OMSI 2 can run badly on a PC that handles much newer games without a problem. You might get 25 FPS on a busy map, or a perfectly playable frame rate interrupted by a freeze every time you drive into a new area.
Those are two different problems. And if you’re trying to fix them, that distinction matters more than another video promising a magic FPS boost.
Low FPS or stuttering?
Low FPS means the game is consistently slow. It’s especially common in busy town centres, with complex add-on buses or a lot of AI traffic. The game has too much work to do every frame.
Stuttering means it runs reasonably well between sudden pauses. If those pauses happen as you move through the map, loading scenery and textures may be part of the problem. If they happen when you stop at a bus stop, check whether autosave is enabled.
Start by changing one setting at a time and testing the same map, bus, location and weather. Otherwise, it’s hard to tell what actually helped.
The settings worth changing first
Open Options in OMSI 2. These are the adjustments I’d try before messing with Windows, graphics drivers or third-party tweaks.
1. Lower AI traffic
In AI-Traffic, reduce the number of unscheduled road vehicles, scheduled vehicles and humans. You can also lower the road traffic factor.
AI vehicles don’t just sit there as scenery. OMSI has to update their movement and behaviour, and scheduled buses add their own complexity. On a busy map, reducing AI counts can make a bigger difference than lowering your screen resolution.
As a starting test, try around 50 unscheduled vehicles and 10 scheduled vehicles, then increase them until you find a sensible balance. These aren’t magic numbers, and a map with lots of required scheduled traffic may need a different setup.
2. Reduce neighbouring tiles
Under Graphics, try Neighbour Tiles Count: 1 or 2.
That sounds like a small change, but there’s a big difference in how much map OMSI keeps loaded around you. A count of 1 means up to 9 tiles in the surrounding square; a count of 2 means up to 25.
Fewer tiles can reduce the amount of scenery and AI the game has to deal with. The trade-off is more visible loading as you drive, so don’t automatically choose the lowest value if your main complaint is stuttering between tiles.
3. Reduce visibility and expensive effects
Still under Graphics, try these in order:
- Reduce Max. Obj. Visibility Distance. Around 500–800 metres is a reasonable starting range to test, not a universal best setting. Check that signs and junctions remain visible soon enough.
- Turn off Shadows and other Stencil Buffer Effects if you’re struggling for FPS.
- Switch Real Time Reflections from Full to Economy. That’s a better compromise than None if you still want usable bus mirrors.
- Lower object or map complexity if the above hasn’t helped enough. The result depends on how the map creator configured the scenery.
You don’t have to make OMSI look terrible. The point is to find which expensive setting is actually hurting your particular setup.
What about freezes when the map loads?
If the game mainly freezes as you cross into a new area, a few different things are worth checking.
An SSD can help with loading delays, particularly if OMSI and your add-ons are still installed on a mechanical hard drive. It won’t fix CPU-heavy simulation work or turn a consistently low frame rate into 60 FPS.
Don’t immediately enable “Load whole map at start”. It may reduce pauses from loading new tiles on some setups, but it increases the initial load and can create memory problems on large maps. Test it rather than treating it as a required optimisation.
Check autosave if you get a noticeable pause whenever you stop. Switching it off can remove that particular interruption, but you’ll need to save manually.
Does the OMSI 2 4 GB patch improve FPS?
Not directly.
OMSI 2 is a 32-bit application. The usual 4 GB patch marks its executable as large address aware, allowing it to use more virtual address space on 64-bit Windows. That’s useful when detailed buses, large maps or high-resolution textures push it towards the normal limit.
It can help with memory-related crashes and missing or white textures. But it doesn’t make OMSI’s AI, physics or rendering faster, and it isn’t a guaranteed fix for stuttering.
We’ve covered the distinction in more detail in why OMSI 2 runs out of memory and our OMSI 2 64-bit explanation.
Why a faster PC doesn’t always solve it
OMSI 2 was built around an older engine and DirectX 9. Some of its busiest simulation and rendering work doesn’t scale neatly across all the cores in a modern CPU. A powerful graphics card can therefore spend time waiting for the rest of the game.
That’s also why copying someone else’s “perfect settings” often disappoints. Your map, bus, AI list and route can matter just as much as the hardware you’re using.
And changing Target Framerate to 60 won’t force the game to produce 60 frames. It’s a target, not a performance upgrade.
Why we’re rebuilding OMSI instead of patching it
These fixes are still worth trying if you’re playing OMSI 2 today. They just work within the limits of the original game.
OMX is a separate, 64-bit reimplementation designed to run existing OMSI 2 maps, buses and scripts. It gives us a chance to address engine-level performance problems without asking creators to remake their content. That doesn’t mean every performance issue has already been solved, and 64-bit alone doesn’t guarantee better FPS.
OMX is currently in a closed beta, with no public download yet. You can follow development here.
For more detail on the original game’s controls, see the OMSI 2 manual published by Aerosoft. There’s also a long-running community guide to performance-related settings on Steam.