This American Truck Simulator road will play 'America the Beautiful' as you drive
What a treat!
A stretch of the iconic Route 66 in American Truck Simulator [official site] will play the song 'America the Beautiful' as we drive our trucks over it. The DLC adding New Mexico will include a real stretch of road near Tijeras which really does play a song, a real thing I haven't made up. 'Musical roads' are a clever idea, similar to the rumble strips that make cars buzz as a warning but tuning them (by varying the distance between grooves) to play music. My dream ATS is filled with Americana and oddities so this is a real treat.
"We thought that it would be fun to feature this section of the road in American Truck Simulator," developers SCS Software said today. "After a short research and experimenting with frequencies and musical scales, we have succeeded in realizing this peculiarity."
Here, have a listen in this prototype (which may yet change):
And here, for comparison, is Beth Thomas's recording of the real thing:
I only hope that, unlike the stretch of coastal highway closing in American Truck Simulator following a real-world landslide, this magical musical road will stay forever Beautiful. Some reports say that the real road is losing its tune.
This is exactly the sort of thing I want from American Truck Simulator. Other ideas for New Mexico: origami sculptures, The World's Largest Pistachio, and the Roswell's UFO McDonald's. SCS have previously shown off some alien oddities in Roswell, which are great. And as American Truck Simulator expands across the country, I hope it'll add things like the many attractions claiming to be The World's Largest Ball of Twine.
I looked into other musical roads and was delighted by the one in California playing a farty tune that's supposed to be the William Tell Overture but just isn't:
The idea originated in Japan, where over 30 roads play everything from nursery rhymes to a song from the soundtrack of My Neighbor Totoro:
