Map Overlay 2

[MadConvoy]

Well, after doing 12.000km with promods, i must say, i am impressed, but also, that it's too hard on people like me who want to play without route advisor. The main reason being:

- Road signs are too cluttered, but even so, they don't show useful information or important cities. While in the normal SCS game i can get anywhere with 95% certainty that i won't get lost (i take notes on paper at beginning of trip), with promods, more often than not, i get lost.
1) Signs too much cluttered with apparently useless information that you have to pause to read everything and with rain even so you have a hard time reading.
2) Some signs put way, way too high to be read from inside the cabin.
3) Some signs don't show relevant information that fits with what you 'd expect from the game map, instead you see things that... aren't on the map. Small example,

https://freeimage.host/i/ets2-20201115-134845-00.Fo0BwP



I had taken note at the start of the journey: Lille A23-> Left to A2 E19 "Brussels" -> E42 E25 E40 E42 "Liege" -> 4 ...

And on the road, i see this:

https://freeimage.host/i/Fo1CJ4

Namur and Seraing, aren't even in the game map. Why are they on the road signs and Liege isn't? And instead there is...Liege airport??? Needless to say i got so lost i failed completely the delivery. The situation is pretty much like this in the all the Benelux-Germany areas i 've been. I find on road signs things i don't expect and i don't find the things i expect (contrary to the base game).

- The mod is heavy. I run Ryzen 2600, 16GB DDR4 3200Mhz, GTX 1650 Super on Ultra (125% scaling) and despite disabling pedestrians, i 've had very visible stuttering in cities one game freeze that ended with crash. Never had that before. I know: "buy a better GPU". Just reporting.l I consider my configuration the minimum for running enjoyablyt this mod (GPU 100%, while with base game is at 68%, both with the same "realistic traffic" and "realistic graphics" mods).

- Some speed limits don't correspond to what you see on signs. You pass a sign with limit 80 and the limit on the route advisor is 60...

- Other than that, splendid cities, splendid scenery, this is what the base game should have been to make cities feel more real, but i think the map is overcluttered. There is a bit "too much", too many overcomplicated junctions, where even with route advisor on you have a hard time guessing where you should turn.

- The other nice thing, is that there more "bumpy" roads than in the base game, as well as more ports, moving boats, etc.


Overall, i will keep using promods, but for a secondary profile, because my "house rules" for not using the route advisor or the ingame map (i only look at the ingame map when i am in a city), make it much more frustrating or...challenging if you prefer, compared to the base game.

If i had a large version of the ingame map as separate jpeg, probably it would be much easier, but right now, i am driving almost blind every time that i don't see what i expect on a sign and get lost very often.


Please take all the above, as constructive criticism, as i am grateful and realize that much time and effort has been put to this and without you being SCS, earning from it. I am also aware that most normal people drive with the route advisor on, so they can't see anything wrong or understand what i am saying.

It's certainly a refreshing change from when you get bored with the base game. Hats off and thank you!

[Volleybal4life]

Our signs display mostly the same as they do in real life. That's why, on our signs, there may be cities which aren't in the game.
Our mod is about realism.

Besides that. Be glad we do such, you can teach yourself some basic European geography

[Vøytek]

Signs in our mod are 1:1 based on real signs, at laest in latest areas. I can't speak about Benelux, as it's old and I didn't investigate how good those signs are. But it's quite common in real life too - you want to go to Berlin from Poland? You'll see Świecko [PL] [DE] on signs, not Berlin. I believe it's the same in every country. Your destination doesn't appear on all signs, especially if you're still far away from it and it's not a major city. You have to check the route earlier online or trust your GPS (in the past, a road atlas). It helps with immersion and none of us will agree to change our signs now. We love realistic signage

About performance - until March, I was using GTX660 and I had no trouble getting stable 60fps with mostly high, sometimes medium settings, with 100/125% scaling. Maybe Ultra is too much for your video card, but it shouldn't be if my old card did pretty well on reasonable settings. Yes, our mod is heavier than the base game obviously and there's nothing we can do about it.

Also, SCS signs won't always help you, at least in ATS. There are small towns on signs, which don't appear on World Map.
Because of complex interchanges appearing in new DLCs in both games, it may not be possible at some point to drive to the exact company without GPS. Look at some city layouts and you'll see how companies belonging to one city can be spread around in many directions. Simplified signs only made sense in the base game with simple interchanges and grid city layouts, with companies being in the center (with a sawmill or quarry outside).

[jdenm8]

I'll address the performance issue first.
I wouldn't use the graphics presets. I also wouldn't let nVidia Experience set the settings for you, as it's known for rendering the game unplayable.

Disabling Pedestrians doesn't do much since they're rather rare.

I have my graphics options set as follows:
Scaling to 150%
AA to Low - the SMAA implementation is crap anyway
SSAO to Medium - High brings no benefits over Medium
HDR to On
Depth of Field to Off
Sunshafts to On
Colour Correction to On
Reflection Detail to Medium - From cab view, the only places where Reflections exist are when the road is wet and near bodies of water. Reducing it can bring a large performance improvement.
Vegetation Detail to High
Grass Density to High
Shadow Quality to Medium - This does have a visual impact, but higher quality shadows have a massive performance impact.
Shadow Texture Size to High
Weather Quality to Ultra
Mirror Quality to Medium
Mirror Resolution to High
Mirror Distance to Medium - Reducing the three Mirror settings serves to reduce expensive drawcalls (texture loads) without making the mirrors useless.
Texture Quality to High
Anisotropic Filtering to Maximum - As you should in *all* games. 16x AF brings massive quality improvements to distant textures with almost no performance penalty.
Normal Maps to On
Traffic Headlights to On
Secondary Vehicle Lights to On
Light Visibility Ranges to High
Pedestrians to On

I have a Ryzen 1600X, Radeon RX580 and 48GB of RAM. I don't always hit 60FPS, but with few exceptions I get over 45FPS. With a mod as heavy as ProMods, that's not a bad framerate.



As for the speed limits, Europe frequently (and annoyingly) has a separate unsignposted truck speed limit based on the class of road. For example, no Motorway on the European Mainland will have a speed limit of more than 90km/h, as that's the speed limit for trucks in Europe.
There is an option in the Gameplay Settings to change the speed limts to the Car limits, which are the signposted ones. This also modifies enforcement, you'll be fined for exceeding the car limit when the option is set that way.

[MadConvoy]

@ Volleybal4life

Yeah, i suspected it was about realism... I understand it, it's a hot debate in many games. It's just that i depend too much on signs, so for me, realism is having out of the cabin the same that i would expect from the game map. It's a sort of "game realism", i guess.

@Vøytek

Oh, Berlin is Świecko??? Gee, i would never imagine that! I had something like this yesterday, when i was trying to find "Liege" on a roadsign. From the base game i also knew that it is "Luttich" in german, but i was making circles and i still couldn't find a damn road sign! And then it hit me and i googled to find what "Luik" is! And bam! That was it! Now i am going to learn Europe in all languages! Poor me!

Outside cities and in several cities, i don't perceive performance drop. But there are some places in some cities where i get stutter on ultra. For a while i monitored the situation and i saw a drop to 50 inside a city. It probably gets worse in particular areas of particular cities. Outside cities i maintain 60fps. I disabled pedestrians because in a city i saw for the first time, something like 10 pedestrians on a row. It's not all of promods fault though, because i also run Cip's "Realistic traffic density" mod, which increases the cars (i 've had real traffic jams inside a city). It's just that compared to the base game with the same mods, GPU use goes from 68% max, to 100%. But it's playable at 60fps, if you don't mind some spots inside bigger cities.

I don't have ATS, only ETS2. The way i play, is this. I keep the route advisor on the right hand corner, but disable the route indicator (the red part). There is a game option where you can set it to show in "job and world map" only. So when you arrive to destination, you can still see the delivery spot "beacon" and go there. If it's not visible once in the destination city, then i open the game map and go there. I would prefer to get rid of the advisor all together, but i can't find a mod that shows speed and speed limit at the same time in another display. It makes the game much more interesting, because with the route indicator it's way too simple, while without it, you have to pay attention to road signs to get there.


@jdenm8

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I don't use the geforce experience at all, i know it sets huge scaling and such. I prefer the ingame presets and your explanation is most useful. I actually don't install the drivers with the geforce experience at all. I hate clutter and it's not like a play too many games. I have SSAO disabled, BTW.


Thank you all gentlemen, i am sure i have still to unveil many of the promods mysterious roads and maybe i will get the hang of it. Probably i must keep taking notes of nearby cities, because the funniest thing is, that i get lost, i try to find something familiar and i stumble on new road signs that confuse me even more, because the names are not familiar, so i get even more lost. Maybe someone will come up with a detailed map with bigger zoom...

At any case, if i was driving with the route advisor always on, this would be awesome. It still is for the sense of "reality"... At least now the cities have "character", you see some cottages in the countryside, landmarks. You have beaten SCS hands down on recreating the atmosphere of Europe.


P.S: I also updated my GPU driver, so far no crash.

Added in 2 hours 5 minutes 56 seconds:
Wow! I 've had 2 deliveries in a row without getting lost! I am at Cluj now! Unfortunately, i took an urgent delivery and i have a feeling that average speed might be even less with promods than in base game, because of the many villages with 50 speed limit and the larger city extension. So i wasn't lost, but i did arrive late and i started dozing off and crashing more and more... At the end...

https://freeimage.host/i/FxWHBI

And just before turning to arrive to the repair shop... (i know, i get reckless when i have high damage and things get only worse).

https://freeimage.host/i/FxWzE7

I very much liked the scenery in Ukraine and Romania, but now i am so screwed. Maybe i will disable the "traffic density" mod for a while... I play at 50% income for jobs and my account is overdrawn, plus i still have to repay my initial bank loan. Maybe this is impossible to save and i should just start a new profile... I think i will stay away from urgent jobs. It's so funny if it wasn't horrible at the same time! I 've never had 100% damage before!

[citelis730]

Urgent jobs are ment to work with deafult traffic. If you add mods that adds too much traffic these jobs can become impossible to finish in time. As for the small villages in Romania they have been created by SCS since most Romania in ProMods is still as it is in Road to Black Sea DLC.

[MadConvoy]

Thanks, it makes sense. I think i will disable the increased traffic mod to see if i can save this economic disaster. I am about -75.000 right now.

[ScuL]

It's already been mentioned but our signs are usually cloned from their real life equivalents. SCS simplifies road signs which breaks realism.
Many places in Europe have confusing roads, and although I am not sure where you are from, it's part of the charm and beauty of European road systems because every country uses a different system.
It pays to learn how certain systems work and then everything starts to make a lot more sense. Even in real life, it is not rare for people to make a mistake and go the wrong way. In some countries, such as Germany or France you can end up driving 80km or more to get to the next exit to correct your mistake if you aren't careful.

Also Ultra is too high of a setting for your hardware spec.

[MadConvoy]

@Scul

Yes, don't worry, i understand the reasoning and also i am probably in a very small minority thats prefers to play without route advisor, so the joke is on me. I am in Italy. To be quite honest, i play with keyboard and with route advisor on, i have always found the base game pretty dull, this is why i disable the route advisor and add traffic mods. In the base game, if you take notes on paper before departing, you can do pretty much any route without the route advisor or checking the ingame map. This is actually an aspect that i appreciate in the base game, even if their road signs aren't realistic. They are realistic compared to the game map, which is what i prefer. There are only a few places that can throw you off course, that you learn by memory. Like that Orodea, Vidin are border cities that don't show on map. Once you 've spotted them, you don't need the router advisor. I am doing a delivery Helsinki -> Calvi right now, in the base game, i am near Zurich and haven't lost a single turn, nor will i do so, because the hardest part is the one around Kaunas.

Anyway, don't worry, i will find a solution for promods too. Maybe i will increase delivery times... It's an alternative way to cope with it. Well, Ultra is Ok, except for certain parts in some big cities. I could tone it down a bit as per instructions given to me above, if it gets too annoying, but once you 're out of a city or in a smaller city, i keep getting 60fps. So not too much of a problem.

Thank you for the help. If you ask me, SCS should hire your modding team to remake all the scenery with the one in your mod.