Living in Oregon I can firmly say that without a proper 101 PCH representation, Oregon is absolutely the best drive in real life.
The PCH from San Francisco to Crescent City, however, is the most amazing drive ever. Especially once you get into the further north and hit the redwoods. Towering redwoods on one side, a cliff dropping to the ocean on the other, and basalt uplift columns dotting the surf.
Another new truck inbound it seems:
Just so everyone knows know that the next-gen VR headsets have dropped, ATS has a beta VR mode that is just awesome. I just did three deliveries in a row. Never did that before.
Wyoming confirmed to be the next stately destination being added to the game. Looks like it could be “a bit of a looker” as a locale too based on the in-development screenshots being shown off in the announcement.
Wyoming is… interesting. Much of the central state, especially along I-80, is a high plateau. From Laramie to Rock Springs is basically scrublands. But there are some incredible sites. The drive from Rock Springs into Salt Lake is genuinely one of the coolest drives out there, as you drop dow. A canyon rolling through the red rocks. The northwest has Yellowstone.
That said for ATS it would be a pretty thin map on content. There just isn’t a lot going on in the state.
I lived most of my adult life in Cheyenne and drove through the state many of times. Much of it is beautiful, but a good portion of it isn’t much better than Nebraska. Hopefully it’s realistic and every winter they close I80 through Laramie and have trucks backed up for miles.
So probably ideal for shaking out the bugs in their new lighting system! :)
(I keed. ETS2’s Iberia will apparently be their first DLC with the new system start to finish.)
I can’t imagine why they don’t do Texas. There’s so much diversity in the state, with deserts out west and coastland to the east. Lots of cities too.
I, too, wish the expansions were larger than a single state. Although I haven’t compared map size between the single-state ATS and the regional ETS2 maps. I assume they’re comparable. Maybe we’ll get multi-state DLC as they hit the smaller Eastern states. (Fingers crossed.)
I think you answered your own question.
As you go further east, and states get more loaded with “stuff,” it’s more likely we’ll see half-state, or county-by-county releases. “Introducing Upstate New York DLC!”
It’s not hard to simulate a huge plot of empty land. It is hard to simulate a tiny patch of incredibly dense, overdeveloped metropolis.
I’m looking forward to the Rhode Island DLC. In real life it takes an hour to drive through it. So that’d be about 3 minutes of game time.
I think region “packs” instead of single states as the game goes East is a given. That’s how they managed smaller countries in ETS2 - “packing” them in a single DLC.
I don’t see much chance of them reaching the East Coast, to be honest, but yeah I imagine they’re not going to do two Dakota DLCs, say.
I mean there are some states that work better as packs. Wyoming, from a driving standpoint, should have very few roads in it. At the level of fidelity they’re giving other states you’d have 80 crossing the south, 25 running along the eastern end, 90 ending at 25 a little ways into the state, and you would probably add routes 191 and 26 to connect to Yellowstone. And even then you are probably modeling the highest % of buildings of any state so far.
As for packs, you’d probably see Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma combine. As few people as Wyoming has, it does have a lot of cool scenery and unique modeling as seen with the Devils Tower in the screenshots. The central plains states have… nothing. You could model the terrain in a days work, and have time to spare. It’s flat flat flat, and nothing interesting. I’d pay more for a Rhode Island, small as it is, than those 3 states combined. It’d take them longer to make too.
But once Wyoming is done, Montana is the only real challenge and unique state left until you get to the Great Lakes and Appalachian mountains
I want Alaska along with real seasons.
Some square mileage data…
Colorado: 104k
Utah: 85k
Idaho: 83k
Portugal & Spain (ETS2): 230k
I’m not sure how they’ve scaled the two games geographically compared to real life outside of that in ETS2 on the highways, it’s roughly 3 minutes to travel 1 hour in game (19 to 1, but England I think is 16 to 1). ATS appears to be the same 19 to 1.
If all that holds up the upcoming Iberia DLC in ETS2 will be roughly 2-3 times larger than the state DLCs
I think ATS has less compression than ETS2 overall. Even if it doesn’t, the “feel” of its areas (compared to ETS2) is IMHO generally a lot better.
I rarely boot ETS2 these days. When I have the truck itch I go to ATS every single time.
I’m curious why that is? What is different about the feel that is better for you?
It could be that the longer hauls give more chance for that ‘flow’ state to set in. Which would have less to do with compression, than the sparseness of some places. People don’t adequately realize how empty some places, especially in the intermountain west, are in the US. Most western states have some completely empty counties. The whole of the Oregon coast has less people than just the town I live in, plus the town next door. Nevada is almost completely Las Vegas and the surrounding, with the affectionately called ‘loneliest road on earth’ running through the geographic center.
Europe doesn’t have anywhere that compares to the vast stretches of land found in many parts of the US. There are 11 states that have lower overall population density than mainland Europe’s least dense (excluding Iceland since its not in the game, and probably never will be). But Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, and North and South Dakota all fall lower than Iceland still, and another 6 lower than Norway. And Nevada, if you exclude Vegas and Clark County (which is roughly 74% of Nevada’s population) has a density of 7.9 people per square mile, almost all of that in Reno and Carson City.
Nevada is crazy empty.
Anyhow, I’d be curious what is the difference for you, and if my speculation is correct, or if I am way off base. Having done real life driving trips in large portions of both maps, it is striking to me how the travel difference feels in Europe. There is less of the type of vast swaths of nothing, and in Europe I never felt more than 20 minutes away from a decent sized town/ city. That is definitely not the case in the western US (though the east coast might feel more like that from DC to Boston)
