The above has a funny side-effect of doubling the FPS in a tunnel, and having insane dips when speeding through a new area :D
Going the same road twice gets me an FPS boost of 20-40% on the second pass -- CPU doesn't manage to load the textures fast enough on the first pass, but they're cached, I suppose.

yo homies, so I've set

<LodScale value="2.000000" />
<PedLodBias value="0.500000" />
<MaxLodScale value="2.000000" />

and it's like I've been playing blind before that. The difference is like forgetting your glasses at home vs having them on.

However, this still looks like shit -- shadows sharpen right in from of my feet o.O

<Shadow_SoftShadows value="1" />
<UltraShadows_Enabled value="false" />  # expensive sh1t
<Shadow_ParticleShadows value="true" />
<Shadow_Distance value="2.000000" />
<Shadow_LongShadows value="true" />
<Shadow_SplitZStart value="1.000000" />
<Shadow_SplitZEnd value="0.990000" />

I think, I'd need this thing.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/271590/discussions/0/611703898450905121/