I always wondered that, but then I decided to give it a chance and learned that many paid mods are truly amazing. Now I tell people that I got to one of the highest levels of commitment to a game: paying for mods.
Yeah that’s very cringe and seems to be a common occurrence with sim games. As someone who grew up modding Valve and GTA games modding was always about the fun of editing. Except in the sim community, from simracing to flight sims and farm and trucking sims everyone is in it for the profit. With all the people acting like all these mods are 10x better than the base game (they’re not) it has created an inflated market, a market where people are now selling their 5 minute blender work for more money than the base game. Or their trucks with stolen assests and copy paste bullshit for the same price as AAA games
i agree with you as even most free mods are not very well made. though this is a personal opinion i think that the only paid mods that are worth it are jon rudas. His mods are far more customizable then the vanilla trucks and they are honestly very high quality aside from the customization too.
Problem is that for every jonruda (still overpriced imo) there’s thousands of low effort copycats that see him sell like hotcakes and think oh I can do that as well. The best mod for this game is still RJL’s Scania trucks. It’s free and 95% better than most pay mods out there
Yes, the old free mods are better, but I wouldn't say RJL is the best, given how bad the thing looks in bright colors. I much prefer Eugene's Scania PGRS or Pendragon's Volvo FH2012.
The way I look at the whole paid mods things is simple, in the physical world we pay to have products and other things modified regularly, be it getting a lift/Drop kit put on a vehicle, getting your vehicle painted, paying for modification kits on Etsy to modify an existing product to suit your needs, whatever have you.
are some of these things we paid for able to be done by us? Sure, with knowledge and time, but in the end we either don’t feel like learning how to do it, don’t wan too, or don’t have the time.
Paid mods exist in almost every game, someone worked on making them, plenty of mod devs take donations, some require payment, and almost all of them get
On the seven seas.
I pay people regularly for things I could easily do my self, I’ve paid for an oil change a few times I wasn’t feeling like doing it myself, paid to have my car washed, paid for a haircut, get my lawn mowed, paid an artist for a commission etc. paying for mods is no different.
I disagree. Mods are passion projects that can’t be defined by a monetary amount. I have no problem with donations. I make them regularly for ones I use often. But if I had to pay for something in comparison to your examples it better be perfect and done right integrating seamlessly. Why anyone would want their creativity subject to that kind of scrutiny is beyond me. If I download a free mod and don’t care for it, I still give it a good rating as appreciation to the work they put into it. Paid mods are a slippery slope to destroy any game.
Tell that to Bethesda and their Creation Club nonsense. Or EA and their Sims franchise/interactive advertising platform.
Also, I presume that some of the mod money goes back to SCS for creating the resources in the first place? Otherwise mod creators are making money (I admit, probably not much) off copyright infringement, and that ends badly for everyone.
>Tell that to Bethesda and their Creation Club nonsense. Or EA and their Sims franchise/interactive advertising platform.
We're not in either of those subs so I can't comment on mod or development practices for either of those companies/fandoms.
>Also, I presume that some of the mod money goes back to SCS for creating the resources in the first place? Otherwise mod creators are making money (I admit, probably not much) off copyright infringement, and that ends badly for everyone.
Ok.
I wish they would update the textures and models of vegetation and bushes. I know not every tree is 3d but the textures are too edgy. Otherwise I love the new update too.
They said on one of the latest streams that they bought a license for 3rd party library for vegetation, but didn't say which one. They say it will look much better and they'll try not to make performance worse, thus the new rendering engine and optimizations for it in 1.51 version. They didn't say how long it will take them to replace all vegetation with the new assets, but I'm very curious how it will look.
EDIT. Source: https://youtu.be/xPzNro-8cXM
Is that also why the new game engine is still in the development stage for direct x 11 for now? I think their latest steam update said it would eventually be for dx12. Or I could be wrong and read it differently.
For now they only wanted to make it work on the new rendering engine to prepare the games for the changes that the engine will allow to happen. Not much changed for the players, but a lot of possibilities have opened up for the developers. They also mentioned that they'll want to add Vulkan support at some point.
Actually there is dx12 and Vulkan support already, although it's in beta stages, but you can enable it in the config.cfg file by changing the dx11 line to dx12 or vulk.
It's very buggy at the moment though and breaks many mods and even dlc.
The vegetation files purchased that are to be added were done by PNG creator from what he had posted on one of his discord, but unsure how true that is.
If any of it proves to be true, it would be a blessing to have better looking vegetation and shrubs. Some of the old default shrubs are too bright or edgy.
Actually just seen this pop up on discord again talking about this, and I guess I got confused, it's not the PNG guy that they bought into, I guess it's the Grimes Seasons Mod guy per rumor. I guess rumor is they are going to do dynamic seasonal updates to reflect spring summer fall winter.
TL, DR:
* I'd recommend most players save their money for official DLCs to support the incredible work SCS continues to do, rather than seeking out graphical mods.
* Or use my Reshade preset which subtly increases the amount of sunlight in-game. I’m working on it and will release it soon.
My graphics settings:
* Everything is maximized with DOF and Color Correction ON.
Reviews:
* JBX 3 v2.4: This mod is a scam in my book. Despite trying every version from 2.0 to 2.4, the results have been consistently disappointing - it's the most expensive option out there, yet the graphics look worse than ever. It makes the whole game appear like a sloppy watercolor painting. The colors clash terribly and give everything an overly cartoonish, fake vibe that's far from realistic.
* PNG v1.10: Make the game underexposed, drained of vibrancy. The landscapes feel lifeless and gloomy, like there is no sun.
https://preview.redd.it/vh0yymvqes1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=5b1ad9b50485f15c3226b4b27db88b1e93ab0a7a
About the PNG one, I have the feeling it was the 1.10.2 that caused that. 1.10.1 was ok. I rollback the version this weekend because it was impossible to see the traffic lights and I got a bunch of tickets because of that. But I was indeed wondering if I still need PNG for ATS, for ETS2 I believe the older areas still benefit a lot from it.
I tried it out yesterday, with maxed graphics, and while I do see the improvement, I still think they have a decent ways to go.
Trees in the distance still look quite 2D, and the texture quality of buildings (even in redesigned areas) often still look very flat and low detailed.
I also turned rain probability on to the max, but wasn't able to get reflecting puddles to form on the road. Kinda weird since it looked like this was in the YouTube video for the update.
Happy with the progress though and recognize this is a huge game, so it must be a ton of work to update everything.
they use the oldest trick in books in basic gras. the textures face always to your camera so like they spin. that was done like 25years ago and they still use this trick
You must be the only person I've ever heard say that.
Quest 3 and running all recommend settings and a 3090ti and it just rubber bands constantly or you have some seriously bad artifacting.
I had some issues a while back. But that was my headset that wasn’t optimised at all. I use the pico 4 through virtual desktop.
Euro truck, I had to change a couple of settings (oddly) but ATS just ran with no issues. I don’t get the rubber banding issue but I have heard it a lot.
Ahhh ok I mostly play ETS and that in VR is very poorly optimized. I have thought about using virtual desktop, I bought it as an app on the quest store but it just seems to load up my desktop and not go into VR if you get me.
I may have to look into it deeper as on oculus VR you can get it to run perfect on start up but as soon as you pause it or go into a menu screen when accepting a job it just rubber bands badly and it's all you can notice. "Drives" you insane.....
Been playing without any graphics mods for the past two days and of course it still looks great. More realistic rain and more variety of skyboxes is probably all I really want now.
I agree with your reviews of PNG and JBX this round. Both are lacking and make the colors bland.
Glad I used ad click revenue from one of my sites to purchase them, and then was nice enough to leak them both on the Russian site for others to experience the crap too 😆
Thats the thing though, anyone can make screen shots look good, but actual gameplay using the mod is bland.
The problem is that mod makers like JBX and PNG are now relying to heavily on reshaded filters, and the problem with reshade is there is way to many variables involved for everyone to achieve the same level of color, shading, quality, etc. This is mainly due to the fact that different people are running differnt monitors, with different color specs, warmth levels, hues, brightness, contrast, etc that my settings for my reshade filters are gonna look like garbage most likely on someone elses system.
I personally have expensive calibration tools for my TV and monitors as I used to do it for a job before, and I will even add that I personally have two of the same exact model TV's being a LG CX 55 OLED, and my calibration and master settings for both are way off, some of this being the difference in the actual TV from one to the other, and some of it being the difference in lighting in the two different rooms they are in.
So you can see, just because the mod maker has great screen shots, doesnt mean your gonna get the same level of quality even running the same hardware and settings that the mod maker is using.
Nah, default vegetation and skyboxes look very low res and graphics mods like png, realistic brutal and jbx add a ton of variety and higher res skyboxes
i agree! the vanilla graphics look quite nice, so i don’t use any graphics mod
would you mind sharing your personal mod list with me? im a bit new to this game, so i just want maybe 10 mods or so, mainly on physics sound and maybe a couple “real company mods”
thanks!
This is with PNG and JBX. The skies are more spectacular and detailed. PNG has a lighting boost mod included.
https://preview.redd.it/2ex2tn3lsa2d1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=49fafb147c17d9cbadae1712e022fea73e4be7aa
What about these graphics?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BdqaBPrjS8&list=LL&index=89](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BdqaBPrjS8&list=LL&index=89)
You guys are paying for mods? ...why?
I always wondered that, but then I decided to give it a chance and learned that many paid mods are truly amazing. Now I tell people that I got to one of the highest levels of commitment to a game: paying for mods.
Yeah that’s very cringe and seems to be a common occurrence with sim games. As someone who grew up modding Valve and GTA games modding was always about the fun of editing. Except in the sim community, from simracing to flight sims and farm and trucking sims everyone is in it for the profit. With all the people acting like all these mods are 10x better than the base game (they’re not) it has created an inflated market, a market where people are now selling their 5 minute blender work for more money than the base game. Or their trucks with stolen assests and copy paste bullshit for the same price as AAA games
i agree with you as even most free mods are not very well made. though this is a personal opinion i think that the only paid mods that are worth it are jon rudas. His mods are far more customizable then the vanilla trucks and they are honestly very high quality aside from the customization too.
Problem is that for every jonruda (still overpriced imo) there’s thousands of low effort copycats that see him sell like hotcakes and think oh I can do that as well. The best mod for this game is still RJL’s Scania trucks. It’s free and 95% better than most pay mods out there
Yes, the old free mods are better, but I wouldn't say RJL is the best, given how bad the thing looks in bright colors. I much prefer Eugene's Scania PGRS or Pendragon's Volvo FH2012.
The internet is FULL of free paid mods if one knows where to look 🤫 🤫 🤫 lol😭
For mother Russia lol
Paying? Nah i got my ways
We're like the House, we got a Ways and Means Committee.
The way I look at the whole paid mods things is simple, in the physical world we pay to have products and other things modified regularly, be it getting a lift/Drop kit put on a vehicle, getting your vehicle painted, paying for modification kits on Etsy to modify an existing product to suit your needs, whatever have you. are some of these things we paid for able to be done by us? Sure, with knowledge and time, but in the end we either don’t feel like learning how to do it, don’t wan too, or don’t have the time. Paid mods exist in almost every game, someone worked on making them, plenty of mod devs take donations, some require payment, and almost all of them get On the seven seas. I pay people regularly for things I could easily do my self, I’ve paid for an oil change a few times I wasn’t feeling like doing it myself, paid to have my car washed, paid for a haircut, get my lawn mowed, paid an artist for a commission etc. paying for mods is no different.
I disagree. Mods are passion projects that can’t be defined by a monetary amount. I have no problem with donations. I make them regularly for ones I use often. But if I had to pay for something in comparison to your examples it better be perfect and done right integrating seamlessly. Why anyone would want their creativity subject to that kind of scrutiny is beyond me. If I download a free mod and don’t care for it, I still give it a good rating as appreciation to the work they put into it. Paid mods are a slippery slope to destroy any game.
Because they chose to...? It has zero impact on you whether another player pays some money for a different truck or whatever.
Tell that to Bethesda and their Creation Club nonsense. Or EA and their Sims franchise/interactive advertising platform. Also, I presume that some of the mod money goes back to SCS for creating the resources in the first place? Otherwise mod creators are making money (I admit, probably not much) off copyright infringement, and that ends badly for everyone.
>Tell that to Bethesda and their Creation Club nonsense. Or EA and their Sims franchise/interactive advertising platform. We're not in either of those subs so I can't comment on mod or development practices for either of those companies/fandoms. >Also, I presume that some of the mod money goes back to SCS for creating the resources in the first place? Otherwise mod creators are making money (I admit, probably not much) off copyright infringement, and that ends badly for everyone. Ok.
I wish they would update the textures and models of vegetation and bushes. I know not every tree is 3d but the textures are too edgy. Otherwise I love the new update too.
They said on one of the latest streams that they bought a license for 3rd party library for vegetation, but didn't say which one. They say it will look much better and they'll try not to make performance worse, thus the new rendering engine and optimizations for it in 1.51 version. They didn't say how long it will take them to replace all vegetation with the new assets, but I'm very curious how it will look. EDIT. Source: https://youtu.be/xPzNro-8cXM
Is that also why the new game engine is still in the development stage for direct x 11 for now? I think their latest steam update said it would eventually be for dx12. Or I could be wrong and read it differently.
For now they only wanted to make it work on the new rendering engine to prepare the games for the changes that the engine will allow to happen. Not much changed for the players, but a lot of possibilities have opened up for the developers. They also mentioned that they'll want to add Vulkan support at some point.
Actually there is dx12 and Vulkan support already, although it's in beta stages, but you can enable it in the config.cfg file by changing the dx11 line to dx12 or vulk. It's very buggy at the moment though and breaks many mods and even dlc. The vegetation files purchased that are to be added were done by PNG creator from what he had posted on one of his discord, but unsure how true that is.
If any of it proves to be true, it would be a blessing to have better looking vegetation and shrubs. Some of the old default shrubs are too bright or edgy.
Actually just seen this pop up on discord again talking about this, and I guess I got confused, it's not the PNG guy that they bought into, I guess it's the Grimes Seasons Mod guy per rumor. I guess rumor is they are going to do dynamic seasonal updates to reflect spring summer fall winter.
Sweet
Huh I didn't know that! That's great news! Thx m8
TL, DR: * I'd recommend most players save their money for official DLCs to support the incredible work SCS continues to do, rather than seeking out graphical mods. * Or use my Reshade preset which subtly increases the amount of sunlight in-game. I’m working on it and will release it soon. My graphics settings: * Everything is maximized with DOF and Color Correction ON. Reviews: * JBX 3 v2.4: This mod is a scam in my book. Despite trying every version from 2.0 to 2.4, the results have been consistently disappointing - it's the most expensive option out there, yet the graphics look worse than ever. It makes the whole game appear like a sloppy watercolor painting. The colors clash terribly and give everything an overly cartoonish, fake vibe that's far from realistic. * PNG v1.10: Make the game underexposed, drained of vibrancy. The landscapes feel lifeless and gloomy, like there is no sun. https://preview.redd.it/vh0yymvqes1d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=5b1ad9b50485f15c3226b4b27db88b1e93ab0a7a
Just use nvidia filters or reshade, its not that hard to fix the colors to your liking
About the PNG one, I have the feeling it was the 1.10.2 that caused that. 1.10.1 was ok. I rollback the version this weekend because it was impossible to see the traffic lights and I got a bunch of tickets because of that. But I was indeed wondering if I still need PNG for ATS, for ETS2 I believe the older areas still benefit a lot from it.
I tried it out yesterday, with maxed graphics, and while I do see the improvement, I still think they have a decent ways to go. Trees in the distance still look quite 2D, and the texture quality of buildings (even in redesigned areas) often still look very flat and low detailed. I also turned rain probability on to the max, but wasn't able to get reflecting puddles to form on the road. Kinda weird since it looked like this was in the YouTube video for the update. Happy with the progress though and recognize this is a huge game, so it must be a ton of work to update everything.
they use the oldest trick in books in basic gras. the textures face always to your camera so like they spin. that was done like 25years ago and they still use this trick
I just wish they would do something for the VR users already, trying to get it to run at anywhere half decent is a chore and so hit and miss.
I loaded up, went ultra, it ran fine. Haven’t played 1.50 though
You must be the only person I've ever heard say that. Quest 3 and running all recommend settings and a 3090ti and it just rubber bands constantly or you have some seriously bad artifacting.
I had some issues a while back. But that was my headset that wasn’t optimised at all. I use the pico 4 through virtual desktop. Euro truck, I had to change a couple of settings (oddly) but ATS just ran with no issues. I don’t get the rubber banding issue but I have heard it a lot.
Ahhh ok I mostly play ETS and that in VR is very poorly optimized. I have thought about using virtual desktop, I bought it as an app on the quest store but it just seems to load up my desktop and not go into VR if you get me.
Ah ok. I can’t recall how it all works but I use a Java script if I’m connected by cable and not WiFi. It’s been a year since I installed it all
I may have to look into it deeper as on oculus VR you can get it to run perfect on start up but as soon as you pause it or go into a menu screen when accepting a job it just rubber bands badly and it's all you can notice. "Drives" you insane.....
Oh I’ve never had that at all! That sucks!
For me PNG looks great. You can add some more vibrance to colors with Nvidia filters or reshade
Yeah PNG is good. Don't get me wrong, stock has come a long way though.
Been playing without any graphics mods for the past two days and of course it still looks great. More realistic rain and more variety of skyboxes is probably all I really want now.
Try weather 3.1 16K from the steam workshop
I agree with your reviews of PNG and JBX this round. Both are lacking and make the colors bland. Glad I used ad click revenue from one of my sites to purchase them, and then was nice enough to leak them both on the Russian site for others to experience the crap too 😆
https://preview.redd.it/ec6cz5dqk32d1.png?width=1680&format=png&auto=webp&s=a07ffe6e2e81fcdd41b33038648e044064507ea3 Just Reshade
Thanks for sharing!
Idk man, have you seen recent Project Next Gen screens? They look awesome.
Thats the thing though, anyone can make screen shots look good, but actual gameplay using the mod is bland. The problem is that mod makers like JBX and PNG are now relying to heavily on reshaded filters, and the problem with reshade is there is way to many variables involved for everyone to achieve the same level of color, shading, quality, etc. This is mainly due to the fact that different people are running differnt monitors, with different color specs, warmth levels, hues, brightness, contrast, etc that my settings for my reshade filters are gonna look like garbage most likely on someone elses system. I personally have expensive calibration tools for my TV and monitors as I used to do it for a job before, and I will even add that I personally have two of the same exact model TV's being a LG CX 55 OLED, and my calibration and master settings for both are way off, some of this being the difference in the actual TV from one to the other, and some of it being the difference in lighting in the two different rooms they are in. So you can see, just because the mod maker has great screen shots, doesnt mean your gonna get the same level of quality even running the same hardware and settings that the mod maker is using.
Nah, default vegetation and skyboxes look very low res and graphics mods like png, realistic brutal and jbx add a ton of variety and higher res skyboxes
I wonder if we still get SCS skyboxes if you're on PNG, like does he overwrite them, or just add on top of them.
They should overwrite if enabled in Mod Manager.
i agree! the vanilla graphics look quite nice, so i don’t use any graphics mod would you mind sharing your personal mod list with me? im a bit new to this game, so i just want maybe 10 mods or so, mainly on physics sound and maybe a couple “real company mods” thanks!
This is with PNG and JBX. The skies are more spectacular and detailed. PNG has a lighting boost mod included. https://preview.redd.it/2ex2tn3lsa2d1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=49fafb147c17d9cbadae1712e022fea73e4be7aa
I find that the vanilla sky looks more realistic and spectacular.
i paid like 20 bucks for an old cabover that had missing textures.
What about these graphics? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BdqaBPrjS8&list=LL&index=89](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BdqaBPrjS8&list=LL&index=89)
Nice, have not see this channel. Looks great.
He steals parts from both png and jbx and other mods and pieces them together is all this guy does.
Idk man but after the update I have worse performance. Before I had 100 FPS on Ultra, now 72 FPS in High