Extra Cars

Extra Cars are a second, lightweight layer of traffic that lives far outside the normal spawn zone. They are what you see on parallel roads, across a valley, or stretching into the distance on a highway. Their point is to make the world look populated even when you cannot physically reach the cars you can see. They are cheaper per car than main traffic because they skip a lot of the simulation overhead.

Where to find it

Main tab → Quick Settings → Extra Cars. In multiplayer the toggle sits behind Show Advanced Settings and is marked experimental.

Why a second layer exists at all

Normal traffic has a specific job: populate the road around the player with real cars that can be interacted with — crashed into, overtaken, raced. That job requires physics, collision, accurate positioning, and detailed models. It is expensive per car.

The visual problem is that the expensive normal-traffic layer is only a small ring around the player. Past that ring, an open world with no cars at all looks dead — especially on tracks with long sight lines or elevated viewpoints. Extra Cars fill that gap with much cheaper vehicles that exist only to be seen, never to interact.

What an Extra Car is allowed to do

Extra Cars drive traffic lanes the same way normal cars do, but a lot of expensive behaviour is skipped:

They use simpler LOD models earlier than normal cars.
They do not participate in crash physics or deformation.
They do not trigger police chases or race encounters.
Their physics updates run at a lower rate — enough for them to drive believably at a distance, not enough to drive well close up.

Because of those shortcuts, an Extra Car that drifts too close to the player would look bad. The spawning system makes sure that never happens: Extra Cars only spawn beyond the normal traffic ring, in a second ring that starts where normal traffic ends.

How the second ring is placed

The Extra Cars ring is generated automatically from your current normal-traffic settings:

Its inner edge sits at the outer edge of the normal spawn zone. Extra Cars never appear inside the main traffic window.
Its outer edge extends roughly twice as far as the normal spawn max. That is how they fill out the horizon.
Its lateral width is several times wider than normal traffic, so Extra Cars populate parallel streets well off your actual road.
Its despawn behind is also about double — because the cars are already far away, they need more rear distance before being cleaned up.

The result: normal traffic is a tight populated shell around you, Extra Cars are a loose distant halo beyond it. The two never overlap.

How many Extra Cars you actually get

There is no separate count slider. The count is derived from your current Performance Preset and Traffic Density using a multiplier baked into the preset:

Low preset — a small fraction of density, leaning toward minimal.
Mid preset — a middle fraction, noticeable but not heavy.
High preset — the largest fraction, enough that wide panoramas feel populated.

Because the count multiplies off density, the right way to get more Extra Cars is to raise Traffic Density, not to look for a hidden slider. There is no exposed “Extra Cars: N” input.

Why Extra Cars can be invisible

The most common report about Extra Cars is “I enabled them but see nothing”. There are three usual causes:

Render distance is too short. The Extra Cars ring sits outside the normal spawn zone. If your render distance stops at the normal-spawn-max value, you are exactly at the edge of where Extra Cars begin — they exist, but are not drawn. Increase Render Distance to see them.
Density is too low. The multiplier rounds down. Density 5 with a 10 % multiplier yields zero Extra Cars. Raise density, or switch to a higher-tier preset with a larger multiplier.
The track has no lanes outside the player’s immediate road. Extra Cars need lanes to drive on. Tracks built as a single loop with no parallel roads have nowhere for an Extra Car to appear.

Performance cost

Per car, Extra Cars are much cheaper than normal traffic. In total, though, they can still add up: the second ring covers a large area and fills it with many cars. The two big cost drivers are:

Your Render Distance — longer means more Extra Cars are drawn at once.
Your Performance Preset’s multiplier — higher tiers produce more Extra Cars for the same density.

If you are on the edge of your GPU budget and want to keep normal traffic intact, turning Extra Cars off is the largest single win available.

When to turn it on and off

Open-world cruising: on. The feature is designed for this and the world feels dead without it.
Cinematic panoramas: on. Wide shots need distant movement.
Closed circuits / short tracks: off. There is no “outside” to populate and the extra draw calls are wasted.
VR on limited GPU: consider off. Render distance costs more in VR than flatscreen, and that is where Extra Cars live.

Interaction with other features

Render Distance. The hard gate for whether Extra Cars are visible at all.
Traffic Density. Raises both normal and extra car counts in lockstep.
Performance Preset. Sets the multiplier that turns density into extra-car count.
Deformation / Police / Race Cars. Explicitly skipped for Extra Cars — they are background only.

Troubleshooting

Enabled Extra Cars but see nothing: Check Render Distance, raise density, and verify the track has parallel lanes.
Distant cars look flat: Intentional — Extra Cars use a simplified LOD to stay cheap. Detailed LOD slider does not apply to them.
FPS dropped after enabling: The longer Render Distance is, the heavier Extra Cars get. Shorten render, drop a preset tier, or disable.
Extra Cars collide with me: They should not. If they do, report it in Discord with the track name and your preset combination.