Graphical Weirdness in both neighborhood Screen and on lots... Part II

[flowerchile]

Necromancy..blah, blah, blah...  So. after having crashed my really well running game, and setting it all up again, (which only took me the best part of 4 weeks..), I have a  freaking glitch which I thought I had seen the last of.  Everything runs beautifully..  but when I took the Kraonz to the Community Centre...  I had a repeat of the same comic book effect, as I had reported in another thread.   The weird thing is, it only happens at Community lots.  And even weirder..  when I took an in game pic,
this is what it turned out like. 


But - this is what I'm seeing...


Anyhoo.. any ideas on why it only happens on Community lots? 

[Arina]

Is it something to do with having too many sims there? Sometimes I just get slowdown when I have a lot with too many sims (playable or visitor), but sometimes I get weird things happening (not exactly what's in your screenshot, but other weird graphic things). If the pictures on the left are just the sims arriving in the taxi, and it's a community lot, which has visitors, perhaps it's just too much? Have you tried with a smaller family, or a smaller community lot?

[Zazazu]

Also try a higher resolution just in case the two-column UI is screwing it up. The one up from 800x600 gives 10 sims in one column, two up from 800x600 gives 12 sims in one column. Non-windowed. It shouldn't be something stupid like that, but then I've never seen that effect...and I've had 12 sims out of a 15 sim family go to a community lot with no weirdness. What card do you have?

How many townies do you have your community lots set to give you? I find that anything more than 20 townies gives me lag, even on my fast machine.

[flowerchile]

Hmmm..  When I reinstalled, I did up my resolution so I could play windowed, but with full screen.  I'll certainly try that one.  I have the ever popular nVidia GEFORCE GO 7400 card,  but all the problems that I was experiencing months ago, somehow sorted themselves out and it was all running beautifully till now.  I'm going to check it out in a lower res, and I'll see how it goes.  Mind you, I'm gonna be pretty pissed if it is that, as I like having a full-screen game, and I like window-mode.     
Loading the game now, and I'll report back.   
 

ETA:  I put the res back to 1024 x 768 and no problem.   

Thanks heaps for your help and ideas, Zazazu.  Very muchly appreciated.

[Hegelian]

The GeForce GO video controller indicates this is a laptop. Therefore, your display is an LCD. Unlike CRTs, LCDs have only one optimal resolution, because the screen is made up of discrete physical elements—an LCD with a "native" resolution of 1024x768 is composed of a grid of 768 rows in 1024 columns. Going to a lower resolution (larger image size) requires the monitor's circuitry to modify the display image sent from the video controller in order to make it fit the 1024x768 array. The upshot is that LCDs set to non-native resolutions always look like crap, and you lose the LCD's inherent sharpness advantage.

In other words, if your LCD is designed for 1024x768, that's what you should run it at. If it's designed for 1280x1024, that's what you should run it at, even if everything looks too small at first.

[Lorelei]

This is a Dumb Question, but how do you determine what your laptop considers to be your "native" resolution?

The fact that I can run mine at 1920x1200 (I think that's correct) doesn't imply to me that this is its "native" resolution, just one it is capable of displaying. I can tell that getting down to 1024x... and 1280x... is not its preference (or is it?) and it does occasionally spazz back and forth a bit when adjusting to older video games, but it runs them well enough.

(Basically, when choosing my res, I went for what made my art programs look good, and allowed a larger working area. This is clearly an unscientific method. Also, I'm a bit nearsighted, and yet still prefer smaller icons and fonts. Go figure.)

[J. M. Pescado]

The "native" resolution of a Lappy is typically its highest resolution. LCD displays downscale extremely poorly, and Lappies often now ship with unusual nonstandard aspect ratios on top of that. You should generally aim to play either at the native resolution, or some evenly divisible factor of it. That, or get used to either big black bars or distorted displays..

[Hegelian]

It will be in your owner's manual. What model do you have?

It used to be that 12-13-inch laptop screens were typically 800x600; 14-15-inch screens were 1024x768, and larger ones were 1280 x 960 or something similar. But with the advent of wide-screen models, resolutions are all over the place. A 15-inch wide-screen model could be 1680x1050, 1920x1200, 1280x800, 1440x900, etc. The "recommended' resolution for your laptop will be the native resolution.

Note that the game will only look its best if you use one of the resolutions available in the video controls. I don't think it supports many, if any, wide-screen modes. Ever notice how some sims in custom-creators' screen captures look too short and too wide? I'm betting they're using the wrong resolution for their monitors.

[J. M. Pescado]

...although you'd think this wouldn't actually matter for the screenshot as YOU see it, since a pixel should be a pixel, and thus it should only look weird on their computer. Never figured out why it would do this.

[Lorelei]

It's a refurb Vaio, so no owner's manual, just manuals about media center tools and Bluray. This is not the first time I've been annoyed by this, so I should bug Sony to send me one.

The 1920x1200 res is the highest available, and I use that, though I could choose 1920x1080. (The lowest is 800x600, though it has successfully emulated lower resolution games.) Screenshots and art are not distorted when transferred to lower res / non-widescreen machines at school.

1024x768 and 1280x1024 games look okay, but, yes, going lower or widescreening (1024x600 / 1280x768) is a bad plan. It has options for stretching or cropping on some midrange res options. I usually let games set res when they want to run fullscreen.

I run Sims2 in window mode, usually 1024x768, and it isn't stretched, but it is sitting on top of the 1920x1200 background. The highest Sims-game available res is 1600x1200, IIRC, and I've run it a few times at that res but it gets balky when moving the camera around if I forget to "pause" first.

For other apps, I could choose that OR 1680x1050 (wide) via display settings. I also have a 1360x768 option, but never use it.

[witch]

...although you'd think this wouldn't actually matter for the screenshot as YOU see it, since a pixel should be a pixel, and thus it should only look weird on their computer. Never figured out why it would do this.

Because screenshots are showing the image as it is displayed - that's what I figure anyway.

You can add additional weird resolutions for wide-screens so the sims game displays properly. I always forget how, but Hook or Jordi or someone always comes to my rescue when I forget. When I bought my laptop, all the screens I saw were wide and optimised for DVDs, because of course people wouldn't be buying computers to compute upon, they're bound to be buying lappies purely as a pricey DVD playing devices.

[cassblonde]

You can add additional weird resolutions for wide-screens so the sims game displays properly. I always forget how, but Hook or Jordi or someone always comes to my rescue when I forget.

Now there's something I could use! Someone tell me how...ever since I got this 21" widescreen my daughter has been telling me my Sims are fat!

Cass

[B]

You can add additional weird resolutions for wide-screens so the sims game displays properly. I always forget how, but Hook or Jordi or someone always comes to my rescue when I forget.

Now there's something I could use! Someone tell me how...ever since I got this 21" widescreen my daughter has been telling me my Sims are fat!

You'll be fine with 1680 x 1050 which should be an existing option.  This is the native resolution for most 20 and 21 inch LCDs.  Of course, you'll need a decent GPU to run at these settings.

[witch]

It's not the laptop that's the problem, it's the sims game which doesn't offer all resolutions. I did actually save the advice last time I was given it. I think it was from Hook. It was most likely from Jordi.

Ohm that's easy. Find your native resolution (1680 x 1050 for a 20" 16:10 monitor, 1920 x 1080 for a larger 16:9 monitor, or whatever).

Go to the last XP you have (Celebrations trumps Seasons).
Open \TSData\Res\Config\Graphics Rules.sgr in a text editor

Look for the string "option ScreenModeResolution" and change the Setting $High as follows:
   setting $High
      uintProp maxResWidth      1680
      uintProp maxResHeight     1050
      uintProp defaultResWidth  1680
      uintProp defaultResHeight 1050

Use your native monitor values of course.

Next time you load the game the resolution is available.

Make sure you either have the original CD, or a backup of the file, should EAMaxis come out with a patch.

PS That last bit is because Eaxis expects a clean Graphics Rules.sgr file for patching.

[jrd]

Rather looks like my kind of typos (ohm rather than oh,) :p

Works fine for me. I'm playing in my monitor's native res of 1680x1050.

[Hegelian]

...although you'd think this wouldn't actually matter for the screenshot as YOU see it, since a pixel should be a pixel, and thus it should only look weird on their computer. Never figured out why it would do this.

Rereading the original post, I suspect that the image showing the on-screen anomalies was taken with a digital camera—she says that the first image is her screen capture, which shows a normal screen image.

As you suggest, this is what we would expect. The screen capture is going to be what the video controller is sending to the monitor, not what the monitor's interpolation circuitry is sending to the screen. If the anomalies appeared in the screen capture, we would know the problem lies upstream, in the video controller (or its drivers) or the game itself, for example.

It's a refurb Vaio, so no owner's manual, just manuals about media center tools and Bluray. This is not the first time I've been annoyed by this, so I should bug Sony to send me one.

But which model is it? The manual should be available on one of Sony's Web sites.

The 1920x1200 res is the highest available, and I use that,

As Pescado suggested, this is probably the native resolution. I don't know for certain, but I don't think LCD displays can be driven at resolutions higher than native. That must be some giant screen for a laptop—my 19-inch desktop LCD runs at 1280x1024 (I run the 19-inch CRT at 1280x960 to maintain the proper aspect ratio). Either that, or everything on the screen is minuscule. To be honest, the two times I have bought laptop computers, I've made sure to get one with a resolution no higher than what I find comfortable for viewing, which means I end up with machines that some would consider "inferior" because they don't have the latest and highest (and most unreadable) native resolutions. It took me long enough the adjust to 1280x1024 on this LCD after years of using 1024x768 on 17-inch CRTs; when I bought a laptop for work a couple years ago, I stuck to 1024x768 on a 15-inch screen. I don't mind giving up some display "real estate" in the interests of readability.

Screenshots and art are not distorted when transferred to lower res / non-widescreen machines at school.

This is as expected. The screen captures are what the video controller sends to the display, before the monitor's circuitry modifies the image to fit the screen at the selected resolution. Again, CRTs and LCDs work differently, and what works fine on a CRT may not work so well on an LCD. So now your saying, "But then, why would sims that appears smooshed on-screen also appear smooshed in screen captures?", my thought is that this is because you set the resolution for game in the game, so it is sending a pre-sized image to the video controller. The controller sends this on to the display, and if the game resolution is not appropriate for the monitor, the sims (and other objects) won't appear in their proper proportions. They appear this way in screen captures also, because the "distortion" is already present in the image the video controller receives from the game.

For other apps, I could choose that OR 1680x1050 (wide) via display settings. I also have a 1360x768 option, but never use it.

Personally, I've never seen an LCD display running at a non-native resolution that didn't give me a headache because of the blurry text (and everything else). Of course, I don't use ClearType either because it makes on-screen text blurry also, as if out of focus. Out of curiosity, do you do your own artwork on this machine at a non-native resolution? I ask because if you do, I wonder how you know what it really looks like. I could never edit photographs at a non-native resolution; although in truth I find LCD displays inadequate for photo editing anyway, even my mid-high level monitor. Of course, I've never seen (and certainly can't afford) one of those dedicated graphics LCDs like the Eizo ColorEdge CG211 (US$2716 from CDW), which are claimed to eliminate the traditional shortcomings of LCDs in displaying fine tonal gradients, especially in shadow areas. Wait—let me check these lottery tickets. . . .   

[Lorelei]

It's a refurb Vaio, so no owner's manual, just manuals about media center tools and Bluray. This is not the first time I've been annoyed by this, so I should bug Sony to send me one.

But which model is it? The manual should be available on one of Sony's Web sites.

No need. Here's the stats.

Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_qfe.070227-2300)
Sony VAIO VGN-AR190G
BIOS: Phoenix NoteBIOS 4.0 Release 6.1     
Processor: Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2500  @ 2.00GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 GT
Driver Name / Version: nv4_disp.dll / 6.14.0010.8457 (English)

But I'm not having any graphical weirdness like the OP, I was just curious about how to find out if I was using my native res or not. It simply isn't something I'd given thought to before. Apparently the answer to my question = "the highest resolution your machine can run." Clear enough for me!

         

The 1920x1200 res is the highest available, and I use that,

As Pescado suggested, this is probably the native resolution. I don't know for certain, but I don't think LCD displays can be driven at resolutions higher than native. That must be some giant screen for a laptop

17" and I need the real estate, but any smaller and it would be too small.

 

Screenshots and art are not distorted when transferred to lower res / non-widescreen machines at school.

This is as expected. The screen captures are what the video controller sends to the display, before the monitor's circuitry modifies the image to fit the screen at the selected resolution. Again, CRTs and LCDs work differently, and what works fine on a CRT may not work so well on an LCD. So now your saying, "But then, why would sims that appears smooshed on-screen also appear smooshed in screen captures?", my thought is that this is because you set the resolution for game in the game, so it is sending a pre-sized image to the video controller. The controller sends this on to the display, and if the game resolution is not appropriate for the monitor, the sims (and other objects) won't appear in their proper proportions. They appear this way in screen captures also, because the "distortion" is already present in the image the video controller receives from the game.

I don't have smooshed Sims, but I bet this helps the OP understand the problem s/he is having; very clearly stated.

 

For other apps, I could choose that OR 1680x1050 (wide) via display settings. I also have a 1360x768 option, but never use it.

Personally, I've never seen an LCD display running at a non-native resolution that didn't give me a headache because of the blurry text (and everything else). Of course, I don't use ClearType either because it makes on-screen text blurry also, as if out of focus. Out of curiosity, do you do your own artwork on this machine at a non-native resolution? I ask because if you do, I wonder how you know what it really looks like. I could never edit photographs at a non-native resolution; although in truth I find LCD displays inadequate for photo editing anyway, even my mid-high level monitor. Of course, I've never seen (and certainly can't afford) one of those dedicated graphics LCDs like the Eizo ColorEdge CG211 (US$2716 from CDW), which are claimed to eliminate the traditional shortcomings of LCDs in displaying fine tonal gradients, especially in shadow areas. Wait—let me check these lottery tickets. . . .   

If 1920x... is native, then no, I don't, I only work on art pieces at that res. I wouldn't mess about with lower resolutions because I need the screen space, and because it doesn't make sense to me to do otherwise.

The top four-five available resolutions are clear, though some are cropped because they are not widescreen mode, but below those, yes, it is blurry.

Games that require lower res, even a res lower than what I can select, tend to run fine, with no stretching, but some of the lower res games are visually unappealing. Not blurry, exactly, but definitely blocky.

I don't know if this is a Media Center PC deal or standard with laptops, but my old laptop did stretch and blur at lower res choices than the highest available.

When I was having graphical anomalies, it was a RAM and driver issue, but that was resolved back in April. Geek Squadders tried to hook me up with a Vista desktop driver and this was major PHAIL. Lappy complained, spammed up fake RAID disk failure errors and borked repeatedly. (That it ran at all was a miracle.) Since then, I am not overly impressed with Geek Squad, at least the in-store geeks. (Travelling Geeks seem to have a higher skillset level and more autonomy, and have done more good than harm; in-store Geeks tried to sell me more (unneeded) crap and pass "throwing money at the problem" off as a valid solution to the problem they caused. In my (limited) experience, salesGeeks just don't have the chops to tackle problems without a full wipe and reinstall, apparently, whereas traveling Geeks apply both official and unofficial GS tools to solve problems, and if they fuck up, they aren't satisfied with a wipe and reinstall, it insults their geekdom to be that lazy or to be beaten by a mere machine.) My geek friends in Atlanta were the efficient, knowledgeable sort.

[Hegelian]

Sony VAIO VGN-AR190G

According to the specifications, the native resolution of the 17-inch WUXGA display on this model is 1920x1200. I think I would go blind!   

You can find the specs here.

I don't have smooshed Sims, but I bet this helps the OP understand the problem s/he is having; very clearly stated.

Sorry! I didn't intend to suggest you did. I think we've all seen examples of this on download sites, and this is my guess for why it occurs. I was just using it as an example.

[flowerchile]

...although you'd think this wouldn't actually matter for the screenshot as YOU see it, since a pixel should be a pixel, and thus it should only look weird on their computer. Never figured out why it would do this.

Rereading the original post, I suspect that the image showing the on-screen anomalies was taken with a digital camera—she says that the first image is her screen capture, which shows a normal screen image.

As you suggest, this is what we would expect. The screen capture is going to be what the video controller is sending to the monitor, not what the monitor's interpolation circuitry is sending to the screen. If the anomalies appeared in the screen capture, we would know the problem lies upstream, in the video controller (or its drivers) or the game itself, for example.

Since I have played on a lower res, not problems at all.  The thing that really bugged me, was the fact that I had no graphical weirdness at all until I took the Sims to a community lot.  The first pic was taken with the in-game camera and showed things as they should be, but the second was a screenie.  So yes, the anomalies do appear in the screen capture, yet not the in-game camera.     

[eevilcat]

Since I have played on a lower res, not problems at all.  The thing that really bugged me, was the fact that I had no graphical weirdness at all until I took the Sims to a community lot.  The first pic was taken with the in-game camera and showed things as they should be, but the second was a screenie.  So yes, the anomalies do appear in the screen capture, yet not the in-game camera.     

I suspect that if you are running your monitor at a non-standard resolution then the game will render the scene to a (game) standard size DirectX buffer which will then be resampled to be displayed on your LCD. It is the resampling that causes the graphical anomalies. When you do in an in-game screenshot using the game camera it will write directly to a buffer in memory which is then saved out to your hard disk as a JPG/BMP. The size of the screen grab is determined by the low/med/high snapshot size camera setting but the aspect ratio is fixed and 'game friendly' so no graphical anomalies.

I run the game at 1024x768 on my laptop with a 15 1/4" display set at its max screen resolution of 1680x1050. I normally run the game in windowed mode and have noticed that the camera clips off a chunk at the top/bottom of the screen so have learned to compensate for this when using the camera. Oddly enough, I'm pretty sure that there is no clipping when running the game full screen so I've come to the conclusion that the game is centering the vertical FOV to match the camera aspect ratio and compensate for the odd display resolution.

[flowerchile]

Murphy's Law SUCKS!   

Playing at the res of 1024x768 was working fine..  was.   Tonight, it started again.  But this time, I had the added bonus of the residential lot going wonky after visiting a community lot - which was wonky.  So I did some thinking..  (yes, it hurt ).  I lost everything in my game after installing the H&M pack.  Anyway, I started over, but in the previous game I hadn't added a shopping district or downtown.  This time I did.  Thank you all very much for the advice...  but is it at all possible that it isn't the resolution at all causing the graphics trouble, but the added districts?  And if it is a possibility, how would I remove these districts?  If this is a possibility?  So many possibilities, so little brainz 

[Hegelian]

I having trouble keeping track of who is doing what with the game on their laptops, so bear with me.   

TS2 is not designed for laptops, therefore, compromises are to be expected. This not to say it can't be run on a laptop, or that all laptop users will experience problems (please read that again); but if you run into problems it should not come as a surprise.

First off, be aware of the minimum specifications for the game, which can vary from EP to EP. These are in the readme.txt file installed with every EP (found in EA GAMES\The Sims 2 [your latest expansion here]\Support\en-us (if you are in North America). For Pets, the relevant section reads as follows:

Supported video cards:

  NVIDIA GeForce series (GeForce2 GTS and better)
    GeForce 2, 2 GTS
    GeForce 3, 3 Ti
    GeForce 4, 4 Ti, 4200, 4600, 4800, MX 420, 440, 460
    GeForce FX 5200, 5500, 5600, 5700, 5800, 5900, 5950
    GeForce PCX 5300, 5900
    GeForce 6200, 6600, 6800
    GeForce 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950

Note there is no mention of the GO series, just as in the ATi section there is no mention of the Xpress line of laptop video controllers. The GO 7000 series was released in January 2006, while the readme for Pets is dated September 2006, so it is unlikely that its omission from this list is a mere oversight. I believe EA has made clear that TS2 is not intended for laptops, hence the Sims Stories series.

Note also that the GO 7400 shares system RAM with the CPU, and has only a 64-bit memory interface (compared to the 256-bit interface--the "highway" for transferring data in and out of video memory--in any decent desktop graphics controller) which could significantly affect game performance, perhaps even texture rendering. To be honest, this was a low-mid part, so you can't expect a lot from it (although it is certainly more capable than the Intel 915 Extreme Graphics in my business laptop, which, with a 1.6 GHz Centrino CPU, will only run the base game and Uni, and without much graphics pizazz).

Running the game at a non-native resolution could also lead to unintended graphical anomalies; I frankly don't know if it places additional strain on the graphics controller, partly because I don't know whether the re-rendering of the display image to the non-native resolution is done by the video controller or the circuitry of the display itself (which I think is what happens in my desktop LCD). I also don't know, but strongly suspect, that running in Windowed mode also adds some strain to the overall system, and might also contribute to graphics anomalies.

For most games most of the time, running full-screen at native or recommended resolutions is the way to go.

[eevilcat]

One thing I did notice looking at your screengrab is that it is only alpha that appears to be screwed. You can see it on the hair, taxi windows and the plumbbob. It could be that you have a corrupt object (mesh) on the community lot and it's screwing with how the alpha is being drawn as it appears to be rendering alternate lines of pixels correctly. If an object is sufficiently broken then it could continue to affect the game if EAxis set it up to re-use resources rather than completely free/reallocate them when switching between lots.

Is it only the one community lot that is causing the problems? Does it happen after you visit any community lot? You could always test by adding a small, empty community lot. If it is just the one lot then have a look at it in build mode, there might be some dodgy custom content in which case remove it. If it is only original content then perhaps an original game file has got corrupted so replace it.

I also remember that Pescado passed an interesting comment elsewhere on what version of the game engine H&M uses (OFB?) so it might be, depending on what other EPs/SPs you have installed, that you might have to regress some hacks.

On a similar note, if you have Seasons installed make sure that shaders are enabled - this could also affect how alpha is being drawn as a lot of the pretty weather effects use shaders so if you went to a lot that was snowing/raining/hailing it might also screw something up.

[flowerchile]

I appreciate your help Hegelian.  Thank you for all the research and surfing you have done.  I know lappies are not designed for gaming..  well, specifically the Sims, but I did research and get advice before I went out and bought this unit.  I had a few hiccups in the beginning, blue screen and the same graphics problems I have now, so the answer to that was to uninstall everything, reinstall and to be on the safe side, and to dismiss any and all  possibilities, I deleted my downloads folder and started afresh.  Best thing I could have done.

Over to eevilcat.  I think you may have something there.  It isn't specific to one community lot, rather all of them and I have added more CC in the last couple of weeks.  I have every EP and stuff pack and the only hacks and mods I have are Hire more employees, More Employees for Hire, and No Friends needed for Careers, the Lot Debugger, college adjuster and Teleporter Shrub.

So my next step will be to go through the dreaded download folders and delete whatever I have added since this problem began. 

Thank you everyone for your advice. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

It's a refurb Vaio, so no owner's manual, just manuals about media center tools and Bluray. This is not the first time I've been annoyed by this, so I should bug Sony to send me one.

Did the sellers make back up reinstall copies and hand them on to you?  I don't know about all Vaios, but mine came without cds, the system restore stuff was all on the machine and I had to make my own copies.  If you weren't given the cds, I'd check to see if the info is still there, or whether they erased it, if it's still there make copies before you need them, and it it isn't, see if you can get copies from the Vaio website, again before you need them.