We’re excited to announce that the 1.59 Open Beta for American Truck Simulator is now live and ready for you to check out. If you choose to participate, we’d greatly appreciate you sharing any bugs or issues you come across in the proper section of our official forums[forum.scssoft.com].

Your feedback is incredibly valuable to us, and we’re thankful for the time you take to help us make the game even better. With that, let’s take a look at what’s included in the 1.59 Open Beta.

We've been closely listening to feedback from our community, and one of the most common points raised in the new route advisor was that many players missed having quick access to information on vehicle damage and finances. While our teams are actively working on the next steps in our broader vision for a redesigned UI in this area, we didn't want to make you wait until that work is complete. Instead, we've prioritized implementing some of the most frequently requested improvements as soon as possible.

Based on that, we've implemented the Damage and Finances widgets. The widgets are designed to restore easy access to information about truck damage, plus trailer and cargo damage, if you are currently driving with a trailer and cargo, as well as your current bank balance, with an average profit over the last seven days displayed too. 

These widgets can be turned on and off in the Widget Settings Menu, and if enabled, they will be displayed in the bottom-right corner above your GPS.

The Tow to Road feature was designed to improve the overall quality of life for players by reducing frustrating situations during gameplay. It will allow drivers to quickly recover if their truck overturns or gets stuck in a ditch or uneven terrain. It will also help prevent disruptions in multiplayer sessions, enabling players to continue with their convoy when they find themselves stuck, without the need to be towed to a service location, which could cause unnecessary delays.

So when you are in a difficult situation, you can simply find the new "Tow to Road" button under the Service menu (set to F7 by default). After paying a small fee for the towing service, you will be transported to your last safe location on the road. You can read more about this feature here[blog.scssoft.com].

The Skill Screen has received a visual rework while remaining in its original place within the interface. This update focuses on improving clarity and overall user experience without changing its core functionality.

You can now view both your current skill level and the next step in its progression. Tooltips also allow you to explore other ranks within each skill. Selecting a skill provides improved readability and clearer visual feedback, including a better indication of how many steps remain in that skill's progression path.

Each skill is represented as a clickable button, making it easy to access more detailed information. The redesign also improves navigation when using a controller.

We're continuing to refine the overall user experience with updates focused on readability, clarity, and smoother controller navigation. The in-game news banner has received a visual refresh to better align with our newer UI style while improving readability. When hovering over a news item, a tooltip will now display a longer excerpt along with a clear call to action. Deactivated news items now feature a clearer status indicator, which also doubles as an activation button. We're making navigation on the world map more intuitive for controller users. A new "undo last pin" feature has been added, along with remapped controls for adding, removing, setting avoid areas, and resetting pins. Save handling has also been improved, with new saves now using the standard save icon instead of a black screenshot and overwriting clearly labeled as "Overwrite". Garage upgrade cutscenes can now be skipped more consistently using the (B) button, and the controller navigation has been further refined with improved D-pad accessibility across UI.

We’ve also made some adjustments to traffic audio as part of this update. Sounds have been softened and rebalanced to better match real-world perception, with less emphasis on distant engine noise and more on the subtle “road hiss” of tires. Honking behavior has also been slightly randomized to reduce repetition. Overall, traffic should now feel less intrusive and better integrated into the ambient soundscape.

We’ve also made a few improvements to the Height Blend feature. Derived normal maps can now be enabled to help conserve GPU memory, and we’ve addressed several graphical issues to ensure more consistent, visually accurate results.

We've decided to temporarily disable the detour feature to focus on maintenance and further development. We've received numerous reports of Detours not functioning as intended, and the current system no longer meets our needs. As a result, we'll be shutting down detours while we work on improving and upgrading the feature in the background to make it more stable and reliable. Please note that this change only affects detours - random road events will continue to be available in the game.

Gameplay

• Tow to Road Feature

UI/UX

• Advisor Update - Finances & Damage Widgets

• Skills UX Redesign

• QoL UI/UX Changes

  • Improved News Banner Readability

  • World Map Pin Enhancements

  • Save Icon Update

  • Garage Cutscene Skipping

  • D-pad Accessibility Improvements

Visuals

• Height Blend Improvements

Sounds

• Traffic Sound Rework

Other

• Detour Feature Maintenance

Enjoy all the new additions, but please remember: It's only an open beta, not a stable public version - so you may encounter bugs, instability, or crashes. It's completely okay if you want to wait for the final release. But if you're interested in helping us to get there faster, we'd appreciate all of your feedback on our forum and your bug reports in the dedicated section[forum.scssoft.com].

Please check our modding wiki to get details pertaining to mods for the game. If you wish to participate in this Open Beta, you can find this version in the Experimental Beta branch on Steam. The way to access it is as follows: Steam client → LIBRARY → right-click on American Truck Simulator → Properties → Betas tab → Beta Participation drop-down menu → public_beta. No password is required. Sometimes you will have to restart your Steam client to see the correct branch name there.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/270880/American_Truck_Simulator/

Some time has passed since our first Road to Consoles Dev Talk[blog.scssoft.com], where we took you behind the scenes of our work on bringing Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator to the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. And today, we would like to share our progress since then with the second dev talk!

We know our #BestCommunityEver is eager to hear more news about the development of this project. We are working hard on bringing our games to consoles as soon as possible, but it is a huge task that requires the involvement of multiple departments in SCS Software. Even though there is still a lot of work to be done, we are making progress every day, and we are happy to give you an update on it.

In our second Road to Consoles Dev Talk, we interviewed some of the key members of the involved departments to tell you more about what they are currently working on, what is ahead of us, and also some of the challenges they are dealing with. And our goal is to do everything properly without taking any shortcuts. So without further ado, let's see what the team has been busy with!

We hope you have enjoyed taking a dive behind the scenes of the development process. And don't worry, we're just as excited to share more as you are to hear it, so stay tuned for our next update when we have something new to reveal. If you're excited to hit the road on consoles, be sure to add ETS2 and ATS to your wishlist[www.scssoft.com] on your preferred platform.

We will share more important information about this project once we are ready to reveal it, so don't forget to follow us on X/Twitter, Facebook[www.facebook.com], Instagram[www.instagram.com], Bluesky[bsky.app], and YouTube, so you won't miss out on any news. Or you can sign up for our newsletter[www.scssoft.com] to stay informed. Until next time, happy trucking!