ATS – Portland, Oregon
There is no way to leave out Portland if you want to portray Oregon properly. It’s the biggest city in the state, the core of a populated region and a very important transport hub. There is a big harbor there and lots of industry. All that should be reflected in American Truck Simulator, not just in appearance, but also in the game’s economy.
We knew that this would not be an easy task right from the early research stages of the Oregon project. The city crosses the Willamette River, and even its nickname “Bridge City” hinted that we would have to deal with several bridges and difficult-to-optimize topology of the area with a lot of reflective water splitting it in half. Indeed, several critical bridges form the very backbone of the transport network. So there is a lot of candidate geometry to render and to strain the 3D card.
Our team has spent a lot of effort and time to build our take on Portland. It has really been quite tough to optimize the layout and design to achieve acceptable framerate. We are quite happy with the result, we believe that it is very representative of the city as seen by a truck driver passing through it, giving the right impression we have been aiming for.