Bus Simulator 16 was released via Steam one week ago today. I wrote my usual “My First Look” blog post last Friday after 5 hours of game play. As of today, one week after release, I have 18 hours of game play and have reached level 21, own 8 buses and employ 8 drivers and working towards completing the Tourist City Objective. I wanted to break away from playing the game to make a few comments.
In that “My First Look” blog post from last week, I indicated several things I Liked about the game and a much longer list of things I didn’t like about it. The “Things I Dislike” list was mostly a list of bugs I had encountered during the first 5 hours of play. Again, with almost 20 hours logged in the game…I’ve come up with a “Top Issues List”. Some of these issues I had pointed out last week and some I didn’t. By the way, the development team from Stillalive studios were super quick to push out an update last week to address poor performance issues in the game. They have also been awesome in providing support through the Steam Discussion page. I remain confident additional patches and fixes will be released in the coming days/weeks to address problems. Additionally, Stillalive Studios have been actively pursuing feedback and suggestions from the user community on what they would like to see added to the game. This is a fantastic game and I’m really looking forward to watching it grow. Now for my top issues list…
GPS Map Rotation
This one was at the top of my list last week and it is where it remains today. While this is just my theory, but this has to be a complete failure of the development and/or testing team. Regardless if I use my Garmin or my GPS enabled smartphone for SatNav purposes, the maps in these devices auto center and keep the arrow or vehicle icon always pointing up. The same applies in my friends expensive SatNav built into his high end SUV. Same goes for the SatNav in both ETS2 and ATS. So it’s not hard to connect the dots and place this issue as a mistake in coding and/or testing. As I’m not a software developer, I don’t immediately know what level of effort it will take to correct this issue. But I would think it would be a simple fix and I hope one that comes sooner rather than later.
Steering Wheel Support
Let me just state for the record that most of what I outlined with issues I had experienced with Steering Wheel Support have been resolved. Remember, I had mentioned that no matter what I did, my Logitech G27 wheel was very hard to turn as if the force feedback was set to max. I had tried everything suggested in the Steam discussion group. I had both sets of Logitech drivers installed and had tweaked a variety of settings in both the game and in the Logitech Profiler. What did I do to resolve my tight wheel issues? I really don’t know. But I think it had to do with me uninstalling and reinstalling the Logitech drivers for their new line of controllers. Understand, these drivers don’t have anything directly to do with the G27. These drivers won’t recognize the G27. But according to the Bus Simulator 16 developers, the Logitech wheel support they developed into the game requires at least part (probably a .dll somewhere) of this new Logitech driver package. I had installed it before, but after removing it and reinstalling it again, magically my G27 loosened up on me.
AI Traffic Brake Lights and Turn Signals
Neither exist in the game play. I also find this a bit ironic considering we as game play bus drivers are rewarded with using our turn signals. It would really help to have the AI vehicles also use their turn signals. Brake lights is also one seems to have been overlooked.
Yes there are many other areas which I hope in time will be addressed. Things like TrackIR support, other AI Bus Traffic etc. I hope will come in time. But I’m also hopeful and perhaps optimistic that at the very least the GPS map rotation issue will be address in the next patch. I would hope we would see the next patch in the next few days.
Until next time…
Happy Simming!!!
J
P.S. Bus Sim 16 Developers, please…please fix the GPS map rotation soon. Thank you for all your hard work to bring us what I believe will become a fantastic bus simulator.