We are constantly bombarded with requests to show more of what is
happening with Euro Truck Simulator 2, but it's complicated now.
On the technology programming side, we have been working on deferred
shading for quite a while, but now the time has come to finally
integrate the code into the game - to give the artists the access to the
tech and tools.
The end result is of course that the artists and designers are at the
same time happy with so many new features that they will have at their
disposal - true shadows including self-shadowing, true lights, new
shader effects, HDR, bloom and the like. But at the same time they are
pulling their hair as we realized how many tweaks of existing stuff will
be still needed.
Anyway, finally we will have a state-of-the-art graphics engine! It will
just take a few more weeks before we can start showing screenshots of
all these things properly tuned and balanced, all working as expected at
the same time in the scene...
For today, here is just a small teaser that shadows are already finding
their way into the game. In these shots only the trucks have shadows
enabled. Fortunately, the new technology is quite smart; it will allow
all objects in the scene to cast shadows relatively cheap when it comes
to performance, so the scenes will look gorgeous even on mid-range
hardware. You will notice that this scene doesn't contain any new
vegetation or some of the things that we have already talked about -
this is exactly the case that many features that people are working on
in parallel now need to be finished, integrated and adjusted to work
together at the same time, not just as isolated research and development
sub-projects. These shots are from a rural area in Poland by the way.
