[DX11] Help regarding Nvidia Profile Inspector (NPI)

[yiannis]

The source of the problem and the reason why we can't have a lot of pedestrians and generally more lively cities, like you guys said before, it's the single threaded nature of the game. You can really do so much before this thread is overwhelmed and stutters start to happen. You can see it now in big cities even if you have a CPU that is way above the recommended system specification. That needs a huge amount of work to be fixed for a small studio. Essentially you need to make the engine multi-threaded. The best solution would be to scrap it all together and build the game in a well known engine like Unreal which has a million more features and can produce spectacular looking games. But I don't think this will ever happen as SCS wants to use their own engine and it is a massive job to move the game to a new one. I am sure they want to make it multi-threaded as this will allow for even more additions, but it is just so much work for a small studio. The aliasing situation will not improve too as I believe SCS think they have solved it with SMAA and they haven't mentioned the issue again since so that must mean that's their solution. The good thing is that the assets in Utah have way less aliasing so if they improve them across the whole game the AA will improve, but this will take ages sadly.
Don't get me wrong, I love the game and I like SCS as a game developer, they give us trucks for free which are top quality for a couple of years now and they improve the old map for free too which is not something they are obliged to do. And also every new update has meaningful features and not just small improvements. The new lighting in 1.4 looks awesome. The trucking stuff I want to be added are multiple drops, tandem trucks and tachograph. Things like walking outside do not interest me, it's not a walking sim..
This AA solution we have here is good enough for me and I will continue to play the game and support SCS cause I just like it. I like the open road, I like to play for a bit every night just to relax and listen to music..

[BenganJ]

@yiannis

I totally agree, but you know that already! You mention the assets in Utah, but isn't that only that they have been
careful NOT placing multiple textures at the same level, which they ought to have done all over. If so, that's not really
related to AA, it's just a general problem of deciding which of the multiple textures to display at every moment and in
a moving environment that will change almost all the time causing shimmering, flickering!

[tantalus]

yiannis, thats why we have command options to tweak launching the game, and a config file to change even more options.
In 1.39 i personally dont have any single framedrop since ages ago, and i have about 90 mods installed including many trucks, many traffic packs from jazzycat and others, maps, and other things.
True i dont use crazy parameters like traffic = 10 (example) or lod_pedestrian = 8 or things like that, but thats because thats absurd and not necessary.
The only difference is that im not using shadow texture size = 8192 because thats completely pointless and thats the major dropback on framedrop. That and reflections.
I use reflections on max detail because without it the game just doesnt look right, but if you use medium detail on reflections, you going to experiment a huge fps improvement.

But as i said, there is no reason to have fps drops, if you do, you are doing something wrong (in 1.39), either you are not tweaking correctly the launch options, or the config file, or something else.
True that the game is very limited because it uses only one core, but still, it should run perfectly fine even with many mods installed, as long as you make the essential changes to the command line and the config file.

You can try to use shadow resolution on the default value of 4096 (max vanilla value) to see if the fps drops still persist, if they do, then there is something wrong in your end that is preventing the game run without problems.

And as BenganJ said, the problem with those annoying flickering textures is a thing that needs to be fixed/improved within the very game engine, using a different way to separate or give priority to some textures,
it has nothing to do with aliasing or other things and theres nothing you can do to fix it.
And since the game engine is not being improved or updated (they can add whatever lightning they want, thats not something complicated, but its going to cost us a huge drop on fps) we are never going to get better things and we are always going to need nvidia inspector.

The AA solution we have here is perfect, keeping in mind how bad the game looks without it. And 1.40 without NPI looks terrible no matter what lightning they added, even worst than before.
What i still dont get is why SCS keeps trying to add graphic changes that are not a priority and decide to ignore the ones that are. Im sorry but i cant support SCS, i mean, i have both ETS2 and ATS with a couple of dlcs but thats about it.
I cant support a company that has as priority to keep releasing dlcs and adding "little extras" when the most important things like immersion breaking things like terrible shimmering are ignored, sorry i just cant. Maybe because i am an experienced gamer and i lived the golden age of videogames, and i realize now how bad the videogaming industry is compared with those years.

[tantalus]

30 FPS it's enough

No, its not. And i was one of those who always would say something similar. But there is a huge difference. Specially in driving games. Not only with only 30fps you are going to experience a less smooth and satisfactory experience, also in the moment you have a very small drop on fps, you are going to notice it. Always. Now, some people dont care if they play with some fps drops or not smooth gameplay, if it is your case, then nothing against it. But i think you are missing sooo much...

[tantalus]

@olaf28

That's not a good thing if it's true. With the new lighting system one would think
things got better in that respect!

Lightning got better, sure, but at a cost. If people prefer to drive with a slighty better lightning system, but having fps drops and hiccups... thats bad, really bad, those are probably the ones who can endure all that shimmering, flickering and terrible aliasing and the ones who would convince SCS to NEVER EVER pay attention to the bigger problems.

[mgysgtdev]

@tantalus try triple screens with 200 mods. The default map is doable. But when going to a map mod that has much more scenary and such it will eat fps. Especialy on tripples. But it's cause of an old game engine. And i know it ain't my hardware cause it can run games from last year on ultra and triples.

[yiannis]

yiannis, thats why we have command options to tweak launching the game, and a config file to change even more options. In 1.39 i personally dont have any single framedrop since ages ago, and i have about 90 mods installed including many trucks, many traffic packs from jazzycat and others, maps, and other things. True i dont use crazy parameters like traffic = 10 (example) or lod_pedestrian = 8 or things like that, but thats because thats absurd and not necessary. The only difference is that im not using shadow texture size = 8192 because thats completely pointless and thats the major dropback on framedrop. That and reflections. I use reflections on max detail because without it the game just doesnt look right, but if you use medium detail on reflections, you going to experiment a huge fps improvement.

But as i said, there is no reason to have fps drops, if you do, you are doing something wrong (in 1.39), either you are not tweaking correctly the launch options, or the config file, or something else. True that the game is very limited because it uses only one core, but still, it should run perfectly fine even with many mods installed, as long as you make the essential changes to the command line and the config file.

You can try to use shadow resolution on the default value of 4096 (max vanilla value) to see if the fps drops still persist, if they do, then there is something wrong in your end that is preventing the game run without problems.

And as BenganJ said, the problem with those annoying flickering textures is a thing that needs to be fixed/improved within the very game engine, using a different way to separate or give priority to some textures, it has nothing to do with aliasing or other things and theres nothing you can do to fix it. And since the game engine is not being improved or updated (they can add whatever lightning they want, thats not something complicated, but its going to cost us a huge drop on fps) we are never going to get better things and we are always going to need nvidia inspector.

The AA solution we have here is perfect, keeping in mind how bad the game looks without it. And 1.40 without NPI looks terrible no matter what lightning they added, even worst than before. What i still dont get is why SCS keeps trying to add graphic changes that are not a priority and decide to ignore the ones that are. Im sorry but i cant support SCS, i mean, i have both ETS2 and ATS with a couple of dlcs but thats about it. I cant support a company that has as priority to keep releasing dlcs and adding "little extras" when the most important things like immersion breaking things like terrible shimmering are ignored, sorry i just cant. Maybe because i am an experienced gamer and i lived the golden age of videogames, and i realize now how bad the videogaming industry is compared with those years.

All these stuff you mentioned have to do with the GPU. I have an RTX 2060 which is way overkill for this game at 1080p even with 4X MSAA we use here. The problem is the single thread which at some points of the game just gets overwhelmed and there is nothing you can do. I have 12 threads and one of them is at ~80%, one at ~20% and the other 10 are sitting around at less than 5%..
P.S. I am using all the parameters in steam and in the config file as well..

[yiannis]

Lightning got better, sure, but at a cost. If people prefer to drive with a slighty better lightning system, but having fps drops and hiccups... thats bad, really bad, those are probably the ones who can endure all that shimmering, flickering and terrible aliasing and the ones who would convince SCS to NEVER EVER pay attention to the bigger problems.

The new lighting is still in beta though..

[yiannis]

No, its not. And i was one of those who always would say something similar. But there is a huge difference. Specially in driving games. Not only with only 30fps you are going to experience a less smooth and satisfactory experience, also in the moment you have a very small drop on fps, you are going to notice it. Always. Now, some people dont care if they play with some fps drops or not smooth gameplay, if it is your case, then nothing against it. But i think you are missing sooo much...

100% agree on that. 30fps is rubbish..

[Arayas]

I was talking about 30FPS, worst case scenario. I am pretty sure no human can't differenciate 30FPS versus 60 FPS with a naked eye. It's just placebo pill. Yes, when the game is running already forced on his maximum redendering power (a very small one) + using just one core of the CPU, yes, you can see the flaws of this game better at 30 than at 60. THIS is the difference, not the FPS. I am playing that shitty FIFA game to burn some steam from time to time, i can cap the FPS at 30 or 60, i cannot see any difference....and that its a game with a lot of movement, not a scenery game like this one.
They are stupid enough to still get hooked on old PC's : " this can be runed on any machine..." Dude, it's 2020, if you still count in your math people with Pentium 4 and GTX 750 it's your problem! Also, another prehystoric decision: scalling! Who the fuck invented this in 2020? Each scalling with his set of resolutions!
Drop scalling idiotic ideea, make the game "harder" on specs but provide multicore support, AA and get in touch with the present day GPU's, not with ones who are already in museums.