Are there config file settings that are beneficial to low end machines?

[Iamezra313]

Hi all,

In short - long term player, thought I'd got outspec'd about 18 months ago (aging Mac, between minimum and recommended spec) and just tried it again and dropped a few of the settings a couple of weeks and have had a happy 30 or so hours since.

The problem - anything newer than Idaho DLC seems super laggy (e.g. I'm assuming they changed something with how they were putting areas together? - previous I'd only have real bad lag like in the middle of Vegas, Seattle or weirdly Bend, Oregon).

Now it seems quite bad - took a run up the middle of Wyoming to Billings (can't remember the road) the inbetween Cities, great, outskirts of a City it was an almost stop and load point before a laggy drive through (which I can live with as the bulk of your time is outside of Towns). The game just totally crashed though somewhere north of Riverton (route 789).

The issue - it seems to take a while on the newer stuff to load everything in (I've noticed after it has a load in moment, I usually get extra scenery load in). In short, I've dropped my scaling fairly low and graphics setting fairly low and don't want to drop it even further (e.g. on the floor) so are there any sensible suggestions as a fix or workaround here (as it's frustrating that large parts of the game it isn't an issue in and even some of the Mods like C2C or Alaska North to the Future or Promods, where I only have minimal issues).

It also has huge rubberbanding as a result (which is something I'd be quite keen to cure) e.g. left Toronto in Discover Ontario, laggy as hell (as it is a huge City with like 20 depots in it) - as soon as I got clear of there it went 100 fps or so for like 20 seconds before calming down again to around 30-40.

I'd be grateful for anyone's thoughts on this or any advice.

[Aspen Ridge]

With it being a MAC...you are certainly limited to what can be expected as far as performance goes...here's a list of my current settings that I'm using for my NVIDIA set up.
You might find a few settings in the cfg file that may help a bit....of course most of these settings will not apply to your MAC as far as graphics go...but anyway...

Here's my settings I'm currently using (quite a few tweaks) and my card is a "shaved down" RTX 2070 Laptop version...about the same as a RTX1600 Series PC card....check it out.

Values to set in the Config.cfg File

uset r_buffer_page_size "100"
uset g_bloom "0"
uset t_averaging_window_length "144"
Note- set this value to double what frame rate you are locking at
e.g. 60FPS=120 value set…72FPS=144 value set

IMPORTANT NOTE- There is a setting in the CFG File that blacks out the small convex mirrors on both left and right mirrors while leaving the large main mirrors active.
I found this setting to help frame rates as the GPU does not have to draw another set of mirrors. If you prefer to have them active just simply reset the uset r_mirror_group "2"
Back to the default value of “3” and all mirrors will be active.

NVIDIA Settings- Restore Global Settings to DEFAULT BEFORE USING THESE SETTINGS
Program Settings- SELECT American Truck Simulator (These will apply only to ATS)

Anis tropic Filtering -16X
AA FXAA- ON
AA Gamma-ON
AA Mode- Override any application
AA Setting-8X
AA Transparency- 8X (Supersample)
Low Latency Mode-ULTRA
MFAA- ON
Texture Filtering anistropic Sample Optimise- OFF
Texture Filtering Negative LOD-CLAMP
Texture Filtering-High Quality
Texture Filtering Tri-Linear Optimise-ON
Triple Buffering-ON

When done hit APPLY All settings that were changed will be in BOLD TYPE.


ATS IN-Game Settings

Resolution- 1920X1080 (or whatever your native resolution is)
Refresh Rate- 143hz (or whatever your monitor’s refresh rate is)
V-SYNC- Economic (saves energy on notebooks) This will set your FPS to half your refresh rate.
NOTE- If using a 60hz Monitor set V-SYNC to ENABLED (your frames will lock at 60FPS)
In my case it is locked at 72FPS (half my 144hz monitor) which is enough for me.

Scaling- 400% (or less if you get frame drops)
AA (SMAA) DISABLED
SSAO DISABLED
These two settings are controlled through NVIDIA so important to keep them OFF
DOF- ON
Sun shafts-ON
Color Correction- OFF/ON (play with it…I prefer OFF)
Reflection Scaling-100%
EVERYTHING ELSE- HIGH (NOT ever Ultra)
EXCEPT-MIRRORS- ALL 3 SETTINGS SET TO MEDIUM (Resolution Quality and Distance) IMPORTANT!
Anistropic Filtering- Slider all the way to the right (Max)
Normal Maps-ON
Traffic Headlights-ON
Secondary Vehicle Lights -OFF (IMPORTANT)
Light Visibility- I use a CUSTOM (set through Config.cfg File) but HIGH will work as well
Pedestrians-OFF

Hope it might work well for you

[Iamezra313]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Am definitely trying:

uset r_buffer_page_size "100" (was whatever the default was like 20 something)
uset g_bloom "0" (was 1 or whatever the default was)
uset t_averaging_window_length "144" (given the rubberbanding effect - this is what through me as this was like 20? - so I figured I wouldn't have got more than 20fps, but have bumped it to 60).

This is definately getting set at 2 as well as that is obviously a clear GPU pull.

If you prefer to have them active just simply reset the uset r_mirror_group "2"
Back to the default value of “3” and all mirrors will be active.

Let's see how it goes. Was finding Montana as heavy as some of the Reforma Mods which is nuts in all honesty (as I get it with Reforma as arguably some of their stuff is a bit overkill but ScS are the devs here and you know when you think how is this that much more different from earlier DLC's and how is this not more optimised??).

[Aspen Ridge]

Originally posted by Iamezra313:

Thanks for the suggestions.

Am definitely trying:

uset r_buffer_page_size "100" (was whatever the default was like 20 something)
uset g_bloom "0" (was 1 or whatever the default was)
uset t_averaging_window_length "144" (given the rubberbanding effect - this is what through me as this was like 20? - so I figured I wouldn't have got more than 20fps, but have bumped it to 60).

This is definately getting set at 2 as well as that is obviously a clear GPU pull.

If you prefer to have them active just simply reset the uset r_mirror_group "2"
Back to the default value of “3” and all mirrors will be active.

Let's see how it goes. Was finding Montana as heavy as some of the Reforma Mods which is nuts in all honesty (as I get it with Reforma as arguably some of their stuff is a bit overkill but ScS are the devs here and you know when you think how is this that much more different from earlier DLC's and how is this not more optimised??).

Yes...this game can be strange and demanding...I have recently rolled back to 1.40 on ETS2
and pretty much only play ATS sporadically now...for whatever reason ETS2 seems to run much better for me....even with ProMods...I'm enjoying it despite using an older version.