SCS Blog

A long time has passed since Polar Express Holiday Event 2014. Tons of people participated in it, and we distributed over 30 thousand free activation keys of Raven Truck Design DLC as a special reward. We made this DLC exclusive for the event, there was no other way to obtain it or purchase it. Ever since then we keep receiving a lot of messages, questions, suggestions, pleas and wishes from our community from all corners of the world to make it available for everyone. It looks like the Raven Truck Design DLC is really desired among the game's fans. So after two years, we have now decided to make this pack available for purchase. First though, we felt that we should revisit it and spice it up with additional goodies. The DLC was silently updated with new tuning parts a couple of weeks ago, to give the current owners a little bit of exclusivity to enjoy the new tuning options. Today, we are releasing Raven Truck Design DLC on Steam for everyone who is interested in getting it. The new stuff in the DLC includes new cabin accessories - Raven Art Figure, Raven Emblem LED, Raven Wings LED, Raven Emblem, also new front & rear rims - Raven Revolution and Raven Claws, and a new paint job: Corvus Ex Machina. Of course the content which has been included since the original release is still there - Raven hubs, nuts, rims and two paint jobs: Golden Raven and Raven Custom. We hope those who earned the DLC during the event will gladly welcome new things for free, that they will feel rewarded once again. And for those of you who have desired this DLC so long, but missed the opportunity to win it during the event, we hope that you appreciate the possibility to finally get it now at this link. View the full article

Recently, we've asked our fellow truckers via our Facebook profiles for ATS and ETS2 to share photos of their cool little places for relaxing and virtual trucking with us. We are always curious and excited to see the various unique gaming setups that passionate game players can come up with to enjoy their favorite truck sims. And we must admit that you've really amazed us! We've got a lot of photos from you and all of them are awesome and very interesting. So big thank to you for sharing them with us! Also thank you for the very kind communication that was started with many of you on this topic, it was really cool to have small chats with you to learn more about your sanctuaries where you can relax and haul some cargos in ATS or ETS2. The number of photos we have received from you is so high that it's not possible to put them all in one article on our blog. We were granted permission to show the photos from many of you, but we had to pick only a small subset. So we've chosen some of the most creative (by our personal opinion anyway) which you can see below. We will be picking some more in the future, so we'll be happy for more submissions. More driving rigs may also appear from time to time on our Instagram profile. Thank you once again, keep on trucking and have a great time! View the full article

We are ready to start public testing of a new Update for ATS today. ETS2 Open Beta should follow later this week. After rescaling the ATS world in 1.5, we have focused on driver experience improvements in this update. We have already mentioned liftable trailer axles in a previous blog post. Weigh station pass device is another little "cabin toy" that's a part of a trucker's life, so we felt that it should be brought into the game. This update also improves simulation of a vehicle's engine internals. There is more attention now on varying performance of different configurations, we have enhanced adaptive transmission modes, and also added the differential lock, which may be handy on uneven surfaces. Additional improvements to vehicle behavior include air brake simulation tweaks, also engine brake input in certain situations has been changed. We have also increased the range of available FOVs for multi-monitor setups. About the weigh station pass device: The box is mounted on the windshield of the truck. In the game, it works the same way as the weigh station functionality that's a part of the on-screen Advisor "widget." For players who prefer to switch off all user interface elements to get a more immersive experience, they will now have the visual cue to know whether they need to either complete the weight check or whether they can bypass it. List of features included in ATS Update 1.6: MAIN FEATURES Weigh station pass device Trailer liftable axles Differential lock Adaptive transmission modes (power, normal, eco) Improved engine simulation model (friction, braking, consumption) MINOR CHANGES Air pressure simulation improved (pressure buildup, cut-off sound, application pressure), working air pressure values fixed Transmission input shaft simulation (double clutch) Coin sound tweaked Field Of View (FOV) range increased to 40-120 degrees in adjuster If engine brake toggle input is not assigned, increase/decrease engine brake input work similar to retarder (in range from 0 to maximum) Tuned wheel noise to be more noticeable with loud engines Multiple fueling points on gas stations g_force_economy_reset flag is disabled after economy reset MOD Single "overrides" (forced default) rule can be used instead of defaults-suitable rule pair across linked accessories All pressure unit set consistently to bars (data, animation, dashboard UI) Nominal air_tank_pressure value added to chassis data Changed interior animations: all air, oil and brake pressure (gauges, indicators) New interior animation: trailer axle lift (indicator), differential lock (button, indicator) New engine data: resistance_torque (measured at 2000 rpm) Coin sound made moddable in the same way as other sounds (through .ogg file) Please check our modding wiki too to get details pertaining to mods for the game. If you wish to participate in the open beta, you can find this version in 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 → 1.6 public beta. No password required. 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 forums. We appreciate all your feedback immensely. View the full article

We're almost there to release the open betas of the next wave of updates for both Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator. Let's keep our fingers crossed that we iron out the last few known glitches so that we are able to release the open betas next week. Today we'd like to tease you a little with a glimpse on one of the new features - the implementation of liftable axles for trailers. This feature was requested by the fan community for quite a while, we're glad to bring it to life for all players looking forward to improvements in simulation fidelity. Lifting a trailer axle allows you to spread the weight among the trailer's wheels to optimize fuel consumption, limit tire wear, or adjust the trailer's maneuverability while turning or reversing. As there was no default hotkey or controller key assigned for this feature as of yet, and we do not want to break players' existing configs, please remember to set this function under any key in the Key & Buttons options. Stay tuned for more feature reveals as we wrap up the work on the updates. The full change log will of course come along with the actual releases. View the full article

We have just started closed beta test for another round of major updates of Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator, but that's a story for another week. Today, two of our colleagues are flying to London to visit the upcoming "PC Gamer Weekender" public event. This event is organized by publishers of the world's best selling PC gaming magazine PC Gamer. Jakub and Tomas will spend the whole weekend at the show, which is taking place February 18-19 in the amazing halls of Olympia, Zone J30. Gamers from all corners of the world will come to enjoy two great days full of playing mostly as of yet un-released yet games plus some ever-greens (that's how we like to view our games), to hear interesting lectures and talks by developers from gaming software studios of all kinds, to try or even buy new hardware & software to bring it home with them, to watch or participate in cool PC gaming tournaments, or simply just to enjoy anything else related to the world of gamers. Our small team will be there with our games too, and if you'd like to try out American Truck Simulator in VR, we'll be happy to greet you at the tiny booth of SCS Software. We are not coming just to give the visitors a chance to play our games, we have also been offered an opportunity to make a speech about our work. Tomas is now readying his notes, and he will surely be happy to see you in the audience if you happen to be nearby ;). But that's not all! There is another good reason to stop by our booth, as we will be handing out free Steam activation codes for the PC Gamer DLC for ETS2. This content pack has been created last year for use on a previous PC Gamer event, but we still have some codes left. It's a little collection of cabin accessories which can't be purchased officially; it can only be obtained at special occasions like this one. The DLC contains cabin accessories tuned in the colors and motifs of PC Gamer. Small hint: don't hesitate too long, because our team has a limited numbers of these codes. Finally, our participation at this event provided an excellent excuse to arrange a little discounting campaign on Steam for American Truck Simulator. So if you have still been hesitating about adding ATS into your games collection, this may be a very nice opportunity to grab it.. We are looking forward to meeting our fans from London metro area and beyond this weekend! View the full article

Valentine's Day is almost here! For those romantically inclined among our fans, we wanted to give you a chance to transfer some of Valentine's atmosphere into our games as well. We have prepared two unique collections of themed paint jobs, one for Euro Truck Simulator 2 and the other for American Truck Simulator. Even more, we added a small bonus into each package in the form of a cabin accessory. Express your passion, show your feelings and decorate your truck with a Valentine's paint job! Get it for yourself or as a gift for someone special. View the full article

Today marks one year anniversary of American Truck Simulator's release. When we started working on the game way back several years ago, it was with a tiny team of five people, and still we were not sure if we can sustain the development. But we persisted, and were rewarded by a very strong launch on the market and a warm reception by the community as well as gaming press. This gave us the confidence to bolster the team and raise our ambition for the scale of the project. At this moment, over 20 people focus solely on ATS development; an internal team plus a network of full-time contractors. Still it is not enough. We are well aware that the game's fans would like to see more content, more vehicles, more game features, more optimizations, faster progress. To make this possible, we keep growing the company - our vision is to at least double our production bandwidth for both American Truck as well as Euro Truck 2. We have been adding a few new people to the company pretty much every month during 2016, and we'll definitely keep on growing through 2017. All this new talent does and will make a difference that you should definitely notice. We are happy to confirm that the next map expansion for American Truck Simulator will be the state of New Mexico! View the full article

Time flies so fast! Late last year, we sent a small technical team to the Scania Demo Centre in Södertälje, Sweden, to acquire detailed reference material for Scania's new S and R trucks. The team consisted of two of our colleagues from SCS and a contractor operating a 3D scanner, as we were evaluating whether to buy this expensive piece of technology. We planned to make a short video documentary of this trip and to share it with you, but as we don't have a dedicated person for videos at the company and video editing has to always be done on top of our normal work duties, we have taken quite a while to come up with the final cut. At last, here it is... The objective of the trip was clear: to make sure that all the measurements required for modeling the new Scania S and R series trucks were accurately gathered. In addition to photogrammetry, which is needed for replicating surface materials - textures - for the vehicle models, for the first time we tried the service of a handheld 3D scanner. By using this technique, we expected much higher precision data as input for our work, allowing us to recreate yet more realistic trucks in our games. We thought that some of you may find it interesting, so we are including a brief report of what our field team had to do during their five-day trip. The list of items to photograph and scan was quite ambitious, so we had to arrange for three days of focused work on site. Rigorous planning was required to pull it off. Fortunately, everything went smoothly, and the team certainly did not mind a short delay caused by very polite conversation with Scania's marketing team. As we were poring over the vehicles, it was inspiring that the corporate giant that is Scania actually took interest in our work and considered it newsworthy (as we mentioned in a previous blog post). By prior arrangement with the manufacturer, we had the following vehicles at our disposal: Day 1 - Sunday 6:00 PM - we are setting off! All equipment is prepared from Friday. We went to Vaclav Havel Airport in Prague to embark a flight to Arlanda Airport near Stockholm. Picked up a rental car and traveled to the Scandic hotel located across the street from Chassiporten - the very manufacturing plant which can be found in the Scandinavia map expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2. Quick dinner at Burger King. Elk Whopper is not present on the menu! What a pity. Day 2 - Monday 6:00 AM wake up, breakfast. Meet & greet with our precious contact Nils at Scania Headquarters. Quick drive to the Demo Centre to pick up Richard. At the Demo Centre, one of the big hangars was made our improvised home for the three days. The pre-arranged trucks were waiting there at our disposal. At the same time as we were photographing the exterior, we were able to work on the interiors, as we were kindly provided with access to Scania S V8 and Scania R brown/light cab interiors adapted for exhibition and presentation purposes (no chassis, but plug and play). Before the first scan we needed to take down the side skirts and cover the truck with numerous sticker markers that improve the precision for both 3D scanning and photogrammetry. Scanning and taking pictures for the rest of the day. We worked long into dark, until we were eventually escorted out of the complex and wished good night - they really insisted that they are closing the facility for the day ;). Day 3 - Tuesday 6:00 AM waking up slowly. All around there is darkness. Again. Daylight at this elevation during this part of year is short - only between 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM. Back in the hangar everything happens quickly and efficiently. One more Scania truck version arrives, sticking it with labels, undress and re-dress side skirts. Scanning and photographing takes the rest of the day, we just switched trucks in the afternoon. Data backup of daily work and good night. Day 4 - Wednesday Work progress basically copied Day 3 with a nice bonus in the afternoon. We get an invitation to test drive Scania S 730 on the closed polygon. What a nice surprise from our hosts! Our work is over. In the evening, there was only packing up and preparing for the trip back home. Day 5 - Thursday Early morning journey back to Stockholm went smoothly, air temperature was around zero and snow at a minimum. On the way, we only stopped at Ikea (where else!) and then bought a supply of dried reindeer meat at the airport. We're very happy with the data that we brought from Sweden. We are hard at work now on the detailed digital 3D model of the next generation of Scania trucks, creating it on the basis of the 3D scans. Having millimeter-precision 3D scan is a great reference, it can shave off precious weeks of iterative guess-work compared to only relying on photos, but there are still several hundred man-hours more to invest into the job to build the virtual representation of a truck. The cooperation with the fantastic people at Scania was excellent as always, they were very welcoming, helpful, and super professional. We can only hope that they had the same impression of ourselves. We want to thank everyone involved for their invaluable assistance! View the full article

About a week ago, we released a new truck paint job set with Belgium-themed liveries. The goal is always to make the players from a particular country happy with each paint job pack added, but this time we have realized quickly that we had not done our research properly. Our choice of stylized Belgian Lion wasn't a particularly good one, and on top of it about half of Belgian players who have bought the new DLC felt that they were not properly represented there. With this community feedback in hand, we have decided that we can mend things so that both major enthnicity groups of Belgium can be happier. Please welcome the reworked Flemish Lion and the newly added Walloon Rooster: The reworked paintjob pack will be automatically downloaded through Steam. View the full article

At the end of November, SCS Software was showing our games at Transport Expo 2016, a new transportation show in Prague. This is not a gaming show, it's all about real trucks and trailers, about commercial vehicles, mechanics, machines and systems related to them. But we didn't feel like we were out of place there with our games. It was also another learning exprerience for us, as we are considering exhibiting our games at more venues in the future. We feel that it is really helpful for improving the dialogue with the transportation industry. We were equipped with a 3-screen demo station with a steering wheel, h-shifter and pedals, and another demo computer was sporting Oculus Rift. We gave visitors a peek at American Truck Simulator and also the "Vive la France !" expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2. While we've been expecting less gaming-tuned audience, especially the mornings on all three days surprised us a little bit because there were vocational schools and high schools visiting the expo from different corners of the country. And as you can imagine, most of this younger crowd was interested way more in our booth with flashy screens and cool VR than in the real vehicles, no matter how shiny they were! But in the afternoons we've greeted visitors from the more mature serious industry audience, too. And as always, we had a great time with our fans as well as with people who never heard about our games until now, but were really curious about them. We would like to thank everyone who stopped by our booth, tried our games and chatted with the SCS Software crew. We've gathered some valuable experiences and contacts which may lead to some form of cooperation in the future. If you want to know on which public events we plan to participate, please follow our social media channels like the Instagram or Twitter profiles. View the full article

We are proud to announce that the Vive la France ! map expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2 is now available for purchase and activation! You are invited to check out Vive la France ! Steam Store page. Make your way through broad boulevards of industrial cities and narrow streets of rural hamlets. Enjoy the French outdoors with its diverse looks and disparate vegetation from north to south. Discover famous landmarks, deliver to expansive industrial areas, navigate complex intersections and interchanges, enjoy visually unique roundabouts inspired by real locations. Transport a variety of new cargo to service new local French companies as well as connecting the region to the rest of Europe. Main features Extensive map of France to explore 20,000 km of new roads and highways Famous landmarks, recognizable places 15 new cities Rural French villages and sceneries Enhanced vegetation with dense forests along to roads New local companies to work for French tollgate system New industries including 5 nuclear plant zones New cargoes to haul Vive la France ! YouTube Trailer Useful links Euro Truck Simulator 2 - Vive la France ! Steam store page Vive la France ! press kit Euro Truck Simulator 2 Steam store page We hope that you will have a great time exploring the new part of the universe of our truck simulator games! View the full article

Only three days are left until Monday December 5th. That's when the new map expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2 Vive la France ! is going to be released after well over a year of hard work of our ETS2 design team. We are very excited by the reactions from people who have reviewed the DLC or had access to it as part of closed beta test. We have already started sending out press keys to media, so reviews, videos, and streams are now popping up online. There will surely be more of them over the weekend. A few of our friends helping us with beta testing have also contributed with their own opinion on what a launch trailer should look like, or started showing extensive gameplay videos. If you are curious what to expect with "Vive la France !" this post is going to collect what we have found on YouTube so far... View the full article

We are continuing our effort to expand the range of national motifs for the Euro Truck Simulator cabs with two more paint job sets. This time we went on a trip to Finland and Belgium. We hope that especially the players from the two countries will enjoy our creative design of these two new Euro Truck 2 DLCs: Finnish Paint Job Pack and Belgian Paint Job Pack. View the full article

We would like to sincerely thank the fan community for the awesome feedback on Open Beta of Euro Truck Simulator 2 version 1.26. We have received a lot of valuable input on the new content and tons of reports for little things that we would have almost missed but that were fixed thanks to you. We are now ready to make the 1.26 Update live for everyone. The game will actually update itself automatically on Steam. The legacy non-Steam edition of the game will have the update ready for download in a couple of days. If you participated in the Open Beta on Steam, please don't forget to switch back to the non-beta branch in ETS2 properties. We have already covered the changes and improvements coming with this update extensively, in the post annoucing the Open Beta, but let's review them again so that you have all the news in one scoop. Older Parts of France Reworked The main star of this map refresh is the city of Paris, which actually has been completely rebuilt to make it way more elaborate than before! We have re-touched the existing region of northern France in the base game. It's not a total rework from scratch, but we believe that you will appreciate some very visible changes in the world; new models, new intersections and use of higher resolution textures in many places. New Transmissions for all Trucks We have adjusted and added some new options for the transmissions of all the trucks tractors in the game, so now there are more options to choose - from the standard or overdrive style of transmissions or even the Allison 4500. We hope that especially the players who care for more choices and precision of the vehicle simulation will appreciate the new adjustment, now there are new opportunities to play with the ratio between engine and wheels. Upgrade Shop & Truck Browser Search Tool A new search line was added into the game's upgrade shop and truck browser screens, so now you will be able to look up for example a specific paintjob or a particular engine upgrade. This new feature will come handy if you own a lot of our minor DLCs or if you happen to have lots of truck tuning mods installed. Game Changes Adjustable interior FOV per truck Added parking difficulty (preset option included) Truck repair/refuel performed by hired driver costs money, included in logs Added informational dialog showing when game detects upgrade or downgrade Added pounds + short tonnes as weight unit option Better trailer air pressure simulation Low air warning should only be active with running engine Revised rolling resistance computations Hired driver use the very same formulas for eco skill as the player Info for Modders Changed map parameters (climate_profile, map_data) Moddable interior camera zoom parameters. (speed, factor) 1 degree rotation on Ctrl + R, 90 degree rotation on Home Merged editable sign and sign dialog Refresh sign template and its model from content browser Added letter-spacing to sign editor Store content browser navigation history Support for day/nigh effect switching and child hookups for lod_model_hookup_u You can follow this link to see the whole changelog of this update. Please also check out our modding wiki to get the best advice for modding the game. View the full article

We're ready to let everyone know when you will be able to hop into your trucks and start exploring the roads of beautiful France! "Vive La France !" map expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2 is going to be released December 5, 2016. To be more specific, we are aiming at 4 pm Prague time (GMT+1) on Monday, that's when the activation keys should be enabled and the DLC will be ready for download and purchase. We are going to price it the same as Scandinavia map add-on on the channels that are under our control (like Steam - here is the "Vive la France !" coming soon page). There may be small price and timing differences on local markets, in retail, or at places like Amazon, where we do not have the power to enforce strict pricing policy. Everything is happening very quickly, we were still not sure about the final date a week ago, as we have been thoroughly testing and polishing the DLC pretty much until today. Now we want to give you a chance to play the expanded game as soon as possible. A week of preparations is sufficient to arrange the release on digital channels, but our retail publishing partners will be struggling with manufacturing deadlines, so some sales channels may take longer to stock the add-on. View the full article

Next week, we will make an anouncement regarding Vive la France! DLC which we believe will make Euro Truck Simulator 2 fans very happy. Until then, we have a picture to tease you with! :) It may actually answer some of the questions that we get bombarded with... View the full article

Starting today we are joining another popular social site / sharing application in addition to our current social channels like this Blog, our Facebook, Youtube and Twitter channels. We have heard repeatedly from some of our fans and even from our industrial partners that Instagram is their prefered choice when seeking or publishing pictures. We do not want to neglect this segment of our fanbase or possibly miss out on the opportunities for new people to discover our games. While we are online on our Facebook pages nearly every single day, posting frequently on Twitter, trying to inform all of you about everything important via our blogposts and Steam community pages, we would like to do more to keep in touch with our awesome community. And that's why we are going to become a part of the wide Instagram family, too. We believe that Instagram will prove to be a great platform for us when we would like to publish some pictures right from a public event, or some quick, hot and first-handed screenshots or videos related to our games. We will be happy if you follow us on the Instagram at this profile. Let's kick it off with a little teaser! :) There is something interesting in the first post on our Instagram profile. What's there hiding under the cover of the night? Check it out, maybe you will recognize a new addition to American Truck Simulator which is finally very close to being added to the game. But anyway don't worry, it will be fully revealed with deciated blogpost later this week. Finally a little SCS Software social media reminder: if you are not following our Facebook pages yet, you can give us a like and follow there. We have a central SCS Software company page and dedicated pages also for our games Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator. If you are more into Twitter or Youtube, you can of course follow as there as well. View the full article

We would like to do more to recognize the dedication of hardcore players who spend a lot of their time with our games. Behind the scenes, our World of Trucks back-end has already been able to gather quite some statistics and information about the job deliveries taking place on the system, and this gives us a great base and toolset to use for something new. We are happy and proud that the number of drivers connected to our WoTr project is steadily growing. We know that truckers like to show off their accomplishments, their statistics, the distance driven and the volume and weight of jobs they have delivered with their mighty, devoted, diesel beasts. And how better to show what kind of a trucker you are than by hunting achievements? So today we're adding some brand new achievements for all of you who've taken the time to connect their in-game profiles with our World of Trucks site: FIRST HUNDRED Complete 100 World of Trucks contracts INTERNATIONAL DRIVER Complete 10 World of Trucks contracts in American Truck Simulator and 10 contracts in Euro Truck Simulator 2 WEEKLY RUSH Transport 1,000 tons (984 lg tn) in a single week. Counts any 7 consecutive days, minimum required job distance is 250 km (155 miles) COMMITTED HAULER Transport 1 million kilograms (2,204,623 pounds) THE ULTIMATE AVERAGE Complete 5 jobs in a row with average delivery distance not smaller than 1,000 km (621 miles) PUNCTUAL PERFECTIONIST Complete 3 contracts in a row with a minimum of 300 km (186 miles) per contract. Your time on duty shouldn't exceed 25 minutes per contract. Each delivery must be perfect (no cargo damage, in time) LITTLE MARATHON Deliver 100 t of cargo in 1 hour. Minimum required job distance is 100 km (62 miles) There are also two hidden achievements to pursue, but we'd like you to discover them on your own. You can check the whole list of all available achievements on your profile at worldoftrucks.com Also a little reminder: our achievements work retrospectively, so don't worry, if you've already passed some of the required criteria, they won't be forgotten and will be counted. Moreover, some of these can be achieved multiple times so you can really show even more skill and passion for trucking by getting them over and over! There is only one question remaining... Are you ready to fasten your seat belt, ignite the engine and accept the challenge? View the full article