Seasons and months in ATS

[Space_Night]

sounds like the dynamic weather i mentiond in ETS2. this would be great, imagine driving in NYC in winter with this on, snow everywhere.

however it would also be nice to have a tick box if they were to implement this so we can choose to turn it off if we so desired

[flight50]

Actually back on the June 27th 2018 stream...iirc, Pavel mentioned that at some point they will have to do it. I believe he even said that he hired a person to research it. But more recently since 2018, he said he didn't have a guy working it. I assume something else took priority. Either way, season would be the ultimate add. We have Summer and Winter would be the next big jump. If I was SCS, I'd make all 4 season static just like mods.......for now. If we can select the season we want, that is a start. Once static is in place, then work on the dynamic season part. It was even in that same interview in 2018 when Pavel said they can cheat and do events or missions with changed whether so its possible for sure.

To make seasons dynamic, it would take a huge effort. There are 4 seasons but to make it seem fluid, it might take 12 to 16 seasons perhaps. The change has to be subtle. It can't be a drastic change so incremental seasons is the best way to get to the full blown next season.

[Seaking]

Texturing alone is a huge effort and, if you want to keep it real, you would have to adapt Ai (no open convertibles in winter, lesser / no animals visible on farm lots, no baskeball playing outside etc.), 3D modeling (leafs on trees or the random stack of snow here and there) especially winter does come with an additional set of challenges when it comes to driving, how much influence do you want to have?

I guess flight50 is on the only doable track with static seasons for a start, maybe even one at a time.

[pilditajs2]

From the beginning the season could be attracted to the seasons in real time. In any case, both ATS and ETS2 are updated every seasonal change. The developer would not need to think about how to realize a seasonal change, a seasonal change with an update. Update - winter; update - spring; update - summer; etc. I think most would be happy about such a solution as well. It will not be necessary to make textures models and patterns for all seasons at once.

[flight50]

^That won't work for 2 reasons. 1) Not everyone wants to change season. Static allows people to change as they want and 2) updates are not consistent with seasons. We don't always get 4 updates and if we do, it might not all be different seasons. The best options is dynamic or static. Not a forced season.

[55sixxx]

I honestly think that something like R* does with GTAV annually would be great... SCS could simply start a yearly update that adds winter theme + physics every December 'till late February.

**(To anyone who's not familiar with GTAV, every end of the year, R* adds snow/winter to the online mode as an update along with a few other stuff like firework rockets and when the festive season ends, they change back to the regular sunny weather.)**

[flight50]

GTA V is not a driving simulator though. You can do more than just drive to add to the game play. ATS/ETS2, that is all we can do is drive. For a game to not have seasons now to being forced to play a particular weather system due to updates/time of year, would loose some fans perhaps. The player base for GTAV is much much higher that SCS's fan base. A step further, the ATS fan base is meniscal to even ETS2. Force people to play a way in which they don't want to wouldn't be wise. Leave than option up to that player. That makes a static pull down menu the better option. People like options. The moment being forced to do something without an option to get out, = trouble.

[firefistus]

They should take note from Microsoft Flight Simulator. They designed a whole module just for weather built into the engine itself. Then tied it to bing to simulate real time weather. It's difficult but totally doable.

[Grizzly]

The game itself is not real time so I don't think that would really work, although it could be used to set initial conditions. Really that's the easy part, Flightgear was doing it years ago using publicly available weather data from airports.

[shimsham]

Seasons would definitely be a neat addition and increase immersion even more.