Optimizations to Mediterraneo: Maririe final section villages (+at night)

Maririe Mediterian stage, fps drop from 120 to 34, whole city part stutters :X

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3114913039 

Also co-driver calls got stuck for half a minute with weird sound and after that game reseted me back to city part..

Thanks for confirming this performance issue.

For the reset, seems like you got the same bug affecting a Chile hairpin, where there's a very easy to trigger track limits issue causing a reset warning sometime later that you can't do anything about when you're already on your way on track. Better create a dedicated bug report identifying the particular spot if devs miss this.

I'm not 100% sure, but maybe I've have come across that exact same issue on Mediterraneo short after game release, but haven't triggered it again. Anyway, this could have been since CM tightened cutting spots on 1.4, requiring extra revision.

On today's "DiRTy Dailies" Club, the stage was set on Mediterraneo's "Ponte" at Sunset, dry weather. Even then with lights off, by the middle of the stage when passing trough that village fps took a large dip during the whole section. From hitting all the time a comfortable cap at ~72fps (while >90-110fps capable when unlimited), to dipping down to low 50s or even high 40's in that section due to abnormal heavy load.

So again, please have a look at this section and its abnormally high cpu usage causing a huge hit to fps. Not only under added light sources (car's own, and local village illumination), but also during day and specially on sunset (likely a performance hit due to shadows). It's the sort of hard hitting thing that could be not only from draw calls, but even be sound engine stuff related due to reverbs, or even track colliders all added up.

Thanks for looking into this

Update: To confirm, I tried "Ponte" in Time Trial during plain day, and while there was a hit to fps at the village by the middle of the stage, it didn't dip so low as during Sunset (always over 60fps was attainable under same settings) . So there's a good chance shadows/sun angle contribute to the issue when comparing both conditions (unless I missed that village lights were already on by sunset while not casting enough light to be noticeable).

^ I also had issues on Ponte somewhere around section 4-5 ish last night while practicing for the Dirty Daily. Basically I would pass the first of those metal towers on like a sharp 3 turn after getting on the right side of the canyon (and past the slowing 5 right keep in with the rock on the outside that I always smash into) and the FPS would suddenly drop from 60 into the 40's and even high 30's briefly and past that it would chug down into the 50's every time another tower came into view. Very painful to drive through that section. Unfortunately, it isn't repeatable because that was when I was practicing running it and when I went and attempted the actual club event, it was pretty much rock solid 60fps, so I don't know what to say except there still appear to be issues lurking in the canyon in Mediterraneo…

NVidia 3070 laptop 8gb GPU, Windows 11, slightly older Nvidia driver (the one from before the 1.4 update) when I looked last night.

In my experience, any section of any location with more roadside scenery objects and buildings suffers large performance losses compared to the basics of just trees and shrubs and grass, and more so at night when other light sources are around as you mention.

Be it the villages in Mediterraneo, Monte Carlo, Mexico, Portugal, etc, even the very small block of industrial buildings in Pacifico you snake around in that one section. They all need a lot more optimization.

Turning off the headlights in these sections at night helps, but even then it's still hitting the framerate more than one would expect like there is in the daytime in those areas.

I've already resorted to running most every night stage with my headlights off and brightness cranked up because of this other issue with excessive noise and artifacting on the roads from the headlights interacting with what I assume are the overly strong bump/normal/diffuse maps on the surfaces. Only workaround that skirts that and also helps somewhat with this performance issue at night. It's absolutely silly to have to do, but I don't know if I ever see either of these issues getting addressed in the future so I might as well get used to it. Not a recommendation, just a crummy option.