How to: Less strain on your computer from any "Sim Detail" setting

[Claeric]

Looking through the graphicsrules file in the /bin folder (latest installed expansion/stuff pack) I discovered that for each Sim Detail setting, there's also a LOD distance value, telling the game at what distance (I have no idea what unit of measurement is used here) a sim becomes what LOD.

Here are the Low settings:
RenderSimLODDistances "2, 8, 15, 100"
(This means sims from 0-2 distance are very high LOD, sims from 2-8 are high, sims from 8-15 are medium, and sims from 15-100 are low [and presumably any past that are very low])

And here are the Very High settings:
RenderSimLODDistances "25, 50, 100, 1000"
(This means the game waits until a sim is 1,000 away [again, no idea what unit of measurement is used here] to make them very low LOD, instead making sims from 100-1000 Low.)

But here's the thing. If you have the game on Very High sim detail, are you doing that for sims in the immediate area, or for sims far away from the camera? Why in the world do sims need to wait until they're so far away to be extremely low LOD? You can't see them well enough to know what LOD they're at.

So the solution here is to change the Very High RenderSimLODDistances settings. I made mine match the Medium setting. So now when my game is set to Very High sim detail, fewer sims are at higher LODs and the sims I can barely see/don't give a fuck about anyway aren't being given so much attention from my graphics card.

It won't make a major difference in performance for most, but this little change could give you noticable improvements in speed depending on your computer. Just be sure to back up the original file.

[Milhouse Trixibelle Saltfucker III]

... you know "less" isn't a verb, right? It didn't occur to you to choose a topic subject which is a little less grammatically cocktarded? I mean, how much harder is it to type, say, "reduce"? This is not rocket science.

[Claeric]

I wasn't using it as a verb.

[jolrei]

This sounds like a decent idea to me.  I shall try it, as my rig is old (and the dust bunnies form a sort of beard).

Also - Grammar score for this thread so far:  Claeric 1 - Trixie 0.  (Unless anyone wants to make a case for me having used "Claeric" as a verb.)

[spockblock]

Colons are invisible to Trixie. Sort of the same deal as concepts like "common sense" and "maybe I should shut up now."

[Cyberdodo]

It's rather sad, how hard Trixie tries to be one of the cool kids, and how hard he fails.

(Unless anyone wants to make a case for me having used "Claeric" as a verb.)

If you want to verb Claeric, please keep it to yourself.

[Claeric]

I had a friend with a crappy computer do a quick, not-fully-conclusive-since-I-didn't-give-many-fucks test on this. I had them line sims up, one per every other tile for 64 tiles and played with a regular Very High setting. Then I had them load the same file, but with Very High set so the LOD settings were the same as Low. Their FPS from that 32-sim scene went up by 5!

An increase of 5FPS can be a big deal. And that big of an increase for a crowd- an oversized one, at that- means it's probably got a noticable effect in general if your computer isn't that great.

[J. M. Pescado]

An increase of 5FPS can be a big deal. And that big of an increase for a crowd- an oversized one, at that- means it's probably got a noticable effect in general if your computer isn't that great.

It depends. If it's an increase of 5 fps when you have low fps, it's a big deal. If it's an increase of 5 fps when you have already exceeded ~30 fps, it is completely useless, because the game itself does not actually produce new information to render faster than that.

[Claeric]

Of course. Their increase was from 20 to 25. They average around 27 on Very High detail, so this helps the game run much, much nicer for them when they are in a crowd situation or on a populated lot. The non-immediate sims are no longer allowed to cause much strain on the computer, even though they've got the details on Very High. (They run on High normally anyway, though, where they get >30FPS, but it does drop down a bit there with crowds too)