ProMods

I believe the best way would be a Pool....

Currently the most popular are:

Interstate | city
1:19 | 1:4 (ETS 2 Default scale)
1:20 | 1:4//or 1:5? (rounded scale)
1:32.5 | 1:? (ATS Default scale)

I thought that this is supposed to be a Truck Driving Simulator. I thought that the idea is to make it feel as real as possible within the game engine limits. The ProMods developers have been working to improve ETS2 (Europe) for, what 3 or 4 years. They are trying to allow someone like me to experience as much of Europe as possible without having to actually go there. They are struggling to get everything in that should be there. But they are limited by the 1:19 scale. You in turn are saying that ATS should stay at 1:32.5 scale and that should be enough for someone to give the world the "feel" of North America. What a joke !!

Well, probably the main difference is, that I look at the game from the perspective of gameplay instead. For me personally, a three hour journey to get from one edge to the other one is actually more than enough, for Europe as well. Europe's map is huge already, although far from finished and it's a patchwork of different quality mapping. SCS has started with 1:19 scale (meaning the map is much much larger than in ETS) probably to reuse old GTS mapping parts, otherwise they might have gone for a smaller map ratio as well.

Most of the states in the USA allow all vehicles to drive 65 to 75 mph (105 to 120 kph)on interstate highways. California is an exception to this. Giving these speeds, 1:19 scale is small enough and 1:32.5 is ridiculous. Driving legally, it takes about 14 hours to cross Texas from side to side. One driver can not drive it in one day legally. At 1:19 scale it should take 45 min. real time. At 1:32.5 it should take 20 min.

Okay, having read that, I did some math on my own. Distance from Western to Eastern coast is about 3000 mi. If we calculate with an average speed of 50mph that makes about 2 hours to get from one edge to the other and perhaps 5 or 6 hours for the course around the US. 2 hours is indeed not so much compared to ETS2 standards and I must admit that I had overestimated this figure before.The different scale still has its appeal to me (quality over quantity!), but probably for most of people here this approach is too arcard-ish.

I'm for 1:19 scale.
I DO mostly like the job SCS has done on the ATS. I just wish for a different scale.

I had been working on a USA map for German Truck Simulator, and starting in the middle I had built Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, and was already covering the whole space of Germany. The entire U.S. at that scale would be a massive undertaking.

1:19 would be a great scale for a North American map because it is suppose to feel huge and open, not small and cramped with towns and cities every few miles. The coastlines east, west, south and around the great lakes have probably 80% of the population if not more and the rest really is vast emptyness. At 1/34 scale there is no way to replicate that and have the small towns that dot the inbetween parts of North America. Its those towns that make the North American feel not cities/towns that are so close you never feel like you even left the last one. When leaving Vegas on my second trip of the game i could still see buildings from Vegas and buildings from Primm cause I jsut left vegas and was already to Primm with no real open feeling inbetween and that killed the game for as soon as I saw that. I dont play the game a bunch but being form the praries in Canada I have an idea what driving in large open spaces is like and North America was built apon those wide open spaces where you may not see anyone for miles at a time. The developers of Promods have a hard time including things in Europe at 1/19 scale to give that true feeling of driving there for the ones like me who have never been there, so making a North American map in a 1/34 scale misses the most important thing driving across it, the shear size and openness that it has. The detail that SCS has done for buildings and landscape is awesome, feels like america, the biget issues are roads and lots of that is because of the map scale as much as it is how the roads are repesented. They have to cut corners on interesections as some truely good custom one would be larger than most of the cities would be, lol, at 1/19 scale Promods has trouble making the intersections near cities cause there is no room for some of them, and it would be 40 times harder at 1/34 scale to make a true representation of a complex interchange near any city in any country.

If Promods wants to represent the feeling of driving in vast open areas dotted with small towns along the way to the next city, the true America driving experience a 1/34 scale would be hard to accomplish that.. It would be boring in places at 1/19 but if the landscape is done right it would take a good eye to truely appreciate the small differences in all the landscapes as there are no two roads places alike. Where I farm from the nearest city, over an hr away, the land changes several times in that area and most people would miss those differences but when a person acually decides to look for those differences is when they discover the natural beauty that it has. Driving across North America is long and boring if a person chooses not look for the diferent things that dot the landscape in each area becuase not everywhere has the sames plants/animals and the landscape changes slightly everywhere and sometime quite suddenly. There are mountians in the east (Appalachian Mountains, Adirondack Mountains) and west (Rocky Mountains, Pacific Mountain System, and the Cascade Range) which are all different from one another, and have vast plains inbetween with different climates depending where you are, north/south, east/west. The main roads are built over the most boring landscape as it is the easiest/cheaper place to build so that makes the small details matter the most. SCS has dont a great job with the details but the scale truely ruins the open feeling as it feels more like populated Europe then it does America. Where I live most cities are 2-3 hrs apart if not more so driving there in a game in under 10 mins sounds as bad as it feels when driving on a scale that small for anyone that lives there. If you want a true representation of North America it should feel much larger as it would take 5-6 days to drive across Canada in real life so how does doing it 3hrs give you that feeling of driving forever, which a Promods quality map would have to do with the great attention to the small details. A map that allows you to drive that far in just 3hrs feels a bit TSMish even if it has 50x better/more accurate details.

^^^^^^
I agree with you completely. I even pretty much said the same thing a page or two back. It is hard to explain the differences in openness between Europe and North America. Someone from Russia or Australia would know what we are talking about.

Russia is very similiar, Australia takes openness to a whole different level, lol.

I fully agree with all of you that posted above.
I also want to remember everyone, that a lot of people already complained about Iceland and its vast countryside and its openness in its beginning. I remember the posts saying, it will be soo boring and you will see nothing besides flat grasslands. Nowadays, it is one of the favorite countries of most ProMods users. It also takes a lot of time going from Seydisfjördur to Reykjavik and back (in total about 1500 km both ways together, if I remember correctly) and nobody complains about it. I know, the USA is about 3 times bigger one way (and before someone argues, you shouldn't compare the route Seydisfjördur-Reykjavik-Seydisfjördur with Los Angeles-New York City, I remember you, that you almost always have to take the way back in Iceland to get back to the mainland as it's dead end, whereas you have hundreds of new delivery locations everywhere in the USA once finished, so there will be no need to take the same way back), but this whole discussion on the forum is just so similar and I am sure, if ATS will be modded in 1:19 one day, nobody will complain afterwards as well. It just would show the USA way better, if the map was 1.19 instead of 1.34,5, which would make it much more interesting to drive long deliveries from coast-to-coast.

Seems to me that with console mode, one can always "shorten the journey" if boredom strikes or there is not enough real-world playtime to drive 2 or 3 hours just to get to the next delivery. Then everyone could be happy? I make a WAG that it would not take a huge amount of extra code to offer an automatic option on teleporting: "clock forward according to regulation speed and rest breaks" or "leave clock alone, I'm really cheating!"

Some realistic mountain driving would be nice... the Rockies...

Next mapping target: the Silk Road through the Pamirs, the Taklamakan, etc all the way to China! [just kidding]

I agree with everyone.. its very hard to include any specific landmarks/interchanges with the current scale.. I think promods have to be a standalone this time.. And im sure so many other map mods will make promods addon map rather than scs addon map