




The Vision Behind Parallax Interiors
What was the motivation behind creating these new Parallax Interiors? “The idea came from one of our colleagues, Wave, who was inspired by how other games, such as Forza, implemented a similar technology.” Sasha tells us “He built the first prototype, proving that this approach could work within our games. From there, we refined the process and expanded it into a full-fledged feature, so big kudos to him for that!”







Where did it all begin?
“In the early stages, way before the research and model artist crew got involved, we started off with a experimental phase” Jan V tells us " The team consisted of Wave and me, who took care of creating the initial textures and 3D modelling work. We were looking at what's realistically possible to implement, coming up with a basic list of requirements and procedurally iterating on what's called a vertical slice, an in-engine initial prototype used to represent what could realistically be formally implemented later into the production pipeline. In this particular case, this process consisted of taking an existing 3D asset and adapting it to use this new rendering technique.” “Before starting work on creating parallax interiors, our programmers developed a shader, which we initially tested using simple blockout scenes.” Yurii H explains “Once the shader passed testing successfully, our researchers conducted an extensive study to determine the types of interiors we needed, their sizes, and how many would be required. Only after that did we move on to fully developing the atlas.”

The Technology, Tools and Code.
The implementation of Parallax Interiors wouldn't be possible without the work of our talented programmers and artists. To make Parallax Interiors easy to work with, Martin Č, one of our tool programmers, developed the Interior Window Tool for Prismtool, which is what we call our internal tooling here at SCS. “A lot of it is centred around Autodesk Maya which is used in-house to create assets for our games including trucks and other vehicles, buildings, props, roads, vegetation, characters, and more.”



Interior Design
With so many types of buildings found across Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator, creating a variety of interior designs to represent some of the more common shops, businesses, living spaces and more was an important task. We spoke with Yurii H to learn more about his role in creating them. "Although we had detailed research to guide us, it mainly served as inspiration for me." Yurii explains "My primary task was to design each interior from scratch and think about how to make the lighting more varied, since each scene needed three lighting variations, for different times of the day/night".



The Future of Parallax
Will we continue to see Parallax interiors in the future and possibly more variety and additions? "Yes, absolutely!" Sasha tells us "New interiors will continue to be introduced with upcoming content, and we also have plans to rework some of the older assets, integrating parallax interiors into them. Over time, these interiors will become a standard feature across the game. As for new atlases, you can definitely expect more!". Yurii also goes on to share a little teaser with us, "Here’s a little insider info, these new parallax interiors will feature technology that allows them to be used not only behind "windows" but also in open spaces, like garages, which will further enhance the visuals in our game"






