ETS2 features thousands of miles of roads and hundreds of assets built over 12 years. Porting this entire library to a new engine would be a monumental task, likely taking years.

The most likely scenario is not a sudden jump to Unreal Engine 5, but the continued, gradual evolution of Prism3D. SCS Software is aware of the competition and often incorporates modern features—like updated lighting pipelines—into their own engine.

There is often confusion regarding Euro Truck Simulator 2 (ETS2) and Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine 5’s provides fully dynamic global illumination. This would mean hyper-realistic sun glares, accurate headlight reflections on wet asphalt, and lifelike shadows moving across the truck's dashboard. Nanite would eliminate visual "pop-in" entirely, rendering highly detailed roadside scenery and distant mountain ranges with cinematic quality. 2. Superior Physics and Destruction

Yet the shift also exposed inequities. Unreal’s demands amplified hardware differences. For players on older rigs or driving purpose-built sim rigs, the updated visuals could stutter or impose compromises—lower traffic, reduced view distance, or simplified post-processing. Developers and modders responded with optimization packs: lod (level-of-detail) cascades, texture streaming profiles, and presets tuned for racers, casual players, or cinematic capture. The result was a fragmented but functional ecosystem where accessibility was an engineering challenge rather than a philosophical decision.