SCS On The Road: Western Star 57X Walk-Around

We're back in the USA for our newest SCS On The Road episode! This time, we're in Cleveland, North Carolina to check out the Western Star 57X at the Daimler Truck North America Cleveland Truck Manufacturing Plant! 

During our visit, we met up with Anthony Pires, who took us on a detailed walk-around of the 57X, which you can also find in American Truck Simulator! This truck brings the best of both worlds of Western Star, with it's X-Series DNA crossed with Daimler's platform tested over millions of miles, bringing you the most advanced on-highway Western Star, ever! 

We hope you enjoy this fun, but educational video with Anthony, who at the time of recording was Western Star's Brand Manager; he has since moved on to a new role. We'd like to express our gratitude for all his hard work and we wish him all the very best in his new position.

We hope you've enjoyed our latest SCS On The Road episode! Let us know which part you enjoyed the most in the comments below. Stay tuned for the next episode! Until then, make sure to follow us on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

Kansas - Research Trip

Today, we are happy to share with you another report from one of our Research Trips! This blog focuses on the journey Kansas Map Lead, Patrik Sadlon, Map Designers Pavel J, Ilona C, Elena H and 2D Artist Annie V, took to the U.S earlier this year. The purpose of their travel was to gather references and information for the upcoming Kansas DLC, as well as to inspire them in preparation for future projects.

However, please keep in mind that the information and media presented here do not confirm what our upcoming DLC will include.

Travelling 10,500kms in 17 days, the team visited 20 different states across the US. Each member of the team had their own goal set for the trip. "The goal of map designers was to experience driving on US roads, which are (of course) completely different compared to our roads in Europe" Patrik tells us. "Annie's goal was to see and grab the feel of typical American info-graphics, billboards, brand logos etc.". As you can imagine, these trips proved to be a valuable experience for our teams in bringing a realistic look and feel to our ATS projects. 

"For me, the best part about visiting America was getting to drive there." Elena explains to us, "Seeing what our players would see from the point of view of a driver really changed my perspective on what to add to our map and what not to. I noticed things while driving the same route we have in the game that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise. The feel of the road is also very different from our roads in Europe. Everything is smoother and larger." 

"Another thing I really liked was the small towns we saw across the states. Each had its own atmosphere, and some of them were truly magical to visit. It was great to see the nature, the roads and their curves, the vastness of the states, and the cities. It's a very different vibe compared to Europe, and I think seeing all this with our own eyes can help us create a better game for our players."

The team spent quite a few days in Kansas, exploring various cities along Interstate 70, such as Colby, Hays, Topeka and of course, Kansas City. They also visited the likes of Wichita, Hutchinson and Emporia to ensure we captured the "genius loci" of the area. 

"The great thing about our trip to Kansas was that as map designers, we were able to be in the places that we would be creating in our game." Pavel J tells us "I am responsible for Topeka, the capital of Kansas in our upcoming DLC. What was great about the trip was that I got to see Topeka with my own eyes and then I got to build it virtually! It gave me a whole different approach and made me realize what was really important and what the players would like. However, I'm sorry that we have limits and I couldn't make the city as big as the community would have liked. The thing I enjoyed most about the state was Kansas City, which I had the privilege of visiting. Now I just hope to visit the US again. Even though Kansas may be boring to some, it still has its charm". 

"It was great to have the opportunity to discover the beauty and diversity that can be found in this part of the United States." Ilona shares  "Known as the 'Sunflower State', Kansas surprised me with its varied landscapes, winding roads and the many farms that dominate the area. Although we saw only a few sunflower fields, it was clear that this flower plays a significant role in the landscape. The western side of the state is dominated by wide fields of corn and wheat, creating a fascinating view of the endless plains that Kansas has to offer."

"We also passed many family farms as well as large commercial farms where corn, maize and other crops are grown. These farms are an important element of the local economy and culture, and their presence gives Kansas its unique character."

With so much to see in a short amount of time, the team made sure to take plenty of reference shots and videos for the team back at the offices. "We took a lot of video and sound equipment with us" Patrik tells us. "We used a 360 degree camera, mounted on the roof of the car, which allowed us to record our own "streetview" that our colleagues can watch in VR. This allows them see the "size" of the area by just letting them sit with us in the office, watching the material that we recorded".

However, Kansas wasn't the only destination for the team! "We had opportunity to see many states in just 15 days, so we have now great comparison of each one, knowing what's typical for which location." Patrik explains "With focus on Kansas and .. one state that will be announced soon (stay tuned!) - we discovered that the mood of great plains is interesting in its own way. We took many notes along the way and now we are ready to implement them into the game. Noises of crickets that we heard and recorded in Kansas are ready to be released with the DLC. Some other bits needs to wait a little bit more to be implemented - but we are working hard to bring the feel to as close as possible to what we experienced in US." 

This huge journey took this particular team from Denver, Colorado and onwards through the states of Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado and Kansas where they spent a few days exploring the agricultural character of the state. From Kansas they headed to Chicago, but with "little" side jobs in Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Missisippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio.

Phew, what a trip! We look forward to sharing how these research trips translate to our virtual recreation of the states in the future. Until then, we hope you enjoyed this little behind the scenes report of our trip out to the states! Be sure to add Kansas to your Steam wishlist. Until next time, keep on truckin' 

Arkansas - Research Trip

Over the past year, we've been able to send quite a few members from various related teams on research trips to the United States of America. Today's blog focuses on one such team's journey to Arkansas and beyond. The purpose of their travel was to gather references and information, as well as to inspire them in preparation for future projects. However, please keep in mind that the information and media presented here do not confirm what our upcoming DLC will include.

The team consisting of Map Lead David Němec (Davido), Map Asset Specialist Jan Pavlíček (Paulie), Senior Map Designers Vojtěch Plechač and Joanna Cempa and Road Specialist Zuzana Holušová, set off on quite the journey in the US! Travelling over 2,200 miles in 12 days, the team managed to visit quite a few different states, major cities, depots, real-life viewpoints, truck stops, and many other locations too. 

"Within Arkansas, we visited cities such as Jonesboro, Little Rock, Russellville, De Queen or Hot Springs, which is a very beautiful spa town with a rich history and many landmarks. Our goal was primarily to explore the beauty of the Natural State of Arkansas, which we're currently working on." Davido tells us. "The most important parts for us were the references around West Memphis, where I-40 and I-55 merge. There are many interesting locations that we could include in this DLC, such as several truck stops, a weigh station, a welcome center, and the Mississippi River. This place really gave us several insights at once. Unfortunately, geographically, all of this is quite close to the AR/TN border, so we know it won't be easy to get everything in due to our game's scale."

For a few of our team members, it was their first time visiting the US. All of them agreed that they learnt a lot from this trip, especially when it came to the roads, truck stops, towns, and cities. Vojtěch shares his experience a little with us, "There were a lot of things that surprised me, but one of the main things for me was probably the overall vastness of the main metropolises as well as the smaller towns and villages; everything seemed to me to be very spread out over a large area. It's a completely different world compared to Europe." 

"Everything is bigger in America. I learnt that this saying is actually quite true because until now I have only seen pictures." Zuzana shares with us. "Being there and seeing everything with my own eyes was an experience I believe every mapper should have at least once because it is so different from what we see through a lens. Trees, barriers, signs, roads, junctions, truckstops, hills.. everything looked much bigger than I could imagine"  

The team also learnt a lot about the conditions of the roads, especially when it came to smaller road networks that wind through the countryside. "There are holes, they are curvy or bumpy, especially some smaller 1-1 roads." Zuzana and Vojtěch shares with us. "We have seen that there's a lot of curves, bumps, potholes, gradients, etc."

The team also took the time to visit multiple locations and industries to collect more accurate references, such as power plants, where only a minimal amount of material or photos were available online. They also took their journey outside of Arkansas too! "Having already flown such a distance, it would be a shame to stay in only one place and not compare Arkansas with the surrounding states" Davido shares with us, "So, we also visited and collected references from Louisiana, where we were able to visit the amazing Avery Island and the Tabasco Factory, which we had a tour of! It was awesome to see how the production of this popular sauce works, from the cultivation of peppers, through barrel aging, blending, bottling to loading onto trucks and distribution."

In addition to Arkansas and Louisiana, the team was also able to visit Mississippi and Missouri and they even had the opportunity to visit Texas and Oklahoma, two states which we have already released. We believe that these opportunities for our team to visit the States really do help those involved in the development of ATS to bring a more immersive and realistic experience for you, our players! 

We look forward to sharing how these research trips translate to our virtual recreation of the states in the future. Until then, we hope you enjoyed this little insight on the process of creating a new State/region, and how our teams gain experience and knowledge of the states. Don't forget to add Arkansas to your Steam wishlist!

SCS On The Road - Mid-America Trucking Show 2023

It's time for another one of our SCS On the Road episodes, don't you think? We are happy to see all the positive feedback for this YouTube series that we started this year. We believe that you'll love the following episodes we are planning on publishing in the future too!

The last episode took us to Eindhoven, where we had a very informative interview with the amazing Jan Feenstra from DAF, on how the whole partnership with this great European truck manufacturer started back in the early days of ETS2 and ATS. If you have missed it, you should definitely visit our YouTube channel and check it out. 

This new episode is going to be more like a ride through our memories participating in the greatest American truck show, the legendary Mid-America Trucking Show, where we had such a great time earlier this year. We thought it might be nice to bring you a glimpse of how such an event looks like and what visitors can see and experience there. 

Once again, we'd like to express our thanks to friends from Western Star®, who invited us to be a part of the Daimler Truck North America booth at this amazing expo. We hope to be back next year as well!

SCS On The Road - Wielton Factory Tour

As we are getting close to the finish line with our Wielton Trailer Pack expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2, we believe it's the right time to go full steam ahead on the hype train for a little bit. 

And what better way to get you excited about Wielton trailers coming to ETS2 than by learning about this well-known European brand. We are happy to invite you to watch our next SCS On The Road episode, in which we were lucky to get a guided tour through Wielton's production facility in Wieluń, Poland. 

We hope you enjoyed this episode! Let us know in the comments what is your favorite part. We really do appreciate your feedback. Also, we would like to thank once again all the great people from Wielton for allowing us to create this bonus content for our #BestCommunityEver with them! Make sure to visit their social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) and show them some love.

SCS On The Road - Kenworth 100 Years Anniversary (MATS 2023)

We are happy that your feedback on our new SCS On The Road YouTube series has been overwhelmingly positive, and that you guys really like the extra content and entertainment that we are bringing to you through these videos. 

After our virtual trip to Scania's famous demo center in Södertälje, Sweden in the previous episode, today we are travelling across the pond all the way to the United States to join Kenworth Trucks. 

As you probably know, Kenworth is celebrating their 100-year anniversary this year, and to commemorate this, they had a very impressive presentation at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky earlier this year. We were lucky to have had the opportunity to see it, plus our amazing friend Brianna Potthast from Kenworth was happy to do a quick guided tour not only through their exhibition booth at MATS, but also walked with us through Kenworth's history. 

100 years! That's hard to even imagine, right? We hope you liked this episode and that you, like us, have learned something new about Kenworth and their history. Leave us a comment and let us know what your favorite part of this episode was. 

Don't forget to check out Kenworth Trucks' social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and show them your love for their trucks! And we will see you - in the next episode.

SCS & Wielton at the Nürburgring

In every race driver's career, there are a few tracks that are noted as legendary on their list and the Nürburgring is one such track! Featuring 11 corners and 3.629km of track, it has been the home of racing in Germany since 1927. 

Today we're happy to share with you that we have been invited to join our friends from Wielton at their booth for the upcoming FIA ETRC Grand Prix event, hosted at the Nürburgring on the 15 & 16th of July. Not only will you experience an action-packed day filled with truck racing, but also the chance to meet a small team from Wielton and SCS Software!

We will also be bringing along our legendary 4D motion simulator, for anyone wanting to give truck driving a go. However, this time around we will be featuring a very special demo version of Euro Truck Simulator 2, which will feature an exclusive first look at Wielton trailers in-game! 

So, if you happen to be attending or you're thinking about visiting after seeing this blog post, be sure to stop by the booth and give us and the team from Wielton a hello, we'd love to chat with you! You can find out more info about the event at the official website. We look forward to meeting you there.

SCS On The Road - New YouTube Series

For some time now, and for many of the recent business trips we took, we have been preparing something extra for our community, something we have always wanted to do, but never had enough capacity within our teams, until now. Today we are happy to finally reveal this idea, this project, this new YouTube series of ours to you!

What is it going to be about, you ask? Rather than putting down a wall of text, we were thinking it might be better to introduce and explain it all to you in the first episode. Let's call it Episode 0, and you can enjoy it below!

We hope you like the idea in general, and that we will be able to bring you through this new series some good entertainment, something fun yet interesting to watch, and that you will be able to learn some bonus information about our work, or about the brands we cooperate with and their products. 

However, it would be quite disappointing to reveal our new series, and not bring you at least one of the episodes we have prepared at the same time as well, right? Let's sit back, relax and enjoy the first episode with us right now.

We have a few more episodes already being finished and becoming ready to be served to you as well, but as of now, and as was mentioned in the introductory video - we don't know when exactly the next episode will come to our YouTube channel, nor can we say what the upcoming episodes might be about. Let us surprise you! Plus, you can always keep your eyes on our social media channels, as we plan to announce/tease them there a little bit ahead. 

Let us know what do you think about these videos, what did you like, and what do you think we should try to pursue and cover for one of the next episodes. We always appreciate your feedback, just as we highly appreciate all the opportunities from our partners to create these bonus content with them while we are visiting their facilities.

And one tiny disclaimer at the end which might not be necessary, but it is still better to mention it - nothing that appears in any of our episodes of this SCS On The Road series should be understood as a promise of future content for our games. 

SCS On The Road - MATS 2023

As the preparations for this year’s Mid America Trucking Show 2023 (MATS) in Louisville, Kentucky are in full swing, we are excited to announce that a small crew from SCS will be making their way to the US to participate in one of the biggest trucking expos and shows out there. Starting on March 30th, you will be able to experience this awesome event while also saying hi to some of our developers at one of the booths!

We are honored and proud to join forces with our friends over at Western Star® to be a part of their amazing presentation for this expo. We have been invited to be at their booth with one of our 4D Motion Simulators on which the visitors will be able to play American Truck Simulator. This is a great opportunity for us to bring the game to life and show the #BestCommunityEver what it's like to be behind the wheel of a big rig.

You will also have a chance to chat with our small crew comprising of Nemiro, Oscar, mr.cenda, Filip, Matej and Max. We believe MATS is the perfect place for us to connect with the trucking community and share our passion for the industry. For more information about the event visit the official page and make sure to properly plan ahead.

We are happy and excited to meet everyone at the event and have a great time together. We’d also like to thank Western Star® for providing us with a home and we’re sure their representatives would like to chat with you as well. Make sure to follow our social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok) to always stay in touch with all the latest information about our presence at the event. We can't wait to see you there!

SCS On The Road - Wielton Production Plant

It's now time to reveal one of our projects that we've been working on for some time already, and to confirm all the speculations about the very cool yet mysterious and unique video we published back in October. Yes, we're talking about the teaser in which not only members of our crew, but a real camel took part in as well! 

Everyone who speculated that this teaser is related to the European trailer company Wielton was right, and we are proud to officially confirm that the cooperation is real and it’s happening. We got in touch with the amazing people from Wielton back in 2022 at the IAA automotive fair in Hannover, where the initial discussions and the first steps in our common interest to bring Wielton trailers into Euro Truck Simulator 2 began. We were honored to find out that the team over at Wielton was already very familiar with ETS2 and with our #BestCommunityEver, and that they were ready and looking forward to joining the truck sim universe with their famous brand.

From the very first moment, it has been nothing but joy and fun to work with Wielton, and we are grateful to be connected to such a cool and open-minded team of people working within the automotive industry. From providing us with high-quality reference data for our vehicle department to being creative in producing unusual but cool marketing content - it's been an absolute pleasure to work on this project together!

A few weeks back, we were also invited to visit their production plant in Wieluń, Poland, to gather some tiny pieces of missing reference data for our 3D graphics designers, and to also take a guided tour through their facility to check out the production process. We can now confirm that we have seen with our own eyes how their teams are tirelessly making sure every single one of their trailers, every tiny detail and part is being made with a deep dedication for perfection and top quality! And we’ve observed their production very closely, as you can tell by the video below!

We would love to use this opportunity to express our deep gratitude to everyone from the Wielton team for all the help that they have given us so far. We can't say when this project will be ready for a release, but if you'll keep your eyes on our communication platforms such as our social media channels you surely won't miss any updates related to this topic!

SCS On The Road: Scania Demo Centre

At the end of last week, a small crew returned from an exciting and promising business trip to Södertälje, Sweden, where both the Scania headquarters and their Demo Centre are located. 

Our excellent relationship with Scania meant we were able to organize a very interesting agenda for our visit. While the main goal of our crew was to record the sounds of a few of Scania's new engines, we have also been able to spice up our schedule a bit with activities related to a few other promising projects too. These will have to remain secret for some time, but we are sure you will love what we have planned.

When it comes to the sound-recording part of our trip to Södertälje, we are happy to have successfully gathered samples and material for three amazing engines Scania offers for their trucks - the 560HP Super (Inline 6), the 590HP V8, and the mighty 770HP V8. We would like to use this opportunity to say a massive thank you to Helene, Joar, and their teams from Scania who helped make this happen and made our team feel like honored guests. It's always great for us to see when partners like Scania take any cooperation or project with us this seriously.

We can't really promise when you can expect all this material to be processed and implemented into the game, but when they are ready you can look forward to new engine options for Scania trucks along with their authentic sounds!