Rotating object preview

[loripanori]

Hey all,
Just wondering if anyone knows if it's possible to replace the rotating object preview in catalog mode with a normal non-moving thumbnail pic...  or if there's some way to turn off the fancy spinning object feature so that a normal thumbnail shows up instead (like the still thumbnail that shows up when you click on an item in create-a-style mode)?  I just installed the game on my laptop, which is slightly below the required specs, and while live mode runs surprisingly well and is definitely playable, I'm finding buying objects & decorating houses to be more slow...  when I click on objects in the catalog there is a few second delay before the rotating preview loads up, which makes it annoying to click through a bunch of different catalog items or recolours.  The rotating preview images of some of the build mode items (the ones without recolours I think - gates, trees, etc) load pretty much instantly, and I just noticed that the fence previews don't rotate (woo), but the buy catalog items and doors/windows are kinda a pain to look through.   
Thanks!

[aspinL]

I have always wondered if someone could make a mod that stops the paintings from rotating in buy mode. Because obviously when I'm decorating a house, I don't care what the back of the dang painting looks like. I find my self sitting there and waiting foir the stupid picture to s.l..o..w..l...y... rotate around 

But as for your problems with the rotating objects, have you tried lowering things like sim detail quality and tree detail quality. They're under the three dots in the bottom right corner-ish, then Options and in the gears tab. You can lower them all there and it usually makes a big difference, possibly with loading times for those 3-D buy mode things.

[loripanori]

Yeah, I ended up reducing the video settings pretty quickly, after noticing that my laptop was becoming insanely hot while the game was running...  the lower video settings definitely helped with both the graphical slowness and my laptop temperature (as you would expect I guess).  There's definitely still a delay in the appearance of the fancy rotating object preview, but it's not as annoying now that I've become more used to the new items and catalog.  I agree about the paintings though - a thumbnail image of the front would definitely be more useful.  Actually, for most items, a single image would probably be just as useful as the slowly rotating 3-D graphic, but that wouldn't be nearly as shiny...  and I'm guessing that this isn't much of an annoyance for most people, as the dang preview probably loads & rotates more quickly on better gaming computers. 

[Liz]

...but that wouldn't be nearly as shiny

Isn't that this franchise's motto, though? A little bit of shiny beats actual play-ability any day. And it's been a while since I played TS3, but aren't the paintings backless by default anyway? All that ridiculous spinning really is nothing more than pointless programmer wankage.

[witch]

...and I'm guessing that this isn't much of an annoyance for most people, as the dang preview probably loads & rotates more quickly on better gaming computers. 

No, no it doesn't, it takes a bloody geological age to rotate.  I don't even wait to see the fronts of things quite often. It's so bloody irritating, especially when I'm comparing between two or more objects. I would prefer a static view of the item I want to use.

[aspinL]

My problem isn't that it takes long to load the 3D rotation of the item, but after it loads it takes a new millennium to fully rotate the object around. But that's what Witch said also.
And I wouldn't mind the rotation, but I just can't think of really anything that I would actually want/need it to rotate. Except for maybe cars and statues.

[loripanori]

Yeah, in my game there's definitely a few second delay (3-4s maybe?) for some of the rotating images to appear at all, followed by the slow ass rotation...  Not all of the 3D previews are slow to load - the items with a bunch of recolours are the worst I think, whereas a fancy spinning tree (for example) appears instantly when I click on one in the catalog.  Anyway, the delayed load of the preview, plus the sloooow rotation once it appears, is making building/decorating annoyingly slow...  Which is just bizarre to me, because live mode runs really smoothly, and isn't laggy at all.  I had my fingers crossed that there might be a way to replace the rotating image with the static thumbnail that appears when you go into create-a-style, but maybe not.