Animated Pedestrians

Animated Pedestrians populate a track with different themed animated 3D characters. You will see pedestrians standing and walking around on sidewalks, crew at pit boxes, and spectators watching you racing from the side of the track.

Where to find it

The master toggle sits in Quick Settings. Per-category toggles and the caps / distance sliders live under Advanced Traffic Settings → Pedestrians when Advanced Settings is on.

How the waypoint system works

Every pedestrian you see is anchored to a waypoint in the world. The waypoint carries a role (walking, standing, crew, spectator) and points to an animation set that defines what characters at that waypoint look like and how they move. At runtime the tool fills waypoints up to your Max Pedestrians cap, prioritising the ones closest to you.

This explains two common observations:

The same track can look empty in rural sections and crowded in downtown sections even though your settings are unchanged — the density you feel reflects how many waypoints the author (or you, in the Pedestrian Editor) placed there.
Pedestrians appear as you drive closer and vanish as you drive away: the tool is moving its limited population budget to wherever you are. They are not despawned because the world is empty; they are waiting for their turn.

The three categories and why they are separate

Pedestrians — pavements and open areas

Waypoints marked for walking get characters that actually move. If the waypoint is connected to neighbours via walk paths (defined in the Pedestrian Editor), the character patrols back and forth. Without connections, they stand idle — a walking role without a path behaves like a standing role.

Crew — pit boxes and marshal posts

Crew waypoints use a different animation set: pit mechanic gestures, flag signals, inspection poses. They are visually distinct and are disabled separately so tracks that already ship with their own pit scene do not get doubled up. Turn off Enable Animated Crew when you want a clean, empty pit lane.

Spectators — grandstands and fences

Spectator waypoints carry animations appropriate for crowds watching a race: clapping, pointing, turning to follow a car. They are also separately toggleable because many Assetto Corsa tracks ship with 2D cardboard cutouts in their grandstands. If you use Animated Spectators, you usually want the 2D cutouts gone too (see the Debug tab’s Disable 2D Track Spectators).

How Max Pedestrians and Render Distance interact

The two sliders describe two different limits:

Max Pedestrians — the absolute ceiling on simultaneous characters. If your grandstand has 1 000 waypoints but your cap is 80, only 80 are shown — the closest 80 to your view.
Pedestrian Render Distance — how far out a waypoint is considered for filling. Beyond this range waypoints are skipped entirely even if the cap is not reached.

That is why raising the cap without raising render distance has diminishing returns: you let more pedestrians exist, but the tool will not populate waypoints outside the render range to find them. The pair of sliders needs to be raised together to grow a visible crowd.

How framerate optimisation scales pedestrians

Pedestrians close to you update their animation every frame. Pedestrians far away update at a reduced rate — few times per second rather than dozens. This is what Optimize Framerate does: it is a distance-based animation LOD, not a quality toggle.

The visual impact is close to invisible, because you cannot resolve the joint-level motion of a character a hundred metres away. The CPU savings in crowded scenes (grandstands, pit lanes) are large. Leave this on unless you have a specific reason to want full-rate animation at every distance.

What happens when a track has no waypoints

A track that ships without pedestrian data simply has no pedestrians. Turning the master toggle on does nothing because the system has nowhere to place characters. The Pedestrian Editor exists precisely for this case: you drop waypoints yourself and the system starts populating them the moment you save.

Likewise, if a track has only spectator waypoints (grandstand) and no pedestrians, you will see crowds in the stands but none on the pavements — the content is exactly as placed by the author.

How the Low preset auto-tunes pedestrians

On Low Performance the master caps drop (fewer simultaneous pedestrians) and Render Distance shortens (waypoints past a shorter range are ignored). The difference from High is not that characters look worse; it is that there are far fewer of them at once and only near you. That makes dense scenes (stadium grandstands) much cheaper on a weak GPU at the cost of visual density.

Interaction with other features

Pedestrian Editor. Where you place the waypoints this system consumes.
Performance Preset. Drives the default cap and render distance for each level.
Walking Mode / Phone. The same waypoints back the walkable characters in the in-world walking mode.
Debug → Disable 2D Track Spectators. Pair this with Animated Spectators to avoid two layers of spectators appearing at once.

Troubleshooting

No pedestrians anywhere: Confirm the master toggle and that the track has waypoints. Many community tracks ship without. Use the Pedestrian Editor to add your own.
Pedestrians pop in/out as I drive: You are at the edge of Pedestrian Render Distance. Raise it so characters enter the fill range earlier.
Double spectators (flat 2D + animated): Enable Disable 2D Track Spectators in the Debug tab. A restart may be required on some tracks.
Pit crew missing: The track has no crew waypoints. Add them in the Pedestrian Editor, or use a track with them built in.
Max cap at 80 but I only see 30 in the grandstand: Grandstand waypoints are beyond your render distance, or other closer waypoints used up the budget. Raise render distance.