ProMods

It misses the good old Austrian song "Jo mir san min Radl do" though

Thanks all for kind words! I've been working on this secretively since March 2017, with a long break this summer, just got to publication-ready (sort of) in the last week or two. My video editing skills are nearly nil, as I bet you noticed, but I did try Have tried it out on a few test subjects who all thought it was a hoot, though one complained she felt a little dizzy due to the mismatch between inner-ear perception and visual perception when riding fast. I haven't had that problem myself. One younger tester immediately pedalled madly up to about 100kph truckspeed and then tried to take a tight corner, inevitably rolling the truck and another tried to go x-country but they all were laughing and having a great time.

There are a couple of things I would love to get some help with (ahem) if anyone is willing. The most important in terms of immersion-maintenance is a better "truck", one that is either invisible or bike-shaped and has less mass (so it accelerates, shifts and corners more like a real bike). This is waaay beyond my modelling skills, and besides I think all the truck-building tools are Windoze-only so I'm out of that game. If anyone could build me a totally flat truck with the "cyclist mover" model glued to it, so it cast a cyslist shadow instead of a great big scary truck shadow, that would be so awesome...

The other big Future Feature is to get telemetry working so that the controller gets feedback about truck speed and terrain -- so for example I could set up a 12v fan with speed proportional to truck speed so you get the "wind in your face" experience, enhancing the realism and cooling off! I know the steps I have to take to get there, but it's going to be a long haul, probably be 2018 before I get that working.

@ETS-User, I just knew someone was going to catch that! I also spaced out late at night and used one screenshot twice, my bad... now it will be too much hassle to take down the video and replace it, so I'll just have to admit the booboo and let it stay up. I'll be doing some more YT of USBcycle, so I might do another "ETS2 bike ride" movie or slideshow to showcase the scenery. I'm hoping my video will introduce more people to ETS2 and ProMods as well. Sorry for not getting the ProMods logo prominently into the video, that was another booboo, I just didn't think of it at the time.

nice initiative

What I just thought would be amazing on such a configuration as well is a say 24 gearbox with correct ratios that you can switch through with your "H-shifter", so the gear levers or handles on your bike. But one would have to fiddle around in the bike's mechanics and frame to get the buttons connected and a rope for the clutch that gets pulled automatically...

Expecting an early 2018 release then?

Hahahaha, just kidding, it's ready when it's ready.

@ETS2-User isn't there an secret option in the config file for an automatic clutch?

I did think of instrumenting the rear wheel so that I could track both RPM (pedaling and wheel spin) and infer the gear from the ratio, since there is little/no sliption where the rear wheel meets the roller. If the in-game vehicle was set to manual gear box, then I might be able to detect gear shifts at the bike and pass them on (with a slight delay) to the game. That could be fun real shifting!

OTOH, I found that the resistance on my trainer (magnetic) was so feeble that I have the bike set up in highest gear all the time. It would be ridiculously easy -- very unrealistic -- in low gears. I guess I might be able to beef up the resistance by tinkering with the trainer mechanism, but it's a nice tidy commercial product and I haven't felt like ripping it apart (yet). Variable resistance would be pretty cool, if it could be driven by in-game telemetry (inferring grade from changes in Z)... ai yi, so many interesting possibilities.

Amazing... O_O

Nice work!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rootlessa ... 6764524189

this is the photo album of a long ride (about a month's worth of evenings at an hour to an hour and thirty minutes a night) I took through the Russia maps.

thought y'all might enjoy the virtual bike tour. the Russia roads are particularly nice being long, empty... long distances between towns, mostly flattish, you can really get on to your cadence and just ride... big skies, nifty architecture. I might have posted this link somewhere else, sorry if its a dup.

I saw you driving in russia: