Trucking Digest

Christmas… When I penned my previous post I was feeling a little out of sorts. I went down very quickly over Christmas Day with what I can best describe as Man-Flu – high temperature, aching limbs and sore throat. Plans for Boxing Day went straight out the window because I was in no fit state to cook nor eat anything too rich. So that was my Christmas 😦 I’m feeling a little better today although the chill effect seems to come and go during the day. Fingers crossed I’ll be back to normal come New Year’s Eve.

I want to write a bit about one of the changes that was brought into Euro and American Truck with version 1.33. You may recall that v1.32 brought improved realism to trailer stability with new physics based around cargo weight and centre of gravity. This was a major improvement. In v1.33 SCS Software had a one-liner advertising further Physics improvements (suspension, damping, braking, COGs). I was somewhat surprised when I started driving in the new version to find that my trailers weren’t appearing very unstable any more. Surprised? – Perplexed would be nearer the mark! It took a lot of questions to the development team by long time simulation reviewer Squirrel to get to the bottom of what was going on and he shared his findings in a video on YouTube which SCS also promoted through their social media accounts… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx43bLMZmxU …I have carried out the necessary changes to the stability and suspension in the background config using the games console and it is such an improvement. Now there is a need to ease back on the speed when approaching sharp corners. If you don’t the truck and trailer will develop an outward lean and ultimately roll over. There is an unforeseen positive – before, in v1.32, there was little warning that you’d reached the critical point for the trailer and it would suddenly go over onto its side. Now, because the truck is also unstable, you get plenty of warning and can take suitable action to avoid reaching that critical point 🙂 In American Truck you won’t notice the effect quite as much in the conventional vehicles such as the Peterbilt 389 because these vehicles are more stable than the European trucks. To have a fun rolling ride you really need to get out and about in one of the old-school cabover’s like the Freightliner FLB 😉

The other news was the annual Christmas Event which began on 18th December. We all had to deliver 12 Christmas Loads in ETS and ATS to qualify for the personal rewards and the community had to achieve 1 million deliveries for the community rewards to be released. I finished my last delivery for this on Christmas Day morning and since then I’ve only done one more run because I didn’t feel up to it (that’ll tell you how unwell I’ve been!). I believe the community completed their target later on Christmas Day. The delivery count is still rising though as there are other members trying to complete their personal targets. I’ll probably try and do a few more runs when I’m back up to speed. Some of the community would like to breach the 2 million mark by the time the event closes on 13th January 🙂 Here’s a few shots from my deliveries…

I think that will have to do for this post. Hope you all had a great time over the Christmas period and that you’re getting ready to see in the New Year. Keep on Trucking 🙂