If you spend enough time scroll short-form content on your app of choice, you’re bound to run into a certain genre of video. The kind that places cars in wacky situations, like trying to dodge giant rotating hammers or attempting jumps over huge canyons. These morbidly fascinating clips are made in BeamNG.drive, a sandbox video game dedicated to accurately simulating the many systems of an automobile.
For the longest time, BeamNG was only available on Windows and Linux operating systems. This is changing soon, however, with its arrival on PS5 coming later this year.
Watch: BeamNG PS5 Announcement Trailer
While the game is best known as a crash test simulator, it’s a bit more sophisticated than that. BeamNG CEO Thomas Fischer puts it best: “[The crashes] are merely an outcome of the physics doing its job underneath. In BeamNG.drive, every component of the vehicle is simulated individually as a network of nodes and beams that can flex under load, deform, or even break outright when pushed too far. As a result, vehicle behavior is never scripted, but emerges from those tiny interactions, allowing the game to produce true-to-life handling dynamics with incredibly accurate damage modeling.”
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This is how the game gets its signature soft-body physics model that truly crumples cars on impact. Most racing games like Forza reflect damage as dents and scrapes on your car since, well, they don’t really want you to stop driving. But you’re basically driving a brick on wheels when you compare it to the damage you can cause in BeamNG.
Smashing cars is fun and all, but that’s not all there is to do in BeamNG. Over the years, through official updates from developers and modifications from community contributors, the game has become a true play-how-you-want experience. You can relax and freely cruise around the larger maps, or you can get into the weeds of observing suspensions setups and clutch assemblies with the X-ray feature.
An official release date for BeamNG on PS5 hasn’t been specified, but it is confirmed for this year. That said, June is the season for gaming announcements at shows, with Playstation’s State of Play and Geoff Keighly’s Summer Game Fest happening this week. More info could be revealed at shows like these in the coming weeks.
For PC players that have tried out BeamNG before, what do you suggest soon-to-be players on PS5 should try out? Aside from smashing cars, of course. Let us know in the comments.
