I appreciate your optimism, and the new screenshot's (and the terrain they feature) look really good....
...but...
"...new shrubs, trees, rocks and terrain materials in order to make some, imho, great vista's...."
doesn't equate to
"...SCS is doing a better job then expected..."
I have been really critical of SCS only releasing ATS with three states. In hindsight, maybe that is a bit unfair, because the original Euro Truck Simulator 2 released with only England, 1/3 of France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland (according to their website, the base game now includes Italy, Austria, and the Czech Republic, but I know Italy wasn't a part of the game when I got it, and I'm not sure about the other two.), so that excluded 2/3 France (DLC), Hungry, Slovakia, Poland (Going East DLC), Norway, Sweden, Denmark (Scandinavia DLC), Italy, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and the other countries that make up the 50 states in the (current) European Union (how many semi's do you think go through Vatican City, or Monaco? How bad ass would negotiating those cities be?!).
The point is, there is probably some American elitism driving the disappointment in the amount of content in ATS, but while I'm willing to concede that all 50 states in the United States of America is a tall ask, the bigger question is; "..what is SCS's goal?" Why did they choose the states that they chose? California has the highest population of any state in the U.S., so it made a logical starting point. However, I would have preferred they move more north and south, as the trip between SoCal and Seattle would have seen a massive shift in geographical terrain, climate, and road variations. Variations that would have driven the need to explore. Variations that would have prevented the repetition that dulls, and eventually bores.
I do wonder, however, if SCS is currently focused on "Coast-to-Coast" travel, meaning after New Mexico, we would see Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and finally the Atlantic Coast in Georgia. While I would understand if this is SCS's plan, it is no joke that, especially with Texas, this is the most boring route across the US. Three states of desert, some desert mountains between AZ and NM, then flat nothing-ness all the way across Texas before you finally hit some place where trees actually grow side by side, rather than just popping up one here and there.
The worst problem is SCS hasn't really disclosed anything about what their prioritizing, or what their end goal is, so, in the mean time, all we get is 80% desert trucking, 5% trees (Northern California and New Mexico), and 15% cities, and no hint of a light at the end of the tunnel, not to mention a finish line anywhere in sight.
Is ATS American Truck Simulator? or Australian Truck Simulator? It just doesn't feel like the game world has defined itself or really made a clear statement that this IS the USA. We still don't have identifiable landmarks like the Grand Canyon, or the Rockies (New Mexico will clip the southern edge of the "Rocky Mountains", which stretch north into Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana and then up into Canada). The terrain so far feels generic, the lack of truck manufacturers don't give you the variety. Nothing tells you that you're in the US, except maybe Las Vegas, and you can't even drive down 'the Strip' and the optimization is so bad that you can't really enjoy driving through the parts of Las Vegas you can visit.
Again, maybe my expectations are higher because I live here, maybe I just don't bond with it yet because I DON'T live in this part of the US, it very well could be mostly or entirely an issue with me and little to nothing that SCS did wrong.
But I don't feel any sort of attachment to this game that I was expecting. If I want a truck simulator, I'd rather play ETS2. Its more fun, it has more variety. The appeal to ATS, as a mid-west kid who grew up on the road (many hours every week of my childhood were spent on the Interstate Highways), driving everywhere with the family (four times to east coast states, three trips to the Atlantic Ocean standing on several coasts between South Carolina and Maryland, four trips into the Rockies, two trips all the way through Rockies, and one trip to the Pacific coast) playing ATS was about using the fantastic mechanics of ETS2, but in an environment that felt familiar, while using (and being surrounded by) trucks that I see every day, and as a whole feels something like a second home to me...
...but so far ATS has just fallen short on most of those points.
