American Truck Sim

[Nels_Anderson]

That's pretty much why we RV -- spending three days behind the wheel going halfway across the country is relaxing. It's not a matter of economics -- I'm "retired" from an airline and we can fly for free, but the last place I want to spend any of my free time is at an airport. Probably why I don't do flight sims.

I really enjoy driving in the sim. I really don't much like driving in the real world. Real world driving means speed bumps, pot holes, bad drivers, traffic congestion... The sim eliminates most of the things that make real world driving unpleasant (except for the bad drivers...the AI vehicles are pretty dangerous!)

Flight simming is much the same. Many of the flightsim companies go out of their way to make things real, i.e. planes that you can walk around and pre-flight, "persistent" aircraft where the state of the plane at the end of one flight carries over to the next meaning things actually wear out and require maintenance. In the real world these are things that are a headache and an expense, so having done them for years in the sim I'd rather avoid them. Fortunately the sim allows just putting me at the end of the runway, engine running and ready to go and lets the fun part start right away without dealing with the tedious details :-)

[haverfordwest]

ATS is now out of update open beta and v1.49 is released.

[eric]

Interesting that you use "relaxing" to describe the activity, as I've quite often thought the same myself. The truck sims can be pretty relaxing if you're doing mostly highway driving, just enjoying the scenery as it goes by. There are places on the small roads that get pretty challenging though. That said, the backgrounds scenery details often makes for the most enjoying viewing.

That's pretty much why we RV -- spending three days behind the wheel going halfway across the country is relaxing. It's not a matter of economics -- I'm "retired" from an airline and we can fly for free, but the last place I want to spend any of my free time is at an airport. Probably why I don't do flight sims.

[Nels_Anderson]

ATS looks to be getting a bit more love than ETS2 in terms of new states.
Though finding ATM preferring Snowrunner even if the maps are fictional (Scandinavia looks nothing like Norway or Sweden) and the vehicle speeds also seem scaled.

ETS2 was/is best with ProMods but it just got too bothersome downloading the next version every time SCS made a change to the parent game.

Both ATS and ETS2 seem to regularly get updates. I recently got the latest Europe DLC and am now exploring countries I'd never visit in real life!

One problem they are about to run into is that they are running out of Europe! They've already got DLC for most of it, whereas they still have half or more of American to cover.

[Nels_Anderson]

Nels_Anderson I haven't given it a try yet, but it's on my list to try. Retirement is at least 11 months and two weeks away by my calendar...

I suspect you'll enjoy it. I forget who it was, but it was someone here on TrainSim.Com that recommended I try the truck sims and it was certainly a good suggestion. Do get yourself a proper steering wheel and pedals as it really helps the experience.

[Nels_Anderson]

Though I enjoy ATS, I find it is not as relaxing to travel long distances as a train simulator like Run8. 1:20 ratio often requires quite a bit of turning, interchanges, etc. that keeps you on your toes pretty much every few seconds. Speed zones and tight curves can come up on you very quickly

Sean

Interesting that you use "relaxing" to describe the activity, as I've quite often thought the same myself. The truck sims can be pretty relaxing if you're doing mostly highway driving, just enjoying the scenery as it goes by. There are places on the small roads that get pretty challenging though. That said, the backgrounds scenery details often makes for the most enjoying viewing.

Both flying and driving trains can be relaxing too, depending on what route you take. On a VFR flight you can just put the plane on autopilot and watch the scenery go by. Likewise with trains, though again it depends on the route...dealing with places with changing elevation or rapid speed limit changes keeps you on your toes...

[NorthernWarrior]

ATS looks to be getting a bit more love than ETS2 in terms of new states.
Though finding ATM preferring Snowrunner even if the maps are fictional (Scandinavia looks nothing like Norway or Sweden) and the vehicle speeds also seem scaled.

ETS2 was/is best with ProMods but it just got too bothersome downloading the next version every time SCS made a change to the parent game.

[eric]

Nels_Anderson I haven't given it a try yet, but it's on my list to try. Retirement is at least 11 months and two weeks away by my calendar...

[haverfordwest]

ATS and ETS2 are not for everyone. The same as my interest in NA railroads, comes a long way down my railway priorities.
I only purchase Run8 addons to support John and the other R8 developers.

[SurvivorSean]

Though I enjoy ATS, I find it is not as relaxing to travel long distances as a train simulator like Run8. 1:20 ratio often requires quite a bit of turning, interchanges, etc. that keeps you on your toes pretty much every few seconds. Speed zones and tight curves can come up on you very quickly.

A train simulator you can often set the air and observe how your train is handling a downgrade. You usually have plenty of notice of an actual mile on speed zones, and .25 mile for whistle posts. Signals in some places can stretch as much as 2 miles. Climbing a grade where you have tonnage you're often below the speed limit and it's just a matter of monitoring the situation and resetting the alerter (much more relaxing).

Thanks

Sean

[Nels_Anderson]

I enjoy most of the vehicle type sims: flight sims, train sims, and truck sims. It's interesting to compare the design challenges for each type, as they each approach recreating the real world in different ways.

Flight sims now include the entire world in pretty reasonable detail, based on mapping and image data, with the addition of custom made smaller areas in higher detail.

Train sims accurately recreate a small portion of the world, but each route is a limited area with hard boundaries. This does allow designers to includes lots of detail, as players cannot escape the design area.

Truck sims are somewhere in between...they cover entire large regions but compress things, i.e. huge cities become only a few blocks and highways are 1/20th of their actual length. But they've done a good job of giving the illusion of being in a real world. Eric, I don't know if you've tried the truck sims but the urban areas are some of the best things about them; they get lots of little details that make the world feel real. When you realize that every object, from a big building to a little pile of trash along the street had to be built by someone, it's kind of amazing how much detail gets included.

[eric]

I suspect that ATS/ETS struggles with the same thing that we do with ORTS/MSTS -- urban routes are considerably more difficult because of the demands for scenery objects and perhaps scenery density.

[Nels_Anderson]

The only western states I've ever visited are California and Washington, and those only briefly. So in reality, as I drive both ATS and ETS the American destinations are almost as foreign to me as the European ones are. Knowing that the designers have to take significant liberties in the scenery (i.e., compared to Flight Simulator, which I'm pretty familiar with) I'm really curious to see how they would handle a region I'm actually familiar with in the real world.

[haverfordwest]

I don't know the US, so they are all new to me Nels. But i understand your preference for familiar locations.

Mike.

[Nels_Anderson]

Always nice to see a new state being released, though personally I can't get all that excited about visiting Kansas. I'd love to be driving more familiar terrain along the East Coast, but that's got to be many years away if ever.