It’s alive!!!
Hello drivers, and thanks for your patience while we put together the biggest update we’ve ever delivered!
Version 0.39 comes jam-packed with features, including massive graphics changes, a full UI overhaul, a new vehicle, and a ton of quality of life features.
Graphics
Let’s start with shadows, which have received a massive overhaul. We’ve improved the stability of shadows while driving and moving the camera. Shadows should no longer detach or float away from objects like wheels and car bodies (Peter Pan will be so pleased). We’ve fixed VR shadows as well. They should now align properly for both eyes in VR. Besides that, we’ve also improved GTAO quality and added auto exposure.
We’ve also made a number of smaller fixes and changes that should result in less flickering when the sun moves, smoother blending between different shadow cascades, and so on. Check the patch notes for more information on the improvements we’ve made to the shadow system!
But that’s not nearly the only thing we’ve done, graphics-wise.
We’ve added HDR output support on Vulkan and Direct3D 12, for brighter highlights, wider color ranges, and improved display accuracy on HDR-capable monitors.
We also implemented physically correct light attenuation, replacing the old light falloff models with an inverse-square physical light model, resulting in more realistic lighting behavior across the board.
We’ve done some work on the sky as well. Not only have we added volumetric clouds, but we’ve also added a physically-based night sky. The sky is based on real astronomical values, including Milky Way rendering and a constellation database, fully synchronized with latitude, longitude, date, and time of day.
For the daytime travelers, we’ve added a multiple scattering sky model with new dynamic ambient lighting based on spherical harmonics, which will result in a more realistic and natural sky across different times of day.
Many of you will be able to enjoy the improved visuals as is, while others might want to revisit their graphics options and dial them back a bit to reach a desired framerate. All of the default graphics presets will look better than before, so don’t be afraid to experiment with lower settings than you’re used to! If you were already running with the lowest preset, the impact should be minimal, hopefully.
Future Updates and PS5
Note on future updates: many of you are eagerly waiting for the PS5 version we announced some months ago. The console version is still planned for release later this year. Since it’s a new process for us, full of novelties, we don’t feel comfortable promising the community a time estimate we can’t be sure of. Sit tight while we continue working hard on that as well as on future PC updates!
User Interface
User Interface Overhaul
We’ve made some major changes to the UI. First up, the entire Pause menu has been redesigned, offering much more flexible solutions for players, modders and us as developers.
Part of the reason for the UI overhaul is to improve gamepad functionality. With the old system, gamepad navigation in the menus ranged from annoying to virtually impossible. The new system will vastly improve the experience for gamepad users, who should find it significantly easier to navigate the menus and systems in the game. We’ve also added some new functions that could come in useful, please check the patch notes for exact details of what’s changed. However, here’s a small sampler of what we’ve done.
The new vehicle tab in the Pause menu will allow you to manage every vehicle you have spawned into the level, whether individually or in bulk. These quick actions should make vehicle management a less painful process.
UI apps have been renamed to HUD apps to better represent their function, and we’ve made a new UI for editing the layouts which can be found in the System tab of the Pause menu. We’ve completely revamped the UI for managing Replays. The new system will use a dedicated Pause-menu workflow instead of requiring an app to be added, and recordings can be managed entirely from the Pause menu.
The Options menu has been fully ported to Vue, with a new back-end that controls all its functions. You’ll now be able to apply heavy graphics settings live with feedback, while critical display changes use a confirmation countdown and will revert automatically if they’re not accepted. This is still being refined, so categories, sorting, and the placement of individual settings may change in future updates.
Good news for modders! The new UI is much more moddable than before. You will be able to add Options tabs and custom buttons to the UI to bring your dreams to life!
Photo Mode
The Photo Mode has gotten a facelift this update. We’ve ported it to Vue and given it an overhaul, starting with a new UI. We’ve added in a bunch of customization parameters in a number of categories, including Camera (position, field of view, etc.), Scene (time of day, shadows, etc.), Effects (depth of field, autofocus and so on), Overlays, and Capture options such as supersampling and downscaling.
The Camera, Scene, and Effects panels support presets, so you can completely or partially restore settings for later use, and presets are saved with the screenshot in a metadata JSON file that can be shared with other players. We’ve added a gallery where you can view all your images inside the game – you can also load presets from the gallery in order to recreate an image.
The new camera flash feature will help you take pictures in dark areas, while the Motion Capture feature will allow you to take photos with motion blur by momentarily unpausing the game to capture the motion blur. (The flash has the same settings as your phone – it can either be used only when taking the photo, or as a flashlight).
Vehicles
New Vehicle: Cherrier Ardente
First up, we have the Cherrier Ardente, a new two-dour coupe addition to the FCV platform. the Ardente is a solid contender for the best-looking vehicle we’ve ever done, with a sculpted contemporary exterior and a sporty, driver-focused interior. It offers various customization options, including a number of custom racing and street livery options, contrast-color pillar and roof configurations, and a variety of other optional enhancements.
On the practical side, the Ardente has a number of powertrain options available, such as FWD/AWD in gasoline and diesel, as well as RWD/AWD electric variants.
But of course, the Ardente is not the only offering we have for you in the vehicle line. We’ve also done some work on a number of other vehicles. For a start, we’ve added movable sunvisors to all cars. Embrace a life free of glare! We’ve also made a number of changes to other vehicles, please check the patch notes for details.
Vehicle Lights
We’ve made a significant change to how vehicle lights work in this version. The light emitted by vehicle lights now has realistic patterns on all vehicles, and headlights and fog lights now project different patterns depending on the vehicle market and technology.
The brightness, range, and color of all vehicle lights are defined by the bulb type and wattage of the light bulb – a separate common part that projects light. To accompany the new vehicle light system, vehicle light materials have all been updated to now use realistic nits output values instead of the old emissive system.
New Aerodynamic Physics System
Until now, each vehicle’s aerodynamics were simulated in isolation. Vehicles already have numerous aerodynamic surfaces, each with its own drag, lift, and stall behavior, all responding in real time to moving mechanisms, damage and even deflecting and bending back from the air pressure itself. With version 0.39, however, any moving vehicle can also influence the airflow experienced by nearby vehicles: slipstreaming, bump drafting and side drafting.
As with the rest of our aerodynamics, these interactions are not limited to cars. They also affect props and other objects using our physics: a truck passing close by at sufficient speed could, for example, knock over a nearby flagpole without touching it. Even if racing is not your main interest, this system opens up new possibilities for experimenting with our physics. We hope you enjoy discovering them!
Levels
Improvements
Moving on to maps, we’ve given some love to West Coast, USA with updated and improved building materials and LODs, and added night lighting to the level.
In addition, we’ve added stop sign data in East Coast, USA, and optimized foliage and groundcover.
We’ve updated the level lighting and environment setup, with updated sky, cloud, moon, fog, cubemap, and reflection setups across all levels. We also updated materials to use environment cubemaps wherever possible across all levels.
Modding
We have created a source file which provides terrain and backdrop creation functionality, all contained within Blender to help those without paid software like Substance or terrain generators. This requires some knowledge of Blender and game files.
One of the highlights is a simple method of creating backdrop meshes for maps with procedural generation. If you’d like to try it out yourself you can find the source inside a .zip in the template level, or view the resulting backdrop in the template level (you’ll need to open it via the editor).
Gameplay
Achievements
We’ve added over 50 new achievements to the game. You can complete many of them by playing Career Mode (WIP), completing different missions in freeroam, completing the freeroam tutorial or modifying your vehicle in various ways.
Freeroam Tutorial
On the gameplay side, we’ve added a Freeroam Tutorial that will introduce new players to the basics of the Freeroam mode. This tutorial can be accessed from the Main Menu – Quickstart Experiences, and will teach players about the game’s controls, as well as cameras, recovery, spawning and removing vehicles, walking mode, vehicle customization, and using the map view.
Rally Mode
We’ve added the first all-gravel Rally Loop: NGRC Rally Utah 2026. This loop features four special stages over 16.4 km and a total loop distance of 30 km.
Pacenotes have gotten a major update. There are now three styles of pacenotes:
- Pro: written and voiced by Alex Kihurani (2024 British Rally Champion co-driver), fully bespoke to all of our stages.
- Enthusiast: featuring nearly 200 unique calls, these pacenotes offer a realistic level of detail.
- Casual: simple pacenotes for those new to rallying, or anyone wanting a more relaxing experience.
Enthusiast and Casual can be edited to your liking, and all pacenotes are fully moddable.
Visual pacenotes received a small refresh. We’ve added an experimental Virtual Competitors feature at the end of stages and loops, with each competitor featuring unique driving traits. Lastly, the penalty and recovery system has been revamped to be less punishing and more fun.
Read about the rest of the improvements (such as difficulty tweaks, repair availability, rebalanced target times, and more) in the full Patch Notes.
Audio
Forest Audio Editor
We’ve updated the ambience for all levels to improve realism and immersion.
Additionally, we’ve added a Forest Audio Editor. This will let you create dynamic ambiences for wind and vegetation, and allow you to choose from a pool of FMOD events representing various biomes. As you move around with the camera, the system will gather information about the surrounding environment such as forest item size, forest density, direction, and so on, and will modulate the sound accordingly.
Optimizations
We’ve dedicated a big part of our development time to optimizations, very specially in terms of memory management. Memory optimizations don’t necessarily mean more framerate, they don’t quite work that way. Here’s what you can expect:
- If your hardware already exceeded the necessary amount of RAM and VRAM: memory optimizations won’t benefit you.
- If your hardware is close to the limits: content that barely fit in memory, might now fit, and run with better framerate.
- If your hardware is below the limits: you may be able to load certain maps or vehicles you couldn’t load before.
The lower memory use will be more evident as: lower peaks of memory use during loading screens, lower memory use after a map has loaded, lower memory use when loading multiple maps in a single session, and lower memory use when spawning multiple vehicles.
With memory optimizations covered, let’s now go into the topic of framerate: we have worked on improving that too, as we’ve been doing for all releases in the past. Normally we’re able to fight the extra quality with optimizations, so framerate stays similar. On this update however, the leap in visual quality is much greater than in previous updates. We tried to perform miracles, trying to offer all that juicy visual quality with no framerate impact. While we were able to offset a lot of the original impact, you can expect better visuals to have an impact in framerate.
In other words: Many of you will be able to enjoy the improved visuals as-is, while others will want to revisit your graphics options and dial them back a bit to reach a desired framerate. All of the default graphics presets will look better than before, so don’t be afraid to experiment with “lower” settings than you’re used to! If you were already running with the lowest preset, the impact should hopefully be minimal.
Note for modders: vehicle license plates use an entirely new render engine, which is much faster, and with lower memory use too. As a trade-off for that additional performance, sadly we lost backwards compatibility with old license plate mods. It was a hard choice between optimization and mod compatibility, and ultimately we had to choose the former. If you created license plate mods, you can update them following these instructions.