Today’s virtual truck shot was taken in western Ukraine. Most of Ukraine is not available to drive in (because of the obvious reason), but what is available is just beautiful. I loved this sunset scene with the Ukrainian flag flying in the background. Click here to see the full 5120x2160 image.
(screenshot from Euro Truck Simulator 2)
Good morning, Newdists. It’s been one hell of a year, hasn’t it? Oh, wait, I guess it’s only been three weeks. How are you doing? I hope you’re finding a way to maintain your sanity through the storm.
As for me, I said a while back that I was going to truck my way through Trump 2.0, and I meant it. For those who don’t know, I picked up a new hobby back in October (not knowing that it was going to become my escape hatch for the new Trump era): trucksimming. Ever since I was a kid, trucking has been a kind of fascination of mine. When I was a teenager, some of the first trucking simulator games were released, although they were more arcade games than “simulators”—very simple gameplay, potato graphics, somewhat boring and lifeless maps, etc. I knew they’d improved in the years since, so I played around with the idea of building a new gaming PC so I could get back into virtual trucking (because I realized I badly needed a new hobby). In October, I decided to finally pull the trigger on it, and I bought all the parts from Micro Center for the BF to build me a beast of a gaming PC. I bought an inexpensive steering wheel and pedals, repurposed an old monitor, and downloaded American Truck Simulator. Soon after, I bought Euro Truck Simulator 2, which is undeniably awesome and I play it a lot, but I still prefer American Truck Simulator most of the time.
I was kind of expecting it to just be another video game, like it was back when I was a kid. But when I started playing, I quickly realized how complex it had become. Of course, you can still play it like an arcade game, and that’s sort of what I did at first. But the more I drove, the more I wanted to learn how to drive properly. And it really is a truck “simulator” in that you can replicate just about everything you do when you drive a real truck. And if you don’t, the punishment is...stress. The more I learned about how to drive a truck, the less stressful and more relaxing the game became.
So I really committed myself to learning how to do everything, which involved watching a lot of CDL school videos on YouTube. I was doing it to have fun, yes, but I also genuinely wanted to learn. I guess it was my way of justifying the fact that I was spending hours playing a video game—if I was going to do it, I was determined to at least learn some things! However, to drive properly meant I needed a proper setup. I invested in a better steering wheel, one with good force feedback to really immerse myself. I bought an Eaton Fuller 18-speed shifter add-on for my gearshift, and I spent literally hundreds of hours (no exaggeration) learning how to shift an 18-speed transmission (a few hundred hours later, it has become second nature!). For extra immersion, I bought a 49-inch curved monitor, which really makes it feel like I’m looking out a real windshield. Combined with a noise-cancelling headset, sometimes I almost fool myself into thinking I’m sitting in a real truck cab.
I thought I’d give a little tour of my truck sim setup this morning. Some of you may be interested, some of you may roll your eyes (lol), but I’m kind of proud of what I’ve built. Just don’t ask me how much it all cost me—it’s too embarrassing to admit.
Here is my current (and final, I think?) setup:
First, zooming in on the computer tower:
The Harris-Walz trucker hat is mostly decoration at this point. That clip attached to the hat is for my head-tracker. That thing attached to the top of the monitor in the picture above tracks the movement of my head so I can look around in the game. Most of the time, I’m using my headset, though (I have another device hooked up to the headset). And I found that little toy truck at a gas station in California and had to get it!
The steering wheel is specifically designed to be a truck simulator wheel. It’s a beautifully made leather wheel that has the feel of a real steering wheel. As you can see, I bought a suicide knob and attached it to the bottom of the wheel, which is helpful because of the 1800-degree rotation of the wheel. Recently, I installed the turn signal and wiper stalks that you see in the background, which add so much more to the immersion than I thought they would! I don’t have functions assigned to all of the buttons and stalks, and not all of them function as they say they do. For example, I programmed the cruise control lever on the bottom left to be a retarder lever, which is especially helpful for Euro trucking since that’s how European trucks are typically designed.
Oh, and I have a specific truck wheel mount for my desk that is adjustable just like a real steering wheel. Just another one of those touches that make it feel like I’m driving a real truck:
Something I realized early on is that there are so many buttons and switches I need on a regular basis! Fortunately, I was able to find this button box, which really helps me out—because trying to remember which key on my computer keyboard I assigned to which function while I’m going down the virtual road is pretty stressful. All of these buttons and switches function just as they’re labeled. I even have a key to start the truck, and a working “CB radio” attached to the side (for multiplayer “convoy” mode in the game, which I never use).
Oh, and here’s the gearshift, which has the switches needed to shift an 18-speed. The only problem is that the gear-splitting switch on the left side of the shifter is actually horizontal in real life (rather than vertical). This is one of those things that doesn’t matter one bit, but it still bugs me, so I’m thinking about replacing my shifter at some point. The one I want is around $100, though, and I still haven’t been able to justify it to myself!
So here I am, trucking through the constitutional crisis. What else am I going to do? We’re all going to have to unplug every now and then, and this is my way of doing it. The BF still thinks it’s crazy that I have the patience to truck for hours at a time. I guess he thinks it would be boring. And it is sometimes, I guess, but that’s kind of the point. The repetition of shifting the gears, the sounds the engine makes, the tedious intensity of backing a trailer up—it’s all quite meditative. We all need a break from reality every now and then, and this is mine.
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From belinda ridgewood and our friends at the Inoculation Project:
Today at The Inoculation Project, we’re taking advantage of special matching grants for Black History Month to help two school libraries for early-elementary students.
