SCS Blog

With Idaho's release just around the corner and with lots of testing, feedback, fixing and fine-tuning, we are excited to announce the arrival of update the 1.38 for American Truck Simulator! We'd like to thank all those who took part in your bug reports, opinions, and general feedback. We hope you can now begin to fully enjoy the various new features which are included within this update. So, what can you expect to find in the 1.38 update ATS? Lets us give you a quick recap of the most significant changes. First off, the city of Las Vegas has received a major revamp, which includes new road networks, updates to existing interstate junctions, more detailed scenery, and the inclusion of newer vegetation, terrain textures, and much more! You can find a more in-depth blog post on the subject which showcases many of the changes found in and around the city. But the best way to see it all is to see the city for yourself! So be sure to make that trip to Nevada and let us know what you think through our social media channels. Las Vegas isn't the only part of the American Truck Simulator world to receive an update in 1.38, one of the more noticeable changes are to Truckstops. One of the first changes you will notice at Truckstops in ATS is that fuel stations now have lanes with appropriate width for trucks to pull up and refuel in. We have also implemented (where possible) guidance lines to help drivers line up their trucks to avoid damaging their vehicles upon entry and exit. Plus there is a completely new truck stop placed on the US-111 road now! We are also excited to introduce the inclusion of a computer graphics technique for efficiently approximating ambient occlusion effects in real-time. Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, better known in its shorter form SSAO, creates shadows in the areas where objects connect, to give it a more natural and believable look in terms of lighting and shadows. Less powerful GPUs may struggle to keep up at full quality, and with 400% or similarly high scaling selected, even mid-range machines would feel the impact on fps. If you are not happy with framerate after this update, please open the advanced graphics options in the game and try to find the right combination of scaling and SSAO quality for you. With a weaker GPU, it may be advisable to switch off SSAO completely. This new feature can be better explained by one of our senior programmers, be sure to read a more in-depth post about the topic at our Under the Hood blog post here We are also excited to introduce a long-requested update to the RGB Color Picker which drivers use to paint their trucks when purchasing or tuning their truck. You now have the option to input specific color inputs (HSV, RGB, and HEX). We know that many drivers like to match their truck colors the same across their whole fleet, so we hope this feature is useful to you. There is much more packed into this update! If you would like a more in-depth read of other features included in this update, take a read of our previous blogpost for the 1.38 Open Beta. MAPLas Vegas city revamped (I-515/I-11 interstate bypass + the whole city switched to the template road system)US-191 road implementedUT-56 road implemented + reskin of a little stretch of US-93 around Panaca settlementCA-111 - new truckstop addedEl Centro revampedNew company in Logan, UT (Plaster & Sons)Reworked all truck stop gas pumps to be more realistic. More realistic dimensions and the logic of how they workNM Shiprock redesigned + piece of US-491Various map fixes VEHICLES Automatic transmission improved (shifting points, adaptive modes)Las Vegas: New ambulance and fire trucksFixed steering deadzone FEATURES Visual improvement - procedural ambient occlusion generation (SSAO)Route Advisor redesignedNavigation ETA to the next waypoint in route advisor and in world mapTobii eye-tracking presetsRGB color picker redesigned Added RGB, HSV and HEX inputsPredefined color presetsSOUND Update to FMOD 2.01.01Fixed the retarder sound when the engine is offAI - exclusion of gear-shifts for trains and electric vehicles To enjoy the 1.38 update, make sure to OPT OUT of beta branches and your game will be automatically updated on Steam. Some mods, however, may have not caught up yet - this update may effectively break them. So remember that you can always stay on 1.37 or an even older branch. The way to access and select them is: Steam client → LIBRARY → right-click on American Truck Simulator → Properties → Betas tab → select the version you want. View the full article

From narrow streets to old churches and impressive castles, Iberia is home to numerous historic villages and towns. No matter where you are traveling across the peninsula, you'll be sure to see a wide array of different architecture. In our upcoming DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2, our teams have researched and created new buildings and assets to best represent the most commonly found architectural designs in Iberia. While it is indeed difficult to write about all of the villages and architectural history found across the peninsula, there are many common designs you can spot when you are driving in Iberia. Namely, the orange terracotta roofs are found on most villas, houses, and buildings; which have been created from the abundance of clay extracted from quarries in the local region. The most common type of design of buildings is designed with white walls, stone floors, and windows with shutters to help keep out the heat. However, not everything about Iberia is native. From Spanish Colonial (a combination of Native American and Moorish influences) to Neoclassical architecture, it is evident to see influences from around the world found in many of Spain and Portugal's buildings and landmarks. So, don't forget to slow down and take a moment to enjoy the history and beautiful architectural design that can be found across both Spain and Portugal. Taking a Siesta in the sun? Then don't forget to take a moment to add Iberia for Euro Truck Simulator 2 to your Steam Wishlist! It really helps supports us and our upcoming releases. Plus you can also visit our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as you can find exclusive screenshots there! No lo lamentará ;) View the full article

With the final touches being made to the Idaho DLC, we are excited to announce a release date for this spudtacular addition to American Truck Simulator. Idaho will be released on the 16th of July 2020! We are excited to be able to let drivers explore Idaho for themselves very soon. We hope this short video trailer will keep you content until next week. If that wasn't enough to get you excited, we also have a gallery of some of the best screenshots from Idaho that have been featured in our previous blog posts along with a few new exclusive photos too. Let us know which one is your favorite in the comments! With Idaho just around the corner, we wanted to also bring something that drivers in American Truck Simulator can take part in. So you all can expect a very nice World of Trucks in-game event coming live with the release of this map expansion! But more info about that later next week! We can't for wait for you to visit Idaho! If you haven't already, make sure to add Idaho to your Steam wishlist! We thank you for your support and we look forward to welcoming you across the state border very soon. View the full article

Since the start of the 1.38 Open Beta for Euro Truck Simulator 2, our team has been hard at work in making various changes, improvements, and fixing bugs as reported by our community. Just like previous versions, you may find that the Open Beta branch of ETS2 has been updated multiple times during testing, to allow for any fixes to be re-tested. Sometimes, however, we include new additions that may have not made it in the first initial release. Today, we are focusing on an update that was made recently to the ETS2 1.38 Open Beta. It includes a feature requested by the community for a long time, for more realism when it comes to the placement of roof air horns. Way back when the game was released, we did not include any specific attachment points for roof horns on the truck models. Truck tuning options were much more limited than where we are now, and it's time to take care of another little debt. Placing the air horns on a roof bar, which was the only option until recently, really isn't that typical in reality. To reflect actual truck setups properly, our vehicle team has added new "pins" on truck cabins that are specific for air horns. We did our best with the research to make sure their locations are chosen on proper references, mostly on factory defaults, of course, but also taking into account what we could find in tuning photos from truck festivals. This isn't the only change however, as we also have included new horn models to better reflect the reality of the design of air horns that you will find often on trucks across Europe. So while we continue to work on the 1.38 update, we hope you will enjoy this new addition for your trucks. If you do take any screenshots from the Open Beta, make sure to share with us on our Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, as we would love to see them!View the full article

Ever wanted to take a moment to look at a historical landmark or a scenic view while on the job, but felt that the pressure of delivering the cargo on time, or the concern for safety on the road, just do not make it possible? Our artists and map designers put a lot of effort into making our game world as beautiful as they can, but often, a location that they may have spent months of time creating will be driven through in a matter of seconds without the player having a chance to admire it. There have always been many players keen to explore the world to the fullest, searching for cool places to see, but until now, the game did not offer any tool or incentive for sightseeing. With the release of the new Idaho DLC, we are experimenting with a new feature that will allow you to take a while to relax and enjoy a nice view of natural or artificial landmarks, or perhaps settlements or industries that are of interest in the given region. In the area of Idaho DLC, drivers will be able to find several such places and activate a special in-game "cutscene" with a short showcase of a nearby place of interest. The locations include sites of economical and historical importance, such as the capital city of Boise. The spots are identified by a new film-camera 3D green icon visible in the world, which also appears on your GPS route advisor as a purple star. At the moment, we still consider the new feature an experiment. If the reception is positive, we are thinking of expanding it further, not just to more cool locations across the whole game world, but also to make it more feature-rich, and a more integrated gameplay element. We are thinking of expanding it with descriptions and more detailed facts on why the place is interesting and important, providing a light education element. We may also consider creating a log of visited places, giving the player a chance to re-play the cut scenes of visited places as a reminder of their travels. If you have any additional ideas on how to get more fun out of the feature for players, we'd like to hear them! We hope you will enjoy this brand new addition arriving in Idaho for American Truck Simulator. If you are excited to visit this new state, make sure you have added it to your Steam Wishlist. If you have done so already, thank you! This really supports us and our upcoming releases. View the full article

We love any opportunity to cement our relations with truck manufacturers, especially if it means that we can bring new exclusive content for our #BestCommunityEver. So when DAF Trucks contacted us with an excellent idea to add their recently released Unity Edition paints for DAF XF trucks to the world of Euro Truck Simulator 2, we jumped right on board and started working on it. Today is the day when we are ready to share the results with you. Get ready to spice up your Super Space Cab DAF XF with one of the fourteen new paint jobs - each of them related to one of the following 14 countries - Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey, Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Spain, Portugal, France, Hungary, Italy, Austria, and Russia. Because these in-game paint jobs reflect the unique customization to the specific DAF XF cab just as for DAF Trucks' customers in the real world, we've decided to add them to the XF Tuning Pack as a free update for this DLC. Existing owners of this expansion will receive these new country-based designs for the DAF XF Super Space Cab as additional free content via an automatic update. As we also wanted to make a bit of a splash about this new content, and show our friends at DAF Trucks how engaged the truck sim community is, together we came up with a special cross-promotional "treasure hunt" mini-event across the web and social media. We are starting a giveaway campaign with 10,000 XF Tuning Pack DLC Steam keys. If you are ready to learn more about DAF and DAF XF Unity, the little Gleam.io widget below gives you access to the Steam key treasure hunt. It's very easy, just follow the instructions in the special giveaway window below, complete the required steps, choose a few more or all of the optional tasks, and the key is yours! To make it impossible for any codes-stealing bots, we have created a mandatory Treasure Code task as a kind of "I'm not a robot captcha" challenge. This should be simple to crack for our human players. We've created a few special screenshots which we have placed across the social media profiles of DAF Trucks N.V. (here and here) and SCS Software (here). These screenshots are showing some of the DAF Unity Edition paint jobs, but if you look closer, you will find three parts of the Treasure Code. Combine them, input them into the system on the "Enter Treasure Code" line, and it's done. DAF XF Unity Edition Campaign If you are a fan of DAF Trucks, are interested in real truck news, or simply want to help us improve our position in the eyes of the transportation industry, consider hitting the Follow button when visiting the social media profiles for DAF Trucks N.V. When pitching our games to prospective licensing partners, it is always useful to be able to prove that there is a sizable overlap between our player base and their customers. Once you get your hands on these new paint jobs, make sure to take a screenshot of your new DAF XF truck in ETS2 and share it with the world! If you show us your screenshots and tag them with SCS Software's and DAF Trucks N.V.'s social media profiles under the #DAFUnityEdition hashtag, you have a chance to win some free merch! Our friends at DAF Trucks kindly sent us a few nice original DAF Trucks merchandise items to give away, and we are looking forward to rewarding the author of the best DAF Unity Edition screenshot! We will be monitoring all social media.View the full article

Today we'd like to explain a new graphical feature that we are introducing to our games with update 1.38. The article is very technical - we have asked our programmers to help out, and the explanation is quite complex. However, we felt that it may actually be interesting for at least some of the people in our audience to be exposed to this material - to see that what is happening under the hood of a game engine involves a lot of research and hard work of our programming team. In addition to the technical details, we thought that providing the context and explaining the performance trade-offs may be useful and important for most of the players. Jaroslav a.k.a.Cim (one of our brave and skilled programmers working on graphics improvements) The TLDR summary of the text below is that Screen Space Ambient Occlusion is a cool new but performance-heavy technique to enrich the rendering of our game world. You do not have to use it if you feel it lowers performance too much for your liking, or you may like it and can afford to trade a few frames per second for improved shadow and depth perception. The effect may be subtle, it mostly works on subconsciousness level, but once you get used to it, it may be hard to go back. It is another milestone in our lighting/shadowing improvements plan that we are now executing, to be followed by new HDR light processing and introduction of more normal-mapped surfaces in upcoming updates. The technique has its limitations and quirks. It has been used by several AAA games in recent years, and even if it's not perfect, it helps the human perception system to understand the scene better, and we hope that adding it to the technology mix of our truck sims is beneficial. We will no doubt want to introduce additional ways of shadowing computation that will improve or even supersede it. We are under constant pressure to improve the looks of our game by a vocal subset of our fan base. At the same time, there is always a desire to make the games run faster. On top of these sometimes competing requests coming from the playerbase, our very own art department is ever eager to get hold of new graphical toys to make our game richer and better. Whenever we introduce a new graphical feature into the game, we try to do it in a way that doesn't hurt the performance for players with older computers, we don't want to make the game incompatible for our existing customers. That's why there is an option to switch SSAO off completely, and several settings for its quality/performance. The work of our programmers on the new SSAO/HBAO techniques also required changes to our art and art creation pipeline. All the 3D models in our games had to be revisited by the art department, and any instances, where any fake shadows and darkening were already applied to a model by an artist, were changed. For some more complex game models, this was a simplification that actually reduced the number of triangles in them enough to improve rendering performance. To some extent, we have traded a part of tentative future manual effort that would be needed for building individual good-looking 3D models for an algorithmic rendering pass that unifies the shadowing look for the whole scene, helping to "root" objects like buildings, lamp-posts, and vegetation to the terrain. What SSAO stands for and how it works Before we start - note that SSAO is a general acronym for "screen space ambient occlusion". The name encompasses all of the various ambient occlusion (AO) techniques and their variants that work in screen space (it means that they obtain all information at runtime from data that are rendered on the computer screen and into related memory buffers). There is SSAO (Crytech 2007 tech that basically gave a general name to all techniques), MSSAO, HBAO, HDAO, GTAO, and many more other techniques each using differently tuned approaches, each having its benefits and downsides. We have based our approach on a horizon-based technique called GTAO that was introduced in a 2016 paper by Activision. The ambient occlusion (AO) name part means that we evaluate how much of incoming light (predominantly sky light, but sometimes the computed occlusion gets applied also to other lights) gets occluded at a particular place in the game world. Imagine that you are standing on flat ground - you would see the whole sky above, so there is 0% occlusion, the ground gets fully lit by the sky. Now imagine that you are at the bottom of a well - you would see only a small patch of sky, that means sky gets occluded almost 100% and contributes only a little to the ambient lighting in that well, and naturally it is quite dark at the bottom of the well. A specific level of ambient occlusion at a particular place affects lighting computations and creates shadowed areas in creases, holes, and other 'complex' places. It can get anywhere between 0% and 100% based on their surroundings. Computing the occlusion in high detail and precision is resource-intensive; basically, you would need to shoot rays from any evaluated position in all directions and test whether they hit the sky or not, and then average the result. The more rays you shoot, the better information you get but at a greater computation cost. This process could be possibly processed off-line, like when the game map gets saved by its designer. Some games and engines use this approach. But that way you are only able to bake ambient occlusion information about static non-moving objects because there are no vehicles, no animated objects present at that time. So instead of baking static information (which would also take a lot of time and storage space given the scale of our world map), we want to compute it on the fly, in run-time. That way we can compute it also for interaction with vehicles, opening bridges, animated objects, and so on. There is a catch though. For such a computation approach, we only have data that are visible on the screen (recall "screen space"), so once some part of the game world gets out of the visible frame, it can't be used for occlusion evaluation. This limitation creates various artifacts such as disappearing occlusion on a wall originally caused by an object that just got behind the edge of the screen and thus became invisible not just for you but also for the algorithm, so it ceased to contribute to occlusion computation. Ok, now we know what to evaluate (ambient occlusion) and we know what data we have (what we see on screen). What do we do? Well, for each pixel on the screen (that is 2 million pixels in HD resolution, times four(!) in 400% scaling!) our shader code needs to query the z-buffer value of its surrounding pixels trying to get a notion of the geometric shape of the area surrounding it. We can do only a limited number of these "taps" as there is a steeply increasing performance cost with increasing tap count, this is an operation that is really taxing the 3D accelerator. The limit on the number of taps, in turn, affects the ambient occlusion precision (and in certain situations may create inaccuracies and banding). Imagine that you want to evaluate your surroundings on a 2-meter straight line, and are willing to spend 8 taps to approximate it. You query the line every 25 centimeters, and any detail smaller than that may happen to be totally unnoticed unless you are lucky and hit it spot on (or unlucky, because you may miss it the next frame so the surroundings would suddenly appear to change between frames and cause flickering). The further your algorithm probes, the less precise it is. So you need to limit the size of an area you analyze around each game pixel which in turn limits how far the AO 'sees' - that is why it is not suitable for computing occlusion in large spaces like under bridge arches. We have mentioned that the technique of our choosing is horizon-based. This means that we are not probing the environment by shooting rays in the 3D world, instead, we analyze a hemisphere above/around each pixel to see how far it opens up until it is blocked, how much light is let in by the surrounding geometry using the z-buffer as our proxy. The hemisphere is actually approximated by several runs along a line rotated around the given pixel. If we can follow along this hemisphere in full, there is no occlusion. If the algorithm taps a value in the z-buffer that would block incoming light, it defines the level of occlusion. The algorithm is optimized for performance but its limitation is that once it hits anything, even possibly a small object, it stops probing any further. This may cause an "over occlusion" problem and may be spotted as a visual artifact when some relatively thin object such as a traffic sign post causes strong occlusion on a nearby wall. You can try to detect such small objects and skip them, which in turn may produce "under occlusion" on thin ledges. We have opted for the former. There is also another interesting and useful property of horizon based techniques. Depending on how much of a hemisphere above a given pixel is occluded, you can compute the direction that is least occluded. The amount of occlusion can be thought of as an ice cream cone with varying apex angle oriented in that direction. This direction is called a "bent normal" and we use it for various light computations like for occluding a reflection on shiny surfaces. The idea is that if you look at the surface and the mirror-reflected direction gets out of this cone, we consider it (at least partially) occluded, tuning down the reflection intensity. The best way to see that effect is to look at bigger and round chrome parts, like the diesel tanks, with SSAO on and off. So you see, the idea is not that hard, for an expert graphics programmer anyway ;), but there is a lot of computation involved, putting quite some strain on the 3D accelerator. So we have created several performance profiles, each using a mix of optimization techniques:Using less taps per direction - it is faster but lets AO miss bigger objects than with finer sampling.Reprojecting AO results from the previous frame - it lets us hide the artifacts from undersampling, but may create ghosting when reprojection fails (when what you see between frames changes a lot).Rendering in half-resolution - reduces the number of computations to 1/4 but creates less fine AO - the result may be slightly blurry shadowingWe hope that all this info was interesting and useful for you. We're sending you a virtual high-five if you read this article to this point. You deserve a cookie and a big cup of hot chocolate! If you still want to get more details about this topic, feel free to check for example this link. Thank you for your time and support and we will see you again at some of the next articles from the "Under the Hood" section we bring for our #BestCommunityEver from time to time.View the full article

Colorado boasts having some of the best wildernesses and mountain ranges in the United States, and from our previous research trip, it's easy to see why. However, while drivers are enjoying the scenery, we need to remember the reason for our journey! Let's take a closer look at some of the new key industries that will be arriving in our upcoming Colorado DLC for American Truck Simulator. Being a state that promotes its natural beauty, Colorado is always looking at ways of using clean-energy to protect the environment. One of the many investments the state has made is into using windpower as a main source of energy. In fact, Colorado has one of the largest wind farms in the nation, with over 400 wind turbines generating enough power for 90,000 homes! So it's no surprise that Colorado is home to the number one wind turbine company in the USA, with a highly trained workforce that builds more towers than any other facility in the world. With unique parts and equipment always on the move from the factory to wind farms across the states, we hope you will be a BIG fan of this industry. Wind turbines might not cool you down on a hot day, but a cold bottle of soda will! Colorado is also home to a variety of bottling plants, each producing and distributing an assortment of different beverages which drivers can deliver to locations across the states. Trucking isn't the only form of transportation to handle logistics however, on any given day more than 2,000 cargo flights are in the skies above America. Denver International Airport is the 20th-busiest airport and sees millions of passengers, packages, mail, and more, pass through its terminals and hubs every year. Drivers will play an important role in the transport of cargo to and from the airport, and with new arrivals everyday, you never know what you might be hauling next! We are excited for you to check out these new industries in the future, but until then, if you like what you see, make sure to add Colorado to your Steam Wishlist! You can also check out our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook profiles for more exclusive pictures. View the full article

From wide open roads to larger sized trucks, everything in the American Truck Simulator world does appear to be a little bigger when compared with its European counterpart. However, one thing that does stay consistently large no matter where you are, is the size of our Special Transport loads! In the upcoming state of Idaho for American Truck Simulator, owners of the Special Transport DLC will have 3 new routes to drive with the assistance of local law enforcement and escort vehicles. These routes are: Boise to Grangeville Idaho Falls to the Challis (near Salmon City) Twin Falls to Nampa Each journey will come with its own challenges. So make sure to adhere to the GPS advisor and speed limit which have been set-out for you before your departure, as there is no room for mistakes! If you are not an owner of the Special Transport DLC, be sure to pick it up whilst the Steam Summer Sale is still ongoing. You can find a wide range of our products from both our ETS2 & ATS catalog at a discounted price. Also, if your excitement for Idaho is BIGGER than these loads, make sure to add it your Steam Wishlist! We thank you for your continued support and we can't wait for you to drive the roads of Idaho for yourself. View the full article

Ever wondered what it is like to walk around the moon? dream no further! Today, we are taking a closer look at one of Idaho's National Parks that is famous for its volcanic history and moon-like landscape. So how did this part of Idaho become so alien like? Between 2,000 and 15,000 years ago, the area now known as the 'Craters of the Moon National Monument' was formed during eight major eruptive periods, in which lava erupted from the Great Rift, a series of deep cracks that start near the current visitor center and stretches 52 miles. Since its last eruption, the lava has cooled to form an unusual terrain with volcanic rocks, lava flows and rich dark soil. This desolate, yet sublime landscape is also known for its connection with space. The Craters of the Moon National Monument allows visitors to explore a moon-like surface without ever leaving Earth. In fact it's so close to the real deal that in 1969, NASA sent some of it's best-known astronauts to prepare and receive training for their future Apollo lunar mission. Unfortunately drivers of American Truck Simulator wont be able to drive on the moon anytime soon, however; you will be able to get close to the experience in our upcoming Idaho DLC in which we are proud to feature and preserve this unique american national monument virtually! Also as a bonus for today's blog, we are excited to share with you some exclusive gameplay footage from Idaho! Join us for a ride as we drive between Boise to Grangeville for a preview of what Idaho state has to offer. Take a watch of it at our official YouTube channel below. View the full article

Following up from the Announcement of the ATS 1.38 Open Beta, we are excited to offer the community a glimpse of the upcoming 1.38 version's improvements, fixes, and new functionality for Euro Truck Simulator 2. It will still take at least several weeks before the full 1.38 release; please keep in mind that this is the first raw open beta, and very much still a work-in-progress build. If you want to take it for a spin, you can help contribute by reporting any bugs you may encounter over at the appropriate section of our official forums. Your feedback and reports are extremely valuable for our team and we thank you in advance for taking the time to help us out. So, what can you expect to find in the 1.38 Open Beta for ETS2? Let's take a closer look! First off, the city of Lille has received a reskin, which includes new road networks, updates to existing junctions, more detailed scenery, and the inclusion of newer vegetation, terrain textures, and much more! Some of the main changes include updates to road junctions have been re-worked to be based on more true-to-life layouts. Road signs and roads in general have also been updated with more accurate, realistic and detailed textures. You can find a dedicated blog post on the subject which showcases many of the changes found in and around the city. But the best way to see it all is to see the city for yourself! So be sure to make that trip to Lille and let us know what you think through our social media channels. Another significant change that has been made in 1.38 is to the various truck dealerships located across Europe. Each represented truck brand now has its own unique dealership design. All dealerships locations across the Euro Truck Simulator 2 map have received a refresh, so make sure to re-discover them in-game as you drive past (trust us, it is well worth the stop!). We are also excited to introduce the inclusion of a computer graphics technique for efficiently approximating ambient occlusion effects in real-time. Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, better known in its shorter form SSAO, creates shadows in the areas where objects connect, to give it a more natural and believable look in terms of lighting and shadows. So what exactly does this feature mean for our players? To break it down as simply as possible, SSAO adds missing shadows where they should have been and improves shadowing in general. It also improves the look of glossy surfaces (such as paint and chrome). SSAO improves the driving experience and overall visual look of the game, however, this comes with an impact on performance. Technically, it is a post-processing pass on the whole rendered screen at the full internal resolution, so a lot of maths for each pixel. Less powerful GPUs may struggle to keep up at full quality, and with 400% or similarly high scaling selected, even mid-range machines will feel the impact on fps. If you are not happy with framerate after this update, please open the advanced graphics options in the game and try to find the right combination of scaling and SSAO quality for you. With a weaker GPU, it may be advisable to switch off SSAO completely. The easiest way to explain to you the benefits of using SSAO is by showing you a range of comparison images, take a look! Keep an eye or two on our blog because we plan to bring you more info about the SSAO in its own dedicated article soon! We are also excited to introduce a long-requested update to the RGB Color Picker which drivers use when purchasing or tuning their truck to paint it. You now have the option to input specific color codes (HSV, RGB, and HEX). Also, in addition to saving color presets for just a single color, the color picker now supports saving a preset for all paint job colors at once. This way a player can store and easily try out a saved color set with other paint jobs. With this feature, we have also extended number of user-defined color swatches from 8 to 40, for your coloring pleasure. We know that many drivers like to match their truck's colours across their whole fleet, so we hope this feature is useful to you. The DAF XF Tuning Pack has also received a small update which will now allow all DAF trucks chassis to be painted. We look forward to seeing how drivers will take advantage of this new customization on their DAF fleet as we know many drivers like to match their truck colours. Be sure to tag DAF Trucks and SCS Software on our social media channels with photos of your newly painted vehicles. There have also been changes made to our GPS Route Advisor, which now features a cleaner and more modern-looking UI allowing for a larger on-screen map view. That's not all however, as we also added new information for drivers using checkpoints for their journeys. Players will now be able to see useful information on their next checkpoint marker such as the distance to their next checkpoint, and their estimated time of arrival through their GPS and world map. On the subject of maps, this open beta also includes a lot of bug fixes across the whole ETS2 map. Many of these bugs were reported from players from our community, so thank you for your reports! They really do help make a difference for others to enjoy a more smooth and immersive gameplay. The FH Tuning Pack for Volvo Trucks have also received a small update based on feedback from our community. Drivers can also expect to find new tuning parts including front wheel covers, side deflectors with LEDs, stock front bumpers and rear top fenders with plastic and chrome options. We are also happy to bring 3 new Special Transport routes for drivers to take on in our latest map expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2, Road to the Black Sea. These routes are: Resita to Targu MuresIstanbul to EdirnePleven to Sofia Each journey will come with its own challenges. So make sure to adhere instructions given on the GPS advisor and the speed limit which have been set-out for you before your departure, as there is no room for mistakes! This addition will come as a free update for owners of Road to the Black Sea and Special Transport for Euro Truck Simulator 2. MAPLille re-skinUnique Truck DealershipsSpecial Transport routes in Road to the Black Sea Resita to Targu MuresIstanbul to EdirnePleven to SofiaVEHICLES Automatic transmission improved (shifting points, adaptive modes)Paintable chassis covers for XF Tuning PackFixed steering deadzoneNew tuning parts added to the FH Tuning Pack FEATURES Visual improvement - procedural ambient occlusion generation (SSAO)Route Advisor redesignedNavigation ETA to the next waypoint in route adviser and in world mapTobii eye tracking presetsRGB colorpicker redesigned Added RGB, HSV and hex inputsPredefined color presets SOUNDUpdate to FMOD 2.01.01Individual horn sounds for each truckFixed the retarder sound when the engine is offAI - exclusion of gear-shifts for trains and electric vehiclesSo enjoy all the new additions, but please remember: It's only an open beta, not a stable public version - so you may encounter bugs, instability, kinks, or crashes. It's completely okay if you want to wait for the final release. But if you're interested in helping us to move there faster, we'll appreciate all of your feedback on our forum and your bug reports in this section. Please check our modding wiki to get details pertaining to mods for the game. If you wish to participate in the open beta, you can find this version in the public_beta branch on Steam. The way to access it is as follows: Steam client → LIBRARY → right-click on Euro Truck Simulator 2 → Properties → Betas tab → public_beta → 1.38 public beta. No password required.View the full article

Next time you are cooking up a meal and you add a dash of olive oil to your pan, take a quick glance at the back of the bottle, as there is a good chance that it was produced in Iberia! Spain is renowned for producing some of the best olives in the world, which are then used for both for making olive oil and for eating as delicious table olives. In fact, Spain produces about half the world's total olive oil, of which about 46% is exported, making them the world's leading olive oil producer and exporter. But how did olives become so prevalent and popular? The first olive trees were brought to Spain over 3,000 years ago by the traveling Phoenicians, the same people who supplied the country with its first grapes! Since then, the Olive industry has boomed with more than 350 million olives being grown each year on 250 different variants of olive trees. So it will come as no surprise that truckers in Iberia play an important role in helping export products of olive-oil and equipment for farmers who work on the vineyards across the region. So whether you are a fan of olives or not, we hope you will take the time to visit and be a part of this world famous industry. We are sure there will be plenty of work available for drivers to deliver this delicate and delicious cargo! Are you excited for Iberia? Then be sure to add it to your Steam Wishlist! You can also check out our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook profiles for more exclusive pictures. View the full article

The #OperationGenoaBridge event is a success and we couldn't be more proud of our community! This task was by no means small, yet drivers from around the world united in Euro Truck Simulator 2 to help complete a new state of the art bridge in Italy. With beacons ablaze and goal in mind, you set out on June 4th to deliver materials, fuel, and construction vehicles back and forth from each of the west and east depots. Just 24 hours after the event started, you had already reached 200,000 deliveries, and 72 hours after that, our community had smashed through the halfway mark of 500,000! However, putting together this event was by no means an easy task. From creating cut scenes, special companies for the event to finding a road network solution that allowed everyone to take part; this was one of the more technically challenging events our team has created. We were very happy to learn that you really enjoyed the extra effort and detail that went into this event, especially the cut-scenes and the way the bridge was lit up at night in the colors of the Italian flag. You also flooded our social media channels with many pictures & videos, with hundreds upon hundreds of posts on Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #OperationGenoaBridge. It was great to see virtual trucking companies, streamers, and truckers from around the world participate in completing this event. Drivers who took part in TruckersMP were among some of the more patient truckers, where traffic jams of up to 3 hours were reported! Many drivers even went the extra mile by completing more than the required personal goal. Some individuals even achieved over 100 personal deliveries during the event, incredible! To all of you we say thank you, no matter how large or little your input, you have helped complete and bring the new Genoa bridge into the Euro Truck Simulator 2 world. While the real-life Genoa Bridge is still set to open in July of this year, we are excited to open its virtual counterpart for truckers in ETS2 to drive on. This new state of the art bridge is self-monitoring using solar power and has a sleek and modern look. Don't forget to claim your rewards if you achieved your personal goal for this event! You can claim your rewards from WorldOfTrucks.com by going to 'My Page' and then clicking on events. We hope you enjoy wearing your paint-job and hanging accessory with pride as a reminder of this event. We look forward to seeing your in-game pictures with this newly completed bridge which you can share with us across our social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter). We'd like to once again thank you, our #BestCommunityEver, for heeding the call to help take part in this special World of Trucks event.View the full article

We are always excited to show our community what changes and updates we are working on for the next version of Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator. Today we want to focus on one of the bigger changes drivers in Europe can expect to see in the upcoming 1.38 update. Introducing the French city of Lille, an important logistics link for truckers traveling between Belgium and the Netherlands, but not as you may remember it in Euro Truck Simulator 2. Lille has received a major reskin, giving it a fresh and up to date look for 1.38. So what exactly has been changed? Let's take a closer look. As you can see from these comparison shots, many of the older vegetation models such as trees and wildflowers have been replaced with newer ones, which gives the city a completely new look in terms of natural beauty. Another major change made to Lille is to its roads and junctions; many of the road junctions have been re-worked to be based on more true to life layouts. Road signs and roads, in general, have also been updated with more accurate, realistic, and detailed textures. While many of the major changes are quite obvious, we will leave it up to you to explore Lille for yourself to spot them all! We look forward to sharing more with you about what is to come in 1.38. Watch this blog and keep an eye on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest news and announcements. View the full article

Not much time has passed since the last update of American Truck Simulator, and here we are again, excited to offer the community a glimpse of the upcoming version 1.38 improvements, fixes, and new functionality. It will still take at least several weeks before the full 1.38 release, please keep in mind that this is the first raw open beta, very much still a work in progress build. If you want to take it for a spin, you can help contribute by reporting any bugs you may encounter at the appropriate section of our official forums. Your feedback and reports are extremely valuable for our team and we thank you in advance for taking the time to help us out. So, what can you expect to find in the 1.38 Open Beta for ATS? Let's take a closer look! First off, the city of Las Vegas has received a major revamp, which includes new road networks, updates to existing interstate junctions, more detailed scenery, and the inclusion of newer vegetation, terrain textures, and much more! Some of the main changes include new Interstate connection (515), an overhaul to the US-93 junction, and correct positioning of the 'Welcome to Las Vegas' with a new pedestrian island. You can find a more in-depth blog post on the subject which showcases many of the changes found in and around the city. But the best way to see it all is to see the city for yourself! So be sure to make that trip to Nevada and let us know what you think through our social media channels. Las Vegas isn't the only part of the American Truck Simulator world to receive an update in 1.38, one of the more noticeable changes are to Truckstops. From our previous trips to the USA to community feedback, we have learnt a lot about these vital services for drivers. One of the first changes you will notice at Truckstops in ATS is that fuel stations now have lanes with appropriate width for trucks to pull up and refuel in. This is because, in reality, most trucks refuel from both sides and not just from one side like a regular car. We have also implemented (where possible) guidance lines to help drivers line up their trucks to avoid damaging their vehicles upon entry and exit. Plus there is a completely new truck stop placed on the US-111 road now! Aside from the changes related to gas stations and truckers' resting areas, we've also implemented a few more content changes across the map. In this update, you will find that Utah has a new road to drive on, the UT-56, but that's not all! The city of El Centro received a large revamp and we also added the US-191 in Arizona. We also made a few minor changes in preparations for future connection to Colorado in New Mexico's Shiprock and made layout corrections to the nearby US-491. We are also excited to introduce the inclusion of a computer graphics technique for efficiently approximating ambient occlusion effects in real-time. Better known in it's shorter form, SSAO creates shadows in the areas where objects connect, to give it a more natural and believable look in terms of lighting and shadows. So what exactly does this feature mean for our players? To break it down as simply as possible, SSAO adds missing shadows where they should have been and improves shadowing in general. It also improves the look of glossy surfaces (such as paint and chrome). SSAO improves the driving experience and overall visual look of the game, however, this comes with an impact on performance. Technically, it is a post-processing pass on the whole rendered screen at the full internal resolution, so a lot of maths for each pixel. Less powerful GPUs may struggle to keep up at full quality, and with 400% or similarly high scaling selected, even mid-range machines would feel the impact on fps. If you are not happy with framerate after this update, please open the advanced graphics options in the game and try to find the right combination of scaling and SSAO quality for you. With a weaker GPU, it may be advisable to switch off SSAO completely. The easiest way to explain to you the benefits of using SSAO is by showing you a range of comparison images, take a look! Keep an eye or two on our blog because we plan to bring you more info about the SSAO in its own dedicated article soon! We are also excited to introduce a long-requested update to the RGB Color Picker which drivers use to paint their trucks when purchasing or tuning their truck. You now have the option to input specific color inputs (HSV, RGB, and HEX). Also, In addition to saving color preset for just a single color, the color picker now supports saving a preset for all paint job colors at once. This way player can store and easily try paint job color set with other paint jobs. With this feature we also extended number of user kept color swatches from 8 to 40, for your coloring pleasure. We know that many drivers like to match their truck colors the same across their whole fleet, so we hope this feature is useful to you. MAPLas Vegas city revamped (I-515/I-11 interstate bypass + the whole city switched to the template road system)US-191 road implementedUT-56 road implemented + reskin of a little stretch of US-93 around Panaca settlementCA-111 - new truckstop addedEl Centro revampedNew company in Logan, UT (Plaster & Sons)Reworked all truck stop gas pumps to be more realistic. More realistic dimensions and the logic of how they workNM Shiprock redesigned + piece of US-491Various map fixes VEHICLES Automatic transmission improved (shifting points, adaptive modes)Las Vegas: New ambulance and fire truck FEATURES Visual improvement - procedural ambient occlusion generation (SSAO)Route Adviser redesignedNavigation ETA to the next waypoint in route adviser and in world mapTobii eye-tracking presetsRGB color picker redesigned Added RGB, HSV and HEX inputsPredefined color presets SOUND Update to FMOD 2.01.01Fixed the retarder sound when the engine is offAI - exclude the gear for trains and electric vehicles So enjoy all the new additions, but please remember: It's only an open beta, not a stable public version - so you may encounter bugs, instability, kinks, or crashes. It's completely okay if you want to wait for the final release. But if you're interested in helping us to move there faster, we'll appreciate all of your feedback on our forum and your bug reports in this section. Please check our modding wiki to get details pertaining to mods for the game. If you wish to participate in the open beta, you can find this version in the public_beta branch on Steam. The way to access it is as follows: Steam client → LIBRARY → right-click on American Truck Simulator → Properties → Betas tab → public_beta → 1.38 public beta. No password required. View the full article