ETS2 Mods

But the best way to see it all is to see the city for yourself! So be sure to make that trip to Nevada and let us know what you think through our social media channels.


Las Vegas isn't the only part of the American Truck Simulator world to receive an update in 1.38, one of the more noticeable changes are to Truckstops. From our previous trips to the USA to community feedback, we have learnt a lot about these vital services for drivers.


One of the first changes you will notice at Truckstops in ATS is that fuel stations now have lanes with appropriate width for trucks to pull up and refuel in. This is because, in reality, most trucks refuel from both sides and not just from one side like a regular car.  We have also implemented (where possible) guidance lines to help drivers line up their trucks to avoid damaging their vehicles upon entry and exit. Plus there is a completely new truck stop placed on the US-111 road now!

Aside from the changes related to gas stations and truckers' resting areas, we've also implemented a few more content changes across the map. In this update, you will find that Utah has a new road to drive on, the UT-56, but that's not all!


The city of El Centro received a large revamp and we also added the US-191 in Arizona. We also made a few minor changes in preparations for future connection to Colorado in New Mexico's Shiprock and made layout corrections to the nearby US-491.


We are also excited to introduce the inclusion of a computer graphics technique for efficiently approximating ambient occlusion effects in real-time. Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, better known in its shorter form SSAO, creates shadows in the areas where objects connect, to give it a more natural and believable look in terms of lighting and shadows.


So what exactly does this feature mean for our players? To break it down as simply as possible, SSAO adds missing shadows where they should have been and improves shadowing in general. It also improves the look of glossy surfaces (such as paint and chrome).


SSAO improves the driving experience and overall visual look of the game, however, this comes with an impact on performance. Technically, it is a post-processing pass on the whole rendered screen at the full internal resolution, so a lot of maths for each pixel.


Less powerful GPUs may struggle to keep up at full quality, and with 400% or similarly high scaling selected, even mid-range machines would feel the impact on fps. If you are not happy with framerate after this update, please open the advanced graphics options in the game and try to find the right combination of scaling and SSAO quality for you. With a weaker GPU, it may be advisable to switch off SSAO completely.


The easiest way to explain to you the benefits of using SSAO is by showing you a range of comparison images, take a look! Keep an eye or two on our blog because we plan to bring you more info about the SSAO in its own dedicated article soon!


We are also excited to introduce a long-requested update to the RGB Color Picker which drivers use to paint their trucks when purchasing or tuning their truck. You now have the option to input specific color inputs (HSV, RGB, and HEX).


Also, In addition to saving color preset for just a single color, the color picker now supports saving a preset for all paint job colors at once. This way player can store and easily try paint job color set with other paint jobs. With this feature we also extended number of user kept color swatches from 8 to 40, for your coloring pleasure.


We know that many drivers like to match their truck colors the same across their whole fleet, so we hope this feature is useful to you.