North American Motorsports Research is pleased to announce our next major release for Q1 2026 of our flagship free tuning product, Atlas 2026.1. Countless hours have been invested across our development and closed-beta testing teams to produce our largest evolution of the Atlas software yet.
In this version of Atlas, enjoy new CAN RX capability that seamlessly integrates with our exclusive custom feature designer, added support for a lightning-fast wireless-capable OBD adapter hardware, a brand new datalogger, improved definitions, and more!
Overview
North American Motorsports Research is pleased to announce our next major release for Q1 2026 of our flagship free tuning product, Atlas 2026.1. Countless hours have been invested across our development and closed-beta testing teams to produce our largest evolution of the Atlas software yet.
In this version of Atlas, enjoy new CAN RX capability that seamlessly integrates with our exclusive custom feature designer, added support for a lightning-fast wireless-capable OBD adapter hardware, a brand new datalogger, improved definitions, and more!
Get Atlas (Downloading & Installing)
Upgrading Atlas 2026.1
Flex Fuel Support & Custom CAN RX
For more information, see our Custom Feature documentation on CAN Input Parameters: CAN Input Parameter
Atlas 2026.1 introduces the first step in our roadmap to introduce full CAN I/O capability to the FA-powered VA and VB WRX models. Starting with this release, highly-granular CAN RX (reception) is now possible in your custom features. This means you can integrate 3rd party data inputs such as oil pressure, ethanol content, and methanol flow directly with your stock ECU and then make your own engine management decisions for fueling, ignition, boost/wastegate, and more based on this auxiliary tuning data in realtime.
This major feature addition significantly multiplies the capability of the Atlas custom feature designer and unlocks new possibilities for the VA and VB WRXs with stock engine management. Custom CAN I/O is something we’ve been planning to implement since the custom feature designer was first envisioned and now that’s it’s here, we couldn’t be more excited to see the builds that CAN RX is immediately enabling in the community.
In extension to this, Atlas 2026.1 now gains capability for ethanol flex fuel capabilities with most major flex fuel kits (yes, it’s finally here!). We recommend the Gerald Just Projects flex fuel kit for its affordability and cross-compatibility: CSG Spec CAN FlexFuel Kit (WRX VA / VB), but if you already have another flex fuel kit installed, Atlas can support it just as easily.
OBDX Pro VX Support (& Wireless Flashing!)
The wait is over! Atlas 2026.1 adds native support for the OBDX Pro VX, a relatively new OBDII adapter that appears to be the fastest and most capable OBDII connection device we’ve tested so far.
Ever since our original flagship device, the Tactrix OpenPort 2.0, went out of stock many of our end-users have been using Atlas with our secondary supported device, the more affordable OBDLink EX. However, the OBDLink with its STN chipset & protocol isn’t nearly as quick as the OpenPort 2.0 is. Understandably, members of our community unable to obtain an OpenPort 2.0 have been asking for a better solution.
Enter the OBDX Pro VX – with a sturdy, lightning-fast communications protocol, a first-party Atlas driver to minimize latency, multiple shipping locations, and a great price-point, this device has resulted in the perfect solution to fill the gap we (and many other products in the industry) have experienced in high-end logging and flashing performance.
Through this device, Atlas now supports wireless flashing and logging, with both Bluetooth or WiFi supported. In our internal testing over the course of several months, we’ve observed impressive logging speeds reaching the ECU’s own maximum of 100Hz across all connection types (physical or wireless) and flash speeds that easily rival those of the OpenPort 2.0.
Brand New Datalogger
You asked and we delivered: Atlas 2026.1 sports a new datalogger layout with customizable scroll-free tracks. You can also save and load your own custom logging profiles, including setting default profiles for logging and initial viewing. Quickly capturing exactly what you need to see from a log has gotten significantly easier with this new user interface. If you prefer the old layout, however, you can just as easily switch back in the Atlas settings.
The Gauges tab also received some improvements, too: a new min/max reset and alphabetical sort have been added.
As usual, improvements have been made to the user experience to boost performance with this major change. A large refactor to the datalogger networking logic has resulted in increased capitalization on your existing hardware’s capabilities and more stable long-term log recording. Pair this with the newly-supported OBDX Pro VX for the best logging experience we’ve been able to offer so far.
Always-On Logger
Starting with 2026.1, Atlas can now keep a 30-second buffer of log data when no logs are recording so you don’t miss important events. Turn on this capability in the Atlas Settings (File → Atlas Settings) by navigating to the Data Logging tab and changing the History setting. You can choose to always include the last 30 seconds or only include history when a gauge alarm has been triggered.
More Supported Calibrations
As usual, this version of Atlas adds new OEM calibrations to our supported list. These include recent TSBs for the 2022-2025 WRX as well as some new CVT calibrations for the VB WRX. We greatly appreciate our community members working with us to add support for new ROMs! If you have ROMs you’d like to see supported, get in touch with us and we’ll work with you to extend support to your vehicle.
Vastly Improved ECU Definitions
Part of supporting a vehicle means ongoing improvements to the reverse engineering of the definitions we offer for the ECUs that platform uses. We routinely expand our definitions in key areas to unlock new capabilities for tuning our supported platforms every release, and 2026.1 is certainly no exception to this rule.
Starting with 2026.1 we’ve introduced brand new powerful definitions for the FA-powered VA and VB WRX. We’ve also improved or corrected the names, descriptions, and unit scaling of many tables and parameters where necessary.
We worked with the engineer that maintains the major community-developed off the shelf (OTS) pro-tune (called “LROTS”) to leverage some of these new definitions and provide our community with an even more capable and refined base map to begin working from in its 8.8 release version.
New Custom Feature Hooks
This new release of Atlas introduces several brand new hooks that enables NAMR and our community to design rich custom features for supported vehicles. Some of these new hooks include the following:
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Control of the check engine light (malfunction indicator light)
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Control of the tachometer on the instrument panel
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Control of the determined gear and calculated gear speed for manual transmission vehicles
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Control of the selected SI Drive mode
First-Party Custom Feature Library
Starting with the VB WRX, a new first-party custom feature library is available for our community for free. Level up your custom VB WRX tune with intuitive and carefully-engineered custom logic, enabling sought-after functionality such as launch control, boost-by-gear, speed density tuning, multi-map capability, and more!
Check out our library for the VB WRX: VB WRX (FA24DIT) Features
Improved Realtime Tuning
For several releases now, Atlas has supported realtime tuning for the VA and VB WRX. Atlas realtime tuning is unique as you choose the tables you’d like to live-tune on the vehicle. In fact, NAMR acted as the leader in this space with Atlas being the first tuning platform to introduce realtime tuning to the VB WRX on its RH850 MCU platform.
As the Atlas core continued to evolve in 2026.1, we’ve extended those improvements to our realtime tuning system. Thanks to these enhancements, you can now enjoy a significantly snappier and more consistent realtime tuning experience in Atlas 2026.1.
Item Color Enhancements
Colors have been revised in this release to improve identifying changes when editing tunes.
When you have made changes to the calibration you based your tune on (i.e. the factory tune), your modified tables are now shaded in green.
In addition to the above. if you’ve made changes to tables since the last flash or save (configurable in the Atlas settings), those items will now be shaded in the blue color as before.
Also, editor tabs now inherit the corresponding color from the project tree to make navigating Atlas easier.
