LFS Editor/Guides/Optimisations

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Vehicle Mods

There are several optimisations that should be done to a vehicle mod in order to improve in-game performance. This can have a significant impact on framerate, especially in a full grid of 40 cars on track.

• Use fewer triangles / points on the model where possible. You can achieve good looking results even with a less detailed model than the hard limit of 65536 triangles for LOD1 and 8192 for LOD2. For LOD2 the recommended target is around 1000 triangles.
• Combine multiple textures of the same subobject onto a single texture page for efficiency. For example, if you have 11 textures with a resolution of 128x128 each, that are all used on the steering wheel object, you could combine them into a single 512x512 texture with a room for 5 more. However, do not combine all the existing textures on a single page, as it brings no benefit, just huge texture sizes.
• Optimize wheel objects by sharing textures between multiple alpha cutouts to reduce texture switching.
• For cars with covered wheels, make sure to use inside covered for option Visibility (in the Wheel Object section). For open wheel cars, use open wheel. One unusual exception is the LX cars that have front wheels open and rear wheels covered.
• For closed cockpit cars, set option Concealed driver to YES (in the Steering / Driver section).
• Convert the hub object into the spoke object to reduce moving subobjects.
• Eliminate the use of Tree Edge Alpha (TEA) cutouts for vehicles, as it is not officially supported and adds unnecessary materials.

For reference, you can load an existing LFS car in the editor and inspect how it is modelled and configured. A good example is the RB4 GT.

References

• Scawen's optimization tips for the N.400S GT4 vehicle mod (21 Jan 2024, LFS Forum)
• Scawen's suggestions for the POSCHER CAYNAM 718 vehicle mod, about the "Inside covered" option for wheels (3 Apr 2024, LFS Forum)