American Truck Simulator

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jztemple2
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by jztemple2 »

Enjoying the game so far, but in one way it's not ETS2. Mobile cops! I got a $1,000 ticket for speeding already (on the Golden Gate bridge!) and $900 for a crash, so I'm not making money real fast :wink:. I did find a great radio station called Flower Power Radio, just the right thing for us oldsters.
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Holman
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by Holman »

Is it fun??

Impressions please. I never played ETS2, but I've seen enough video to have a sense of it. Does this game feel fully baked, or will it need a few months of patching and DLC to really be worth it?
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by jztemple2 »

Holman wrote:Is it fun??

Impressions please. I never played ETS2, but I've seen enough video to have a sense of it. Does this game feel fully baked, or will it need a few months of patching and DLC to really be worth it?
The game is nicely polished, but you would expect that since it's using the game system from Euro Truck Simulator. I've played a couple of hours and am enjoying it so far. There's enough gameplay to justify $20 and encourage SCS to put out more states. Highlights...

Had a crash... with a police car. Not a good thing
Image (click to enlarge)

Costly too
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Trying to do a u-turn on an interstate:
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The fuzz!
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Truckee to San Francisco
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Speeding on the Golden Gate bridge!
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Built in Mod Manager:
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Favorite radio stations. I'm really enjoying Flower Power, I'm streaming it through Winamp on my desktop.
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YellowKing
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by YellowKing »

Purchased. I can't freaking wait to put the kids to bed tonight, crank up a radio station, and head out across the west coast highways. :auto-swerve:
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Alefroth
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by Alefroth »

Any particular station? :lol:
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by jztemple2 »

Alefroth wrote:Any particular station? :lol:
For old folks, Flower Power Radio can't be beat. The music is from the 50s/60s/70s. No DJ, no commercials, just a thirty second news update on the hour.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by SlapBone »

Edit: Refund requested.

I guess Europe doesn't seem as off because I've never been there. This game feels like they weren't really trying.
Last edited by SlapBone on Tue Feb 02, 2016 11:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Alefroth
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by Alefroth »

jztemple2 wrote:
Alefroth wrote:Any particular station? :lol:
For old folks, Flower Power Radio can't be beat. The music is from the 50s/60s/70s. No DJ, no commercials, just a thirty second news update on the hour.
I thought Beatles Radio might have caught YK's eye.

My favorite from ETS2 was the Hot Mix Radio from France.
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YellowKing
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by YellowKing »

For some reason none of my radio stations will play. They just sit there buffering forever. :(
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by jztemple2 »

YellowKing wrote:For some reason none of my radio stations will play. They just sit there buffering forever. :(
I've had the occasional problem with buffering, especially with the Beatles station. Might be the sudden onrush of ATS players tuning in their radios that are bringing these stations to their knees.
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Alefroth
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by Alefroth »

Can you try streaming through Winamp like jz mentioned?
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by jztemple2 »

Alefroth wrote:Can you try streaming through Winamp like jz mentioned?
That's a good idea. The URLs are located in the live_streams.sii file, which is in your C:\Users\[name]\Documents\American Truck Simulator folder.
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YellowKing
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by YellowKing »

Yeah, that's been my workaround. I saw a forum post with someone having the same issue in ETS2, so I think it may be a game bug of some sort. Whatever it is, it's rare though as I can't find anyone else with the problem. I tried making sure it was allowed through my firewall, tested the streams to make sure they work fine, nothing. If I click on a station it just tries for a second then continuously cycles through the stations. If I favorite one, it will stay on that station but will never play. Hopefully somebody else will have the issue on the forums and we can figure it out. I may also try disconnecting the Xbox controller to see if that has anything to do with it.

Lots of fun so far, and the level of detail seems a lot higher than ETS2 (though admittedly I have not played that game in awhile). I made two successful runs so far without incident, except for getting a speeding ticket outside Bakersfield. That was $1,000 I'd like to get back! Lots of Smokeys out there folks, be on the lookout!
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baelthazar
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by baelthazar »

Just a preference question - for those of you using Xbox 360 controllers, what sensitivity and deadzone do you set for your steering stick? Also, do you controller users toggle the auto-center button or not?
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by jztemple2 »

baelthazar wrote:Just a preference question - for those of you using Xbox 360 controllers, what sensitivity and deadzone do you set for your steering stick? Also, do you controller users toggle the auto-center button or not?
Honestly I just use the game default on my X360 controller and it works fine. I don't use the auto-center button.

I'm deep into the tycoon game now. I had $20,000 in cash and borrowed $100,000 from the bank to buy my first truck. Since I have to play about $1900 in interest every day (damn loansharks!) I have to watch every penny and I've been killing myself with stupid fines. I was exiting an interstate onto an up ramp and got stuck in traffic half way up. When I would let off the brake to gas and go the engine would stall and I manage to twice hit the truck behind me, for a total of $1800 in fines. And another few hundred for an illegal right on red :x.

And it got worse. I was driving into a town on a highway and the speed dropped from 55 to 35 with no advance warning and I got nailed for a grand. Damn speed traps! :x :x

So I've programmed my controller to have the cruise control button as "Y" and cruise control decrease and increase on the shoulder buttons. I use the cruise control as much as possible to avoid these stupid tickets. I suspect there will be a lot of other players griping about this.

On a more positive note, I'm now getting addicted to Beatles Radio :D
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by jztemple2 »

Speaking of police fines, this was posted on the ATS Steam discussion board:
how i save money GO TO: C:\Users\USER\Documents\American Truck Simulator\profiles

1. select your profile folder will be a bunch of numbers
2. select config and open it in notepad
3. look for uset g_police "1"
4 change it to uset g_police "0" and save
5. Break the law all you want and Profit $$
I tried it and it seems to work. I wasn't planning on hacking the game, but the fines are large and things like that speed trap are annoying. I'll probably disable the hack once I have enough money.

UPDATE: I've also seen this on my Steam download page:
Image

There wasn't anything downloaded, but I think that maybe SCS is getting ready to roll out Steam Workshop support, something they had previously announced will happen sometime after the launch of ATS.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by Daehawk »

And another few hundred for an illegal right on red
Is that a hold over from the Euro version or are there places in the US thats not a legal thing?
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by Holman »

Daehawk wrote:
And another few hundred for an illegal right on red
Is that a hold over from the Euro version or are there places in the US thats not a legal thing?
You can't do it in NYC. I don't know how it goes in California.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by raydude »

Holman wrote:
Daehawk wrote:
And another few hundred for an illegal right on red
Is that a hold over from the Euro version or are there places in the US thats not a legal thing?
You can't do it in NYC. I don't know how it goes in California.
Maybe there was a sign that said "No right on red" ? We have a few of those in the DC area.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by YellowKing »

Yeah I had read in a preview that right on red was going to be allowed, so maybe it was a specific intersection.

The speeding thing is tough, but I don't want to hack the game to get around it. I do think $1000 is a bit steep, considering the runs I'm on right now only pay out about $4,000. I wish speed limits were more clearly posted - I just use a general rule of thumb not to drive over 35 in the city or over 65 on the highway.

Some thoughts:

- I'm getting pretty good at the intermediate parking, but advanced parking ain't happenin' right now. :D
- I'm using the Xbox 360 controller. Right now I'm just fully automatic, though as I get more experienced I may switch to manual. I mapped "look around" to the right joystick so I rarely have to touch the mouse. Tonight maybe I'll get around to mapping some other buttons for cruise and turn signals and the like.
- I'm trying to avoid taking out a huge loan, even though it's going to take forever to buy a truck. I'm focusing on getting my hazardous materials licenses and long-distance skill up so I can take on higher paying jobs.

Really the only annoyance for me right now is the radio streams not working. Winamp works fine as a workaround, but it sucks I can't just switch channels on the fly in-game. I'm thinking of backing up my save, deleting, and reinstalling just in case something got jacked up on the install.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by wanderingoutlaw »

YellowKing wrote:The speeding thing is tough, but I don't want to hack the game to get around it. I do think $1000 is a bit steep, considering the runs I'm on right now only pay out about $4,000. I wish speed limits were more clearly posted - I just use a general rule of thumb not to drive over 35 in the city or over 65 on the highway.
If you use the Route Advisor, the box with the GPS navigator in the lower right corner of the screen, the current speed limit is shown there--as a black number in a white box in the lower left of the GPS map. (In Euro Truck Simulator 2, it's shown as black number within a white circle with red circumference.) The speed limit signs seem to be for cars and not necessarily trucks. In my brief play yesterday, I was driving down a highway with a 65 mph posted speed limit, but the speed limit in the route advisor showed 55 mph.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by Daehawk »

Are speeding tickets in the real world more for a semi than a car? Ive seen tickets for a car where they were 25mph over and the ticket was around $80 - $120
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by naednek »

YellowKing wrote:Yeah I had read in a preview that right on red was going to be allowed, so maybe it was a specific intersection.

The speeding thing is tough, but I don't want to hack the game to get around it. I do think $1000 is a bit steep, considering the runs I'm on right now only pay out about $4,000. I wish speed limits were more clearly posted - I just use a general rule of thumb not to drive over 35 in the city or over 65 on the highway.

.

Just look at it this way... You're driving in CA (I'm a resident) it's expensive to live here, there's fines for everything, and just pretend you're also paying a fine for polluting. It's their form of CapNTrade.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by naednek »

wanderingoutlaw wrote:
YellowKing wrote:The speeding thing is tough, but I don't want to hack the game to get around it. I do think $1000 is a bit steep, considering the runs I'm on right now only pay out about $4,000. I wish speed limits were more clearly posted - I just use a general rule of thumb not to drive over 35 in the city or over 65 on the highway.
If you use the Route Advisor, the box with the GPS navigator in the lower right corner of the screen, the current speed limit is shown there--as a black number in a white box in the lower left of the GPS map. (In Euro Truck Simulator 2, it's shown as black number within a white circle with red circumference.) The speed limit signs seem to be for cars and not necessarily trucks. In my brief play yesterday, I was driving down a highway with a 65 mph posted speed limit, but the speed limit in the route advisor showed 55 mph.

As someone who lives in CA, Trucks can only go 55mph. 65mph are for cars.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by naednek »

The game is fun, but one thing that kind annoys me compared to ETS is that in ETS I knew nothing about the region. Again, as someone who lives in CA, who's been to Redding, who lives in Sacramento, who's been to SF and LA, the landscape\roads\routes are nowhere as accurate I thought it be. Instead of going up the grapevine to get to LA from I5, you go through a tunnel. In Sacramento where the truckstops are there should be the Sacramento River, but not in the game.

I know there's limitations, but the familiarity is a double edge sword, it's cool to drive it, but you start noticing how many things are wrong.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

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So I played last night a couple hours. As a real life over the road truck driver, I found the game pretty fun. I must say, I wish we were paid as much as in game !! Holy crap, that's a lot of money for just one load. Though I understand it's for game play purposes; it would take forever to make enough to buy a truck...even with a loan. I know, cuz I did just that in real life. Took 6 years, from training school to company driver to purchasing to paying off/owning outright.

The biggest negative/unrealistic part so far is right turns. In reality, the driver has to go at least partially into the other lane to turn right to avoid jumping onto the curb, but in game the "apron" is pretty far set back to eliminate this issue.

I can almost guarantee I will not put points into the "just in time" branch, as this would add stress in game...I already do enough of that for real !!
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by YellowKing »

persself wrote: In reality, the driver has to go at least partially into the other lane to turn right to avoid jumping onto the curb, but in game the "apron" is pretty far set back to eliminate this issue.
I've never driven a real truck, but I thought the turning was really forgiving as well. I still swing wide just for the fun of it. :D

And bravo for playing a game that simulates your real job. If I had to play a game that simulated being an IT guy, I'd shoot myself. :shock:
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Re: American Truck Simulator

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YellowKing wrote: And bravo for playing a game that simulates your real job. If I had to play a game that simulated being an IT guy, I'd shoot myself. :shock:
I really debated for that very reason, but I remember having a lot of fun years ago with 18wheels of steel or whatever it was called...course, that was before I began my truck driving career.

edit: And making ridiculous amounts of money in the game, I pretend/think what if in reality. LOL.
How much different: I make 65% of line haul plus a fuel surcharge, which is like $.16/mile now with
crappy low fuel prices. Comes to apprx. $1.50/mile on average !!
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by jztemple2 »

YellowKing wrote:And bravo for playing a game that simulates your real job. If I had to play a game that simulated being an IT guy, I'd shoot myself. :shock:
I worked as an engineer on the Space Shuttle program for 35 years, so playing Kerbal Space Program was just like... oh hell, it was nothing like work :D

Played some more today. Really liking the Beatles radio as I grew up in the 1960s. I did find out that apparently if the station you are listening to drops out, it switches to another station you have "starred". It took me a little while to be really sure that wasn't a Beatles song :roll:.

I did find something a bit annoying. It's this stretch of road starting down there at the "1" and running up to Carson City the "back" way, in other words the loop on the west side. It's got really nice scenery, some nice elevation changes, and I'd never have a reason ever to drive on it except if I'm working towards 100% completion of roads driven. I really hope they update the map to add connections north and south from it.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by persself »

Many times those back roads have restrictions and/or low clearance: <13'6"

Did the euro truck game have low clearances or restricted routes ? I'm guessing no...
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by KDH »

persself wrote:Many times those back roads have restrictions and/or low clearance: <13'6"

Did the euro truck game have low clearances or restricted routes ? I'm guessing no...
you are guessing correct .. there are NO special circumstances ... like not enough clearance UNDER the truck....
today .. in San Francisco

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YellowKing
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by YellowKing »

Re: the streaming radio issue:

Found in the game log an error: "FAILED TO LOAD stream blah blah blah" - so I figured something was blocking the stream. I tried disabling the Windows firewall and even disabling the firewall service to no avail. I downloaded a new codec pack. I uninstalled the game, reinstalled the game. Disabled anti-spyware, disabled Windows Defender. Nothing works.

Paste the same stream into a browser or WinAmp, plays fine.

I'm running Windows 10 which I assume a lot of other people are, so don't know what about my PC it doesn't like. Guess I'll live with WinAmp for now, but it's super annoying, particularly since it seems to be such a rare issue. The only other instances I saw of people having the same problem and resolving it was when they were running an N version of Windows 8 that didn't have Windows Media Player. So it may be something related to WMP, even though I've messed around with its settings and haven't been able to get anything to work either.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by jztemple2 »

I'm getting a little disappointed with what I see as missed opportunities in the game, or maybe not enough development time or direction. I was at Eureka and picked up a load at HWM, north of town. Their depot just is a bit south of a major four lane highway, traffic zooming along on it. Except that the highway isn't accessible by the player, it has those "XXX" symbols blocking it. A quick check of Google Maps shows the highway to be US 101. How awesome would it be to take 101 (or as the Californians say, "the" 101) all the way down the coast? I know it's a $20 game, and maybe because I'm not familiar with European roads, I didn't notice it in ETS2, but it seems they could have added more roads. Certainly it wasn't because of worrying about the retail package, the download was only a gig, easy to have quadrupled that on a DVD for retail.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by persself »

Another big gripe is left turns with no light or no left turn arrow light at busy roads. I have sat for several minutes in line without moving...reload, was first in line this time, and just had to gun it. Didn't work, as I wrecked/caused crash...reload and try again.

They need to fix these intersections where heavy traffic prevents turning left ASAP.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by jztemple2 »

persself wrote:Another big gripe is left turns with no light or no left turn arrow light at busy roads. I have sat for several minutes in line without moving...reload, was first in line this time, and just had to gun it. Didn't work, as I wrecked/caused crash...reload and try again.

They need to fix these intersections where heavy traffic prevents turning left ASAP.
I posted about about something related to this over in the Steam discussion bug thread. There are several places where access to an Interstate highway is by the road you are on ending with a stop sign facing the interstate. If you are turning left it takes forever for a break in traffic, and the break in the median isn't deep enough to hold the truck. A couple of times I went right then when there was a break in the median I did a U-turn. Not very easy!

Whether I buy the next pay DLC (New Mexico? Oregon?) will depend on how well they address these issues. Or maybe I'll just buy them anyway :roll:

I'm getting a retro vibe on this... remember when Microsoft re-launched their Flight Sim series with Microsoft Flight? They released only part of Hawaii at first, with the intent of releasing the rest of the USA in stages. They completed all of Hawaii and did part of Alaska then bailed.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by Sepiche »

persself wrote:Another big gripe is left turns with no light or no left turn arrow light at busy roads. I have sat for several minutes in line without moving...reload, was first in line this time, and just had to gun it. Didn't work, as I wrecked/caused crash...reload and try again.

They need to fix these intersections where heavy traffic prevents turning left ASAP.
Yeah, I ran into a spot like that last night. I ended up getting across by inching out when I saw a small gap to get the cars to stop, then I gunned it and made the turn. It seems like traffic for a given area is spawned fairly randomly... they just need to code in gaps every once in a while. I did notice though in one spot where I was waiting for a bit for a left hand turn, eventually a couple of the oncoming cars just stopped and let me turn. Not sure if that was a fluke or intentional, but it helped.

Another annoying thing I ran into... I started a night job, turned on my engine, put the truck in gear, and before I even moved an inch a passing police car gave me a $900 fine for driving with no lights. :|

With XCOM out tonight I probably won't play this a whole lot for a while, but hopefully that will give them a chance to get some more states added. Only two states was already starting to feel a little small after a dozen or so jobs.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by Alefroth »

jztemple2 wrote:I'm getting a little disappointed with what I see as missed opportunities in the game, or maybe not enough development time or direction. I was at Eureka and picked up a load at HWM, north of town. Their depot just is a bit south of a major four lane highway, traffic zooming along on it. Except that the highway isn't accessible by the player, it has those "XXX" symbols blocking it. A quick check of Google Maps shows the highway to be US 101. How awesome would it be to take 101 (or as the Californians say, "the" 101) all the way down the coast? I know it's a $20 game, and maybe because I'm not familiar with European roads, I didn't notice it in ETS2, but it seems they could have added more roads. Certainly it wasn't because of worrying about the retail package, the download was only a gig, easy to have quadrupled that on a DVD for retail.
101 isn't modeled? That's sure an odd decision. Have you been on any real life highways? I figured the roads in ETS were based on real highways, but maybe not.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by jztemple2 »

Alefroth wrote:101 isn't modeled? That's sure an odd decision. Have you been on any real life highways? I figured the roads in ETS were based on real highways, but maybe not.
I'm thinking you are talking about European real-life highways in reference to ETS2? No, I've not been on them, but I did do some research and found that they were *somewhat* modeled.

As to this game, I've been to California a number of times. I've taken 101 up from LAX (via the 405) to Santa Barbara and on to Santa Maria. That was back in the 80s when I was working at Vandenburg AFB. The 101 is modeled in the game, but very weirdly. Also weirdly in the game, Oxnard and Santa Cruz are almost adjacent and placed about dead center between LA and SF.

I've posted a screen grab of the map to illustrate. Now, I don't begrudge SCS for making these changes to fix the map scale, but boy I would have liked to see a lot more roads and businesses to fill in the blank spots.

Image (click to enlarge)
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by Alefroth »

Sorry, I meant real highways modeled in ATS. Sounds like they have, just not entirely accurately. As a former resident of Santa Cruz, it is funny to see it there.
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Re: American Truck Simulator

Post by baelthazar »

Alefroth wrote:Sorry, I meant real highways modeled in ATS. Sounds like they have, just not entirely accurately. As a former resident of Santa Cruz, it is funny to see it there.
OH NO! A WORMHOLE ATE SANTA BARBARA AND SAN LUIS OBISPO!

Seriously though, that map is strange. It redacts almost 300 miles!
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