Thanks! Yeah, cars.... the thing with those (as you've probably noticed) is that they drive like trucks. Still fun to mess around with, though
Fantasy freelancers
Hey there... back again for one more set from Arizona. Here we are at the weigh station on the New Mexico border
with a cargo for LA from Las Cruces.
San Simon is the last place we haven't visited yet.
Love the huge mounds of trash!
Not sure what the San Simon tourist board would have to say about this potrayal of their town, but I like it...
Heading for Phoenix. This guy seems to have skidded off the road, I guess.
A last bit of Arizona countryside.
Into Phoenix. Let's check it out.
It's not as spectacular as Las Vegas, and you can't get near the centre.
The airport is pretty big. That's a ton of cars.
Fairly unimposing bit of industry. Phoenix has quite an ordinary vibe, which doesn't quite go with
the name.
Leaving town.
An uneventful trip through previously featured landscape brings us to Ehrenberg, a small CDP (Census Designated Place)
on the Colorado river with about 1500 inhabitants. It seems to be situated on a very chunky foundation, no doubt due to the
permafrost they get down there.
There's the Colorado.
Welcome to California! My mobile's camera couldn't handle the bright California Sun here.
One last one as we head for a truck stop. Not going to make LA today.
Dan will be back in a while to tour California, but for now it's time to return to the old continent once again.
Cheers!
Hello, and a very good day to you from fantasy freelancer number 4 - Henri... taking a special transport
from north of Linkoping in Sweden on a short hop down to somewhere north of Kalmar.
This is Anni's stamping ground, I know, and I hope to spend this year touring the British Isles and France.
But if I'm not mistaken, not all special transports set up by SCS are enabled in ProMods. With 2.40 still
pending, I thought I'd make use of the opportunity to do a few (3) special transport jobs without ProMods
before letting Milan get back in the driving seat in Latvia.
Enjoying a nice bit of Scandinavian countryside...
Passing through Linkoping.
So who am I, Henri? Well, I'm French and I specialise in heavy industrial transport jobs.
I graduated from the École Polytechnique with a Master's in Engineering and worked in my chosen field for a while.
Somehow I ended up at Groupe Renault in the trucks division. I got more and more involved in truck testing and driving,
till I found I liked driving more than the engineering part of the job.
A few years later, here I am... I still like to drive Renault trucks, but anything's OK really, as long as it's HEAVY...
First job almost over.
You can't beat hauling a weighty load, caked in flashing lights and surrounded by a team doing their utmost to clear the
way for you and get the cargo through to its destination unharmed.
Young couples taking selfies as we rumble by, enthusiastic journalists interviewing company staff. Makes you feel like a rock star!
We've arrived!! Next job will be Dortmund to Hanover in newly refurbished N. Germany.
Au revoir!
Last edited by krigl on 07 Mar 2019 22:32, edited 1 time in total.
Final preparations before we leave the Dortmund area for Hanover with a cargo of giant MUTT 785C mining truck tyres.
Tie them tight, don't want them rolling off somewhere.
More adulation from truck-spotters. It's what I live for. Actually that lady looks like she's saying: "You know I had envisioned spending our anniversary doing something different."
Higher fidelity sunflowers!! They look like the ones in ATS, i.e. very nice. Today I watched some gameplay videos from ETS1 and played "spot the assets reused in ETS2" I recommend trying it sometime, with a special focus on city areas. Given that ETS1 came out in 2008, some of those assets probably date back to 2006 or earlier. Shiver.
In that light Mandelsoft's refreshing of Northern Germany seems to be rather a Good Thing, seeing as it's now 2019. The countryside does look nicer than before, as does that pylon.
Kassel is also looking a bit tastier. That crane was deffo in ETS1 though.
To be honest though, I'd prefer it if SCS had set out to thoroughly revamp the base map instead of sending a skeleton crew to do it, however talented.
At bottom left: "Darling... just how many photos of that truck do you need?" "We'll go shoe shopping later, ok hon? Just let me get a few more."
No doubt it's totally unrealistic to expect/implement or whatever, but I would happily have paid full price long ago for a backwards compatible graphics upgrade labelled ETS3 or ETS2.5 which works with all the DLCs (and mods of course).
I'd be happy to pay for upgrades in the form of DLCs with the understanding that in a year they will be integrated into the main vanilla game. I could imagine Germany DLC, British Isles DLC (including Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but rescaled to bring it into line with the rest of Europe), the Other Bits DLC with the stuff surrounding Germany on 3 sides, and an improved Going East DLC.
I can imagine a model where SCS tasks a group of professional content creators from their team to produce new vegetation, buildings and prefabs for the various parts of the vanilla map and then lets ProMods use them to improve it so each area is beautifully detailed and packed with character and different from other areas, and then perhaps pays them a bit for their services once its done...and then integrates their work into the main game. Pie in the sky nonsense? Probably. But I like to dream...
It is undeniably looking better here though...nice work! Hopefully ProMods will be able to put most of their great stuff back with the new textures and vegetation and stuff. Yep.
Musings over... we've arrived. Must fly, my fans await! And I want to see the tyres being put on the MUTT. The jack and tyre iron they use will surely be a sight to behold.
The last set for now will be from sunny Italy...
- TheNuvolari
- Posts: 370
- Joined: 14 Apr 2017 09:02
- Location: Bács-Kiskun
Can't wait for the Italian set! It'll look even better there!
You're right about Italy - fantastic both in real life and in game. Hope I managed to do it justice. Thank you for your support!!
Last edited by krigl on 09 Mar 2019 09:46, edited 1 time in total.
A third and final set (for now) from me, “Heavy” Henri, sees us loading up a spectacular exceptional cargo at the Italian port of Naples – a heat exchanger. It’s a big, almost ritualistic event – the company even sent a trio of Morris dancers to see us off.
The local police were on edge. I got the feeling they didn’t trust me – took a few “precautions” just in case I got any funny ideas about absconding alla velocità with the precious cargo.
Even after the beautiful Baltic DLC, Bella Italia is still the Gold Standard for SCS’s ETS2.
Sorry Sir, can’t let you do that right now. The Nautilus is coming through!
Don’t worry, soon you’ll be on your way. In a nice little traffic jam.
We get to dodge the ubiquitous toll booths! Win!
Vesuvius rises majestic!
Renzo Piano’s Il Volcano Buono lies close by. I hope he’s right about Vesuvius being a Good Volcano – nothing ruins a nice afternoon of boutique shopping like a lava flow.
Making progress down the autostrada.
Again! Take that, Benetton!
Italy is beautiful. One of the things keeping me going on this tour is the knowledge that I will finally allow myself to tour and post screenshots from Italy after I’ve done most of the rest of Europe. Not that the rest is in any way bad - much is excellent (of course, or I wouldn't be devoting hundreds of hours of my life to it), but Italy is pretty much top for me, along with the ProMods far northern stuff.
Approaching Terni.
The Baltic region doesn’t have a monopoly on “green and lush”.
Terni roundabout, one of the tricky places on this drive which my team had absolutely no problem dealing with. No problem at all.
Okay, well we did get a bit stuck once or twice. And in Naples I squashed a white chihuahua while reversing. But it wasn’t my fault! It’s owner was pressing a notepad against the cab window, trying to get my autograph.
Mum! Dad!
Stay on the balcony for 10 more minutes or you’ll feel the back of my hand!
But there’s this really cool thingy out there!
Nearing the delivery point. What a drive it’s been!
Dusty and industrial - just how I like it.
Milan will be back next time, in green, lush Latvia. This paintjob is pretty lush too.
Meanwhile I’ve got a lot of paperwork to do…
Au revoir!
Ahoj there, Milan here, and I’m back in the Baltic states, concretely in Svente, to the south of Daugavpils in Latvia. This time I’ll be back for a while, for I’m starting to get the feeling that ProMods 2.40 is just around the corner. I mean, it’s got to be, right? So I’m going to explore all of Latvia and Estonia without anyone else butting in and spoiling my fun.
Heading north towards Daugavpils. Thing is, right now the Baltic region is unique, but it seems likely that the vegetation and buildings from the DLC will start popping up all over at least the Eastern part of Europe from 2.40 onwards, and then the area won't be so unique any more. So it’s a case of striking while the iron is hot, as it were.
Really hyped for 2.40, even though I’m not going to see most of it before the next edition next year. I have planned ahead regarding what to explore for the next two years – hopefully the motivation will stay high and we'll manage to get through it all...
What? What? Everyone needs a hobby, right? Like fishing or car waxing or beermat collecting or watching endless games of football is any better…
The plans for the first half or so of this year are – because I know people care – to tour the rest of the Scandinavia DLC with all the ProMods stuff attached, to tour all the ProMods parts of the British Isles, and to explore the whole of California and the majority of RusMap. Here’s hoping…
Well, we’ve reached Daugavpils. Let’s check the city out! It was great in ProMods and it’s turned out to be decent here too!
Love seeing public transport in these cities, adds another dimension.
Daugavpils is cool, so I bought a garage there and went looking for someone to hire.
Turned out that old warhorse Dan Vavra was free, so I hired him.
Then it was time to get out of town for Liepaja on a route that crosses
the whole of the south of the country.
The region seemed to be nice, but a bit less populated with interesting things to
see than Lithuania and Kaliningrad oblast.
Still enjoyed it though. This is Malta, which by some quirk of continental drift has
appeared between Daugavpils and Rezekne.
There were quite a lot of roundabouts in this area, I think. Reminded me of driving in the real-life south of England.
We skirted Rezekne and struck out in the direction of Riga.
Yep. Understated beauty. Yep.
And we’re back at that power plant. It’s Latvia’s version of all roads lead to Rome.
Nice bit of kit, though.
The tree flinched. Miss a turn. Continuing our journey towards Liepaja.
For some reason the river is blocked off and the riverbed dry on the other side of the road. I wonder why?
Nearing Skrunda.
Skrunda.
Lovely garden in Skrunda…. after that it was a short hop to Liepaja. We’ll be going there next time,
but starting from Klaipeda and then continuing on up to Ventspils. Can’t wait!!
Cau, Milan.
Today we're in Klaipeda again.
An old friend now in the Baltic haulage business invited me over for a chat, and to check out his fleet.
Not of boats though.... trucks, of course
Klaipeda is a lovely city, so I popped back down to Lithuania from Latvia and we went out for a beer or two.
Unfortunatly he fell on the way home and got concussion, so I grandly offered to do a couple of jobs for him
while he recuperates.
For some reason he's running MAN TGAs and a couple of Steyrs, which are pretty much the same thing.
Nice to drive something different.
Ahead of the pack. The first job took us up to Ventspils in Latvia. It's only a couple of hours drive, and Liepaja
stands between them, so the whole area is rather urbanised.
We're at the border already.
On this route, you've hardly got time to say "lush and green" and you're at the next city.
Liepaja has more of an industrial feel to Klaipeda.
It has one or two cool landmarks that set it apart.
And trams...brilliant.
This shot's from a previous trip, but I liked the black and white traffic light fixture and the water tower behind,.
Leaving Liepaja and off to Ventspils.
A slightly longer stretch of countryside ensues.
With a rare cow-encrusted vista of the sea!
But soon we're back in civilisation again - Ventspils.
The Latvians do seem to like their cows.
Panelaks can be pretty...
A statue of a cow.... on a pedastal. Okay....
And a floral cow! Cousin to the Vegetal Mammoth of Holbrook, perhaps? What is it with Latvians and cows??
Didn't your mama tell you it's rude to Steyr?
Ventspils is yet another port, but it manages to feel different once again. It has a "big port" feeling, with some great new
ship models.
Back in a couple of days...
Čau!
The cow as statue isn't too weird, this is near where I'm living called "Us mem". It's Frisian for "our mom".
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_Mem
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_Mem
Just a trucker here, nothing to be seen. Please more along!
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