Unbearable load times

[[33°] NuSpeak]

Hi all,

I really want to play this game all the time but the load times are pretty unbearable for me, and ultimately it detracts from the fun. I know to some extent that is self-inflicted with mods, and that you can improve load times by lowering number of active mods and also the UI resolution, but what other tricks are there? After all, this game is kinda dependent on modding so I don't want to lean it out too much.

I'm running good hardware (i5, 1070SC, Samsung SSD) and get 60fps in game on High, but menus/loads are slow. I've seen other people complain about this going back some time. Does anyone have a good recommendation?

[ChyonE]

Originally posted by Clever Moniker:

Hi all,

I really want to play this game all the time but the load times are pretty unbearable for me, and ultimately it detracts from the fun. I know to some extent that is self-inflicted with mods, and that you can improve load times by lowering number of active mods and also the UI resolution, but what other tricks are there? After all, this game is kinda dependent on modding so I don't want to lean it out too much.

I'm running good hardware (i5, 1070SC, Samsung SSD) and get 60fps in game on High, but menus/loads are slow. I've seen other people complain about this going back some time. Does anyone have a good recommendation?

How old is the SSD? maybe factory reset would help a lot

[[33°] NuSpeak]

Yeah I usually reinstall Windows once every 6 months or so to keep things clean, but it's been failing recently and I need to open a ticket with Microsoft. The SSD is only 2 years old and is Samsung EVO so I don't think it's that. I could live with the maps/cars being slower to load in general but the UI totally drags for no good reason, even using 1280 res.

[Nadeox1]

Can you give some example, and on which maps?
How many mods you have? As you said yourself, mods can and will impact on loading times. The more you have, the more stuff the game has to load, the longer it will take. Good rule of thumb is to just keep the mods you really use enabled.

[[33°] NuSpeak]

Thanks for your response.

I have a lot, probably 200 or so. The overall speed goes up significantly if I turn them off but then there is not enough content in the base game, so it kinda washes either way I guess. I will have to just grin and bear it for now.

The most annoying lag is in the UI, not maps or cars, which I could live with. This is apparent even when running in safe mode. Is this a commonly reported issue or something local to my machine?

[Fuzzy]

Most of his symptoms are similar to mine with around 260 mods and an old WD blue hdd, i think mods are just really taxing. not an easily fixable issue

[Los.Injurus.Bob.Blunderton]

Mods, especially when you have 100+, make the menus UNBEARABLY SLOW to load, especially the vehicle selector, as it has to go back and re-verify each one ever since the game started doing so around 0.9 or 0.10 alpha. This feature lets you install mods on the fly, unfortunately, with LOTS of mods, it gets very very slow and laggy very very fast.
So yes, keep the maps and vehicle mods you use most often, otherwise, love the lag. The Youtube crash compilation guys deal with this issue all of the time, for a year+ now.
That being said, you might help your speed a bit by making sure you've run an administrator-level CHKDSK /F command from the command line in Windows, if you've had any unscheduled shut-downs in the last few months (power out, overclock failure, faulty hardware or drivers causing a BSOD), and it will help keep your SSD working in ship-shape.
I've had the same OS (Windows 7! yes!) installed since 2014 and it's still pretty peppy on my 4th-gen i7 (Haswell refresh), you just need to maintain your install, not having to start fresh every time it gets 'slow'.
TL:DR, if you run an SSD benchmark like the kinds available for free, and you're not getting your rated speeds, especially on disk writes (unless your disk is nearly full, +/- 20% free space left or less), then you should run CHKDSK /F like I said above. If it's fine, don't worry about doing that, as it's likely just the sheer amount of mods you have. I only get the mods I really use regularly.
And no, while I don't have the mod lag here because I might have 40 of them MAX, I do know of many reports of large amounts of mods lagging the heck out of the game vehicle selector.

Samsung SSD's (only the EVO model) had issues with old data being 'slow', if your data is recent, this may not be the issue, but may be why you reinstall the OS often, run the samsung Magician program (Free for owners), to see if it can update your drive (backup your savedgames documents and other important things first!). This issue dates back to late 2014.
Good luck!

[Nadeox1]

Please keep the amount of active mods reasonable, 100 or less for example.
More mods means more files for the game the interface to load, which will take their toll on the overall performance. If you pair that with a weak CPU (general example), those will sum.

[[33°] NuSpeak]

I will lower it below 100 as that seems to be (roughly) the magic number to keep the UI speed reasonable. Thanks all.

[Kenton]

Wow, 200+ mods The game itself is uniquely taxing on hardware without any mods in fairness, when comapred with many other simulator games purely because of the very well optimized, yet complicated physics engine. Not to mention how many of those 200+ mods would end up out of date without you realising it... And possible incompatibility! And re-installing Windows every 6 months?? Really? This will not be of any benefit to an already clean, fast, well looked after rig. Delete all mods, and start a fresh. Don't be scared! ;)

[dogdaddonga]

Load times are longer the more mods u load sadly
Try turn off some