Sound plays a very important role in interactive games, which is why we are very excited to introduce a new sound engine to the worlds of Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator in the near future.
FMOD is a proprietary sound effects engine that will allow us to make really dynamic and complex audio. We have been working on implementing it for a long time already, and our sound designer has already poured hundreds of hours into implementing new vehicle sounds. Eventually, the changes to our soundscape will be more profound as we plan to revisit ambient sound sources all around the environment, this is planned to appear in the game through a series of follow-up updates. The feedback we receive from our community will surely play an important role in how we tune and tweak the sfx in future updates, we expect it to take some iterations.
Another part of the community that might be excited (or nervous) for such a change is our modders. Honestly, they will need to start from scratch to plug their sounds back into the game, as the changes in data structures are considerable. This update will make most existing sound mods incompatible. The silver lining is that the new wealth of features in the sound library will allow for way more fidelity especially with vehicle sounds, so we hope that the deep changes we are coming with will be appreciated. FMOD offers a free application for everyone to use, so mod creators will have the some power available to them as our own sound department. To help with the transition, we also plan on releasing some useful tutorials to help you become familiar with this new software.
For those with an eye for detail, you may have noticed a picture we shared across our social media channels this past weekend to tease you. Did you spot it? A long-awaited requested feature will be made possible with this FMOD update - the ability to roll down your truck windows! Look out for a more detailed blog post in a few days!
While we still have a long way to go with this big new feature, we hope you will enjoy this sneak-peak of what is to come and how this new sound engine and the Doppler effect will change the way you hear things around you in ETS2 and ATS.