🎮 Euro Truck Simulator 2 on Linux
ETS2 screenshot showing Santiago Bernabéu Stadium
One of the games I've been playing is Euro Truck Simulator 2. I played the Windows version under Proton for over a year, maybe over two years, and the performance was good, considering I don't have a dedicated GPU on my laptop. However, after the 1.45 or 1.46 version update, the game performance decreased severely and crashed frequently.
I posted about this on Mastodon, and someone mentioned that the Linux version had good performance. I'd had issues with the Linux version a few years ago but decided to try and see how it performed. Surprisingly, the performance was better than when the Windows port worked well with Proton for me.
I've been running the Linux version for at least two months. I play it in FullHD but with the objects at 50% scale, so it doesn't get insanely slow. I also enabled the SSAO at the maximum quality, as well as the textures, reflexes, etc. – except for the anisotropic filter, but more on this below. Only the shadows stayed a level below the top quality permitted by the game. Not bad for the integrated GPU from an Intel i7-1165G7.
The thing is, I've been having an issue with the Linux port: some textures from distant or thinner objects seem to flicker, sometimes very fast. This annoys the hell out of me when I'm feeling more tired or have thicker brain fog, and occasionally it even gives me headaches.
My first attempt to fix it was changing the anisotropic filter to the max, but it didn't fix it. I tried decreasing the antialiasing but to no avail. Today, however, I wanted to play with the objects at 100% scale, so I disabled the SSAO because it carries quite a performance toll on my system. To my surprise, it decreased the flickering. I also reduced the antialiasing from Ultra to High, which held a slight positive impact.
I'm still having some issues with the textures flickering, but at least it's on a sane level.
If you know a complete fix, please ping me on Mastodon.