BeamNG.drive 0.40 and its three hotfixes: what changed for mods

24 Oct 2026 · 4 min read · ModsDrop

Pictured: Gavrilbilt Semi – Detailed Semi Truck with 23 Configurations, from the ModsDrop library.

BeamNG.drive 0.40 landed on 19 October 2026, the same day the game arrived on PlayStation 5, and three hotfixes followed within four days. It is the biggest update since 0.39 in July, and several of its changes touch the things mod users care about: how mods load, which UI apps still work, and why a custom map that used to behave may suddenly behave differently. Here is what matters, sorted by what you are likely to notice first.

The headline content

The new vehicle is the Cherrier Percheron, a European cab-over semi truck. It comes with a 12.8-litre turbocharged straight-six rated between 310 and 500 hp, a choice of a 12-speed manual or a 7-speed automatic, three cab sizes (S, L and XL), five frame lengths from 6.17 to 9.80 metres and anything from two to five axles. Its hydrodynamic retarder is simulated for real, including the heat it dumps into the engine coolant, and it is rated up to 600 kW. Flatbed, insulated box, concrete mixer and tanker upfits come with it, and a new family of FPU European trailers (semi and rigid, one of them with a passive steering axle) gives the Percheron something to pull.

Split-screen is the other big addition: up to four local players on PS5 and up to 64 on PC, with seven modes (Race, Drag Race, Pursuit, Derby, Drift, Rock Crawling and Soccer). A new “First Drive” tutorial replaces the old freeroam one, co-drivers now sit in the cabin in Rally mode, and occupants have become physical: a seated character (the developers call him Bob) adds 89 kg to the vehicle, and seats can be filled by players or dummies.

The main menu was redesigned around large tiles, the vehicle selector opens in one to two seconds where it used to take ten to fifteen, the trip computer and minimap were rebuilt, and the graphics settings gained a resolution-scaling slider with SMAA T2x, DLSS, FSR 3 and 4 and XeSS as upscaling options. Vulkan and Direct3D 12 moved to bindless rendering, which lowers CPU overhead, and Direct3D 12 VR arrived through OpenXR on PC.

What changed for mods

This is the part worth reading twice if you run a long mod list.

Mods load much faster. Startup, level loading and mod mounting were all sped up; the developers’ mod-mounting test case went from three minutes to four seconds. If your game used to sit on the loading screen because of a big mod folder, 0.40 should feel very different.
UI app mods may break. The v-bng-panel directive was removed, createVueApp is deprecated and setWindowTitle is gone. Any mod that adds a custom HUD app or UI panel built on the old pieces needs an update from its author. If a HUD app vanishes after the update, this is the first thing to suspect.
Vehicle mods mostly survive. Mods that still use the old dash camera name keep working through a compatibility layer. The new isInside JBeam flag replaces camera-name detection for occupant volumes, and a seat occupant system is available to modders, so vehicle mods that want seated passengers need a small JBeam update to get them.
Custom maps had a rough first day. On some mod maps the invisible ground plane was read at the wrong altitude, so vehicles appeared to drive in mid-air. Hotfix 0.40.1 on 20 October fixed that. If a map still floats for you, make sure the game is on 0.40.1 or later before blaming the map.
The Mod Manager lost one button and gained some patience. The “show possibly broken mods” button was removed. Hotfix 0.40.2 made the manager more resilient against corrupted mod archives, which fixes a case where active mods were silently hidden from the list.
Debugging got better. The Groundmodel Debug panel was revamped and a DEVICE input keyword was added for input bindings.

The three hotfixes

0.40.1 (20 October) fixed the mod-map ground plane problem described above, improved the stability of generic tow hitches, corrected FPU box trailer configurations that were far heavier than advertised, stopped Career tutorial popups from getting stuck and fixed a PS5 UI crash when many images loaded at once.

0.40.2 (22 October) is the big one. It added safety guards to occupant.jbeam against variable leaks that could crash the game, fixed a common crash caused by the audio mixer hanging, fixed Vulkan occlusion culling on PC, cut about 200 MB of RAM per in-vehicle navigation screen, doubled Career autosaves from two to four, repaired AI traffic that would pull over and never move again after witnessing a crash, and fixed a long list of wheel and force-feedback issues (including the swapped throttle and clutch on the Thrustmaster T598 on PS5).

0.40.3 (also 22 October) fixed a memory leak in the Vue UI subsystems and a bug that could stop Career Mode from saving any further progress, and it improved the supersampling and upscaling information shown in Photo Mode.

A sensible update routine

Let Steam finish with 0.40.3. Check the version in the bottom corner of the main menu before testing any mod.
Start once with mods disabled (Safe Mode from the launcher works) so the game can rebuild its caches on the new version.
Re-enable mods in batches: vehicles first, then maps, then UI apps. UI apps are the most likely casualties of this update.
If a mod misbehaves, check its page for a 0.40 note from the author before reporting it. Most vehicle mods on ModsDrop were uploaded for 0.39 and earlier, and the great majority of them run unchanged; HUD apps are the exception.

PS5 and mods

The console version launched on 19 October without mod support and without VR; the developers say they are aiming for feature parity across platforms where possible in the long term but cannot confirm timing or scope. The World Editor also stays on PC. So the files hosted here remain PC files for now, and nothing on this site will change that until BeamNG does.

Sources: the official 0.40 release notes, the 0.40.1, 0.40.2 and 0.40.3 notes, and the PS5 release announcement.

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