Optional Features wrote: ↑28 Apr 2023 07:25Honestly, my favorite truck at any given moment is rarely an SCS model, but that's beside the point. GIANTS releases a game approximately every two years, and every two years there are more brands than ever. With this latest game, they added Mack and Volvo plus Lode-King. I would be surprised to see these brands disappear with the next game (probably a bit more than two years this time), and I wouldn't be surprised to see additional new brands join. As long as the dev retains a good relationship with the manufacturers, getting a new license shouldn't be an issue.
Even for Giants it happens. Sometimes, they do then release those vehicles as a free mod, but there is no guarantee it'll happen. Also, depending on the exact terms of the contract they had, it could be borderline illegal, i.e. a grey zone. In any case, it doesn't mean that another company would behave the same.
Generally, it's not that easy to compare different games here if they don't target the same brands/product. First, companies could be different and more open or strict to licensing. But also the kind of tools/vehicles they produce and how well they are known.
Most of the brands of farming equipment aren't really well known outside of the farming bubble. So for them it could be very nice to gain some screen time via games.
Car makers and truck makers on the other hand are already well known, since basically everybody sees them on a regular basis. Of course, being featured in a game should still be a good thing for them, but they don't always see it as that and they might have higher requirements (in terms of money, quality or whatever) as to what is required to get the license.
Assetto Corsa 2 will most likely be released in the next 1-1.5 years, based on what we know so far. They did make the step that you wish for, i.e. a clean cut after the original AC and then develop something new.
However, you can't really compare it too easily to something like ETS2. The engine of AC, even though it served us simracers very will and continues to do so, is really a dead end. There isn't really anything to salvage (based on what we heard form the devs).
For Kunos, it was clear from the very beginning of the next title (ACC) that they need something completely new and they combined that with other new ideas to create ACC, which is basically a huge testbed for them, because they can e.g. develop a new tire model without having to update more than 100 vehicles and similar stuff.
The original AC was basically left for dead and it's only due to huge modding community that it's still thriving; actually more than ACC. It even surpassed ATS now 5 years after the end.
If you take ACC away, which I do, because I more or less never drive ACC, an AC simracer had to wait more than 5 years after the last update (Jan 2018) to AC until a new one arrives at some point in the future.
AC's content was really great and I don't really want to miss out on any of the cars in the new AC2. I fear though that they will cut it down significantly. From what Marco said in the past, some of those deals for both cars and tracks were really hard to get and I don't know if they can pull it off again. Maybe we'll get some of the newer cars instead of the older ones, but honestly, most of the newer cars really suck.
(Actually, I love especially electric cars in real live, but in a game, I want to drive other stuff. CO2 emission etc. doesn't matter there.)
There is of course a chance that some of the contracts were not tied to a specific game. Such things exist, as we unfortunately know from the famous deal between Porsche and EA, where Porsche wasn't featured in any non-EA game for 15 years until the Porsche DLCs in AC.
Though, given the (relatively) low budget that these smaller studios operate with, I do doubt that they have deals that span multiple games.
Will DX12 bring a new focus on interactivity? Only time will tell. One thing is for certain: across all genres of simulators other than trucksims, the top products are always interactive/challenging/focused on realism. MSFS and DCS, TrainSImWorld and Derail Valley, Assetto Corsa and iRacing, etc--these are class-leading games that focus on presenting real-world challenges to the PC gamer. SCS is focused on skins, photo trophies, and city intros. It's honestly strange that SCS has been able to maintain its position in the truck sim genre for this long without implementing even basic concepts like parking a chip trailer on the truck dumper instead of at a random "dock". Things like opening doors and clickable buttons would be amazing, but we have yet to see them move all basic triggers into realistic locations.
Careful, what you compare here. MSFS is made by a huge company, they just have much more options to boost multiple areas in their products. In the past, simulations were often good at physics etc. but quite bad in the graphics department, accessibility and other areas. e.g. X-Plane is still lacking a lot when it comes to graphics. AA and reflections are horrible, despite having a Vulkan-based engine now.
DCS also was pretty bad, but they managed to get huge improvements in the last ~5 years. You have to keep in mind though that DCS is much cost-heavier to run than a game like ETS2. Every aircraft and scenery will cost you something in the range of 30-70€, that's the price of up to 6 or 7 map dlc in ETS2.
In addition to that, eagle dynamics provides professional services and support for companies for training simulators. For that reason alone they have to have a different focus than SCS.
iRacing also has a much higher running cost and a much larger dev team due to that and still the graphics in iRacing aren't the best either. For a long time, players also complained about FFB, although I think that has been solved in the last years.
(Personally, I never used iRacing, so this is just based on what I read from other users.)
So the best comparisons could possibly be made with AC, Trainsimworld and Derail Valley. For (the original) AC, the small dev team (one programmer at the time!) and the focus on being a proper simulation lead to the above-mentioned limitations which put AC in a dead end regarding engine development. Something they surely wouldn't have done, if dumming down the physics would've been an option, since it severely limited the possibilities for a future development.
And the train sims … well, trains are pretty easily simulated, there just isn't as much going on as with a car or a truck. Generally, the complexity ranking would be something like trains < planes < cars < helicopters, although I'm not quite sure about cars vs helicopters. For cars you have the complexity of the (full/partial) tire/asphalt patch. Or maybe even on dirt/gravel/snow/ice. In addition to that the whole flexing and the multiple springs/bars play a significant role in the physics modelling as well. On the other hand, a helicopter simulator could be basically called "turbulence simulator" and turbulence is among the hardest things to properly simulate, period. One of the reasons why MSFS apparently is still lacking in helicopter simulation compared to XP12 or DCS.
And then there is the aspect that maybe(!) most people don't even want a "real" simulation from a specific game. And that is even true for me personally as well.
Even though I really dig simulations (AC is my goto driving sim and I absolutely love flying in XP12 or DCS), when I jump into a truck, I don't want a simulation, I want it to be a relaxing experience.
Of course, I wouldn't mind a bit more realistic physics here and there, but as soon as it gets stressful in any way, like it is actually in the real world, I'm out, because that's not why I drive in ETS2/ATS.
Sorry for the long post and that it kind of went into the off-topic direction for a bit. 
