Are Any Of The Truck Driving Sims On The Market For PC Very Realistic?

I do know computer based "gaming" sims can be quite realistic. I used P3Ds (Formally Microsoft) Flight Simulator and knew a guy who had built a full 737 ****pit around it in his garage and he was an actual airline pilot. I just wanted to get a feel for what it might take to drive a big rig and maybe get an idea if I could deal with it. I have ran into two: "American Truck Simulator" and "18 Wheels of Steel: Hauling" The former has a lot better graphics but only includes three states, that latter is a nation wide simulation, which I would be more interested in since I would like to see if I am really up to the challenge of a long haul in real time, but the graphics are much poorer. Can anyone comment as to these or other sims?

As far as simulators go, if you got the $ you can make a pretty realistic setup (flight, racing, driving sims). As far as driving simulators ATS is the "newest", I find it pretty decent. They have weigh stations, "CAT scales" near fuel stops. They even added a more "realistic" system when hooking up to a trailer where you can miss the king-pin. However, I think it'll be a while before they can simulate jumping the king-pin over the fifth-wheel. For about $600 or so you can have a pretty realistic setup with wheel/pedals/shifter. There is also a newly made shifter that makes it more realistic for truck sims. It basically turns the standard shifter into a 10 or 18-speed shifter(http://csio.tech/).

There are also mods for it that you can download that gives you the whole country to run.

I have 330+ hours on ATS. 18WOS Is a much older game made by the same people, but I haven't played it.There are limited states, but if you unlock longer loads they can get lengthy; some have taken me about an hour! Overall the driving aspect of it is extremely realistic, but the economy and fact that you can choose your load are not very realistic at all. I'd recommend ATS, well worth the 20 dollars.

Bill, of the two you mentioned I would definitely go with ATS (American Truck Simulator). With their upgrade in the scaling department it has helped with one of their short comings of time. It is more realistic now but still not a one to one with real life. As mentioned you can get a number of mods as well as gaming equipment to help with your experience.

They have a very good sister to this program which is ETS2 (European Truck Simulator 2). The one big downfall of this one for drivers here in the US is that all their trucks are cab overs. Other than that it is very good and you can drive across much of Europe with plenty of tunnels and switchback roads over the mountains. You can also get screwed up pretty good sometimes driving in England on the wrong side of the road and have the choice of your controls being right or left side.

Either way, for me the two biggest short comings for realism is that there is no bumper to bumper slow rush hour traffic or accident causing traffic (unless it is you), and with the reduced scaling there are a number of corners that are sharper than you would have in real life on the interstates. The problem is you still go around those just as fast if you want to keep up with traffic as if they were much less sharp. I also don't like the fact that you can't get out and walk around your truck for GOAL or inspection or hook up of the trailer. It is nice now that you can miss the kingpin and you have to wait a moment for the landing gear crank to activate which are steps in the right direction.

With that said, I personally love both of these simulators and have seen one set up on You Tube of a guy who had everything including retarder switch and gauges. It must have cost a bundle.