Today Cities: Skylines 2 developer Colossal Order released update 1.0.18F1, which will be the last of the year teased earlier this week.
The update aims to improve performance by adding LODs to characters and other objects, which is something that has been requested for quite a while.
If you don't know what LODs (which stands for "Levels of Detail") are, they're increasingly less detailed models that are displayed as the camera moves further away from an object, since the fully detailed models aren't even visible beyond certain distances.
There are more bolts into the patch's performance-improving quiver, as follows.
- Added LODs for characters and selected assets
- Optimized geometry layout for all assets
- Decreased Virtual Texturing pressure with assets that don't use emissive maps
- Disabled VSync for default settings
- Disabled volumetric lighting calculations where it was mostly invisible
On top of that, we also get two new maps, Sunshine Peninsula and Corral Riches, on top of plenty of fixes and improvements to traffic, air cargo, cargo storage, economy, pedestrians, visuals, and the infamous bug that made the UI permanently disappear for the whole session after pressing "M" in photo mode.
All in all, it appears to be a solid performance as we end 2023 and head into 2024. To find out about all the changes in detail, you can head over to the official patch notes on the Paradox Forums.
Cities: Skylines 2 is currently available only for PC, but we already know that the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions will benefit from all the tweaking and optimization work made for the PC version when they'll launch in early 2024. They were supposed to launch at the same time, but they have been (likely wisely) delayed.
The release of the PC version of the game was flawed by issues and mediocre performance, but having played a build of the game at Gamescom, I still believe it's a promising game. Colossal Order has been working hard on improving it, and the original game started with similar problems and evolved into what's likely the best city builders on the market.
In the meantime, we're going to receive 8 region packs for free, created by community modders, and Colossal Order has promised that no paid DLC will be released until the game's remaining performance issues are fully addressed.
