Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung Hannover

A small team from SCS Software ventured to Hannover, Germany, to visit IAA - International Commercial Vehicles show. To describe it in one word, it is huge. There were hundreds and hundreds of vehicles on display, but also all kinds of parts, aftermarket upgrades and research concepts, trucks, buses, vans and trailers, a giant mixture of shiny technology mixed with business guys wearing jackets and ties and beautiful booth babes posing next to trucks.

We pursued several objectives at IAA. Of course one of them was to take a lot of photos for research purposes. It was a rare opportunity to get into the cabin of the high-class trucks, to zoom in on all the details in and around the vehicles. The photos will be a valuable extension for our database - to tap into whenever we build new or improve existing 3D models and textures. We already put some of the photos for your viewing pleasure to our Facebook page, and more photos will follow shortly. The impressions from how the transportation industry presents itself is also definitely going to have an influence on our visual design decisions, and maybe even help in enriching game mechanics.

Another objective was to check out German Truck Simulator running as a demo at one of the booths. Yes, GTS is at IAA right now in playable form, used for illustrating the application of eye-tracking, head-tracking and hand-tracking biomechanics tools at Commercial Vehicle Group booth. CVG is the leading supplier of seating for trucks and buses in the US, and we are looking at opportunities with them for possibly adapting our technology for their cab design research & development needs.

Finally, we tried to approach brand management and marketing/PR people from the truck manufacturing companies about the possibility of including real truck brands into our future games. It seems that IAA is the place to be, as we got far more traction approaching people in person there than we managed to achieve in the past three years by e-mails and phone calls. We are of course not sure if we eventually manage to persuade the giant truck manufacturing corporations to give enough attention to small SCS Software and consider the matter and the benefits of having their brand, treated with all respect, clearly visible by players of our games. But we have talked to important people, gave them samples of the game and the "elevator pitch" of why we think it would be a good idea for them to come aboard, and now it's down to patiently working from this start.