American Truck Simulator and its older sibling, European Truck Simulator

Put your hand on the bottom of the wheel, look over your shoulder, and turn the wheel where you want the trailer to go. (You will have to catch it by turning the wheel the other way, as Papageno implies, but that trick at least gets the trailer moving the right way first.)

I use the external camera to help line up the trailer.

Parking is supposed to be a fun challenge. If you don’t enjoy it, then don’t do it. The extra bit of xp isn’t worth the frustration.

Picked this up over the weekend, and I am kind of addicted to it. It’s a super chill comfort food gaming experience. I got the PNW pack and I am pretty impressed driving around Washington. Took I-90 Seattle to Spokane, which I’ve done in reality way too many times, and it’s so impressive how they’ve captured the scenery but all tightly compressed. If only I could do the real drive in 20 minutes.

Kind of funny how great the driving experience is, but how low-rent the controller setup and menus are. Getting my Xbox One controller working with it when I have several other controllers detected was a bit of a PITA.

I wish the new Microsoft Flight Sim would do something like this. I know there’s always been passenger and cargo add-ons, but they never feel particularly integrated into the experience.

A few questions:

Once you’ve got your own truck, does your location persist? I like being able to take a delivery from my last location, but the game just leaves it to you to remember where you left off.

Is there some detailed settings for traffic violations that I am missing? I saw one checkbox in settings, which is checked. I’m surprised I’ve only been dinged for running one red light light the entire time (no speeding violations).

Any tips for improving anti-aliasing beyond just maxing it out in the game’s settings?

Yes

Speeding in this game, unlike ETS, is generally only enforced when there’s a cop car nearby (also sometimes on bridges).

Oversampling. But, yeah, it’s a pretty jaggy engine.

Hauling in Idaho be wack (as the kids say?) in a way that I don’t recall from other states in ATS. As in, hauling triples and the route involves 135 degree turns on two-lane roads. There doesn’t appear to be a lot of alternate routes, either. Tons more “XXXXXXX” no pass side roads than I’m used to. And who puts a plain-ass stop sign in the middle of a long-ass straight stretch where the speed limit is 65?! “Cross traffic does not stop.” Bleh.

But maybe that’s all normal? I admit I spend a lot more time with ETS2.

I liked going around in Idaho, though delivering to one city (Salmon, I think?) is quite difficult because of all the mountains in the way.

Otherwise, I liked what I saw, but indeed some of the tight turns could be hard on normal loads, much more so on triples. But look at that as a new challenge! ;)

True of some cities like the one I mentioned, but not quite so true with at least half of them. Idaho is not the only state with that problem in ATS, but since most of the cities with this alternate route problem are close to yet non-implemented states, I suppose that will get “solved” as more states are added.

Is that a fact?

And here I was following the speed limit like a sucker. This game just got a whole lot more interesting!

I always respect speed limits. In the game and in real life.

Heh, that is quite a bit different. I started recently driving ETS2 and haven’t messed with ATS yet. That’d make for a big difference in game play. My first few drives in ETS2 were super expensive due to all sorts of violations (speeding, running red lights, not using lights, not sleeping).

I found that turning on the voice navigation in the settings helped a ton with that, though. The voice usually warns you about speeding a few seconds before you’re fined, so that leaves me enough time to slow down. I suppose that doesn’t work the same way in ATS, then.

Now we just need all 50 states so we can get some Cannonball Run competition going.

Ohhh…can’t wait for the Nebraska DLC. 400 miles of corn fields on straight flat roads.

Are there mods for ATS that expand the map like ProMods in Europe? Like, is that possible right now?

I’m excited for the Rhode Island DLC. Bargain priced at $0.39.

ETS2 has speed cameras in addition to police cars. There seem to be much fewer cameras now than there used to be, and generally there will be a sign notifying you that a speed camera is ahead.

My understanding is there are map mods that will let you drive coast to coast, but they are of poor quality. There is a ProMods team working on Canada though.

That is 100 percent the Idaho driving experience. The bottom half of the state is desert and valley, with long, mostly straight stretches. The top half, being so skinny, is basically just one two-lane highway doing its best to get through miles and miles of mountains.

It nails the (sometimes frustrating) feel of mountain driving, though.

Coeur d’Alene sure is beautiful though.

I lived there as a kid back in '81-82. It was far more beautiful then (before Hagadone, the Inland Empire’s own Trump, ruined it).

There’s one long stretch in the mountains that’s no passing for pretty much the entire thing. I seem to get stuck behind a line with a slow-ass dump truck at the head every time. Definitely nails the frustration!

Granted, I use an AI mod for the traffic that might have something to do with it.

Oh that looks interesting, gonna check that out. Thanks for sharing.

While that one is fun, there’s actually two other mods that I find spectacularly useful and nearly indispensable:

Top Corner F2 Mirrors - moves the mirror insets aaaallll the way into the corners
minimal adviser interface for ATS & ETS2 - top bar version - changes the advisor info pane to a little bar; there’s also a version that puts the bar at the bottom

I only use mods that are available for both games, so I run a fairly mod-light load.