BeamNG.drive

Although cars are mostly made out of steel, they quickly crumble under their own weight whenever they crash, putting lives at risk in the process. Thus, it is rather unfeasible to witness how vehicles react in certain situations, because someone must be exposed to a serious injury risk in order to find out.

BeamNG.drive is mostly an experiment concerning car physics and their interaction with the environment, especially when it comes to crashes. Thus, although nothing is stopping you from driving safely and avoiding the wide variety of ramps spread across the landscape, the fun is kind of lost in the process and you do not get to witness the true power of the game engine.

Whenever your vehicle hits something, or lands harshly after a bold jump, it deforms in a very realistic way, taking into the consideration the speed of the impact and the collision angle. Hence, regardless of how you manage to crash, the vehicle is able to accurately represent the damage and make it increasingly difficult for you to keep going, since the operational components are affected as well.

Due to the fact that this is basically a tech demo of an yet unfinished product, the sandbox world is just a collection of ramps, obstacles and various other curious constructions that enable you to crash the vehicle in any way you can imagine. Whenever the car gets too damaged to move, it can easily be respawned with the press of a button and also fully repaired in the process.

Graphically-speaking, the game looks as good as you might think, considering the fact that it uses CryEngine 3 to render the vehicle and the environment. Thus, every detail is closely modeled and textured, especially when it comes to the components that are part of the cars. There are a few tracks and maps available for the development build, but they are not very big and they certainly do not take full advantage of what the graphic engine has to offer, at least for now.

In the end, BeamNG.drive is definitely the most realistic simulator when it comes to vehicle physics, since the entire body of the car is susceptible to deformation. There are, however, a lot of other things that need polishing, not to mention additional vehicles and tracks to have fun with.