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Euro Truck Simulator 2 News

Euro Truck Simulator 2: 1.40 Open Beta

With all of the excitement surrounding the upcoming updates for our trucking titles, we are happy to share with you that the 1.40 Open Beta for Euro Truck Simulator 2 is now ready to be tested and tried-out by our community!



Please do keep in mind that this is the first iteration of the open beta, which is very much still a work in progress build. We anticipate that several weeks of further tweaking will be needed to get things stable. If you want to take it for a spin, you can help contribute by reporting any bugs you may encounter in the appropriate section of our official forums. Your feedback and reports are extremely valuable for our team and we thank you in advance for taking the time to help us out.

Please bear in mind that this huge update will likely render many community MODs incompatible. MOD authors may need to adjust and update their mods to work with this update. We strongly recommend you use a profile without any third-party modifications if you wish to participate in the 1.40 Open Beta.

So, let's take a look at what the 1.40 update has in store! 

[h2]New Visual Lighting System[/h2]

One of the biggest changes you'll notice when you first hop into your truck cab is the implementation of our new visual lighting system. While still not perfect, it's a solid step in the direction we need to take to improve our games' look. The new light system has full HDR internals, and it can adapt much better to changes of daylight around the clock or under various weather conditions. 



Our art teams had to make a lot of changes across the whole catalogue of our in-game world objects; including a majority of the in-game 2D/3D assets, textures, and materials to better work with the new physical model of the new light system. Some of the textures, including our new skyboxes, have a bit higher resolution, but for now, we are still keeping things in limits to maintain reasonable performance on mid-range GPUs and below. We plan to bring a more in-depth article to our 'Under the Hood' series focused on this major graphical rework soon, with more info and comparison images. 



We are very excited for you to be able to experience and immerse yourself in driving under the new light. The result is the combination of thousands of hours by our programmers and visual effect artists and many other teams involved in the development and implementation of the new system. 

During this open beta, your feedback is incredibly important and valuable to us, so we ask that you please submits yours to us in the 1.40 section for Euro Truck Simulator 2 on our forums which you can find here.



1.40 will also bring the final piece of our revisiting Germany project which a small team of mappers has been working on.



For those who are new to our game, the revisiting Germany project consists of a small dedicated map team, who has been working hard to update one of the oldest map sections of the base game with a more realistic and up-to-date look.



The biggest change that will come with this update is a complete reskin and rework of all the highways and roads in this part of our in-game world, which was not retouched in previous updates.



Additionally, the areas around Dortmund, Köln, Dusseldorf, and Duisburg have not only benefitted from a complete road network redesign but a few new intersections and roads as well! The southern part of the Bundesautobahn 7 will also be available in this update.



[h2]Vive La France ! New Cities [/h2]
With the upcoming release of the Iberia expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2, we know that many drivers will be excited to progressively make their way down Europe to cross into the peninsula for the first time. With France being mainland Europe's gateway to Spain and Portugal, our team is currently developing 2 new French locations which will be a part of a free update to the
Vive La France ! DLC in the future. 



The first being the city of Bayonne, located in the southwest of France; it is the capital of the French Basque Country and an important connection for drivers heading to Spain as it is located close to the border.



The second location will be the smaller commune of Lacq, which is located in the Arrondissement of Pau. While this small village will just be a scenic drive-through for most, Lacq is home to the largest refinery in France. 



Both of these areas plus two new connecting junctions in Toulouse and Bordeaux will come as a free update to the Vive La France ! DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2, which we originally announced would arrive with the release of Iberia. However, with them being ready now, we thought it would be a nice surprise to include them early in this update. 

[h2]Super Stripes Paint Jobs Pack Update[/h2]

Our latest ETS2 DLC is also about to get an update - two of the amazing designs in the Super Stripes Paint Jobs Pack have been expanded and are now applicable on owned trailers! And believe it or not, there was a small social media experiment behind the choice of the two paint jobs that were picked for this upgrade.



Back in November 2020, we wrote short and seemingly insignificant posts on our Euro Truck Simulator 2 and SCS Software Facebook pages, where we called upon our community to cast votes on which DLC designs you liked the most. Today we are happy to share with you that the two most popular designs are getting an upgrade so that everyone can match these designs on both trucks and trailers! 



Your engagement and activity on our social media channels really do matter! We can't wait to see all the beautiful matching combinations on your vehicles. This may be a good opportunity for some VTCs to redesign their virtual corporate identity!

[h2]Changelog:[/h2]

Visual:
New Visual Lighting System

Map:
Germany Reskin
New French Cities (Vive La France ! DLC)

Vehicle
Two new paint jobs (from the Super Stripes Paint Jobs Pack) for owned trailers

So enjoy all the new additions, but please remember: It's only an experimental open beta, not a stable public version - so you may encounter bugs, instability, kinks, or crashes. It's completely okay if you want to wait for the final release. But if you're interested in helping us to move there faster, we'll appreciate all of your feedback on our forum and your bug reports in this section.

If you wish to participate in the open beta, you can find this version in the public_beta branch on Steam. The way to access it is as follows: Steam client → LIBRARY → right-click on Euro Truck Simulator 2 → Properties → Betas tab → public_beta → 1.40. No password required.

See Euro Truck Simulator 2's upcoming Iberian Peninsula map

You probably shouldn’t watch this Euro Truck Simulator 2 update video while operating heavy machinery. This showcase of the new Iberia Peninsula (“Ibby Penny” to its friends) map expansion shows a short hop from the port in Algeciras to Malaga, perhaps delivering boxed copies of the very expansion they’re showing off in the video? Anyway, it will gently lull you into a trucky torpor as the player winds through the Spanish roads, so please don’t watch and drive.


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Iberia: Gameplay Preview

It's time we take a closer look at our next upcoming DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2, Iberia. We are starting off slow here, as we do not want to spoil the enjoyment of discovering the beauty of the peninsula for yourself.  

Take a seat in the position of the driver and join us as we drive from the port of Algeciras to Malaga! This gameplay video will also give you a first look at our new visual lighting system that is still a work-in-progress from a first-person view; let us know what you think!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

If you like what you see, then be sure to add Iberia to your Steam Wishlist. It really helps support us and our upcoming expansions. Gracias!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1209460/Euro_Truck_Simulator_2__Iberia/

Iberia: Tollgates & Toll Roads

Spain and Portugal have an excellent and fast motorway network which spans the entire peninsula, and in comparison to other European countries, it has very few motorway tolls. However, you may still find yourself travelling on a toll road or coming across a toll plaza when driving across our upcoming Iberia DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2.



Any driver and their wallet traveling across Europe would be very familiar with paying tolls, especially in countries such as France, but there is a good reason behind them. Toll roads give road users the option to drive on a better maintained, less busy, and more often than not, a faster route to their destination. However, these roads can rack up quite the bill when you're doing a lot of driving in a day. 


The Iberia DLC will feature an array of different toll booth designs and technologies, from the slower traditional tolls with barriers, to the latest in toll road technology; overhead cameras reading every vehicle's tags without them needing to slow down! 


We look forward to sharing more about Iberia with you soon, but until then, please keep in mind that the images and visual lighting you see featured in this post are still in a work in progress state and may not represent the final released product. 



Whilst the tolls may hurt your wallet virtually, one thing that is free is adding Iberia to your Steam Wishlist! It really helps supports us and our upcoming releases and we thank those who have already done so! 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1209460/Euro_Truck_Simulator_2__Iberia/

Truck Simulator devs affirm "faith in science" after "unfortunate phrasing" of COVID-19 event

January 22, 2021 SCS Software says that its COVID-19 delivery event was prompted by a "civic duty to promote the notion that vaccines are our hope for the future."


A new event is underway in both American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2 called Hauling Hope: a series of challenging missions in which you'll attempt to safely deliver COVID-19 vaccines to various destinations. Despite an announcement broadly implying that these vaccines are a positive thing, developer SCS Software appeared to be strangely cordial toward anti-vax sentiments in its messaging, but the company now says it is "proud to stand behind sound policies and good research."


"An accompanying press release that followed the initial announcement of the event carried an unfortunate rephrasing of the original message on our blog," an SCS representative tells us via email. "This message may have given the wrong impression that we are denying responsibility by avoiding a clear stance on COVID vaccines. Our position is as such: we created this event to recognize the sacrifices of truckers and logistics staff in these difficult times. We are resolute in our belief that vaccines offer a glimmer of hope for normalcy once again, and we are proud to stand behind sound policies and good research."


SCS says that it "felt a civic duty to promote the notion that vaccines are our hope for the future, but also wanted to minimize controversial imagery such as syringes."


Read the rest of the story...


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