SCS Blog

Why do we bother? We have heard from some of you; questioning our effort to actively promote our games and SCS Software at public events. With so much work ahead of us to improve the games, why lose time and money traveling to distant places? Everybody should sit at their computer and work round the clock on the software, shouldn't they? There are in fact multiple reasons for us to try to be more visible. It is of course very important for game companies to be in touch with their fan base. With our "sim container," we are going to have an easy time visiting various game expos - just drive the truck to the location, and deploy it with a single push of a button (or so the theory goes). There will be ample opportunities for you to meet us. It's really not just about us doing PR to push our games to the crowd, it is more about meeting our passionate fans and hearing their opinions and suggestions. But there is more - we also plan to attend the various transportation industry events, to raise our profile within the industry. Our games would definitely benefit if we can improve our ties to the industry in general. The quality of our work would go up with input and feedback from the companies and the pros. We also hope that the situation with brand licenses may improve with better visibility to transportation industry senior managers. As you are aware, it's not going all so smoothly in this regard. We trust that you can view our activity with the sim container though this optics - it's not delaying the work of the core teams working on the games. On the contrary, it should be providing them with feedback and inspiration, and hopefully also with networking leads and contacts to improve our business relations. Let us look back a little bit to the most recent event when our small 'On The Road' crew has visited the FIA ETRC racing event at Slovakia Ring. We are still in the learning phase, the trailer with the 4D motion seats was in fact not yet fully completed, but it was such an exciting time, both for us and the visitors! Maybe you have followed us in real time on our Twitter or Instagram profiles, here is a gallery of photos we've taken during this field trip. Thanks to the FIA ETRC organizers, we had a really great location in the Fan Village at this event and we enjoyed every moment of our time there. We've been having crowds of people interested in our games and simulation seats for the whole weekend - there were lines since early morning till the evening hours and it was simply amazing! It was the first event where we used this new pet of ours - a refurbished shipping container converted into a fantastic demo trailer. While it wasn't in its supposed final look - in fact, we still had to put some work into it after its arrival - it served our purpose very well and it also has got lots of interest from the visitors. We have committed to participate in the upcoming rounds of the FIA ETRC championship too! Here is the calendar of races. Next stop is at the famous Hungaroring from the 26th to 27th of August. However, there is a bit of a collision in the calendar, as the world famous Gamescom is happening from 22nd to 26th of August in Cologne, Germany. We know that there will be fans of our games at both places! We have to split to attend both! And indeed this is the plan! One team and one motion seat will be set on the road to Hungary, while the big sim trailer and an even larger team will be going to Gamescom. We have a nice place reserved for us just next to Hall 8, so this year we'll be there for you as an exhibitor with the full parade. You can look forward to trying our games on high-tech 4D motion seats and getting some fresh info about our projects. It's a chance to grab some stickers, have a chat with members of the development team, take a picture with our crew, or maybe get a piece of our SCS merch? Plus one big surprise which we're trying to prepare for you and which we don't want to spoil yet. There is only one question remaining: are we going to meet at Hungaroring or at Gamescom? Related article: SCS On The Road: ETRC 2017 #1, #2 View the full article

Welcome back to fourth small post about the creativity of our fellow truckers. For those, who've missed the previous sets of photos, you can get to them via links under this article. Pictures of your awesome setups for gaming are still coming to our inboxes and we simply love them all. Honestly, we'd really like to haul some cargoes on many of these hand-made driver seats you've built. Let's take a look at another few pictures of these amazing spots for virtual trucking: Pretty cool, right? Thank you all who've sent pictures to us and if you haven't yet, but would like to, you can send them to the message inboxes at our Facebook profiles: SCS Software, Euro Truck Simulator 2 or American Truck Simulator. Related articles: Community's Driver Seats #1, #2, #3View the full article

Open Beta 1.28 for Euro Truck Simulator 2 is now ready for you to try! This update will bring the highly desired functionality of double trailers into the game. For their initial introduction, we will make transportation jobs with double trailers only available in the countries of Scandinavia, where we know them to be legal. We will be looking into additional territories or stretches of the road around Europe where local regulations allow for them to be operated, to expand your transportation choices in the future. For those interested in the details, you should look here and here. Nonetheless, we are sure it will be amazing to drive doubles through narrow roads and steep hills of Scandinavia for now. Another highly visible feature coming with 1.28 is the option to use alternate backgrounds for the game's main menu. New light flares have been a big change that was worthy of its own dedicated blog post and you can take a look at it here. We're looking forward to what modders have in store for our latest Open Beta, we're sure it will be amazing as usual. One of the reasons for providing early access to our betas is to make sure that modders can test-drive their creations and adapt to any new stuff or technology changes before the final official update hits the servers. MAIN FEATURES Doubles Background screen options Changed light flares on the player and AI vehicles MINOR CHANGES Auxiliary brakes system support (engine brake and retarder in one control element) Fixed licence plate change in states/countries where no city formats exist Fixed brake vs parking brake behavior Fixed tire noise of silent tires Retarder improvement (better cruise control behavior, no braking with throttle, icon when moving only) Steam Inventory support to allow for distributing rewards from upcoming World of Trucks events 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 → 1.28 public beta. No password required. During open betas, there is a dedicated beta site for World of Trucks, which is used to safely test all new features. Please visit World of Trucks Open Beta web for more information. Also check our modding wiki too to get details pertaining to mods for the game. Just as with the previous Open Beta releases - please keep in mind that this is still only a beta version of the update! You may experience instability and/or bugs and kinks. It’s completely okay if you want to wait for the final release. But if you are interested in providing feedback at this stage, be sure to let us know on our forum, you can join the discussion here and report bugs here. We appreciate all your feedback immensely. Related articles: Doubles Better light flares for vehicles American Truck Simulator 1.28 Open Beta View the full article

Open Beta test for the latest update of American Truck Simulator is here! (Euro Truck Simulator 2 may still need a few more days, as we are fighting with a small but particularly hard to catch bug there.) You may wonder about the game version number suddenly jumping to 1.28, as at the moment it was sitting at ver. 1.6. We have decided to unify versioning of ETS2 and ATS to simplify communication about game updates both internally and externally. The version number used to denote that ETS2 has been through 27 major updates, while ATS has been through 6 big revisions since the respective game's release. But we realized that this is not a crucial piece of information. It is more relevant and more important to provide the information that the updates, even if they appear at slightly different times, are based off the same core functionality upgrade; that the progress is in sync on both games. That's why we decided to only continue the numbering scheme established originally with the older Euro Truck Simulator 2 game, and stick to it even with American Truck. This way it will be clearer if and when both games reach a particular development milestone. As usual, this update is full of great features for you to try out. Doubles are the main feature of this particular update which is great on its own. But since there are different regulations in Nevada, we decided to add something special for our fans. Please welcome triples and Rocky Mountain doubles which are part of ATS Nevada economy now! Apart from those, there is a number of features worth looking into and we are sure you will take the time to study every bit of them through and through as you always do and then enjoy them in the game. Let's make a list here so you can decide which of them will catch your eye first. MAIN FEATURES Doubles (and more) Background screen options Better flares on the player and AI vehicles MINOR CHANGES Auxiliary brakes system support (engine brake and retarder in one control element) Fixed LP change in states/countries where no city formats exist Fixed brake vs parking brake behavior Retarder improvement (better cruise control behavior, no braking with throttle, icon when moving only) Fixed suspension load gauges Steam Inventory support to allow for distributing rewards from upcoming World of Trucks events Doubles are just amazing and so much fun, we are sure you will agree once you try them yourselves. Background screen options are a new cosmetic feature that changes the background of the main menu to better suit your style. You will have to try and choose one that suits you best. Flares have been a big change that was worthy of its own dedicated blog post and you can take a look at it here. 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 → 1.28 public beta. No password required. During open betas, there is a dedicated beta site for World of Trucks, which is used to safely test all new features. Please visit World of Trucks Open Beta web for more information. Also check our modding wiki too to get details pertaining to mods for the game. Just as with the previous Open Beta releases - please keep in mind that this is still only a beta version of the update! You may experience instability and/or bugs and kinks. It’s completely okay if you want to wait for the final release. But if you are interested in providing feedback at this stage, be sure to let us know on our forum. We appreciate all your feedback immensely. Related articles: Doubles Better light flares for vehicles View the full article

Dear American truckers. In your future travel plans, please keep in mind the temporary closure of the offshore section of California's coastal Highway 1. As you already know from the IRL media, Big Sur landslide interrupted the iconic route. We always strive to bring something new in our game updates. This time, at this particular spot, we will not give, but take. The next update will close the Highway 1 section. Its reopening in our American Truck Simulator will depend entirely on real world events. Fortunately, an alternate route is going to be available. View the full article

We know that our fans are waiting for any new information about the status of the upcoming update for our games. We finally believe that the extensive internal testing of the new content for Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator is almost complete. An Open Beta stage is planned next, but we do not want to release a build of the game with any known issues even into beta. At this point, we are still tweaking the last little things so we can invite you all to test new content as soon as possible, hopefully early next week. In addition to new features, you can look forward to improved DAF XF 105 in the next update for Euro Truck Simulator 2. We have revisited the truck model and made quite some changes to the Exclusive and Standard interior. In the exterior, the changes touched stock sun shield for Super Space Cab and Super Space Cab Plus. We're constantly striving not only to deliver new content but also to improve the existing one that we can proudly offer the highest standard of truck simulators to our fans. Related articles: Doubles Better light flares for vehicles View the full article

Welcome back to next episode of the UtH series. First of all, we'd like to thank you for all of the good feedback you've given us under previous articles dedicated to the deeper description of how things are made at SCS Software. The last article became quite a wall of text, so I'll try to grow something shorter and smaller this time. Yes, the word grow is used as intended there, because today we're going to take a look at assets of vegetation in our games! So grab your gloves, shovels, clippers, fertilizer etc. and let's go gardening! You need to know what you want to grow Maybe it starts to sound quite repetitive, but the creation of vegetation assets begins at the research phase too. As we've written a few times already, when you want to make in-game content close to reality as possible, you need to gather all available information about everything you're going to recreate. And vegetation is no different. You definitely don't want to bring roads, mountains, buildings and everything else precisely created by real exemplars and then ruin the final feel of the whole new zone by adding trees, bushes, plants etc. who are totally not even from the same climatic zone. For example, just imagine desert full of deciduous trees. That'd look really foolish. Hence, as in the other realms of a creation of our games, we do deep research for vegetation too. When a new zone is being researched, we gather information and useful material about places and zones located near the roads and highways which are going to be implemented. And not only the plants, but also ground and terrain such as fields, forests, meadows and so on. For this purpose, we use every possible way of getting quality material. For example an external database of textures, photos, online photos and videos searching tools, applications similar to 'streetview', satellite shots and also our own photos and videos which we try to capture every time some of our colleagues are somewhere on the roads. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's not. As you probably know, our company is located in Prague, Czech Republic. That means we're located in Central Europe. So when we create a new state or zone for ETS 2, it's much easier to get good material by our own doing than for new areas in ATS. Yes, vegetation is different in each European country too, but it's still quite similar, well known for us or at least not so far away. If you're asking that it means we sometimes simply take a camera and go into the woods then the answer is yes. For example, in the team of asset designers, it's quite normal that one of the artists dedicated to vegetation systems says something like he's not going to be available in the office tomorrow if the weather will be good for shooting. Maybe we can publicly admit, that some of the deciduous forests in France had their foundation in material captured in the nature of the Kunratice valley, a small part of Prague. Does it sound like our colleague got it too easy? Unfortunately, he didn't. Because when he was there, the weather suddenly changed from partly cloudy to quite a big storm and he came back wet and cold as an abandoned dog. But as it's said, there's no greenery without water. Seeds, ground, and patient care, right? Or not? But how are the vegetation assets made? When we have all the good data and material we need, the phase of creation begins. It starts with a texture and mask. You need to capture and recreate the look, colors, pattern of foliage, bark, translucence, shine, shadows and so on. Then it's time to create the whole model. To make the width, height, shapes, roots or treetops. To decide how big the vegetation asset will be, how small, how it will look dry, fresh, healthy or withered. As we've been gaining experience with every new zone we made for our games, we started to create more looks and versions of every single vegetation asset we create. The reason is probably really obvious - to have more options, to be able to create the whole forest composed of different trees and plants of the same or similar species. No one wants to make a greenery zone full of exactly the same models of vegetation. When the models are done and the textures are put on them, the whole compositions are recreated a few times again but with different 'Level Of Detail' (as you can see on the picture below). The purpose for that is to bring even more options for map designers as they need to distinguish highly detailed assets which are placed near the roads where players are able to drive or lower detail assets which are placed on the horizon far away from the player's close range. The whole set of new vegetation is further assigned to the map designers along with new textures for ground, terrain, 2D 'walls of textured horizon' which serve as coulisses at the maximum viewed distance. And also the information and suggestions of its use and placement. Gloves + shovel or keyboard + mouse? Definitely keyboard and mouse. Like the other assets and models in our games, which are made in graphic applications and software, vegetation is no different. Two colleagues out of our team of asset designers are currently dedicated for vegetation systems, and they use the same or quite similar tools. It doesn't matter if they're going to make new buildings, traffic signs, or trees and plants. So if you're interested in which software they use, we can give you some tips such as Adobe Photoshop or our own SCS plugin for Blender and Maya. This plugin also includes specialized Vegetation tool. As you can see in the gif below, one of our colleagues found passion and love in vegetation asset development since one classified space program ended. Do you recognize him? The whole process of new vegetation asset creation is really complex, comprehensive and quite difficult. As you can probably imagine, every single tree or plant, ground or terrain texture needs a different approach if you want to make it well. And even when you have enough time, material and skill, you can't capture nature's diversity exactly as it is in reality. Moreover, there are many other things which we need to keep in mind but nature doesn't. For example the impact on players' hardware, polygons, scale or texel (pixels in a meter) detail limitations, a transition between models' LODs (level of details), vegetation translucence, wind animations (set manually for each single branch) of the whole trees or in the leaves, and much more. There are so many things you mustn't forget. And our games are not located right in the middle of nature but on the roads. We can imagine how hard it must be for studios which make for example RPGs or FPS shooter games. But on the other hand, they often don't need to do everything according to reality, right? Don't forget to water the plants Well, it looks like I failed with my initial intention to write a shorter article than the previous one. Hope you don't mind and that you've enjoyed reading it, that it has brought new information about how another part of our games is made. As always, thank you for your time and I'm looking forward to reading your comments, criticism, feedback, and suggestions on which topic you'd like to see covered in the next article from the Under the Hood series. Until we meet again, have a great time and don't forget to water the plants. At least those you have at your flat or house. And we'll keep an eye on those which are in our games. Do we have a deal? Related articles: Under the Hood: #1 Research , #2 Assets View the full article

Those who've followed our social media channels during recent days know our team has been participating at the FIA ETRC racing event at Nürburgring, Germany. If you've missed our posts, you can find them on dedicated media channels or you can browse and look at the photos we've taken here. Thanks to the organizers of this event, our booth was placed at the perfect position. We had notable placement directly at the left side of the main stage where the trophy ceremony was held. With our two brand new simulators, merchandise, promo or discount cards and smiles on our faces, members of our crew were entertaining the visitors for three days from early morning hours to late evenings. No matter the rainy weather, the numbers of fans who were interested in trying out Euro Truck Simulator 2 on our 4D motion seats were really high. And it was awesome! Except for all the great moments and chats with our fans, our colleagues were able to spend some time with ETRC racing drivers and their team members. We also met an amazing singer Jessica Lynn! We enjoyed every second there and we'd like to thank the organizers for this great experience. It was our first participation in a real truck race and we instantly felt in love with the audience for these events. We'd like to announce that our small team is getting ready for next round. This time it's going to be at Slovakiaring and it would be really cool to hang out with you there for a while. So if you're considering the visit of this upcoming event, or if you've already decided that you'll be there, come and visit us! We'll be there with our SCS On the Road Crew. We're looking forward to meet, have a chat or take a photo with you. And if you can't make it but you'd like to stay in touch, you can follow SCS social media like Instagram and Twitter profiles. We'll be doing fresh news, posts, and tweets about what's going on there. Thank you all and see you at the Slovakiaring! Related articles: SCS On The Road: Plan B, ETRC 2017 View the full article

While working on the New Mexico DLC for American Truck Simulator, we thought it would be fun to include the city of Roswell, the site of the famed "Roswell Incident." Fortunately, it made sense to include it as a node in our road network layout. UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike will celebrate and remember this year's 70th anniversary of the 1947 incident that many people believe involved an extraterrestrial spaceship crash-landing on a ranch in the Roswell area. This event led to many conspiracy theories and belief in the existence of flying saucers which persist until today. We're serving the first American Truck Simulator's Roswell appetizer in the form of a few screenshots. Here you can find several landmarks which local experts will surely have no trouble recognizing. Articles related to New Mexico: New Prefabs Places to Rest and Refuel The Land of Enchantment View the full article

It turns out that the paint hasn't quite dried yet. Unfortunately, the company refurbishing the shipping container for us - to turn it into a luxurious demo trailer - haven't managed to finish everything for our needs by this weekend. But we have not given up and improvised a solution that's almost as good. The motion seats have been transported to the event site. Our team is on the spot and ready for the visitors of this weekend's ETRC race. And we hope that some of our fans living nearby may stop by as well, as we have some merchandise to gift and discount coupons to distribute ;) Follow us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook to get fresh information and photos from Nürburgring! Related articles: SCS on the road: ETRC 2017 View the full article

We are working hard on addressing the remaining known issues before we can start the Open Beta process for the next major updates for both Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator. We thought that you may be interested in learning about one little visual improvement that we are planning to introduce as a part of the update... We have never been quite been happy with the way vehicle lights look, doing something about it was on our wishlist since the launch of Euro Truck Simulator 2. Our coders have actually improved the underlying system a while ago already, but finally, we have caught up with them and tweaked the "sprite" graphics, which in fact involved painstaking re-adjustment of a ton of various numerical constants that define light flare behavior. The light flares in our games have always been growing too big at a short distance, masking out the entire headlight and any interesting shape and detail. Our goal for the change was to make sure that the lamp mask can be seen during both day and night without the excessive glare. At longer distances, the new system adjusting the flare intensity still had to make sure that lights do not disappear. The eye is very good at catching the photons coming in even from a tiny source in the distance, and our system has to emulate it. You can see the results of our effort on today's comparative series of screenshots. Related articles: Doubles View the full article

A lot of fans have reminded us that the release of the Heavy Cargo DLC packs for Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator respectively would make a nice opportunity to introduce some new Steam Achievements for the games. We decided to heed the advice and just added 5 new achievements for each game, slightly different so that owners of both games can have a somewhat different experience hunting them down. Thanks to /u/rockandrole8 on Reddit's /r/trucksim who made a nice comparison of the two sets of achievements! The Steam sale continues and our games are on sale. Get some DLCs and surprise your friends! View the full article

We are proud to announce our partnership with the European Truck Racing Association (ETRA). ETRA has been the promoter of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship (FIA ETRC) since 2016. They have been very kind to approach SCS Software with the opportunity to show our games to the visitors of ETRC racing weekends. Here is the plan - SCS Software will be a part of the show at several upcoming championship races in 2017, and possibly beyond! The very first event coming up is the third round of races, held in Germany at Nürburgring, July 1 - 2, 2017. And we are really pressed for time... You see, we have been thinking about building some sort of demonstration platform for our games for quite a while already; something that we could deploy to the various games industry shows, as well as transportation industry events, something that would make a lasting impression on visitors. The impulse from ETRA was the final inspiration to turn the vague plans into reality. The final go-ahead was given only a couple of months ago, and we started designing and working immediately under a crazy tight deadline. We are building something really special. The ETRC race series visitors will be the first to see it, but there are several more gaming and trucking shows in our calendar. Our team of specialists has been working on a unique exhibition platform. Its basis is a forty feet long cargo container, which is being refurbished with a custom-made interior. Our visitors will be able to experience a ride in Euro Truck Simulator 2 on an advanced 4DOF motion-sim platform with a three-display setup. We are packing in not just one of those high-tech simulators but two! We are still hard at work actually, far from finished. The special trailer will arrive at the first event still smelling of fresh paint! SCS Software's On the Road Team is looking forward to the European Truck Racing Championship events, and we are excited to invite the fans of our games to meet us there in person. Oh, and you may happen to see a bunch of really cool racing trucks up close! View the full article

The engine is roaring. The town is behind me now, miles of the road stretch into the distance ahead of me. And all around there is just pristine nature. Land of Enchantment is New Mexico's nickname, and we are doing our best have it reflected in our new DLC. We’ve created a new set of local flora: new shrubs, coniferous trees and over forty new terrain materials (grass, clay, stones). There are tons of new rocks and stones shaping the scenery. Fantastic horizon panoramas created from scanned templates abound. Note the great-looking streams, the map designers are also very proud of the dry and muddy riverbed created with decals. A picture is worth a thousand words, enjoy the beauty of New Mexico in our screenshots, currently in development for American Truck Simulator! Articles related to New Mexico: New Prefabs Places to Rest and Refuel View the full article

Simulation of suspension and weight distribution For well over a year, our programmers and testers have been spending a huge amount of time and effort with the goal of bringing more interesting cargo and trailer combinations into our games, adding proper support for one of the most requested features: doubles, heavy cargo, advanced and multi-joint trailers. You may wonder why this feature, in particular, should be so difficult and demanding to pull off. After all, we had reasonably working road trains in one of our earlier sims in the 18 Wheels of Steel series games. But the fidelity and accompanying complexity of our physics simulation has increased by an order of magnitude since then. Making sure all things are in balance and in sync is getting more complex as well. Efficient physics of the trailer where many wheels are touching the road is proving to be a tough task; we had to iterate a lot, especially with cargo weight distribution and accompanied suspension loads. Over its lifetime, a trailer will carry thousands and thousands of tons of cargo, ideally while operating with as little maintenance as possible. To withstand the harsh demands, and to deliver the load to its destination safely, it is crucial to observe the weight of the cargo. If you overload a trailer, or if you do not balance the weight right, it may cause damage to the trailer, its suspension or wheels, it may damage the road, and most importantly, it will make it unsafe to operate. With the never-ceasing demand to transport more and heavier cargo, the transportation industry has adopted new solutions to overcome the technical and legal limitations, in most cases centering around adding more length and axles to the tractor and semi-trailer . It is not just about the number of axles though, it is about where they are and how trailer as a whole behaves while under load. There are considerable differences between North America and Europe. In Europe, the legislative push is to limit the overall length of the truck and trailer combo, while making sure the total weight is distributed such that no wheel is pressing on the road surface too hard. Ultimately, this has lead to adding axles to the rear of the tractor as well as adding them generously under the relatively limited-length trailer. As engineers realized that putting more wheels next to each other causes problems with tyre scrub (due to high lateral friction, a paper about the topic here, chapter 2.1.3), a creative solution was adopted, making the wheels follow the turn or even steerable. On the other hand, in the USA, the regulation is a bit more flexible about total truck length. There are still tough restrictions regarding weight on each axle, but there is also legislation in place making sure that the weight is not concentrated over a short length, pushing to increase the distances between the axles. The engineers, in turn, made the trailers longer to spread the weight in such way that it will comply with Federal Bridge Formula (source). To lessen tyre wear and to make it possible to make turns in reasonable fashion, trailers with multiple pivot points were adopted. The primary duty of suspension is keeping the wheel on the road. It is effectively pushing the wheel into the ground to make sure that friction caused by wheels is sufficient to either brake or to corner. It is also in place to absorb the energy of impacts from road bumps, potholes, uneven roads or unexpected shifts of weight caused by side wind. The suspension system has to be incredibly durable, each axle has its own suspension system which takes care of the load on each wheel separately, working as a dynamic system absorbing energy from the environment. There are several types of suspensions used in cargo transportation, but this may deserve a future topic of its own. Brakes are arguably the most critical part of a vehicle. Either from standpoint of safety of others on road, or safety of the cargo, we all want them to work as intended. With multiple axles on the vehicle, each axle has to have its own brake system. By far the most complicated problem we encountered was the distribution of weight along the multiple axles and pivots of new trailers. We had to rework weight distribution algorithms in order to make it work for new trailers and to make sure that old ones wouldn't be negatively affected. Our constant battle with the numerical stability of the suspension simulation code is far from over. During testing and tuning, we encountered many issues, some quite hilarious, especially when we had to (re)learn backing and reversed steering. We had a lot of fun debugging it. In general sense, it was all about making the behavior of the trailer appear to work correctly with the player's input. That proved to be the largest challenge for us, especially with steerable trailers for ETS2. We definitely enjoyed working on them immensely. In the end, our determination, grit, and dedication prevailed, and it was a very proud moment for us to share our experience and the final product of our tireless effort with all of you! Related articles: ETS2: Heavy Cargo Pack DLC is here!, Heavy Cargo Pack DLC for ATS is out! View the full article

Looks like 2017 is going to be a very exciting year for truck sim fans. Today we are here to announce the release of Heavy Cargo DLC for American Truck Simulator! Much like in our previous release of Heavy Cargo Pack for ETS2, this DLC contains a set of new features that will enhance your gameplay. Let's see what you can look forward to in this heavy haul pack. New Cargoes to haul We are introducing 9 cargoes for you to haul: Crawler Tractor Bulldozer Lift Truck Chassis Lift Truck Cable Reel Milling Machine All Terrain Crane Scraper Transformer All of these cargoes range in weight from 55, 000 lbs to 123, 000 lbs (25 - 56 metric tons), so there is plenty of work to be done if you want to get them to their destination. Trailers If you are wondering why these trailers look very different from the ones used in Europe, look up Federal Bridge Gross Weight Formula. The trailers tend to be quite long and multi-pivoted for a good reason. Let's familiarize ourselves with each part. The first part which is the closest to the tractor is called the jeep and it is connected to the truck via the normal fifth wheel. The second part is called the lowboy and that's where the cargo is placed. It's either in the middle or it's the last part, depending on the configuration. The third part is semi-optional in relation to the cargo that is transported. It's called the spreader (or the stinger or the axle booster as it is called sometimes) and as the name suggests, it is there to spread the weight of the cargo across more axles and greater length. All three have their own pivot point which makes backing really entertaining and actually generally not advisable. Our Heavy Cargo Pack comes with a mix of 2-part and 3-part (with spreader/stinger) configuration trailers, chosen to suit each particular cargo. New engines We have recently added new engine variants (with real behavior) to the game and we feel that this is the right time to remind you of that. All trucks now have a 600 hp engine option available and some trucks even have a stronger engine to choose from. There are of course still lower power engines available too - very sensible and economical choices for most transportation scenarios. See you on the road! If you happen to play both Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator, consider this link: SCS Cargo Addict Bundle. Related articles: ETS2: Heavy Cargo Pack DLC is here! View the full article

A few days have passed since we've started our new game merch E-shop. We just wanted to show you that the packages are indeed getting on the way! Based on your feedback, we have made some quick adjustments, like adding Brazil to the list of countries that we can ship to, we have also rebalanced shipping costs to particular territories. Thank you all for your opinions and feedback, we really appreciate it! Related articles: Suit Up in the Colors of SCS Software! View the full article

As you may have noticed if you're following our Instagram and Twitter profiles, a small team of our colleagues, along with our CEO Pavel Šebor, participated at a special "marketplace for developers" event last weekend. The organizer's stated purpose was to facilitate informal developer-to-developer dialogue and offer a place where companies from a wide range of IT industry can meet with skilled programmers, freelancers, developers, and university graduates. We are always looking for new talent, in fact, we are now making more room for it! We are in the process of fitting out a new place for SCS Software now, with some 1,700 square meters of office space. This is going to be a huge leap for us again, as we are planning to grow the team to over 100 people. We are well aware that our fans want us to do more for them - to improve and expand the games at a faster rate - so clearly we need to grow even more to have a chance to pursue all these opportunities. We prepared a small programmer-oriented quiz for the visitors of our booth ("How fast can you sort an array of floats?" - you can refer to this Wiki page if you are into algorithms). David, the lucky (and smart!) winner of our little contest has stopped by today to pick up his prize, an MSI Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics card, plus some goodies from SCS Software's recently opened e-shop. We'd like to thank all visitors who stopped by to have a chat with us and to try our games. Big thanks also belong to the organizers of this event, and to Czech Technical University in Prague, which hosted the event. It is always an inspiring experience to show our games to the public. This event was in no way focused only on game industry, but we were pleasantly surprised to meet so many people who knew our games and were active players even among the hundreds of participants looking for all kinds of jobs in general IT industry. View the full article

Today is a special day for our company. When we're on the road - at public events, truck shows, or any gaming industry expos - we are often asked if there is any way to buy some of the game-themed clothes we're wearing. We have been hesitating for years, but as we've been getting these requests more frequently, we've started to think about SCS Software merchandise a little bit more. Finally, we decided to give it a try and offer our fellow truck sim fans a chance to get clothes or other handy stuff with the Euro Truck Simulator 2 or American Truck Simulator motifs. We are happy to open our new SCS Software merchandise E-Shop! The selection of goods is currently pretty basic (we welcome your tips for more types of merchandise to offer), but everything is in stock and ready to be shipped. Our clothing comes in different colors and sizes, and it's of really good quality. Clothes are not the only stuff that you can browse. You can go on a trip with a new backpack, pack your lunch along, or sip your coffee from a nicely decorated mug. Only time will tell how popular our merchandise will be. Most players care only about the games of course, but we are very excited to offer our fans this extra option to show your enthusiasm for our games! View the full article

We're still receiving really great pictures of gaming setups and places from our fellow truck simmers and we'd like to share another batch of these photos with the rest of our fanbase. It's so motivating to see that our work can inspire some of the players to spend considerable time and effort to build so elaborate setups for virtual trucking! If you've missed the previous sets of gaming rig pictures, you can check them at the links under this article. And if you'd like to share your awesome place where you're hauling digital cargo, please send us your photos to inboxes at any of our official facebook profiles: Euro Truck Simulator 2, American Truck Simulator or SCS Software. Here come the pictures: Thank you, our fellow truckers! And until next time - take care and have a great time! Related articles: Community's Driver Seats, Community's Driver Seats #2 View the full article

We are always thinking of opportunities to make our tech more flexible, to help us bring the "touch of real trucking spirit" into our virtual worlds. Besides driving, the places to stop and rest are an integral part of a driver's life. We have decided that they deserve our focus now as we work on New Mexico DLC for American Truck Simulator. Even smaller rest areas for New Mexico are now being created as custom works. Instead of monolithic prefabs used repeatedly across the world, we are now combining smaller building blocks into unique sets for each location. This approach also makes it easier to mix in location-specific objects. An even greater amount of care is given to big truck stops. They are truly vast unique locations that are recognizable as real world landmarks. We have separated petrol stations for passenger cars and trucks. There are dedicated spots offering virtual drivers complete services as they are: fuel, repairs, rest, and services. This required a bit of technical innovation - we had to teach the AI drivers to navigate around the sprawling rest stops. The invisible AI guidance "rails" were historically only created in Maya or Blender as part of one-piece prefabs, but now the map designer will be able to flexibly lay them where needed. That should push the immersion depth and the overall feel of our truck stops to a new level. Related articles: New Mexico: New Prefabs View the full article

At SCS Software, we always have several internal projects under way, big and small, in variuos stages of completion - from pure concept research, to pre-production, to full-blown production. We try to keep things mostly under wraps until we gain enough confidence that a project is viable. It is always a great pleasure to finally make the announcement when we are ready to release something new! Today, we are proud to bring you a new DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2 - the Heavy Cargo Pack is here! Along with this new pack, there is a lot of content which will be added into the base game as a FREE update for everyone. But first, let's check out the new content in the DLC: New Cargoes Prepare yourself for 8 new heavy haul cargoes: Asphalt Miller Industrial Cable Reel Concrete Beams Crawl Dozer Locomotive Metal Centering Mobile Crane Transformer New Trailers The new DLC contains a pair of new high-tech trailers: Single Extendable Flatbed and Semi Lowloader with Drop Deck. These trailers come with steerable axles for safer navigation around tight bends. The good news today don't just stop here. We are also adding a lot of free content and a new feature into the base game! New Truck Chassis Variants and Tuning While working on the new heavy cargoes, we were inspired to take a look into special transport variants of truck tractors. The fan community has long been asking for 8x4 chassis options, and this is a great opportunity to finally introduce them into the game. We don't have 8x4 chassis option available for all the trucks in the game at this moment, but we hope that you will be happy to find it available for Mercedes-Benz New Actros, Volvo FH 2012, and both Scania R and Streamline trucks. The new chassis variants are a free part of today's game update, so you can try them out immediately even without buying the Heavy Cargo Pack DLC. For each new vehicle variant, we have also created a set of new paint jobs too, to make you feel real unique and anxious for the more difficult challenges. In addition, we have added several new truck tuning accessories into the game, such as wheel tuning parts. Truck Analysis Screen With the new heavy loads, you may find out that not all trucks are equally suitable for hauling them. There are technical as well as legal limitations and implications for transporting heavy cargo in the real wold, and while Euro Truck Simulator 2 is only a game, we felt that the players should be aware of them. All manufacturers offer a wide range of options for the trucks, and the companies that buy them try their best to optimize the configuration to best suit their needs, while making the purchase economical - both at the time of purchase and even more importantly while operating them. The new Truck Analysis screen is our attempt to indicate the suitability of a particular truck configuration for various operational scenarios and conditions. This new feature works in the upgrade shop too, where it may help you configure your truck to best fit your goals and budget. The Truck Analysis screen doesn't impose any restricitions on your choice of vehicle, it is only there as a guide. But we think it may be a good idea to pay attention to the advice. You may make the screen disapper with a single click, but half an hour later, you may find yourself in real trouble trying to pass a difficult spot in the world, and upset that you have not made a wiser choice of the truck to pull the heavy cargo. Well, do you have what it takes to answer the call of heavy duty? We bet you do! Related articles: Big in America, Heavyweights to enter the ring soon View the full article

Today we have an announcement that should make many of our fans happy. After quite some years of internal discussions and frankly some frustrations and struggles to have the gameplay as well as technical side of multi-trailer physics support ironed out, we finally feel ready to reveal fresh info about our progress on doubles. It has taken us a long time, but hope never dies! We are polishing double trailers for inclusion in the next major updates for Euro Truck Simulator 2 as well as for American Truck Simulator. We have a few pictures for you to prove that we are serious... Our games' fans have patiently (or not so patiently) waited for double trailers for a long time, and the wait should not be that long any more. The new trailers and physics improvements will be a part of the next big "point release" update of both games. Our hope is to release the updates in early summer. It's going to be a FREE update. Meanwhile, we are also wrapping up work on Heavy Cargo packs both for ETS2 and for ATS, which are going to be paid DLCs, comparable to our existing High Power Cargo Pack DLC. So if you are into cargo transport in particular, there is a ton of cool stuff to look forward to! View the full article

Our work on the announced models of SCANIA Next Generation trucks for Euro Truck Simulator 2 continues successfully. We're excited about reaching an internal milestone and want to share a couple of screenshots with you. Despite some resistance from the vehicle department (they prefer to show off their creations when they are fully complete), we were able to get fresh Scania S 4x2 High Cab shots. This model is in a development phase when it can already be presented in the game environment to review and assess the implementation of its characteristic features. First look at the details of the cab interior is also possible now. Keep in mind that the presented model is incomplete and subject to further tweaks. Both Scania S and R models are under development in parallel. There is still a ton of work left and many details to polish before we reach the finish line, but as you can see, we are giving them a lot of care! Related articles: 3D Scanning - The Next Generation Scania, Sound recording - SCANIA S and R View the full article

We are excited about our progress on New Mexico map DLC expansion for American Truck Simulator. It is still going to take us some time to wrap the work up and polish it for release, but we feel that we are ready to gradually start showing you new cool stuff from New Mexico. An important part of the in-game economy are the prefabs representing local industries. They should be visually recognizable and believable for gameplay to be fun. Prefabs are often represented by a typical building, special-purpose installation, or even a whole industrial complex. We focus on their realistic appearance and adjust them to fit perfectly into the surroundings. The team is doing their homework on research to make sure we take proper inspirations from relevant real industrial facilities as the basis for our work. Stone by stone, we piled gravel deposits to represent the location for the transport of bulk materials. It's made up of tons of raw materials, loaders, conveyors and other heavy machinery. The Intermodal Train Depot is a typical US transport hub for loading and unloading of entire trailers. These are then further transported by rail to save both fuel costs and fuel emissions to another node in the transportation network, before they reach their final destination by road again. Within the prefab intended for the food industry, we may have gotten a little carried away. We designed and implemented unique depots that will surprise you by their size. We were inspired by actual existing industrial facilities for production of cereals and dairy products. An important feature of those two objects represents separated locations for loading and unloading. The rear wing is used for supply of raw materials, the front one for distribution of finished products. This solution is designed according to the regulations for the transport of foodstuffs. View the full article