Cities Skylines II

[mestevo]

I'll need to mess w/ some settings, the lighting is ROUGH at times, instead of it looking striking the game turns into a quivering mess of light/shadows.

https://streamable.com/zs6tmb

[Gotmadskillzson]

So I let Nvidia optimize the game. It runs so much better now.

[bcruise]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gotmadskillzson

So I let Nvidia optimize the game. It runs so much better now.

This did pretty well for me (and made things much simpler), although I made a few changes to what it was recommending in the Advanced tab - 1080p rather than 1440p (no matter what I cannot run the game on 1440p without some unplayable hitching while moving the camera), Dynamic Resolution Scale to Automatic (on Constant it's just too jaggy even with the following change) and Anti-Aliasing method to TAA. Looks fine to me and DRS does help framerate more than having it completely disabled (despite it only having an option for AMD tech). Maybe a little blurry from distance but I much prefer that to seeing every jagged line on every building. Most guides I've read strongly recommend turning depth of field and motion blur off as well.

I haven't built any large towns yet though, so we'll see how it holds up later.

Core i7-8700, RTX 3070, 32 GB System RAM

[Gotmadskillzson]

I can still run it in 4K just fine with no hitching. It completely disabled global illumination and reflection quality. Dropped the shadows and volumetrics to low. Texture of buildings and terrain to medium. Animation to medium. But yeah I noticed with Nvidia optimization my I9 12900k get 30% usage and RTX 4090 get 70%. Where as before it 1% and 99%.

The AO, reflections, shadows and volumetrics be the biggest frame killers for open world games even with a game that is optimized. But when the stuff turned on or up high on an non optimized game it is even worse. At this rate I can see the console version being delayed until the end of next year because if they struggling to get it where they want it to be on high end PCs, than consoles going to have a harder time.

Despite all that, after you fine you some settings for your rig, the game is a blast. I play strictly in sandbox mode, unlimited money, everything unlocked for I can just build what I want. The bridges in the game are cool.

[canes21]

Definitely turn depth of field off if you haven't. It's having a much larger impact on frames than I think anyone would expect. Many reports of peoples' frames doubling when doing so and mine was near that as well.

Of course, I still have left nearly everything else at High and only get around 25ish frames in my small town of a few thousand, but I was in the very low teens with depth of field on. In a game like this, I can live with 25. I'd love more, and hope they can actually optimize the game over time like they say they will. I also hope when DLSS is implemented it leads to significant improvement.

My only worry now is that I am getting 25 in a small town, so I hope when I am in the small city population range it still runs decent. Most people say it scales very well, it's just low performance overall, so my fingers are crossed that my frames stay around here as the town grows into a city.

[ODogg]

This article may help some folks get a better framerate:

Switch from 'Fullscreen' to 'Windowed Fullscreen' (or vice-versa)
Set 'Depth of Field Mode' to 'Disabled'
Set 'Volumetrics Quality' to 'Disabled'
Set 'Level of Detail' to Very Low
Turn motion blur off

https://www.pcgamer.com/cities-skyli...ormance-boost/

[canes21]

Going into the Advanced graphics settings and turning the Anti-aliasing Method to TAA has completely fixed the flickering issues I had with both assets and shadows without negatively impacting performance at all. Even with leaving the AA quality at Low and leaving the multisamples at 2. The removal of the flickering has done wonders for the visuals, imo.

[TheBleedingRed21]

Just came here to say turning off Depth of Field, Fog, and lowering level of detail to medium fixed my issues and run constant 60 FPS now even with a growing city.

i7 9700k (OC 4.9ghz)
RX 6950xt 16GB
32GB Ram

Game is awesome. Wish they had better optimization but with the right tweaks, you can get it good enough for a city builder.