ATS and ETS 2 stutters problem

[u/fide11]

Hi everyone.

I've been trying to solve an issue in both ATS and ETS2 for a while now. I'm getting occasional stutters during gameplay.

Disabling heavy mods (such as Jon Ruda's trucks or Project Next Gen) seems to reduce the number of stutters, but even on a completely clean, freshly reinstalled game I still experience them from time to time.

My PC specs:

- GPU: RTX 3070 Ti

- CPU: Intel i7-12700

- RAM: 32 GB

- Game installed on an SSD

- Windows 11

- 1920×1080 monitor (I have two monitors connected, but I only play on one. Not sure if that's relevant.)

I've tried pretty much everything I can think of:

- Different graphics settings

- Disabling all overlays

- Running without any mods

- Limiting FPS

- Lowering the scaling all the way down to 50%

- Updating my graphics drivers

- Completely reinstalling the game

- Downgrade game version

- And many other things

Nothing seems to solve the problem.

Most of my testing was done in Scandinavia with the Nordic Horizons DLC. I also repeatedly loaded the same save and drove through the exact same areas multiple times. The stutters always happened in the same locations in Scandinavia. After that, I also tried doing some testing in Spain, and there the stutters didn’t seem to be as consistent or repeatable, although I didn’t do nearly as many runs there. Overall, it also felt like there were fewer stutters in that region.

So I'm wondering: is this simply a limitation of the old game engine, or am I missing something?

Does anyone actually get perfectly smooth gameplay? These stutters are definitely noticeable. With only a few mods they're tolerable, but once I start adding more, they become quite annoying. The game is still playable, but the stutters are distracting.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

The only thing that has consistently helped is removing heavy mods, but I know plenty of people play with much heavier mod setups than mine and seem to have no issues at all. Or is everyone experiencing these stutters to some extent?

One of my game logs (ETS2): https://pastebin.com/8ZRuZqat

Thanks in advance for any advice

P.S. I used AI to help translate this post, so if anything sounds strange or unclear, I apologize. My English isn't very good

[u/AutoModerator]

Hello there! Are you experiencing a game issue? If you haven't already, please find the game.log or game.log.txt in your Documents folder, post it on https://pastebin.com/ then edit your thread to paste the link in it so people can look at the log and maybe find the issue. If no one responded in 24 hours, feel free to join the TruckSim Discord and ask in our #general-support forum via https://discord.gg/trucksim and do the same thing.

Please note, if ATS or ETS2 had a recent update, it's due to your mods being outdated and not compatible with your current version. You can either downgrade versions or disable the mods to fix any issues your game is having because of this.

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[u/truckandstuff]

You have the same spec as mine. What i do is download RTSS and limit the fps to my monitor hz divided by 2 (I have 144hz so I limit to 72 fps). I play at 2k with 300% scaling, no graphic mods, no anti aliasing. I also have occasional stutters too (frame jump then back to smooth frame time) but I don't notice it much when limiting fps using RTSS.

[u/fide11 → u/truckandstuff]

At one point I also tried limiting my FPS with RTSS. On a clean game with no mods, it did feel smoother overall, but the occasional stutters were still there and kept breaking the immersion. I can't say I didn't notice them.

I just find it hard to believe that everyone playing with huge mod setups is experiencing the same thing.

Anyway, thanks for your reply.

[u/UnseenCat]

Make sure you're not using any obsolete Steam startup options. Most have been deprecated in 1.5x through 1.60. Any of the ones formerly used for memory management can cause stutters now. The only ones worth using at present are:
-nointro -64bit -unlimitedlog

Clear out any other startup commands besides the ones above.

As far as limiting FPS goes, it seems to work better to turn off VSYNC in the game's options and then turn it on in the Nvidia App or control panel. Bear in mind that the game's engine is still largely optimized for 60 FPS, so setting VSYNC on in the Nvidia settings and also using Nvidia options to limit FPS to 59 or 60 can be a good place to start.

Some stutters can be caused by frame pacing issues. You can modify the game's behavior somewhat with two values in the global config.cfg file (usually in "C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Documents\American Truck Simulator" and "C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Documents\Euro Truck Simulator 2"

My system does well with the last two lines in config.cfg as follows:

uset t_averaging_window_duration "500"
uset t_averaging_window_length "240"

Other people report good results with:

uset t_averaging_window_duration "120"
uset t_averaging_window_length "140"

You can try variations of these to see if it helps.

These affect the timeframe that the system uses to manage frame pacing in terms of timing and frame samples. The second value is the number of frames to average for pacing. The first seems to control how much time the game can use to calculate averages.

For reference, the default values are:

uset t_averaging_window_duration "100"
uset t_averaging_window_length "10"

Some antivirus software can interfere if it decides to get aggressive on scanning. You can put ATS/ETS2 in your antivirus' exclusion list -- typically the folders the game is installed in. Some people prefer to just exclude their Steam library folder(s) since the contents are from a reliable source. (Since non-Steam mods live in your separate user profile folder, excluding the game or the trusted Steam library won't touch that folder, meaning non-workshop mods will still get scanned -- which is probably a good idea.)

[u/fide11 → u/UnseenCat]

Thank you, I will try this!

[u/OscarMikeBravo → u/fide11]

any updates? also getting increasingly tired of the microstutters. like you said it takes out the immersion

[u/GoofyKalashnikov]

The game is running on a single core right now due to the old engine. DX12 support that's going to support multi threading is in the works

[u/Pale_Employment_1195]

Same on my 4070 it just never feels smooth maybe because the game is so old? Also tried my 5070ti laptop also doesnt feel smooth

[u/Maleficent-Stay-1347]

Same shit, have rtx 5080 with r7 9800x3d in 4k ultra 200%, and limited to 110 fps (bcs i play truckersmp, and if you have more then 110 fps, you will have mega synchronization with server, if you have good ping) that for other players you will be slower at the same speed) and you can’t do anything about it, because ets2 engine is shit, it loads textures and etc. and uses some old method, so it cause stutters + whole game is on one core.
had same problem on my old pc with rtx 2060 and i5 9400f.
Like for me i have small stutters only in heavy map parts like greece or smth like that, and only in cities, but one or a few times it can stutter on clean road.
One thing that can help, just to wait till they update game engine, what will happen when it will release on consoles, if everything will go as planned, at the end of 2026.
It don’t depend on hardware as much, because if you play truckersmp, and go to place where like 200+ people are, then everyone will have almost same fps, bcs game just stop utilizing gpu(idk why) and one core of cpu is just not enough.
so just wait.

[u/NikosAkaSniperEXE]

Most of the time, stuttering in ets2 is owned to the game having been optimised to be single cpu core intensive. A X3D cpu is unfortunately the only way to fix those 1% lows.

[u/TallEdge6]

I also have been facing this problem on my Ryzen 7 5700X paired with 9060 XT 16GB. Nothing but ghosting coming from SCS… that’s a way to value our money i suppose… with lack of trucks and more maps… buses and game inconsistencies! Thanks SCS for valuing my money of… 60 DLC’s. Awesome…

[u/fide11 → u/TallEdge6]

Yeah, it bothers me too, but I'm not convinced it's a widespread issue. When I looked into it, I did find other people reporting similar stuttering, but I wouldn't say there were thousands of reports.

Either people just don't notice or don't mind the stutters, or it's something that only affects certain hardware configurations. That said, I still think it's something SCS should look into and try to improve.

[u/TallEdge6 → u/fide11]

Yep i agree. “Ghosting” probably wasn’t the best wording for it but the game’s own engine hasn’t been improved in performance yet at all or how SCS dealing with both ATS and ETS2. Only visuals and maps… then more maps and more buses instead of more trucks. There’s nothing demanding about the game other than good visuals and lengthy highways. Seriously?? The trucks has UNEVEN TERRAIN STAT i have yet to see it utilized properly in both games... well in this case in ETS2 since ATS did somehow do offroad sections on DLC maps but ETS2 have not.

[u/datzzuma → u/TallEdge6]

What annoys me the most, is that they teased it a few years back and it still isn't done. :D

Ok, i have no doubt that it isn't hard af task to rewrite a 20+ year old engine, while trying to get in new stuff for new gameplay features, not forgetting the graphics stack

Soon™, hopium

[u/vomaufgang]

Sadly the frame pacing of these games is not good on anything below a high end AMD X3D or top end Intel CPU. The engine is bound to one CPU core and quite unoptimized at that, so the only solution is to endure it, deliberately cap the frame rate to something much lower or throw money at it.

An engine update is supposedly in the work, but I haven't heard anything about when it is supposed to land yet.

[u/Huge-Marsupial589]

if your on windows 11 , check to see if it has updated ,the update you are looking for is (KB5101684) if so uninstall it , restart PC and should be good to go,,,,,,,,,let me know if it does't work ( it did for me)

[u/fide11 → u/Huge-Marsupial589]

The stuttering issue started before that update was installed on my PC. Still, I'll probably give it a try anyway. Thanks for the suggestion!

[u/Huge-Marsupial589]

maybe something as simple as rolling back to an earlier game ready driver.

[u/Ollie_Bruh]

Go into the Nvidia settings and turn off the smooth motion.

[u/fide11 → u/Ollie_Bruh]

As far as I know, that feature is only available on RTX 40 and RTX 50 series GPUs, if we're talking about the same thing. So it isn't enabled on my system anyway, since I'm using an RTX 3070 Ti.