Every road network I ever constructed in Cities: Skylines had deep-rooted performance issues I’d then spend dozens more happy hours trying to unravel. I hope Colossal Order are having a similarly fun time trying to fix the performance issues present in Cities: Skylines 2, which launched earlier this week. The first patch is out now and it includes optimisations for rendering, fog, depth-of-field and more designed to make the citybuilder’s framerates less gridlocked.
“While this does not address all issues we are aware of, we wanted to get you these improvements as soon as possible,” says the patch notes. “Unfortunately, this patch is only available on Steam today. We’re doing our very best to make it available on Microsoft Store as soon as possible.”
The actual list of changes is relatively short, although it seems substantial in terms of which areas it touches upon. Here they are in full:
- Changed LOD to be independent of rendering resolution to get more consistent performance with high resolutions
- Minor optimization with fog
- Depth of field optimizations and tweaks
- Global illumination tweaks
- Optimized stutters when buildings spawn/level up
- Optimized various stutters across all systems
- Fixed crash after upgrading wind turbine
- Fixed crash when car crashes into still hidden car with trailer
- Fixed crash with mesh loading (that happens with low settings mostly)
Last week, Paradox admitted they had “not achieved the benchmark” targeted for performance, but that they considered the game a long-term project they could continue to improve after launch. Our James has his own recommendations for how to get the best performance out of the game as it currently stands.
Alas, while seemingly engaging, Sin wrote in her Cities: Skylines 2 review that there seemed to be little new or improved about the citybuilder that would justify the numeric sequel.
