Update Speculation thread

There's not really anything to speculate about (except traffic).

 

I like traffic….. i got a problem

 

In the next coming updates, could we see Tire wear? On the Beam.NG Youtube channel they shown them working with Calspan for this, so maybe in the next couple of updates, we could see this.

 

I would say don’t expect it. We’ll get tire improvements over a series of updates tbd. If it happens, though, cool.

We just got new vehicles so I’m assuming a remaster is most likely next. Prime candidates would be the muscle cars, Barstow and Moonhawk. And the Hopper as well.

 

I think it will be the hopper, its the most out of date.

 

So i just noticed that since 0.38, the dealership system has been changed to make vehicle sales dependent on the cars native region. This made me thinking that there will maybe be car importers in the next update, which could lead to west coast map updates

 

I honestly think some maps such as East Coast, USA and Italy should recieve the same updates too. West Coast has already gained enough updates (they continue updating it cause it's the main Career Mode map) in my opinion.

 

The town in ECUSA is so poorly made, with half the buildings clipping each other, half the town being one .dae which means you couldn't fix it easily if you wanted to. It needs a LOT of love.

 

It’s kinda alright. It received a remaster in 2019 and it looks a bit better than the pre-remaster. But yeah, it needs more some major changes overall.

 

The other thing that needs to go is the tree walls. They make the forest areas look super unrealistic, I've personally gone through the whole entire map and tried to remove as many as possible because they are super ugly in my opinion. The town reuses the same couple buildings in multiple instances and a lot of it just doesn't make sense.

 

I wonder if we will see any large remasters in the future. Miramar and Burnside only got refreshed, and that could mean that rest of the vehicles that need it (Hopper, I series, Barstow and Moonhawk) won't receive full on remasters like D Series and LeGran did. Moonhawk also got bits and pieces over the years so it might even not be a candidate for refresh/remaster at all, but then again so did Sunburst and it got remastered anyway.

 

I think the Moonhawk will deserve a refresh because it is still has a nice look, and the I-series recieved many upgrades at some point if we can't say it was refresh through the updates (suspension, engine, PBR interior etc.).
But the Hopper and the Barstow, yes, they really need remaster.

Also, according to Steelorse, he talked to a dev to know if there will be a second remaster of the D-series. The dev told yes but with a problem. The problem is the following one : the D-series is the most complex vehicle in the game. It's the vehicle with the higher number of parts and technology like the hydraulics for the rollback, the bypass suspension for the prerunner etc. Remake the D-series could take between 3 and 4 years.

 

Speaking as someone with level design experience, I disagree. Overlapping objects is a supremely common tradeoff when developing a level with instanceable assets, and IIRC, is even seen in other cities/towns in Beam (Norte, for instance). The only reason it stands out in Firwood, is because those buildings have visible groundfloor interiors, which means you occasionally see the corners of adjacent buildings jutting into them. I agree this effect could be improved, of course, but there is no sin against level design being committed, other than the same selection of smoke-and-mirrors techniques used throughout the games industry.

 

That's just my opinion, I feel like it simply could be better and more realistic, for example maybe not re-using assets as much.

 

New assets would just make the game file size bigger for maybe a minor benefit.

 

I honestly think west coast needs an update to the city, if you compare its buildings to Italy Italy is way better

 

So, December 2025 is now over, and wow, did 0.38 do numbers:



Every single record from previous updates were obliterated - over 1,000 more players over the previous month than 0.33, almost 2,000 more peak players than 0.27, and almost 1,400 more average players than 0.27. It also had a larger average increase than every other update since 0.31 combined (4,408 vs. 4,301), and less than 100 more peak players (6,455 vs. 6,528). It also had more players over the previous month than every other 2025 update combined.

There's gotta be some follow-up to this incredible performance. There was with 0.27 (0.29 and 0.30), and while not everyone was a fan of the off-road updates, they did quite well - while 0.28 didn't. Clearly, there's a big group of players who like construction vehicles, and plenty of people have been suggesting more of them.

0.35-0.37 didn't have as much of a strong connection to 0.34 as I thought they would in December 2024. I guess the major theme was "remasters", but that also was the main point of 0.31-0.33 (the remastering of the T-Series). (You could also count rallying, but only 0.35 gave that any major attention.) However, I think that was detrimental to 0.35-0.37's performance - or maybe people just aren't that interested in regular cars any more, without new features to go along with them. 0.37 did well, but its performance was far below that of 0.30 and 0.33 for peak and monthly increases. Even 0.34 was the worst-performing of the past four winter updates.

I think we'll see the devs return to more strongly-themed updates per year, so we'll likely get more construction equipment and other "oddball" vehicles this year. That being said...

...I still think we'll get remasters/refreshes this year. We've had at least one every year since 2019 - usually two or three. There are five vehicles released before 0.8 (Moonhawk, SBR, Barstow, '88 Pessima, I-Series) that have yet to be remastered. However, many of those vehicles have received major content additions and/or minor refreshes in recent years, so they're likely lower-priority. The Hopper is the most likely of the post-0.8 vehicles to be remastered, IMO, since it's yet to receive the new smooth lights and it's going to become a traffic vehicle.

Spring updates have usually been for remasters/refreshes since 2019 (only the FCV and Wendover have dropped in the spring since then - that's two out of seventeen vehicles), and I expect that trend to continue. We did get a double refresh/remaster for 0.28, 0.32, and 0.36 (which also had the new MD-Series content), so I could see that happening again for 0.39. The Miramar/Burnside and BX/T-Series also prove that vehicles don't have to share parts to get remastered/refreshed together. I wonder if the Hopper and DT40L will be remastered/refreshed together - they both were released in spring, so it would be fitting.

 

I think the only vehicle that will be remastered is the Hopper. All other vehicles mentioned need refreshes not remasters. They will likely add more content to those vehicles that are lacking in it (Both Pessimas, Barstow, Moonhawk) those vehicles need some texture updates and some more content, not a full remaster as they are already very high quality.

The hopper is super out of date, from the textures to configs. All the configs are basically the same, and it has yet to be added to traffic. It’s one of the two SUVs and it needs the love the roamer has. PLEASE it needs to be in traffic.

One thing the Pessimas badly need is JDM and EUDM configs, it makes no sense that they are only USDM. Same with the hopper, it needs JDM and EUDM configs like its irl Toyota Landcruiser counterpart.

Also the traffic needs some of the missing configs to be added, like some of the missing trim levels, and the very few missing cars.

 

the hopper is more like a YJ Jeep wrangler made under a Japanese brand. it is nothing like the Land Cruiser

 

@DriftinCovet1987

I agree with a lot of your post, but I don’t think a slew of new oddball vehicles is gonna be the priority. I would say the heavy machinery was very polarizing, definitely love it or hate it. I think game content online, holiday season and sale, and yes a new update with vehicles completely different from anything else in game created a perfect storm for new players to jump in and also still gave vets enough to log some hours

For longevity, I do think the focus needs to shift to more traditional beam experiences with cars and trucks built for traditional motoring disciplines. Continuing to expand on rally is huge, anything to coerce all those RBR rally guys to give Beam a shot. Maybe improving the time trial/hot lapping functions to incentivize building those finely tuned track cars and putting in lap after lap. And I think a new map would be huge as well. It’s hard for a driving game to keep going without new places to test vehicles limits. And obviously remasters for vehicles like the moonhawk or hopper that have been around forever, are showing their age but still get love from the community, would be popular too.
what about race configs for more cars? When the rally update dropped, a bunch of cars got rally interiors, sun strips, roof scoops, rally lights etc. Why not redo the race configs? The wings and splitters could use updates, add modern racing wheels to more cars (Only the etk gt4 has one and it looks great), update the race dash, maybe more colors or design for the race seats, add race fuel cells to more cars, and update the roll cages because a lot have clipping issues. Just things like that