More Awesome Than You!

I have something.... odd.... happening in my game and I'm sure there is a simple reason that I'm missing.  Anyway, most custom clothes in my game show up most clearly on "High Texture Quality" but some skins and clothes are blurred at high quality, and are seen best at medium. 

I would have thought everything would be better at high quality.  I'm having trouble deciding which setting to keep.  It doesn't seem to make a lot of difference in performance and I have the most recent drivers.  I've tried an older driver too and the same thing happened. 

Any thoughts?

C

Perhaps it has something to do with the graphics settings of the person who made the custom things? I guess if it was me I'd just go with whichever setting shows the majority of the skins the best way. I played for a long while on really low settings before upgrading my video card so I'm just glad to be able to see cinematics now and see the Sims with fingers and not paws, so I'm not quite sure if that's what the problem is, but it seems like it to me...

Two things I know of might cause this:

Either... The skins that look best on Medium have smaller-than-normal textures, so they're having to be enlarged to fit the Sim (although I have no idea whether BodyShop would even allow that to happen, since I've never tried to sneak in a smaller texture)...

OR

There's something going on with the bumpmaps. I can't verify that, either, since I have to play without bumpmaps activated because of my graphics card.

Do you have bumpmaps activated? If you don't, then it's not the second thing.

Can you post a screenshot showing the two side by side, for comparison? You've got me curious.

I will work on getting a screenshot.  The skin problem could be what you are saying, as the skin looks fine on the Crammyboy sim (tattooed one) but is blurred on my bodybuilder sim (stretched).  It's really the clothes that bugs me most because you can't read text on the T-shirts or see the details of some of the pretty stuff I've gotten off YOUR site   :)

I'll try and get some pics and post today.

C

IIRC, there was actually a bug in some versions of bodyshop which is causing the problem of bluriness on high level when the original creator had certain types of hardware (low end).

You might try exporting them in body shop and looking at the source files and then reimporting them.

Okay, here is Mary Sue Pleasant after her makeover.  First pic is at high texture quality, second pic is at medium texture quality.

(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a321/cwieberdink/snapshot_cdae71fd_90c3edf8.jpg)

(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a321/cwieberdink/snapshot_cdae71fd_50c3edba.jpg)

C

Do you have Shadows "on"? It looks like you need more shadow.

Hi all,

Just a thought. I don't know how good is your video card, but if it's not that high-end (128mb and above), then it might be possible that it just can't "hold" the higher textures and blurs them, and when set back on the quality it can display it again propery.

I can have this problem (my card is 64mb), in the first hours without shadows and reflections the game runs on the highest settings without blurring together, but after turning on reflections/having too many sims on the lot/playing a too big lot it just loses footing and begins showing crappier quality without actually changing the setting. Sometimes setting the lower setting then setting the higher again works, sometimes it only gets better if I restart the game.

Vejitto~

I don't have an answer for you, Fae, I just want to say that I love her hairstyle.  :)  She's a very pretty sim. 

You know what, I just noticed last night while I was playing that the graphics had "slipped" by the time I had played for a few hours.  Clothes that were nice and clear were suddenly blurry.  Tht must be what the problem is.  I don't remember what exactly is the memory on it.  I want to say 128 though but I could definitely be wrong.

C

Well, "low end" might apply in this case, since the blue skin in the screenshots is one of mine. I certainly don't have a "high end" card, but low end? It's an NVIDIA GeForce FX5500 (or numbers to that effect) with 256MB memory... That skin looks fine in my game, though, so I don't think that's the problem.

However, I can't see very fine textures, or read t-shirt text at far zooms, either, unless I drop "smooth edges" to 0. I think that's a problem with the game's rendering method ~ it smooths edges by antialiasing everything, instead of just actual edges. Perhaps more powerful video cards compensate for this, but that's something I and other skinners can't control.  :-\

I think you can check it by running the DirectX Diagnostic Tool (Control Panel -> DirectX -> choosing DxDiag), it should be under Display along with name, manufacturer, etc.

That is certainly not low-end, don't worry  :D I think the best cards now have 512mb, with no in-between those and 256mb cards, so yours is really good (especially if it allows for smoothing).

Vejitto~

So thats why my sims have paws haha.

So, did anyone ever figure out what causes this? I'm having the same exact thing in my game right now. It was fine up until this morning when I started up the game. I haven't changed a thing.

Do you folks use Nvidia cards? If so, I can share the trick I used to get rid of those compression anomalies.

No, I have a radeon. But here's the weird thing. I had everything on high, except for shadows, which are always off. I turned shadows on, and the graphics cleared again. I turned shadows back off and the graphics are still clear. Except for the thumbnails of the portraits of my toddlers only, which I can live with, it's all crystal clear and normal again. I don't know if that's like banging on the tv to get a better picture, but it seemed to jar something. Maybe. I have no clue.  :P

I do.  What's the trick?

C

Which model is it?

GeForce 4200 (I think)?

C

I have my graphics problem back, again. With "texture" set to low, it clears up. It's blurriest on high. Anytime I go into buy/build mode, or even into my sims' inventories, when I return back to the game, I get blurry clothes, again. I have to set the texture to medium then back down to low to get it clearer. Even when the sims themselves have cleared up, the thumbnails haven't. And it does not affect every sim. It only affects the clothing, apparently. Very frustrating. I'm going to shut the game down, cool off my cpu and reboot and see if that helps.

Here's a pic I took to help illustrate the problem. I have the texture set to low, here. Jason, up front, while not as sharp as he normally shows, is much clearer than his thumbnail, and it's only his clothes that are problematic. As you can see in the background, the others are fine. Some sims have crystal clear thumbnail pics, some are like Jason's. If I set the texture to high, everybody looks as muddled as Jason's pic. This just started today, so I don't get it.

(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/A%20Sim%20Val%20Story/blurry2.jpg)

I have a similar probelm with some skins, when the setting is high they get some weird shadow under their neck and on down, even though shadows are off. The only thing I can figure is that the skins were made to look good with a low end graphics card and now that I have a better card they dont look right? I have no idea but its bugging me because they are my skins...I guess I will have to redo them and see if that fixes it.

Brynne, how can I steal this pretty Jason?  ;)

Brynne,

You might want to give this a try, it worked on an NVidia card, which I know you don't have, but Radeon control panels should be very similar.

(Disclaimer - This solution is not mine, just something I read while surfing that might help)

In game graphics settings:

All on high but turn smooth edges all the way down. You'll be using your card settings for the anti-aliasing/smooth edges instead (4x). It looks just as good this way.

In Nvidia control panel (ATI should be similar):

To get to the control panel, right click on desktop, choose properties, settings, then advanced. Click on the tab that has the name of your video card. Mine says 'Geforce 6600GT'. Click on performance and quality settings (or similar). The settings you're changing will be under global driver settings. Be sure to tick the box to enable the advanced options to be shown.

Antialiasing (4x - be sure to uncheck application-controlled)
Anisotropic Filtering - (2x - be sure to uncheck application-controlled) - This is optional
Image Settings - High Quality
Vsync - Application Controlled
Force Mipmaps - Bilinear
Conformant Texture Clamp - Off

I also went into Color Correction settings and bumped Image Sharpening up to about halfway and Digital Vibrance to Low. These settings tend to make your game look more Maxis-like

Brynne, welcome to my world  ;)  I followed Jorene's advice on adjusting my vid card, we'll see what happens now.  It is frustrating because it didn't always do this.  Before I play, I always do a clean boot, shut down all extraneous processes and start up the game.  Sometimes though if I've been playing every day or playing for  7 or 8 hours at a time (yes, I do have benders too!   :D) it will start to get really bad.

C

Right. Except it is possible to set antialiasing to 2XQ instead of 4X and save some processor cycles.

Fae, I found the one thing that got rid of the corruption was simply changing:
Antialiasing to 2XQ and Antiscopic Filtering to off

If you want to reference my driver settings (I have a 440MX which isn't much different):
Image Settings - Performance (anything higher makes minimal difference in Sims 2)
Vsync - Application Controlled
Force Mipmaps - None (Seemed only necesary to change this for older games like Quake2)
Conformant Texture Clamp - Off
Negetive LOD Bias - Off

Make sure you have the latest Nvidia drivers and remember that you have to uninstall the old driver before you can install the new one.  The process: Download driver (http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp), uninstall old driver, reboot, install new driver, reboot, pull hair out.

Let me know if it works for you.

(Edited to show additional settings for reference)

Actually I wouldn't download the latest NVidia Drivers, unless you want radioactive pillows and newspapers.  I have found either 77.77 or 78.01 work best if you have nightlife installed.

She's using an older card. It's the newer cards that have issues with the latest drivers. My 440MX works just fine with v81.98.

Thanks so much!  I do have the latest drivers.  I went in and tweaked my settings to match yours.  We'll see how it does now!  Do you run your game on high or medium texture quality?  Do you see weirdness like Brynne and I have been getting?  That especially the clothes seems to wack out sometimes?

I'll let you know.

C

I used to have those problems until I changed my settings (above).
My game is using high texture quality, high light, medium shadow (sometimes high depending on the lot size).

Well, restarting seemed to have cleared things up. Unfortunately, I'm not  playing right now because I sent several sims to uni, and the freakin' Landgrabb Society screen just took over the game. Kicking myself for forgetting to put back the no secret society abductions hack. The loading screen is nice and crisp, though.  ::)

I think the abductions are mildly amusing, but I could do without being yoinked to the other lot. Perhaps I shall make an "offscreen abduction" mode.

Maybe they take the sim away for a couple of hours? Or brings up a dialogue: Would you like to go to the Secret Society lot? Because I like the abductions, but they can get really annoying.

I also like the abductions, but I'd rather have them not go to that lot.

I've got this problem too, but it tends to be with objects instead of sims.  I've assumed a long time ago that it was my freaking 64MB card, so I really haven't asked anyone about it at all.  I use a Geforce 4 MX 420 or 440.  I don't remember which but I bet there's not a difference.  I can't really use the trick with the nVidia card drivers like you all described, because I'm using the Omega Drivers since I couldn't get Civilization 4 to work without it.

I also run into the problem with objects rather than sims. I have a Nvidia GeForce 5200 FX (It looked good way back when I bought it) and tried tweaking things according to the posts above. Things looked good but it slowed my game performance way down.

I have finally come to grips with the reality that my computer sucks.

March 3rd = Alienware baby.

Boy did that jump off topic or what?

Fae, did that solve your problem?

I had the fuzzy clothes problem this morning. Shutting my computer down for a bit cleared it up again. I'm wondering if it's heat-related?

I agree.  If this is possible, that'd be great.  Sometimes I want my Sims to be taken to the secret society, and other times I really just want to stay on my current lot.

Nah, it's the settings applied to the card. I cleared mine up with the recommendations listed earlier. You have a different card, however I'm sure the settings are there.

It helped, yes, but the thumbnails are still fuzzy in some cases.

C

Yeah, you'll need to refresh the thumbnails by having the sim "change appearance" in a mirror, and without actually changing appearance, click the check mark to accept. That'll refresh the thumbnail.

Hmmm.  Is the "not actually changing the appearance" part important?  I have used the mirror several times and all the makeup is fine.  It's the clothes in the catalogue that are fuzzy.

C

I think the 'without changing anything' part is just because you don't want to mess around with your sims looks.

:D Right. Changing your appearance changes the thumbnail. But, you don't have to actually change anything. It is possible to "Change Appearance", not change anything and click the check mark to refresh the thumbnail.

Change their looks if you like, I assumed you only wanted to fix the thumbnail.

Oh, I guess I wasn't clear.  The sims' thumbnail isn't the problem.  It's the pictures of clothes in the clothes buying tool or when shopping for clothes on a community lot.  Not all are fuzzy, only some.

C

I still don't understand why I get this problem intermittently. Without changing any settings at all, it does this, then magically corrects itself with a reboot.

I get this problem too, all the time it seems lately, but I didn't pay it that much attention until recently.  Hook told me it was a video card thing, which I could imagine seeing my video card is shite.

It could be due to poor handling of image compression either by the game, or the video card/driver.
Those are undoubtedly compression artifacts.

I've never had it happen with any other game so the blame scale dips a bit on the Maxis side. :P

Fae: Maybe renaming the \My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Thumbnails\ packages will help refresh your thumbnails. I say rename so that you can restore them in case something goes terribly wrong. :P I know for certain that CASThumbnails.package can be safely deleted but I'm not sure about the others.

I'm pretty sure that your thumbnails are messed up due to the compression type used before you changed the driver settings and will remain that way until the thumbnails are forced to refresh.

You can kill anything in the \Thumbnails folder and it will regenerate. I've done it numerous times. They always come back.

Some of the thumbnails were probably generated with the graphics problem active, and some without, which is why some are fuzzy and some aren't. Bomb 'em all and make them regenerate while your graphics are good, and they should stay that way.

Geez...killing and bombing...I'm starting to sound like Pescado. <<slaps self vigorously>>