6.1 General settings:

6.1.1 Lookahead distance turning

This is how far the driver ‘aims’ ahead when following a route. Increasing this value will result in some curner-cutting but keeping it too low might cause vehicles which have a wider turning radius than the one uses to record the network to ‘loose’ the path and start spinning in circles. This value should in almost all cases be left at default.

6.1.2 Auto-connect Start

(see ‘Record and edit the network’) If enabled, the first point of a new recording session will be connected with the currently ‘Selected point’ (red line).

6.1.3 Auto-connect End

(see ‘Record and edit the network’) If enabled, the last recorded point of a session will be connected to the most suited point if one is found.

6.1.4 Use fastest route

This option is only active in the recalculation process. If enabled, the weight between two points are not given by their Euclidian distance but also by looking at the incoming/outgoing angle and calculating the expected drive time along this connection. This is not always an accurate representation of the actual drive time and can lead to unexpectedly chosen routes. It also adds affects the required recalculation speed slightly. Only use this option if you are also aware of the potential problems.

6.1.5 Avoid other targets

During the recalculation process of the shortest routes, this setting is checked. The default weight or cost for travelling from one point to another is defined by their distance. If this option is set to true, each connection that starts at a destination point receives an added weight. The player can define this added weight with the setting ‘Maximum detour’. This can be used to ensure that the shortest routes are usually going through the main roads. On main roads, there should usually be no other destinations in the middle of the road. Consider for example you have a road going around your farm. Somewhere above your farm is Field #1 and somewhere below your farm is sell point #2. If you have recorded routes that go around your farm and follow an actual road from #1 -> #2 and you also have a path that goes through your farm and has a third destination, #3 which you use to send vehicles to your farm. In default mode, the shortest route from #1 -> #2 would go straight through your farm, which is often not a desired behaviour. By using ‘Avoid other targets’ the path through your farm gets an additional weight in the form of ‘Maximum detour’ because of the destination #3 which is also in this path. Now the shortest path is calculated as the one going around your farm and avoiding to drive through other destinations.

6.1.6 Maximum detour

See explanation above

6.1.7 If silo empty

When the driver is in ‘Pickup & Deliver’ mode and has reached a load trigger (e.g. silo) and the loading process has stopped, this setting will be checked. If it is set to ‘Wait’, he will stop until he is either filled manually or the ‘Continue’ button is pressed. If set to ‘Drive on’ he will continue driving. ToDo: Apparently this setting is not always working as intended and the driver stops again after pressing continue.

6.1.8 Gui scale for AutoDrive HUD

If left on default, the game internal setting of the HUD scaling is used. Otherwise this setting can be used to reduce the size of the AutoDrive HUD.

6.1.9 Display help

En/disable the keybinding listings in the F1 window. This option is often not found by new players and causes confusion when handling vehicles that rely on displaying their own F1 entries, such as the wood cutter. If you know how to open the AutoDrive menu and HUD, you should probably deactivate this setting.

6.1.10 Driver wages

Use this setting to determine how much money an AutoDrive controlled vehicle will cost you. The base cost is derived from the Giants internal AI helper costs and is already multiplied by default with the multiplier for the difficulty setting. The base values are not changed by AutoDrive and might change in different game versions or patches. The value set in this settings is then multiplied with the base value. So setting this to 250% will result in: Cost per millisecond: (Base game AI cost per millisecond) * difficulty multiplier * 2.5 Important: The wages are also deducted if a driver is currently paused because he is either blocked by another vehicle, waiting to be filled or waiting to be called by a harvester.

6.1.11 Calculation speed

This value is only used during the recalculation process. During each frame, the process is only allowed to perform a limited number of calculations, let’s say X, to ensure a smooth gameplay during that phase. This value was set rather cautiously to ensure that the mod will not cause a bad gameplay experience on any machine. If the player has a rather large network or is generally willing to trade FPS for calculation performance, he can use this value to heavily improve the required time for a new recalculation. Important: This value has now effect on the path finder process which is used in the unload combine mode or when Courseplay passes control over to AutoDrive for unload/refill courses in the middle of the field.

6.1.12 Show next path

If enabled, the next two points of the current driver’s path is displayed in white. If this behaviour is undesired, it can be disabled here.

6.1.13 Line height

Simply switches the height of the drawn points and connections between ‘Ground level’ (0.3m) and ‘Above tractor’. During editing phases, it might help to set this ‘Above tractor’ to make it easier to identify the ‘Selected point’ and the ‘Neighbour point’.

6.1.14 Collision detection

The collision detection in AutoDrive relies on two different approaches.One is always active (except in BGA mode). The second one can be en/disabled with this setting.

6.1.14.1 Simple box check

This is the default collision detection of AutoDrive that has been pretty much unchanged since the first release. It draws a virtual 2D box in front of the vehicle. This box is always in front of the wheels, so it is depending on the current steering rotation. It is also dynamically adapted to the vehicle’s current speed. Now each vehicle in the game (excluding AI traffic cars / including pallets, implements, trailer etc.) is iterated. The vehicle’s width and length is used to create a 2D box that matches the vehicle dimensions. Then the dynamic box for the current vehicle is checked for a collision with any of the other boxes. If any collision is detected, the check returns true.

6.1.14.2 Advanced collision check

This is the check that is en/disabled with the ‘Collision detection’ setting. For this one, a 3D box is calculated in front of the vehicle. It is slightly angled upwards. Otherwise it is calculated the same as the simple box by looking at the current steering angle and the current speed. This box is now checked with an internal Giants engine function whether it contains any collision. This now includes fences, lamp posts, AI traffic and the ground itself. This causes some issues on steep streets in certain maps. Also some buildings are created with wrong collision masks and can cause a ‘false’ collision warning in AutoDrive. By pressing F5, the player can display the box AutoDrive uses to detect collision. If it is red, a collision has been detected.

6.1.15 Use folders

En/disables the folders in the AutoDrive HUD. The folder for each destination is stored in the config file and will not be lost if you toggle this setting. It will only affect the display of the pull-down lists in the HUD.

6.1.16 Maximum trigger distance

In ‘Pickup & Deliver’ and in ‘Load mode’, the vehicle will accept triggers that are not farther away from the destination than configured in this setting. This works as a radius around the destination. But the vehicle will still stop at it’s load destination and wait to be filled there, regardless of a trigger ahead, unless the ‘If silo empty’ setting is also set to ‘Drive on’.

6.1.17 Beacon lights

If enabled, the driver will enable it’s beacon lights while driving on the road. It is currently also active when he is paused, but this is subject to discussion. When the driver is working on the field as unloader, this is disabled. The beacon lights are also of course switched off when AutoDrive is disabled/has finished it’s course.

6.2 Vehicle specific settings:

6.2.1 Pipe Offset

By default, the path finder will use the extended pipe’s unload trigger as target. And then add some points along the combine length axis to actually pull the trailer under the pipe and not the unloader’s vehicle center. The ‘Pipe Offset’ can be used to move that target position orthogonal to the combine’s length axis. So either closer or further away from the combine.

6.2.2 Trailer offset

This is the offset in the vehicles length axis. Setting this to a positive value will increase the distance the driver drives in front of the pipe. Negative values will make him stop earlier. This value is needed for vehicles combinations that are either very small or where the target bin is already on the vehicle. So for example on trucks with an included bin. Or for vehicles which have a wide distance between the vehicles’ center and the unloading bin. ToDo: Change this behaviour to either autodetect offset or keep on driving until harvester is discharging into trailer.

6.2.3 Unload fill level

This setting determines the fill level the driver has to reach to start driving to the unload destination.

6.3 Unload mode settings: