How to get traffic and ped densities right.

eshenk

Let's be honest, by default, GTAV is a "ghost town". If I was forced to play like that, I would have left the community as soon as I finished story-mode. It's hard to create carnage and devilish mayhem, when there is nary a vehicle or ped in sight.

The thing I always used to do is work through the game config, and popcycle. The issue is, is that almost all variables that deal with this, are NOT intuitive at all. After much experimenting, I never determined what each value specifically controls. I also noticed that all the increased traffic mods, had author's changing different values - I looked at them all - and it didn't appear that any of them knew either, just people throwing whatever they could at a wall to see what would stick.

I have found the best way to do this is through both popcycle AND your settings.xml file. There is an exception though in the gameconfig. Below, you will see what I mean -

<VehicleSpacing_Base>
<VehicleSpacing_0_Base value="1"/>
<VehicleSpacing_1_Base value="84"/>
<VehicleSpacing_2_Base value="76"/>
<VehicleSpacing_3_Base value="40"/>
<VehicleSpacing_4_Base value="32"/>
<VehicleSpacing_5_Base value="28"/>
<VehicleSpacing_6_Base value="24"/>
<VehicleSpacing_7_Base value="20"/>
<VehicleSpacing_8_Base value="16"/>
<VehicleSpacing_9_Base value="12"/>
<VehicleSpacing_10_Base value="8"/>
<VehicleSpacing_11_Base value="4"/>
<VehicleSpacing_12_Base value="4"/>
<VehicleSpacing_13_Base value="4"/>
<VehicleSpacing_14_Base value="4"/>
<VehicleSpacing_15_Base value="4"/>
</VehicleSpacing_Base>
<VehicleSpacing>
<VehicleSpacing_0 value="1"/>
<VehicleSpacing_1 value="84"/>
<VehicleSpacing_2 value="76"/>
<VehicleSpacing_3 value="40"/>
<VehicleSpacing_4 value="32"/>
<VehicleSpacing_5 value="28"/>
<VehicleSpacing_6 value="24"/>
<VehicleSpacing_7 value="20"/>
<VehicleSpacing_8 value="16"/>
<VehicleSpacing_9 value="12"/>
<VehicleSpacing_10 value="8"/>
<VehicleSpacing_11 value="4"/>
<VehicleSpacing_12 value="4"/>
<VehicleSpacing_13 value="4"/>
<VehicleSpacing_14 value="4"/>
<VehicleSpacing_15 value="4"/>

If you compare what I have to what vanilla gameconfig has, you will clearly see the changes for what they are. You will see that I have considerably decreased the values to allow room for increased traffic. The larger the value, the less traffic you will see. Definitely we want MUCH higher densities in the city, much less in the suburbs, and much less in the country.

Now to get the densities up, I go to settings.xml, and increase this value -

The default-value is 1.000000

You can also bump these values up to increase variety as well -

Now don't be fooled here. To the average eye it would appear as though I have just doubled up, but I don't really believe that is how it actually plays out. I say this, because this value does a LOT more than just double the very little traffic we get in it's default state as 1.000000. It appears that each increment of .1 doubles the traffic. So 1.1 would double the traffic, 1.4 would be 400%, 1.8 would be 800% and so on. You will be able to see how high you can go, by viewing your vRam capacity meter in the in-game settings. Do NOT let it go into the "red"! The more vRam you have, the higher the density value can be increased without risk of texture pop-in. Even 1.4 is a LOT more than default.

But this alone is NOT enough. If we don't make proper edits to popcycle, the traffic spawns will be totally unrealistic - too much traffic in the countryside and suburbs, and barely a dent in the city. Also, you will have an insane quantity of birds, as birds are counted as peds. I will now provide some example edits to show you how to get things realistic -

Example one (city traffic)

Snippet:

POP_SCHEDULE:
Downtown_Vinewood
// Weekday
//
// #Peds #Scenario #Cars
50 20 80
20 10 20
50 20 400
65 25 400
70 50 200
100 50 200
100 50 200
100 50 200
100 50 400
80 50 400
65 35 200
55 35 100

A couple things to notice, starting with the ped values. Notice how it starts low, then lower, and then gradually increases during the day, and then later at night, starts to scale back? You know....just like in real life? The 12 values represent 2 hour slots, starting with 12-2 am, 2-4 am, 4-6 am, 6-8 am, etc. Notice the second value (2-4 am) 20, would be during a time in a 24 hour day, where there would be the fewest amount of peds walking around - just as in real-life? And then clearly, as the day progresses, more and more peds spawn, and then later at night, I have them scaling back again. The default popcycle doesn't do that at all for some strange, unknown, reason. Notice the vehicle numbers now. What I have done here is simulate normal traffic patterns by doubling up during the periods of rush hour. Notice the two 400 values both at 4-6 am and 6-8 am, and then again at 4-6 pm and 6-8 pm respectively? Then traffic decreases 100 % in-between rush-hour, and then decreases more as we get later in the evening, and then especially more in the wee-hours of the morn. This represents real-life as much as it can be, where R* values never made sense on any level, LOL.

Now let us look at how I handled the country -

Snippet:

POP_SCHEDULE:
COUNTRYSIDE
// Weekday
//
// #Peds #Scenario #Cars
08 10 04
02 05 01
06 10 08
08 15 08
14 18 04
14 18 04
16 18 04
16 18 04
16 18 08
14 18 08
14 15 04
08 15 04

Whoa!! Way less, but why? One it is in the countryside - so there should NOT be near as much traffic as we would expect to see downtown. If left in it's default state, the 2.2 increase I gave in the settings.xml file would blow your PC up! Bumper-to-bumper for miles and miles it would be.

Suburbs:

POP_SCHEDULE:
VINEWOOD_HILLS
// Weekday
//
// #Peds #Scenario #Cars
10 10 10
01 01 02
10 10 20
25 15 20
30 10 10
40 20 10
40 30 10
40 30 10
40 30 20
30 20 20
25 15 10
15 15 10

This is Hollywood Hills. If I did not bring numbers down significantly, you would have bumper-to-bumper traffic with cars crashing into each other. You have to look at each region, and compare with what they are like in real-life and make adjustments accordingly. Slab, cult, and hippy should resemble countryside values, Burton, Strawberry, Downtown, Vinewood should resemble city values. Do NOT go too heavy on freeway traffic, because with the freeway - unlike city traffic - there are no 4-way stops, which means all vehicles spawned will have no where to go except on a straight-line -

Snippet:

POP_SCHEDULE:
FREEWAY
// Weekday
//
// #Peds #Scenario #Cars
10 40 50
03 40 20
05 40 100
10 40 100
10 40 50
10 40 50
10 40 50
10 40 50
10 40 100
10 40 100
10 40 50
10 40 50

Get rid of the birds! Default values in too many paces go as high as 79, which is insane, and will totally destroy your PC, LOL. See here what I mean -

peds ARMY 99 Fish 01 cars VEH_ARMY 100
peds ARMY 99 Fish 01 cars VEH_ARMY 100
peds ARMY 99 Fish 01 cars VEH_ARMY 100
peds ARMY 99 Fish 01 cars VEH_ARMY 100
peds ARMY 99 Fish 01 cars VEH_ARMY 100
peds ARMY 99 Fish 01 cars VEH_ARMY 100
peds ARMY 99 Fish 01 cars VEH_ARMY 100
peds ARMY 99 Fish 01 cars VEH_ARMY 100
peds ARMY 99 Fish 01 cars VEH_ARMY 100
peds ARMY 99 Fish 01 cars VEH_ARMY 100
peds ARMY 99 Fish 01 cars VEH_ARMY 100
peds ARMY 99 Fish 01 cars VEH_ARMY 100

Notice I took the birds out completely?It did say Birds_Countryside 79, but I removed those lines. There will still be a few soaring, as you cannot completely wipe them out for some reason. But notice what I did when I did remove those lines? There were 79 so when I removed them, I had to add the 79 to something else, because the total amount of peds must equal 100. I only had ARMY and Fish to choose between, so I made up the difference by adding them to the Army. Remember to be careful when using other's popcycles - all ped and vehicle values must equal to 100, not below or above. See below snippet -

cars VEH_POOR 60 VEH_MID 29 VEH_COURIER 01 VEH_LARGE_CITY 10

If you count up the values, you will see they add up to 100. It doesn't matter what values you give to either group, as long as they add up to 100.

Hopefully you have the info you need to get your traffic looking as it should!

yellowboy06

Care to share the file edits?

InfiniteQuestion

@yellowboy06 I have a heavily edited version of popcycle in my mod. Removes birds and fish, makes the traffic spawns the same everywhere, and maxes the cars and ped values. If you want real, this isnt that mod. If you like clean even numbers and spawn rates to be equal, this is the mod for you.

https://www.gta5-mods.com/misc/enhanced-population