Farming Simulator 25 on FarmCon24: GPS and other features analysis

Farming Simulator 25 on FarmCon24: GPS and other features analysis

Grain swathing

The new grain swathing feature is used to let the plants ripen for longer – making sure the uneven growth is evened out and the final harvest is as good as possible. The only known equipment for this function so far is the MacDon Pack vehicles, which are available as a pre-order bonus for early players. In the promo materials, you can see the MacDon M1240, which practically looks backward while driving. The MacDon D 140 XL cutterbar is attached to it. With an impressive working speed of 20 km/h, this machinery swathes the grains, and the field changes its texture.

Consumables & RaniWrap

You might call it realistic – or you might call it annoying – but now, for the first time in a Farming Simulator series, your machinery and equipment will need to be maintained and refilled with consumables! For example, your bale wrapper will now require you to fill it up with film. This is where one of the newest licensed Farming Simulator brands comes in: RaniWrap film will be available on FS25. The color of your bales will no longer be decided by your baler’s configuration, but it will accurately reflect the film you purchase. Without the consumables in your baler, it will not work at all, and the film will have to be constantly replaced for everything to work. Whether this will start a trend of even more consumables in the game, we’re going to find out later.

New vehicles & machines

It’s a small detail – but one that should still be mentioned. The John Deere C440R compact baler with an included wrapping option isn’t available now, but it should be available in FS25. The 7th generation Fendt is also visible: the developers are slowly showing the new-generation models that will be available in the base game.

GPS & AI helper

GPS tracking is something that players previously had to add with the help of the mods. Now, it seems like GPS will be a very important part of FS25. In fact, on some screenshots, you can actually see the “GPS” icon at the bottom right of the HUD. At FarmCon, more information came out: it appears that GPS lane guidance will be implemented as a standard, and this feature will share a lot of the same technology coming from the game’s integrated AI assistant, using the same course generation. With this system, the boundaries on the field, created either by the mods or the gameplay itself, will be accounted for – and a suitable route will be calculated. The longest straight line will work as an orientation point, and all other paths will be affected by it.

The new system will finally allow for the AI helper to actually navigate around the headlands. When the tractor is on the field, the game’s system will generate a course for the helper to use. It will be based on the shape of the field, and the existing width of your machinery with all of its implements.

Basically, GPS will only be activated on the straight paths, while you do the navigation yourself, and the smart AI system will work on the field completely on its own.

User interface (HUD)

The latest Farming Simulator 25 game will also include some slight changes to the UI. So far, there haven’t been any major reports on what people should expect. But from the released media, it’s pretty easy to speculate on what we saw. For example, the rev counter constantly displays the fuel level. The fill type of your machinery is now constantly reflected, which is wonderful news: this means no more guesswork trying to remember what you have placed in your trailer.

Repair and tank bars look exactly the same, but there are also no features that are possible or wishlist related to any of those parts on the HUD. The gear shifting system, introduced in FS22, remains completely unchanged as well. The working hours on your machinery only go up to 999.9, and it’s likely that it won’t show anything over 1000. In terms of what’s also unchanged, time, date, weather, and account balance look exactly the same, just in a slightly different green color.

New crop – long grain rice!

The FarmCon 24 press releases have been hard at work, exclusively showing the new crop in the Farming Simulator 25 – long grain rice! There are plenty of ways to harvest and process this grain: we have already seen some options with the New Holland CR 11 combine harvester. Using this NH, dry rice can be harvested at a working speed of 10 km/h. After the harvest is done, rice can be sold the same way other grains can. For now, there is no information on the production cycles and possible products that can be made using your rice.

Rice cultivation and seedlings

From the information released by the developers before and during the FarmCon 24, a lot of attention has been paid to the features related to rice cultivation. The gameplay trailer, for instance, has shown us that rice will not be purchased in seed pallets but will be grown from seedlings in the greenhouses. This should lead many players to a great rabbit hole, exploring exactly what makes rice farming so unusual. 5000 liters of water will be required to grow rice seedlings, but there is still no additional information on whether anything else is required. So far, we only saw the pallet full of seedlings spawned next to a greenhouse. A front loader can transport the pallets, as we saw with the Fendt, sporting an Albutt pallet fork and a Quicke front loader.

ISEKI planting machine

Once you use all of your resources to gather the seedlings and get them to a field, it’s planting time. Here we saw the ISEKI PRJ8D seedling machine hard at work – it fits up to 25 liters of seedlings, and one pallet seems to have 24 liters in capacity.

Once the machine is filled up, it approaches the flooded field and you can see the irrigation system – which might be available as a placeable object that can help place the water above the field. It’s unclear how all of this will look in the game, mostly because of just how different this is to what we are used to.

After the bumpy initial start, the ISEKI planting machine gets going at 6 km/h. As the 8 in PRJ8D’s name indicated, it starts planting the seedlings in 8 rows.

Rice harvesting

Finally, once all the work is done and it’s time to harvest the rice, the new machinery comes along! The ISEKI HJ6130 rice harvester makes its debut in this game series. The machine itself picks up all the rice: unlike in classical European farming, there is no way for a tractor with a trailer to move alongside. The rice harvest is relatively slow, at 8 km/h, but everything is done with one piece of machinery. Then, the harvested rice can be sold for profit.