Signage is one of the simpler aspects that can influence realism in a long-distance driving game. While Euro Truck Simulator 2 has been improving over time in this regard, it still has not reached the same standards as American Truck Simulator. Where ATS signposts many rivers, counties, bridges, and other landmarks, in ETS2 you rarely see signs referring to viaducts, tunnels, bodies of water or regions when they exist in real life.
Truth to be said, unlike the United States, which is one country with small variations on the signage depending on the state, each European nation follows its own designs for its road signs, complicating their inclusion in the game. However, it is also true that the differences between each country have already been considered when it comes to the symbolic, directional and distance signs that already exist in the game. There is no reason why other types of signs could not be added in the game where real rivers, tunnels and viaducts have been recreated.
Tunnels, rivers, and viaducts
Some time ago I started a project to identify every river, viaduct and tunnel that is represented in ETS2. I kind of started that in the past when I began with the road atlas maps for both games, but until now I had not gathered a list specifically for these kind of features. The result is the map below, which unlike my road atlas maps, has been directly based on the in-game map. The main reason is the short distances between some of the in-game tunnels and viaducts, which would not be represented clearly on a GIS-based map.
In the map below:
- Blue lines represent rivers and bodies of water. Blue circles are lakes and reservoirs.
- Orange lines are viaducts. Only the viaducts that do not cross bodies of water are marked in the map. The ones that go over water bodies are already accounted for with the blue lines.
- Grey lines are tunnels.
Most of the rivers, viaducts and tunnels in the map are labeled with the name that is signposted in real life. There are some of them that are unnamed or even do not exist in real life (in the older parts of the map), and in those cases they have been labeled in cursive.
Any of the tunnels and bridges that have a name in the map could have a sign in the game. Some of them already exist in ETS2, but they are mostly located in Iberia. The most difficult part would be to create the different sign designs for each country, although that problem has also been encountered with the creation of directional signs. To close this section, I will show examples that illustrate the variety in sign designs used by the countries that currently appear in ETS2:
River signs
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Viaduct signs
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Tunnel signs
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Region signs
Region signs were for the first time introduced with the Italia DLC, probably due to their simpler design. A few examples of them reappeared in the Russian part of the Beyond the Baltic Sea DLC. But since then, they have only been added in Sweden and Spain. Despite of the limitations of the 1:19 scale, there are other countries with regions large enough for them to be included in the game, which are shown in the map below.
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While it is true that the areas around those IRL signs have not always been recreated in the game, for now it has not really mattered for the countries that already include them. The difficulty in their inclusion varies depending on the number of divisions of each country and the designs it uses. But any country with large enough regions should eventually have them signed in the game.
Distance signs
Distance signs are another example where the signage design from each country has been implemented decently. From what I have observed in ETS2, distance signs are placed mostly on these kind of places:
- Main road intersections outside of urban areas.
- Crossings of borders.
- Points where a dual carriageway turns into a single carriageway road and vice-versa.
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For some reason, distance signs are less common in countries like Italy, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria and Spain, where there are plenty of major junctions without this kind of signs. Some borders have signs on both sides of them and others not, and several countries only include distance signs on motorways, when in reality they can also be found in minor roads. In my opinion consistency is key to improve the mileage sign distribution.
Another topic to consider are the control cities (known as ‘mileage targets’ in the game’s map editor), which are the town names that appear on them next to their distances. In the game control cites can be represented by the following elements:
- Marked cities, which appear in the in-game GPS.
- Scenery towns, which do not appear in the in-game GPS. They may be accessible or inaccessible while being visible from a distance. For example, Villach in Austria.
- Main road junctions. For example, the intersection between M4 and M5 in the UK is signed as Bristol in-game.
- Border towns. These are more common on Polish roads, although there are some examples for other countries too, such as Nădlac for Romania.
- Gas stations. These are mostly found in Germany. For example, the gas station located in A2 between Dortmund and Hannover is singed as Bielefeld in the game.
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Conclusion
In my opinion, the addition of signs for rivers, viaducts and tunnels coupled with the improvement of region and distance signs would greatly improve the immersion in Euro Truck Simulator 2. Their inclusion would also make sense to keep the entire map more consistent, because as of now:
- Only the Iberia DLC simultaneously features signs from all the types mentioned in this thread.
- Apart from Iberia, the only other few signed viaducts and rivers just appear in the Vive la France and the Beyond the Baltic Sea DLCs.
- The only countries that currently have regional signs in the game are Sweden, Italy, Russia and Spain. There are other countries with regions large enough for them to be signed on a 1:19 map.
- There are important differences between countries in the in-game positioning and frequency of mileage signs. The frequency of them should be more consistent across the map and countries like Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Spain, Russia and Bulgaria should include more of them.
- Unused mileage targets should appear on some distance signs, and the few marked cities without a target should receive one. There are also some major junctions that could be represented by additional mileage targets.
Regards, SenseFM.
