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Situated at the edge of the U.S.-Mexico border, the West Texas town of El Paso is home to a range of cultures and historical sites unique to the Lone Star State. An average of 320 days of sunshine has earned it the nickname “Sun City,” so you’re practically guaranteed to spend your visit enjoying the outdoors.  El Paso is within a few hours’ drive to some of the most spectacular places in the southwestern USA including several national parks. With scenic mountains in the distance and unique coloured road elements, such as painted bridges, El Paso is a colourful city to visit!  One unique industry that El Paso will feature is its International Airport, where drivers will be able to deliver to and from. We can't wait to show you more in the future from this depot along with other industries in Texas. With all the driving you'll be doing across the state, you'll need to take a rest at some point, and El Paso is a perfect place for a stop! Featuring one of the largest Truck Stops in American Truck Simulator so far, make sure to take advantage of all that space.  Also, don’t forget to keep an eye out for our Texas DLC microsite, which contains a lot of interesting and exclusive content. And finally, check out our social media profiles (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) and give them a follow, or subscribe to our newsletter, to stay in touch with the latest news! View the full article

Nestled in the Rocky Mountains, between Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, is the historic mining city of Butte. Previously nicknamed as 'The Richest Hill on Earth', this city once was thriving with industrial activity in the 1800's because of its abundance of mineral wealth.  While many of the mines from the 18th Century no longer operate, many of the old mining towers still stand as reminders of the past across the city. Each one of them are unique, and even have their own names! The downtown portion of Butte is rich in monuments and architectural buildings from the past, which our team have done a great job of recreating for our upcoming Montana DLC for American Truck Simulator.  Drivers visiting Butte can find several industries to deliver to and from, including an electric network service and electric substation. One unique industry players will be able to work with is the Port of Montana, which is located nearby Butte.  The Port of Montana is an industrial transload, distribution and warehousing facility with easy rail and highway access to directly benefit businesses throughout the region. It also include a unique Silene Gas Factory, which has been created according to a 1:1 reference!  With so many reasons to visit Butte, we hope you take a moment to stop by and admire all that it has to offer. Excited? Be sure to add Montana to your Steam wishlist; we appreciate all of you that have done so far. You can also check out our social media profiles (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) and give them a follow, or subscribe to our newsletter and check out our Montana microsite to not only stay in touch with the latest news but find a lot of interesting and exclusive content as well.  View the full article

It has been almost two weeks now since the first element of our crew bound for Canada returned back to our offices in Prague. After we interviewed them internally about their trip, we thought it may be interesting to let you know what they got up to! We hope this will be a nice article providing you with more proof that our community is really the #BestCommunityEver! Our trip to North America had multiple purposes. First of all, we were honored to be invited to participate at the Daimler Truck North America booth at one of the largest Canadian truck shows, the famous Truck World expo. It was a great pleasure for us to be able to have our small gaming station at the very center of the joint Freightliner Trucks and Western Star Trucks booth. Initially, our plans were to ship one of our 4D Motion Sims there, however, due to multiple logistic issues, mostly caused by heavy congestion in the ports of Hamburg and Montreal, our simulator never made it to the destination in time for the expo. Our crew found a quick workaround to the problem, which they immediately executed by building a gaming station there from products readily available at local stores. On the shopping list was a gaming PC, a chair, a wheel stand with pedals, a big flat screen, and voila - an improvised gaming station was made.  Not as fancy as our motion sim, but it still did the trick. Local visitors at the event were happy to be able to play our game, and our friends from Daimler Truck North America were satisfied with the result. What a save! A massive thanks to everyone from both the Western Star Trucks and Freightliner Trucks teams who helped us with all these unexpected issues, and who made our crew feel welcome. It was great to hear from the truck manufacturer representatives how much they love the ATS community! Check their messages for you here and here. BTW, we are already working on some new content for you together with DTNA, so stay tuned! During the opening days of the show, we were lucky enough to meet with quite a lot of fans too. We enjoyed every minute of our long chats and deep discussion about pretty much everything with you, thanks for taking the time to stop by the booth! However, meeting with the game fans was not the only reason for our presence at this exhibition. Our Industry Partnerships Manager Oscar was with us, too, and that means he was bouncing around, shaking hands, and having promising meetings with representatives from multiple truck OEMs. This may or may not bring some new content for our games in the future. No spoilers for now though! The other big reason for our trip to Canada was related to our game on a deeper level. We've been lucky enough to get in touch with two amazing guys from our #BestCommunityEver, Daniel and Mark, who helped us by getting three different trucks with different engines, trailers, and mileage so our SFX guys could record truck sounds with them. Our friends really went the extra mile to help us make our games more realistic and we are very grateful and honored to have done these sound recording sessions with them. Mark, Dan, if you're reading this - thank you so much! Both guys have a great life story too. It turns out that they found and developed their passion and love for trucking through our games! They went on to become professional truck drivers and even owner-operators (a trucker taking on jobs with their own truck) for many years now. It was really cool hanging out with them, chatting about the profession in general and how tough a truck driver's life can be. They provided us with a lot of insights about the automotive industry, trucking, road network, and traffic rules in not just Canada, but in the US as well, and we are going to pass all this along with contacts to them to our other departments for sure! We have prepared a short video for you all and you can check it out and hit the like on it below! No matter the issues we had to deal with during our trip to Canada, we can say that all the reasons for our stay there, our presence at Truck World, our sound recording sessions, and our licensing talks were a big success and that we had a great time as well. All this would not have been possible without our great, awesome community! We really love you all! If you're watching our social media channels closely, then you probably know a couple of guys from our crew actually haven't come back to Prague with us - they keep on going across the US. We'll be probably covering their journey here later. They still have some more tasks to do, meetings to attend, and ambient and truck sounds to record around a few places throughout the US. We wish them luck that everything goes smoothly and that they'll return back home safe and sound, with a lot of reference material gathered! View the full article

We are happy to share with you that the 1.44 update has now been released for Euro Truck Simulator 2. This update is packed with new features and changes, so we recommend reading through them all.  We'd like to thank everyone who participated, provided their feedback, and made bug reports during the Open Beta of 1.44. Your valuable input helped us make tweaks, changes and smash some bugs we may have missed the first time around. We hope you can now begin to fully enjoy the various new features which are included within this update, including some new ones that may not have made it during the beta!  Austria Rework We are excited to bring the highly anticipated Austria Rework as part of this free update for all owners of Euro Truck Simulator 2. Our rework team have been diligently working on updating this magnificent country and today we are excited for you to explore this beautiful country for yourselves.  The entire country of Austria has been reworked to bring it up to a true to life standard, as previously this was one of the older original areas of Euro Truck Simulator 2 when it released in 2012. All cities, surrounding areas, and road networks has been given a complete overhaul including the famous Alps!  We are sure drivers will face quite the challenge when trucking over these winding roads which travel along the valleys.  Companies Logos Revision As some of our eagled eye players might have noticed from some our previous blogposts and social media video clips, some of our in-game companies logos featured in the base of game of Euro Truck Simulator 2, have received a rework!  These new modern logos, still stay true with their colour schemes but bring a modern and fresh take on these old-school companies. Keeping modern and up-to date is important for companies, even our virtual ones!  We hope you enjoy spotting these new logos on company trailers and industries across Euro Truck Simulator 2 in the 1.44 update!  Mod Refund Feature Since the introduction of third party modification support in our convoy mode, our team has been working to improve the mod support experience. In this update, we are happy to share a new feature which we hope will further improve the players experience when playing with modifications.  We like to call this new addition the 'Mod Refund' feature. In simple terms, after a player has downloaded a third party modification and used it on their truck, they may in the future want to remove it (or it even may have become incompatible). This new feature reads and recognises the data from the modification, even if it has been removed, and refunds the player the difference with the in-game currency. This removes the problem of players losing money after using a modification.  It works by recognising that a crucial part is missing (such as the chassis, engine etc) and replacing it with a default part. Players will be prompted with a pop-up containing information that some parts are being refunded and will be given the option to accept or reject this refund. If you decide to reject the refund and reactivate the mod instead, the truck will now revert to its former glory even if you have saved the game in the meantime. So, whether you're trucking with friends in a convoy session with mods, or you want to remove a certain modification after use, this new feature will make sure you won't go out of pocket! Licensed vs Aftermarket Customization Options in UI Players customising their truck or looking at new parts in the garage may see some new icons appearing in the list. In total we have added 4 new icons to represent what type of accessory it is. When you hover over them, they will show if they are classed as a: Factory part - A stock part sold by the manufacturer (including interiors) Licensed part - Anything that is officially licensed that is not produced by truck factory Aftermarket part - Any additional accessory that is not related to the brand. Unknown part - A part that is not recognised or in some cases, a third party modification This should help drivers when it comes to customisation if they wish to keep it within the manufacturers customisation options, or tune their truck further with aftermarket parts. We hope you enjoy this small yet helpful feature! Accurate Mileage System  Mileage signs are now present in Euro Truck Simulator 2, which add an extra layer of realism. They show the "in-game" distance to a displayed city or landmark. For cities this is normally a central location within the central business district (major intersection, city hall, post office etc). They're particularly handy for players who turn the GPS off and like the challenge of following road signs for their destination. It also gives you an idea of when you should stop for fuel and/or rest breaks etc. We hope you enjoy this new addition to the roads of ETS2, we are sure many of you will find them useful and immersive on your travels! Unmarked Roads Exploration With the 1.44 update, we are bringing into ETS2 and ATS a new feature; once you drive onto an unmarked road, you will be notified about having done so with a message in the route advisor, and the explored road will appear on the map as an orange dashed line, with any unexplored part ahead of you shown in grey.  On one hand, this will ensure that you will immediately be aware of the fact that you have found something interesting, and on the other hand, if you ever decide to re-visit a hidden zone you will know where to go. Map explorers, do not panic! These unmarked roads do not contribute to your map discovery percentage, but they do add a nice addition to your GPS if you do come across them. You can read more about this new feature here.  Force Feedback Upgrade This update also includes a few new upgrades to the force feedback experience when playing ATS or ETS2. These changes have been made to represent a more realistic driving experience. These upgrades include: New gearbox grind effect simulating vibration of missed gear when using manual shifting. New understeer slip effect simulating tyre slip when vehicle is understeering Revisited power steering curves and pressure gain of self centering effect to improve steering feel. Revisited internal friction force giving better feedback depending on the speed of steering. Since self centering and internal friction were updated, we highly recommend that you reset the FFB settings to their defaults again. Smart Sequential Shifting Smart Sequential Shifting is now available to truckers, if they wish to enable it via the options. So what does it do? In simple terms, when you shift up or down sequentially, it will automatically shift by more gears at once based on the current torque or speed. For this to work, drivers will still need to trigger the shifting process, but once working, should require less input from the driver.  Interior Camera Horizontal Lock This new option allows truckers driving in the first person view (in the cabin) to lock the camera view to the horizon, so that it moves more independently from the position of the cabin. With the introduction of this new feature, players can find a slider in the options that defines the locking factor; with the slider being to the left disabling the locking and to the right, being the strongest locking option.  Adjustable Suspension Height Sometimes, when you are driving a big rig, trailer pick ups can be a bit tricky. Adjustable suspension height should help drivers eliminate the problem of hooking up to sometimes problematic trailers or in difficult pick up/delivery area.  Drivers now can lower the suspension of their truck to get the correct height for hooking up their trailer, without damaging it. Players will be able to find the inputs for this new adjustable suspension in the options. Its inputs are front up/down and rear up/down.  We have also included a new UI prompt which appears when the drivers are having trouble hooking up their trailers after a few attempts. We hope this makes picking up deliveries of any size easier in the future! Changelog MapAustria ReworkUnmarked Road ExplorationDistance Signs with Accurate Mileage SystemSome older border crossings reworked in Beyond the Baltic SeaItalian Tollgates UpdateCompanies Logo RevisionsUI Road Numbers in Corsica/SardiniaOther Map Improvements GameplayMod Refund Feature Licensed vs Aftermarket UI in browsers Force Feedback Upgrade Adjustable Suspension Height Interior Camera Horizontal Lock Smart Sequential Shifting VehiclesNew 2022 Interior option for Renault T Exterior Interior Models reworked for Renault T View the full article

Due to the sheer size of Texas DLC, driving through the eastern and western parts might sometimes feel like two different sides of one coin. The various biomes always pave the way for specific industries, and there is one extremely important focused mainly on the east. Let’s take a look at the local logging industry and everything that it will have to offer! Texas is home to approximately 62 million acres of forestland, so it is probably not a surprise that the logging industry has been in constant development for quite a while - in fact for over 180 years! There are records indicating the existence of sawmills near the Gulf coast and inland around the year 1820, which is truly amazing and it just shows exactly why the industry is contributing quite a lot to the current economy of the state.  We’ve read a lot of requests on social media to be mindful of the importance of this industry, and we hope our depots that will be reminiscent of the production cycle will do the job in the representation. Whether it will be areas for felling of the trees, sawmills that cut the wood into lumber, or construction sites that build wooden structures, you will always feel that your journey is helping the local economy. And we also know how much you love hauling cargo through challenging dirt roads, so you can look forward to several of those too! Well, wood you be interested in hauling some materials related to the logging industry in The Lone Star State? If so, make sure to add the Texas DLC to your Steam Wishlist to stay in touch with all the latest news, and once the map expansion will be available, you can be one of the first to head out on the dirt roads and get amazed by the local forests! Also, don’t forget to keep an eye out for our Texas DLC microsite, which contains a lot of interesting and exclusive content. And finally, check out our social media profiles (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) and give them a follow, or subscribe to our newsletter, to stay in touch with the latest news! View the full article