Feel the Game with RP, music and ambiance

Ambiance means the feeling of the surrounding. How do you feel about the surrounding you are in. Now that we know what it is, let's try to make it better, because just playing a game without a headphones is already completely different from having no sound or sound through the speakers. Lights in the room can affect the ingame day time, so playing a night mission would have a better ambiance with lights off.

Since I played Arma 3 AltisLife, I usually took trucking missions, and these were usually quite long. What I would do is, I'd listen to local radio.

A big contributor to the ambiance is audio so here are the tips:

1. Use headphones, inears or over ears, headset anything, it mutes properly the surroundings and you are able to enjoy the ambiance undisturbed. But if you are able to use a atleast 2.1 surround sound, meaning left and right and subwoofer, and your gaming corner is completely void of any other noises then this could be even better, as you don't feel the headphones pressing your ears or in your ears. I would recommend a surround sound setup of atleast 3.1, left, right, middle and subwoofer as the ears are more aligned to your front. And the subwoofer gives the extra shaking to the sound of the motor.
2. Music, like I said, I used to listen to local radio, but you can also listen to music. There is this radio station KDUB Hit Country that I used to listen to when I played ATS and in Arma, depending on the island. On Altis for example I'd listen to Astra FM, it has a little bit of talking, and local music. Really gives the feeling of being somewhere else in the moment. In ATS I listened mostly to KDUB as it had this country music which I really associate the US American lifestyle with. The radio had local advertisements and some callers and talking. It was really something to listen to how people live there in the area where I would be driving my truck. For just music I can recommend looking up some playlists, country music or check out Arma 3 Prairie SOG Soundtrack, because that really takes me to a nice place with BBQ at neighbours'.
3. When playing single player, there are even better/realistic sound mods that even further enhance the experience.
4. Adding the Radio station in game can even further better the experience, as you wouldn't need to tab in our out of the game to change the radio station.

For those who want to listen to radio, but the station is not ingame, or you don't know what you like, you can always use the Firefox Worldwide Radio extension. It shows most countries and almost all radio stations in a neat list that you can use to find a radio station of your choice from any country.
If you don't have Firefox you can also use radio.net to find some radio stations.

There are many ways to enhance the visual experience. This will further pull you into the game because you will get a certain feeling that makes you more comfortable. For example.

1. Multiple screens, having atleast two screens gives you a massively more comfortable feeling and using both in the game will even make the 2D effect less noticeable as the brain warps the image abit, giving the feeling of actually being inside a driving seat. Three screens then is way more comfortable than two, because you can have one screen in the middle.
2. VR, if you are able to play this in VR, you should try it out. Tricking the brain way more than just screens is the ability to sit there and look where you need to look without moving the mouse.
3. If you are not using VR, you can further enhance the experience with Ambilight derivatives. Ambilight is a technology that uses LED lamps behind your monitor to project the colours on the monitor edges on to the wall behind it. I used to use Ambilight and it was an amazing feeling. In a completely dark room it makes it into a theatre of wonder and aw. I built it myself with led strips, arduino and software from the web. You can also buy premade with software from Alix.
4. If you don't have Ambilight you can also use the room lights to show the time of the day when playing as it also changes the pupils and reactions in your body to give the feeling that it is day/night time.
5. Mods in game, if you aren't playing multiplayer you can also use fidelity mods that make the graphics look more realistic to give an extra edge to it. There are many available in the ATS workshop.
6. ReShade, now you might be wondering what it is, but it is something really nice. I made a guide on this for Modern Warfare, the same steps apply for any game. ReShade allows you to add different shaders to the game, for example change up the colours to be more realistic, HDR, depth of field, screen space reflections and Amd FidelityFX to name a few. Reshade can make old games look amazing again.

There are some other smaller things that can be changed to enhance the gameplay, of well any game.

1. Using the manual gear shift in the game
2. Closing Discord and other messaging on the desktop and using your phone, like you would be actually driving.
3. Setting up your setup like there are no spaces in between your screens, the bezels of the screens can be layered. The desk can be cleaned and you could have another chair next you if you need to have some other things with you like your phone.
4. Using simulator gear, even just using a steering wheel does alot, and then adding pedals and maybe even a stick shift will upgrade the experience by a mile.

That's all I can come up with. If you have any suggestions please let me know and I'll add them here.