doing underneath you. Clutch bite, stalling it, the way the back end goes light when you lift off mid-corner, the difference between a front-wheel-drive car washing wide and a rear-drive car snapping into oversteer – BeamNG teaches all of it through the wheel, because the physics underneath are real rather than scripted. Off-road and rally are a particular joy, where the suspension working over rough ground gives you more feedback than any tarmac sim does. If your wheel skills are letting you down in iRacing or ACC, a few hours catching slides in BeamNG carries over more than you’d expect. I’d put it ahead of almost anything for raw car-control practice.

Now the weak half. BeamNG is a top-tier driving sim and a poor racing sim, and the gap is exactly the stuff competitive racing lives on. No laser-scanned tracks, so you can’t learn a real circuit metre by metre the way you can in iRacing. The aero model is basic, the tyre model doesn’t have the thermal depth that decides a stint in ACC, and there’s no proper online racing structure, ranked grids or race procedure. So it won’t make you faster at a specific track in a specific car the way dedicated practice in your main sim will.

So where does it sit on my rig? Alongside iRacing and the rest of my sim library, not instead of any of it. I use BeamNG to build feel and to mess about; I use the racing sims to actually race. Treat it as a driving sim and a sandbox and it’s one of the best twenty quid you’ll spend on this hobby. Expect it to replace your track practice and it’ll let you down. Buy it knowing which one it is.

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