It's Thursday, the weekend is nearly here, but you can't face the thought of pushing through with Friday to get there. With a long week almost behind you, you'd rather start the wind-down early by riding the open road in the most patriotic truck you can find. The American Truck Simulator update just made the virtual world considerably bigger.
Altering the scale of American Truck Simulator's world from 1:35 or 1:20 sounds like a minor improvement. But when you think of the location in question, that's an awfully large addition. The long road ahead just got longer, and this time it's ok to fall asleep at the wheel.
But it isn't just the virtual landscape seeing changes this time around. With the patch being in development for more than a few months, there's a couple more alterations heading into the changelogs. Including the aformentioned size change, here's the rest;
- Scale: It's bigger! You will understand it once you start the game.
- New chassis options (6x2 and 6x2 Midlift): There is an option now to choose 6x2 chassis or 6x2 chassis with lift-able axles (lifted axles avoid unnecessary tire wear when the weight distribution stays within legal limits).
- Weight stations: We have improved how they operate to better reflect reality. A message will always pop up before you approach a weight station telling you if you can bypass it (green light) or you have to go get checked (red light).
- Parking brake behaviour: Thanks to pneumatic safeguard you have to manually disengage parking brake if you had low air pressure previously.
- Map projection: We are now using Lambert conformal conic projection (LCC) instead of Mercator projection so it will more accurately show the area and shape of each state as you are used to from any other source.
But the patch is still in open beta, which means you'll have to right-click the title in your Steam library and 'opt-in' through the properties page to have the download be pushed to your system.
