Tracks Tips and Tricks to get more FPS out of your tracks

Danny kung · Aug 24, 2018

Hi there. Looking for any possible tips/tricks as in the title from any modders or lurkers out there, as for making your track operate even better, to maximize performance boosts and with that get the best FPS on your mod track. Also to talk about what are the limits, And to consolidate the information here so that others can see and use easily.

So far I've got:

Do not use .png or .jpg for your texture work they cause lots of stuttering. Use .dds only.

2. Make a physical invisible road mesh separate from the texturing road mesh.
Doesn't matter if total triangle count on the physical mesh is 40k or 600k, you can be very detailed on the physical without any loss of FPS.

3. Well looks like you lot have it sorted! The comments right here are pretty organised, so for the time being, there's not much need to link them back here. Unexpected, Awesome stuff!

There's a great in-depth guide by Lilski on handy tips for track making but I feel there's a place for this thread to exist in a more detailed matter and to allow more discussion of possible nuances.

Thread links:
https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/proper-technique-in-track-making-plus-tips.122794/

I hope to update this post. What else could boost FPS? drop a link or comment

Johnr777 · Aug 24, 2018

The correct way of creating 3d grass, using kslayers and give them LOD values. https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/3d-grass-how-to.25087/

Also utilize the LOD feature in KsEditor with poly heavy objects in general. Giving them an LOD out number will make them not render when you are far from it or when the trackside camera isnt looking. Can give a little FPS boost.

Minimize the number of materials, by combining multiple object textures into one, and try to reuse that material with as many objects as possible. Keeping the number of materials down and consolidating objects will keep DIP values low, your GPU will thank you!

Maybe the next "rebooted" tracks will have these optimizations under the hood... yeah right

AccAkut · Aug 24, 2018

Also advice for all Race Track Builder users: Apparently (I don't know if this is down to personal setup of the program or standard) using RTB alone will result in all sorts of performance hindering issues. Duplicated textures, materials, the xpacks you find on the net are often not made to any standard (textures in wrong files formats and sizes)

You simply should not build a detailed track only in RTB, you need to rework it in a real 3D modelling tool like 3DSMax or Blender.

Ghoults · Aug 24, 2018

Do not use complex meshes as colliders. For any guardrails or buildings make a separate simple mesh that is used as collider.

Turn off shadows for meshes that don't need them.

Stereo · Aug 24, 2018

Johnr777 said:
Minimize the number of materials, by combining multiple object textures into one, and try to reuse that material with as many objects as possible. Keeping the number of materials down and consolidating objects will keep DIP values low, your GPU will thank you!

To be concrete on this one, the Render Stats app is helpful (this is the official Mustang + Magione):

DIP and B.Size are the most relevant numbers to tell if you have roughly the right object size (dip is total # objects, b.size is their average polycount) TRI tells you how much is actually getting rendered, splitting up objects and setting LOD distances appropriately brings that down. (mine's 3 million cause of triple screens, would be 1 million on 1 display)