[Once again I wax on endlessly about that stupid truck-driving
sim. Just move on to the next post. It's okay; I'll understand
if you do so. ;-)]

So, with a single key bind, I just turned my favorite driving sim into
a walking sim.

The former being, of course, the SCS Truck Driving Simulators
(American/European), which have kept me cheerfully engaged for close
to a decade now.* Driving down the highways has always had a calming
appeal. It's not a very difficult game; the default simulation
settings are fairly mild**, distances are minimized, and traffic is
minimal.

But what if I could make the game even easier? What if I could make it
so my driving sim had all the challenge of your average walking-sim?

It turns out, I can, and all with a simple key-press. See, the
developers recently added 'lane-keeping' capability to the trucks.
Which, combined with cruise-control for speed management, means I
barely need to DRIVE my driving game at all anymore. Just get the
truck up to speed and in the right lane, press a couple of buttons,
and it's hands off!

Well, not really. Lane-keeping doesn't do navigation, or avoid
traffic. And -whether because of bad navmeshing or intentional design-
it's not all that stable; the truck 'pinballs' slightly to the left
and right of the lane, with the swing getting slightly wilder as time
gets by, until finally manual intervention is required to stabilize
things again. The truck also takes no note of things like construction
or traffic lights or any other obstacles; it'll just happily barrel
forward at full speed unless I suggest that maybe --just maybe--
plowing into another truck at a crossing is a Bad Idea. So I still
have to do /some/ monitoring.

But, yeah, it does take a lot of the stress out of the driving, and
even I have to wonder what's the point of playing the game this way?

Except... it does change things somewhat to the positive. For one
thing, I can now dare to take my eyes off the road for a second. One
of the biggest flaws (purposeful design choices) of the SCS Truck Sims
is to make the world a 1:20 imitation of reality. This is good in the
sense that I can finish a 1000-mile journey in a single sitting, but
it does lead to some oddities on the map... like excessively twisty
roads. Considering the size of the map, a remarkably large number of
the highways feature extremely tight turns (sometimes multiple S-turns
in the span of several hundred feet), and -too often in normal play-
you dare not take your eyes off the road for a millisecond lest you go
over the edge. It's actually a bit annoying, especially since I find
the best parts of the game are when I can turn OFF my brain and just
relax (their representation of the German autobahn is perfect for
this).

But with lane-keeping? Why, I can finally look AROUND me and watch the
pretty landscape go by. It's changed how I play the game entirely. I
can look at the other trucks. I can look at the inside of MY truck. I
can play with all those buttons on the dash. I can marvel at the
idiosyncratic AI. I'm no longer fixated on how the pavement directly
in front of me might suddenly weave to the left or right. Suddenly
there's a whole world around me that I can appreciate.

I'm not sure I'll stick with it though; as I said, the game lacks much
in the way of challenge to begin with, and that's almost entirely gone
with lane-keeping enabled. But it sort of amazes me how one tiny
change so drastically altered how I experience the game.

All from a single key-press.

* what can I say, I'm easily amused.
** you can tune a variety of settings to make them -presumably- more
realistic, but since I have no idea what it's like to really drive a
Big Rig, I don't know what values to change those settings to, so I
just leave everything at the defaults

On 1/6/2025 8:10 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> [Once again I wax on endlessly about that stupid truck-driving
> sim. Just move on to the next post. It's okay; I'll understand
> if you do so. ;-)]
>
>
>
> So, with a single key bind, I just turned my favorite driving sim into
> a walking sim.
>
> The former being, of course, the SCS Truck Driving Simulators
> (American/European), which have kept me cheerfully engaged for close
> to a decade now.* Driving down the highways has always had a calming
> appeal. It's not a very difficult game; the default simulation
> settings are fairly mild**, distances are minimized, and traffic is
> minimal.
>
> But what if I could make the game even easier? What if I could make it
> so my driving sim had all the challenge of your average walking-sim?
>
> It turns out, I can, and all with a simple key-press. See, the
> developers recently added 'lane-keeping' capability to the trucks.
> Which, combined with cruise-control for speed management, means I
> barely need to DRIVE my driving game at all anymore. Just get the
> truck up to speed and in the right lane, press a couple of buttons,
> and it's hands off!
>
> Well, not really. Lane-keeping doesn't do navigation, or avoid
> traffic. And -whether because of bad navmeshing or intentional design-
> it's not all that stable; the truck 'pinballs' slightly to the left
> and right of the lane, with the swing getting slightly wilder as time
> gets by, until finally manual intervention is required to stabilize
> things again. The truck also takes no note of things like construction
> or traffic lights or any other obstacles; it'll just happily barrel
> forward at full speed unless I suggest that maybe --just maybe--
> plowing into another truck at a crossing is a Bad Idea. So I still
> have to do /some/ monitoring.
>

On my recent 500 mile trip I tried the lane and distance keeping cruise
control on my 2021 real car. It worked pretty well but some stretches
of road it did a lot of pin-balling back and forth, and if there was
rain or the road was wet, or the markings faded it tended to not find
the right and would try to veer into it or the shoulder if I was in the
rightmost. It also complained when I had my hand lightly on the
steering wheel. It mostly did better than I at at detecting cars ahead
and keeping pace with them up to the set cruise speed, but had trouble
with people cutting me off (way more times than I could count) taking a
few seconds to recognize that, and detecting a car to the right when it
was veering off that way.

I seemed to get tunnel vision far less than driving with just plain old
set speed cruise control, I was worried I'd have more trouble paying
attention with it doing all that, but perhaps because I was monitoring
what it was doing I was more engaged.

> Except... it does change things somewhat to the positive. For one
> thing, I can now dare to take my eyes off the road for a second.

Ah yes, I noticed that with the fancier cruise control too, that may
have contributed to avoiding tunnel vision since I could glance off at
signs and landmarks much more, and also made the drive more enjoyable.

--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'

On Tue, 7 Jan 2025 11:11:20 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On 1/6/2025 8:10 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>
>> [Once again I wax on endlessly about that stupid truck-driving
>> sim. Just move on to the next post. It's okay; I'll understand
>> if you do so. ;-)]
>>

>On my recent 500 mile trip I tried the lane and distance keeping cruise
>control on my 2021 real car. It worked pretty well but some stretches
>of road it did a lot of pin-balling back and forth, and if there was
>rain or the road was wet, or the markings faded it tended to not find
>the right and would try to veer into it or the shoulder if I was in the
>rightmost. It also complained when I had my hand lightly on the
>steering wheel. It mostly did better than I at at detecting cars ahead
>and keeping pace with them up to the set cruise speed, but had trouble
>with people cutting me off (way more times than I could count) taking a
>few seconds to recognize that, and detecting a car to the right when it
>was veering off that way.

>I seemed to get tunnel vision far less than driving with just plain old
>set speed cruise control, I was worried I'd have more trouble paying
>attention with it doing all that, but perhaps because I was monitoring
>what it was doing I was more engaged.

Interesting. I've never had a car with lane-keeping, or even driven a
rental with the capability. So I've no real familiarity with how well
it works.

I assumed the pinballing was an effect of the game's mechanics. The
game's roads are stitched together using pre-made roads with nav-mesh
lines underneath. Sometimes the stitching isn't quite perfect, and I
figured the back-n-forth was a result of the AI jumping between the
nav-mesh lines as we crossed over the stitches. But maybe it was
intentional after all?

>> Except... it does change things somewhat to the positive. For one
>> thing, I can now dare to take my eyes off the road for a second.
>
>Ah yes, I noticed that with the fancier cruise control too, that may
>have contributed to avoiding tunnel vision since I could glance off at
>signs and landmarks much more, and also made the drive more enjoyable.

In the game, it allowed me to look around more. I'm not sure that made
me a better driver though. While I felt a lot more aware of my
surroundings, I felt a lot less aware of the road. The lane-keeping
didn't cause any accidents but I felt less in control (it also was a
bitch when it came to changing lanes). I'm not sure it's something I'd
want to use in Real Life.

But it made for an interesting change of pace.

On 1/8/2025 7:47 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Jan 2025 11:11:20 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 1/6/2025 8:10 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>>
>>> [Once again I wax on endlessly about that stupid truck-driving
>>> sim. Just move on to the next post. It's okay; I'll understand
>>> if you do so. ;-)]
>>>
>
>> On my recent 500 mile trip I tried the lane and distance keeping cruise
>> control on my 2021 real car. It worked pretty well but some stretches
>> of road it did a lot of pin-balling back and forth, and if there was
>> rain or the road was wet, or the markings faded it tended to not find
>> the right and would try to veer into it or the shoulder if I was in the
>> rightmost. It also complained when I had my hand lightly on the
>> steering wheel. It mostly did better than I at at detecting cars ahead
>> and keeping pace with them up to the set cruise speed, but had trouble
>> with people cutting me off (way more times than I could count) taking a
>> few seconds to recognize that, and detecting a car to the right when it
>> was veering off that way.
>
>> I seemed to get tunnel vision far less than driving with just plain old
>> set speed cruise control, I was worried I'd have more trouble paying
>> attention with it doing all that, but perhaps because I was monitoring
>> what it was doing I was more engaged.
>
> Interesting. I've never had a car with lane-keeping, or even driven a
> rental with the capability. So I've no real familiarity with how well
> it works.
>
> I assumed the pinballing was an effect of the game's mechanics. The
> game's roads are stitched together using pre-made roads with nav-mesh
> lines underneath. Sometimes the stitching isn't quite perfect, and I
> figured the back-n-forth was a result of the AI jumping between the
> nav-mesh lines as we crossed over the stitches. But maybe it was
> intentional after all?
>
I don't think I would be surprised if it turns out that the software
companies are using real world "driver assist" car features to test the
software for the game.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>On 1/8/2025 7:47 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> On Tue, 7 Jan 2025 11:11:20 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 1/6/2025 8:10 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>>>
>>>> [Once again I wax on endlessly about that stupid truck-driving
>>>> sim. Just move on to the next post. It's okay; I'll understand
>>>> if you do so. ;-)]
>>>>
>>
>>> On my recent 500 mile trip I tried the lane and distance keeping cruise
>>> control on my 2021 real car. It worked pretty well but some stretches
>>> of road it did a lot of pin-balling back and forth, and if there was
>>> rain or the road was wet, or the markings faded it tended to not find
>>> the right and would try to veer into it or the shoulder if I was in the
>>> rightmost. It also complained when I had my hand lightly on the
>>> steering wheel. It mostly did better than I at at detecting cars ahead
>>> and keeping pace with them up to the set cruise speed, but had trouble
>>> with people cutting me off (way more times than I could count) taking a
>>> few seconds to recognize that, and detecting a car to the right when it
>>> was veering off that way.
>>
>>> I seemed to get tunnel vision far less than driving with just plain old
>>> set speed cruise control, I was worried I'd have more trouble paying
>>> attention with it doing all that, but perhaps because I was monitoring
>>> what it was doing I was more engaged.
>>
>> Interesting. I've never had a car with lane-keeping, or even driven a
>> rental with the capability. So I've no real familiarity with how well
>> it works.
>>
>> I assumed the pinballing was an effect of the game's mechanics. The
>> game's roads are stitched together using pre-made roads with nav-mesh
>> lines underneath. Sometimes the stitching isn't quite perfect, and I
>> figured the back-n-forth was a result of the AI jumping between the
>> nav-mesh lines as we crossed over the stitches. But maybe it was
>> intentional after all?
>>
>I don't think I would be surprised if it turns out that the software
>companies are using real world "driver assist" car features to test the
>software for the game.

Or worse yet, Vice Versa. Makes you want a car with this feature
doesn't it?

I'll stick to older cars and drive myself or take a cab.

Xocyll

On Mon, 06 Jan 2025 11:10:53 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> [Once again I wax on endlessly about that stupid truck-driving
> sim. Just move on to the next post. It's okay; I'll understand
> if you do so. ;-)]

Heh, I just learned this game has adaptive cruise control too. It'll
automatically slow down the truck to match the speed of the traffic
ahead of it (and speed up again once the traffic clears).

It's really getting to the point where I barely need to drive at all.
I am literally reading my phone while driving in this game. It's
teaching me some awful habits. ;-)

Maybe its time to rebrand: European Truck Simulator 2: The Clicker
Game?