Euro Truck Simulator 2
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Euro Truck Simulator 2

Sometimes I worry that my love of Euro Truck Simulator 2 is misconstrued by those who've never played it as some gimmicky affectation. It's not; it's genuinely great. Rather than the undulating pace of some high-action shooter, ETS2 is a constant low-level challenge. You have to obey the rules of the road, maintain balance between speed and controllability, and negotiate motorway junctions. And that's all before each delivery's final boss: reverse parking into the cargo space. 

It's a very calming game, but it's also an unnerving one. It's a battle between relaxation and the fact you're driving a giant metal battering ram.

None of this comes across in the medium of video, which is a shame because SCS has released an hour of alpha footage from their ETS2 follow-up American Truck Simulator. At one point, a trucker delivers a tractor to Fresno. Exciting, no?

Look, if you're not visibly shaking at the prospect of delivering 38,600 lb of peas to Los Angeles, then frankly I don't know what to say.

As SCS reminds viewers over at their blog: "American Truck Simulator is still very much under development and features and environments may change prior to the official release."

Euro Truck Simulator 2
Euro Truck Simulator 2

Don't let the reindeers and sleigh fool you: Santa is essentially a glorified trucker. As such, it makes sense that virtual truckers get in on his action. A new Christmassy update has landed for Euro Truck Simulator 2, and with it, a new challenge for would-be gift deliverers.

Top of the billing is the Christmas event. Truckists can now accept a cargo of "Christmas Gifts" to be ferried around the game's truncated Europe. If a player can, over the course of the event, deliver gifts across the distance from SCS's office to the North Pole, they'll be rewarded with a unique paint skin.

Also with the update: new fixes and features, including showroom improvements, driving tweaks and, most importantly of all, new sounds for Scania 6 cylinder engines. Game changer. You can see the full patch notes here.

Update aside, I'm writing this more to remind people that Euro Truck Simulator 2 exists and is still surprisingly brilliant. In a year of comedy simulators, it's nice to remember that serious sims can still be a lot of fun.

Outside of Europe, SCS are making progress with the upcoming American Truck Simulator. You can see some of the latest screenshots over at the ETS2 Steam page.

Euro Truck Simulator 2
Euro Truck East

Unironic truck driving game Euro Truck Simulator 2 now has three new European cities to drive to and away from. Venice, Graz and Klagenfurt are now feasible destinations thanks to update 1.11, which also introduces a range of other new features and fixes. For example: you can now adjust your seat. It s possible to adjust your seat in real world trucks, so it s about time this was reflected in Euro Truck Simulator 2.
There s more of course. Car AI code has been tweaked extensively, there are new cruise control features, the radio player now has sorting and filtering options, while the user-interface has been given a significant overhaul. Here s a list of the major changes, with the full changelog available on the Euro Truck Simulator 2 website. The update is available right now.



3 new cities: Venice, Graz, and Klagenfurt with a lot of new kilometers to explore


Seat Adjustment feature


Several months of tweaks of car AI code


Re-designed radio player for with additional sorting and filtering options


New Cruise control features


Displaying current road speed limit in Route Advisor (disable, or switch car or truck speciefic limits in options)


Complete UI facelift


Support for sway bar simulation


Refined the truck suspension for more control over truck and trailer stability


Recalculated the center of gravity of each cargo (more individual behavior of the whole rig)


Controls to adjust trailer stability in options


Improve collisions of player's truck and AI vehicles


Re-created all scratch and crash sounds in the game


Equalized the sound volume of in-cabin engine sounds and external engine sounds for all trucks


More realistic timing for the air brake sound


Retarder indicator is lit during automatic retarder usage


Ability to sell a garage


Ability to relocate your headquarters to another city

Euro Truck Simulator 2
Euro Truck Simulator 2


A big update to Euro Truck Simulator 2 is adding three new cities to its lineup of places you can keep on truckin' through, as well as truck-specific speed limits to the GPS route adviser and the hotly anticipated "Seat Adjustement" feature. But perhaps even more interesting than any of that is that Tomas Duda, one of the developers on the game, was banned from Steam for a year for using a "Daily Deal" announcement to bring a potentially serious security vulnerability to Valve's attention.

If you hit yesterday's announcement that Euro Truck Simulator 2 was the Steam Daily Deal, you might have found yourself redirected to an unexpected place: the Harlem Shake video. The idea, according to Duda, was to force Valve to take notice of the security flaw in community announcements, and then fix it, but what happened instead was a one-year ban "for violations of the Steam Subscriber Agreement."

Duda said he went with the ill-advised Harlem Shake redirect after talks about the vulnerability with "a Valve guy (a) few months ago" went nowhere. "I was talking about the script tag vulnerability multiple times. No one fixed it. Now I did Harlem Shake for fun (yay for #steamdb)," he wrote. "Imagine if someone used the vulnerability to steal users' session IDs? Redirected to a phishing site?"

He also claimed that he didn't want to make the vulnerability public, but said it's hard to avoid widespread attention when you post something funny. "People then just share it and it spreads," he wrote. "Had like ~100 people at the time on the announcement page a few minutes after doing that."

Duda and his supporters are working on an open letter to Valve appealing the ban, and an "Unban Timmy" user group (in reference to his Steam ID) has also popped up. You can also keep track of his status at istimmystillbanned.info, which for now remains at an unhappy "Yes."
Euro Truck Simulator 2
ETS2


One of two things are usually the case if a game has "Simulator" in its title. Either it's an overly earnest attempt to provide accurate simulation, or it's a joke. Euro Truck Simulator 2 is something of a rarity. It's the former, sure, but avoids the usual trap of being buggy, obtuse and transparent in its limitations. It's good. You're probably sick of people saying its good, but by all logic it shouldn't be, so it bears repeating.

Only one thing could make it better, and that's the inclusion of friends. Strong is the draw of a convoy, especially when filled with folks hauling concrete across Belgium. That dream is increasingly approaching reality. Today, the ETS2 Multiplayer mod launches into open alpha.

It's definitely an alpha. Having attempted to connect a few times this morning, its server has either been full or down. Still, if you have the patience to persist, you can download the installer from the mod's alpha page. At least, you can if it's working it too has had more than a few wobbles since the mod's launch.

Naturally, this is just an early implementation of what will hopefully become a more robust creation. The life of a Euro Truck Simulator 2 driver is a lonely one, and the chance to populate its roads with other players will now doubt liven up an admittedly sedate experience.
Euro Truck Simulator 2
The Rift Report - Euro Truck Simulator


Every Tuesday Andy straps on the Oculus Rift and dives headfirst into the world of virtual reality. Is it really the future of PC gaming? Let s find out.

When I first heard about how amazing Oculus Rift was, I was unconvinced. I m naturally wary of any technology heralded as THE FUTURE, because I know that, in most cases, we ll look back at ourselves and laugh at how excited we got about such rubbish technology. But then I stuck my head in one and was instantly converted. Now I ve become a tedious VR evangelist, bending the ear of anyone who ll listen about how incredible it is, and forcing people to sit at my desk and try it for themselves. So to give the guys in the office peace, I ve decided to start this new weekly report on all things VR, both for people curious about the tech, and those of you who already own a Rift.

Driving from Stuttgart to Aberdeen in Euro Truck Simulator 2



The unironically brilliant Euro Truck Simulator 2 recently added experimental Oculus Rift support. While the idea of using VR to simulate slowly driving down the M4 might seem like a gross misuse of the technology, it s actually one of the best Rift games I ve played. Those lovingly modelled cabins give your surroundings a real sense of depth and space. It s so detailed that when it rains, you see the droplets streak along the glass as you build up speed. With a good force feedback wheel (I used a Thrustmaster Ferrari F430), the rumble of your tyres on the tarmac and steering resistance only add to the hypnotic realism. If you turn and look out of the driver s window, the camera flips back to show you the rear end of the truck. This gives you a realistic feeling of leaning out of the window.

I decide to stress test the simulation by driving non-stop from Stuttgart to Aberdeen. After about 30 minutes of driving, my brain is convinced I m sitting in a truck on a German motorway, and not on a squeaky chair in an office in Bath. The cabin feels weirdly real, and there s something quite relaxing about cruising along with the wheel rumbling softly in my hands. At one point I was so convinced by the 3D cabin, I tried to lean my arm on the door. The door that doesn t exist. But then I start getting hot. The insulating foam around the Rift s eyepiece, the fluffy velour earpads of my Beyerdynamic headphones, and our stiflingly warm office force me to pull the headset off. I m sweating buckets. So I barely made it out of Germany, but while it lasted it was a great example of how virtual reality can give simulators an extra layer of immersion. Just make sure you ve got a desk fan to hand.

Buy Euro Truck Simulator
To enable Oculus Rift mode, right click on the game in your Steam library, go to the betas tab, opt into the oculus experimental branch, then add -oculus to your launch options.

Watching Star Wars in a virtual cinema



VR Cinema is a virtual movie theatre that allows you to watch video files imported from your PC on a remarkably convincing cinema screen. I watched a 1080p Blu-ray rip of the first Star Wars film, and it s one of the most impressive Rift experiences I ve had so far. You can wander around the theatre freely, or use a hologram-like interface to jump between seats. The screen feels genuinely massive, especially when you walk towards it and look up. Cleverly, the lighting around you reacts dynamically to what s happening in the film. If a scene is dark the theatre will be plunged into blackness, but if there s a brighter moment, like an explosion, it ll light up with the same colour as the image on the screen. You can even see a projector on the back wall if you look behind you. It s like having your own personal 500-inch TV, and you don t have to worry about idiots talking through the film.

This is the kind of thing that ll give Oculus Rift mainstream appeal beyond games. The idea of watching old or obscure films on the big screen that you d otherwise never get the chance to is a powerful one, especially for cinephiles. Even with our development kit, which is a much lower resolution than the commercial Rift will be, it works incredibly well. I tried a few other films Blade Runner, Children of Men, The Shining and noticed that after 30-40 minutes of watching them, when I was sufficiently lost in the story, I completely forgot that I was looking at a virtual screen. It was like I d fooled my brain into thinking I was actually at the cinema, which is a very strange feeling. The only problem is comfort. I have a hard time sitting through a film with 3D glasses on, never mind a plastic box strapped to my head. But get over that and this is one of the Rift s most tantalising showcases.

Download VR Cinema
VR Cinema supports .avi, .mp4, .mkv, and .wmv files. If you import a video and see a blank screen, download the Combined Community Codec Pack.

Reliving virtual memories



One of the most surprising effects of using the Rift for extended periods of time is having distinct, three-dimensional memories of places that don t exist. When I think of that movie theatre from VR Cinema, I don t think of it as somewhere I viewed passively on a screen: I remember it as a place. I recall its dimensions and its lighting. There s something unnatural about remembering things that didn t happen so vividly and tangibly, which makes me think of how replicants in Ridley Scott s tech-noir masterpiece Blade Runner were implanted with fake memories to make them believe they re human. Rift does things to the brain that it wasn t built for, and it ll be interesting to see what other sensations and effects emerge from prolonged use. Let s hope it s not slowly melting my brain. If I start ranting about hearing voices and tasting colours in this column, please alert the authorities.

Jerry s Place is a Rift demo that lets you explore Jerry Seinfeld s apartment, as featured in hit 90s sitcom Seinfeld. I ve watched every episode a handful of times and I know the place inside out, but seeing it in 3D, and walking around it, was a bizarre feeling. Then I watched the show a couple of nights later and really felt like I d been on the set before. I had a sense of it as a physical space, rather than a 2D projection. I really hope I see more of this in the future. Exploring film and TV sets in Rift could become huge, and like the virtual cinema, open it up to a much wider audience outside of gaming. Imagine being able to wander around the Starship Enterprise, or Twin Peaks, or Winterfell, or well, you get the idea. Developers could work with set designers to make these worlds as accurate as possible. If this becomes a thing, I might just live inside the Rift forever.

Download Jerry s Place
Plug time! What drives a man to recreate a set from a 90s sitcom for a futuristic VR headset? I ask the creator of Jerry s Place this, and more, in the next issue of PC Gamer.

Community FAQ
Want to know something about Oculus Rift? Ask and Andy will answer. Tweet your questions to @pc_gamer with the hashtag #oculusfaq or leave them in the comments.

Any side effects from playing it for prolonged times? Dave Jewitt

People react differently to using the Rift. I know at least one person who had to take it off after five minutes because it made them feel sick. But I ve been mostly fine. Besides overheating, I ve had the occasional mild headache, which didn t last for more than a few minutes, and a slight feeling of seasickness after smashing my ship into an asteroid in Elite: Dangerous. The one exception is Half-Life 2, which made me feel like I was going to vomit almost immediately. I m not sure why. It could be the high frame rate, or the field of view. It s hard to tell when you re in there.

How much is a Rift, and is it worth waiting for an updated consumer version? Eoin Hurrell

Anyone can order a development kit from the Oculus VR website for $300 (about 180), but you won t be getting the full experience. This version is a much lower resolution than the consumer model will be. It s still impressive, and the sensation of 3D still works, but it s not in HD. I can only imagine what it ll look like in 1080p. As soon as we get one of the new Crystal Cove prototypes, which have a higher display resolution and more accurate head tracking, I ll let you know how much better it is. But if you have the money, the development kit is still a lot of fun to play with. There are hundreds of games, tech demos, applications, and other playthings to experiment with, which can be downloaded from sites like RiftEnabled.

How many times have you gasped and gone Oh, fuck Athene Allen

Many, many times. One of my favourite things is seeing peoples reactions as they use the Rift for the first time. It s always the same: gasping, swearing, and inevitably saying Wow! as something flies past their head. I can see why the Rift has generated so much buzz, because the first time you use it you can t help but be impressed. There s no hard sell required: Oculus just have to strap it to a potential investor s head and wait for the money to roll in. Even now, after having clocked at least 30 hours in the thing, I still find myself exclaiming out loud, or staring in awe at things with my mouth hanging open.

For more adventures in virtual reality, return next Tuesday for the next edition of The Rift Report.
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