Texas Discussion Thread

[Viper28]

a lot of this stuff comes down to the reality that they have INTENTIONALLY designed their game engine to be "light on the backend." Now, I put that in quotes because when a couple years ago I got sick of the (honk) I looked up Prism3D to try to get some info on this so-called dynamic proprietary engine SCS uses. And this was a very close paraphrase to what was indicated blah blah blah something about its functionality for simulation and then this blurb about the coding backend being light or something to that effect. SO, I see it as this intention coupled with not wanting to push out those who play with Jurassic Era computers (because they may make up 50% or more of the player base) which is quite the bummer and something I hope they aren't as steadfastly glued to in the future.

[fra_ba]

2nd and probably 4th images belong to Dallas intermodal terminal:
https://www.google.com/maps/@32.6208064 ... a=!3m1!1e3
It's worth pointing out that in a blog with a title "Intermodal terminals", there should be more shots of actual intermodal terminals not railroads and rail yards!!! And Texas has more of them actually. There is at least one intermodal terminal in Houston, San Antonio, Laredo, El Paso and Ft. Worth.

[flight50]

So, Texas has been in the making for 3.5 years already. How long was Iberia in the making? I know, Iberia is smaller than Texas (I believe the size of Texas is about the size of Spain + two times the size of Portugal together).

I have no idea how long Iberia was in production. But there is one huge difference.....map team size. When Iberia started, almost the entire ETS2 map team was on it. On the 2020 xmas stream, it was noted the ETS2 map team was like 25+ and Pavel wanted about the same for ATS. Well now ATS has those numbers but they are spread out over 3-4 parallel projects. So Texas takes longer due ro bandwidth.

[Quark]

Not size, but it comes with the road density as well. Texas has a lot of roads and a town at nearly every corner. Take a lot out, and it could evade routes of realism.

Sure, and its realatively densely populated compared to other states in especially western USA but compared to Iberia, it looks rather almost empty, when you leave behind the big metropolitan areas. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... on_map.png
The average population density of Iberia is more than twice as high as that of Texas. In Iberia you have 12(!) metropolitan areas with a population of over 1 million, Texas has "just" 4.

Road density however is harder to assess, couldn't find valuable data on the fly to be able to compare so there is no clear picture. If you use Google maps as a reference doesn't help that much either, because depending on the zooming level, it changes the perception multiple times. from far away, Iberia looks much denser and in Texas only the interstates are shown. When zooming in closer, a gazillion of yellow roads pop up all of a sudden and form a huge, dense network in Texas while, at the same scale, Iberia looks much more empty for some reason. Now, when increasing the scale even further it reveals many new white roads in Iberia and it looks now pretty much like Texas at that same scale. In my view, this means the average road density might be quite similar, but its possible that Texas beats Iberia when it comes to the amount and density of multiple lane highways i would guess at least.

@Vinnie Terranova Yep you are correct, Texas has the size of Spain + 2 times Portugal.

[Vinnie Terranova]

See below for a comparison between Texas (northwest part) and New Mexico (east part). How many of the yellow roads in Texas will be included in the Texas DLC? Despite there are quite some US highways, I certainly don't think they will all be included. So road density IRL doesn't say much; it's more about how dense SCS is gonna make Texas...

[ external image ]

[Seerman]

Do not forget that the scale of ETS2 is 1:19, ATS is 1:20

[clifflandmark]

X : Size of TX or Iberia

p : one worker's manpower

(X:20)/p = X/20p : manpower per worker for ATS

(X:19)/p = X/19p : manpower per worker for ETS

So, difference between manpower per worker for TX and Iberia is X/19p-X/20p :

X/380p

If we consider 25 people worked on both TX and Iberia, X/380p is such a small work to do for per worker.I mean they could handle this manpower difference easily.I believe TX is coming late because I want to believe TX will be the top notch of SCS' ever released until now.

Edit :

consider that 25 people work on X size map which requires 380p.

380p/25=15.2p : work that a worker do until X completed.

If a worker did 16.2p for Iberia, it will decrease to 15.2p for Texas.Texas' delay only could explained by quality augmentation.

[harishw8r]

Agreed. Texas is a highly anticipated DLC and seen as a game changer for ATS. SCS literally cannot afford any screw-ups.

[Seerman]

Texas is late due to the non-release of HoR. All forces were sent to Montana to make up for the lack of released DLS in the current year. Why Montana? Because it's smaller. That's all.

This is my proposition.

[Outlaw Transport]

By recycled prefab, do you mean this one?
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/i ... /03a_1.jpg

I compared it to the Rail Export in Denver (attached file), and it seems quite different. We don't normally see the two rows of trailers back to back, and the location of the green marker (for selecting a load) is also in a different location from usual.
I get that at first glance it looks the same as the depot we already have, but it's not the same.

I mean, the comparison should probably be with literally every other rail station except Denver, the only one somewhat unique on the entire map.

And the only thing they did in Denver was increase the scale slightly, rotated some assets and added those concrete dividers at the entrance so you can't even get into the yard unless you're in the far left lane. And if you're oversize, there's just no way in there aside from teleporting. Just very strange for that to make it into the game.

I SO wish some of the other truck sim games coming out got some real traction. Not that I would necessarily switch, but it would likely force SCS to snap out of this lazy bubble of drawing some new roads, adding a bunch of new signs and pretending it's a new state.

But to end on a positive note, I still very much like a lot of stuff with these games. I am very glad they haven't ventured into the pointless "walk out and raise the landing gear, check kingpin, step into the office to grab papers" -part of the simulation. I also think the graphics are great for what the game is, and don't really miss any features off the top of my head. I only really have two issues; the complete neglect of AI traffic and prefabs to the point where they don't even seem to acknowledge them.