American Truck Simulator and its older sibling, European Truck Simulator

From the front page of this site, there’s this and this. Also, my year end lists.

-Tom

Great now I need to drag out ETS 2 again. Which is not a bad thing!

Now see if the trucks in these games had lasers I’d be all over them.

… Maybe that should be the next Saint’s Row game.

I jumped around through the video and it looks like the driver stuck with routes and small towns in the Central Valley which was nice but I’d really like to see how it models the bigger cities especially LA and San Francisco. It also looked like those semi trucks were all automatic - is that a recent addition to modern semis? The trucks available on the Peterbilt and Kenworth websites are pretty damn nice, almost car like with the interior options available and the sleep cabins could comfortably fit two truck stop escorts.

I use an Xbox controller myself… well at least the Logitech equivalent. Same exact layout, different branding. I also do everything from the cabin, including backing up, with controller. It works reasonably well for me. I’m sure there are some benefits to using a wheel and pedal system, but for ETS it doesn’t really seem as important. The games languid pace makes things like pedals and track IR really only important for the enthusiast deep into the genre.

I dunno about American Truck sim. Personally I’ve driven across most of the US. I don’t find the appeal as strong as I do for ETS. Admittedly it is a bit of the digital tourism, but it is also because I dread driving across Nebraska. Driving across Nebraska was basically my penance for going skiing in Colorado.

Nebraska is at least green (granted, not so much in winter if you’re going skiing). The eastern half of Colorado from the border clear to the airport is barren wasteland. And warnings about picking up hitchhikers because of all the federal prisons around. Easy to forget, when most people think of Colorado as the area between Boulder and Colorado Springs, and the airport and the mountains. Amazingly tiny section of the state as a whole. :)

Are they buying the Truck equivalent of a HOTAS? I don’t know if I’d be wanting to do all the shifting!

Unfortunately, decent PC wheels are really expensive. I don’t play racing games seriously enough to justify one.

I jumped around through the video and it looks like the driver stuck with routes and small towns in the Central Valley which was nice but I’d really like to see how it models the bigger cities especially LA and San Francisco.

If it’s anything like ETS 2 (and it certainly seems that way), it won’t. Or rather, it will have a landmark or two and that’s it. The cities are tiny (like six blocks), and they don’t make any attempt at verisimillitude, other than architectural style.

I play ETS2 with my G25 and TrackIR. It really is pretty awesome with full clutch and full range gears (in as much as they can simulate it with a 6 speed stick controller). I always found driving with controller a little more twitchy, but that could be just me not tweaking sensitivity enough to my liking.

I try to only use an external camera view to line up before reversing using the top view, then is is all internal view, mirrors and leaning out the window.

I won’t be getting this one.

I drove “over the road” for two and half years.

Looks too much like work. (I guess that’s a good thing?)

The city screenshot at the top of the thread in Nick’s post looks like a pretty dense urban environment. It seems – seems! – to imply they’ll be doing a better job modeling urban sprawl. Fingers crossed. I’ve been spoiled by The Crew’s version of a driveable America.

-Tom

I use an old Logitech Momo racing wheel in ETS 2. The steering ratio is much quicker than in a real truck, not so much that it’s hard to control though. I tried using the paddle shifters for a while, but eventually decided to let the truck handle the shifting duties. There are real trucks with automatic gearboxes, so technically it’s realistic, but mainly I didn’t really enjoy the extra workload while driving (which is odd, because my car has a manual transmission). Also, the progressive automatic option was using approximately the same shift points that I did when I was shifting for myself, so I didn’t gain much benefit from the manual gearbox.

Depends on your definition of decent, of course. You can get a fairly good Logitech wheel for $100, and while it won’t be as hardcore as a more upscale model with all the bells and whistles, it’ll be infinitely more satisfying for racing (in this case, driving!) games than an xbox gamepad / mouse+keyboard. Unless you’re really hard up on cash (not the usual for an avid PC gamer) there are more valid excuses for not having a wheel, like not cluttering up your gaming space, or more likely (as in my case), your wife doesn’t want “her” living space occupied by big black hunks of plastic.

Big rigs! The open road! Truck stop floozies!

They’re called ‘lot lizards.’ I only know this because I encountered one in the parking lot of the freight company where I used to work.

The Bates Motel even!
They need to do something cool with that.

I’m all for the romance of the open road, but, as an American who recently spent some time driving in Europe, I don’t see how the challenge is going to be the same. :P

As an American who has driven most of the continent, and is about to drive through Europe, I don’t see how this would be nearly as interesting.

Seriously, driving through Nebraska is like paying my fun tax for going to Colorado.

That’s the challenge! It’s like Desert Bus, but much better looking.

Or… I’ll just buy the Scandinavia expansion and play that instead.

The big question is how much are they scaling? If they do the same level of scaling as they did for ETS then you almost need to start on the east coast, Chicago, or California. The US is big, and getting started in Omaha would be dreadful, especially with starting the shorter run limits.

For now I’ll trust the devs to make a good game of it, and not make a hardcore simulation of driving on the interstate roads across Arizona or Kansas.