Load times have always been a huge problem, especially with the advent of super detailed laser tracks. I readily admit, and thank S397 for working a lot to improve these load times. It is very far from being perfect, but it is all the same really better, and especially much less variable. Before there was enough "to pull your hair out", lol. I would like to bring your attention to the fact that certainly the loading of the track outside AI is faster and less variable (thanks again), but the optimization of the loading times related to AI seems very weak (maybe nonexistent) : I would like the loading of AIs when loading tracks to be really improved. It would be a nice message sent to offline gamers in particular. @Paul Jeffrey , it would be nice if you escalate this problem to the staff, or put it on the todo list. Thanks for reading me !
Car loading begins somewhere in the low to mid 80% range, The 'speed' of AI loading is most likely affected by the number of different AI models, i.e. a field of Astons will load faster than the same number of GTE or GT3 cars from the entire available car packs. Add in the PBR shaders, cars like the Ferrari or new Corvette just have more detail, ergo more time needed to load. Also, I think a good deal of the time taken for both cars & tracks is due to unpacking them from MAS files. So cpu speeds probably affect loading as much as your storage hardware.(a-lot of SSD users have posted the loading times aren't much different from their old hard drives.) Finally, another haphazard guess, Users with lots of Vram, (6+GB) may get quicker loading as windows doesn't have to shift around textures from system to Vram. (note: I 'qualified almost every sentence with lots of "I thinks", "most likely's" etc. etc.)
You're loading like 100 AI from different classes (different vehicles). That's a lot of data that needs to be loaded into memory. I doubt you'll see a major improvement for your use, because the only way to 'optimize' such a thing is to reduce the size of each car - lower detail textures mainly.
Hi. Yes 89 AI in multiclass is huge. If it takes for example 120 sec to load 89 AI in multiclass (for ex GTE + GT3 + LMP2 + LMP3 + DPI + SENNA), just if S397 succeed (and try) to optimize say "only" 15%, it will correspond to 18 sec save, it will be significative I think. Of course, I don't know if its possible, but I think it will be a good thing to try. Also opponents are on low on my system (to save VRAM because I have only 11 Gb GDDR6 OC +1000 Mhz). Also in playerjson "load oponent cockpit" to false, perhaps it helps. Thx for the answers.
1.34 sec per AI is not bad. Have you timed AI loading in other games? With the 32 AI allowed in [vanilla] AC & Madness Engine (PCARS & AMS2), that corresponds to a max loading time of 43 sec for those platforms. Choosing "Low" does not keep the system from needing to process the files during loading. All it does is change the viewing distance for polygon detail and save VRAM for mipmaps (DDS stores the mipmaps in a single file, so, if I understand the process, the whole file still has to be read to extract the desired mipmaps before transferring to VRAM).
I think it is more 160 sec approx for 89 AI, so approx 1,8 sec. I just want S397 to see if a improvement can be made (probably), if yes try to improve and I know that improvment will not be -1 sec per AI! But it would be a good thing. It is a shame that loading track is improved but not AI loading time because it is also loading time. And yes I understand that only a few people put more than 60 AI on track. In putting 89 AI with a lot multiclass + endurance track + day/night in qualif session I obtain a really good sim experience. Using qualif session necessite a lot AI but you have strongly better opponents experience than this broken AI on race sessions.
