Issue with snow opacity?

Linamints

I'm having an issue in my current world with snow opacity on a couple lots. The top image is what the ground looks like on my residential lot and the neighboring empty lot, an the bottom image is what snow is like on the last residential lot I lived on. It's not a huge issue but it bugs me that my own lot doesn't have heavy snow like almost every other lot in the world.

Does anyone know what might be causing this?

kellycot1

Which world is this? If I recall correctly, the game has issues with snow on the lots that fall below or are close to the water level. Aurora Skies is known for this problem, due to the geothermal lake, but others may have it too.

It is hard to tell from your images, but the snow will appear thinner and slightly grey. If that's your problem, the only fix I know of is tweaking the water levels in CAW (a massive pain!) or moving to another lot.

Hope you figure out what's happening. Happy Simming!

Linamints

@Kellycot1 This is a custom world of my own creation. Is there any way to check whether that is the issue easily in CAW? Like a height number somewhere?
I'm thinking that might possibly be the issue since this is a low lying area in the world.

Thank you for the response.

kellycot1

I haven't heard of anyone working out exact height numbers for the land and water level to prevent this (I'd be all over that!), but you can certainly search for it. Best bet would be at Mod the Sims.

As far as I know, the solution is through trial and error. Try lowering the water level in a separate save of your CAW files (probably the easier option for testing), or try raising that bit of land (sounds harder to me). Even if you just do a rough job at first, check whether it resolves the problem in game and go from there about finessing it. Definitely not ideal, but this is one of those things EA never managed to fix.

Here's a thread where someone fixed the problem in Aurora Skies: https://forums.thesims.com/en_us/discussion/680042/how-to-fix-the-snow-in-aurora-skies-o

I wish I could bring better news or an easier solution. Good luck with the fix!

Linamints

Thank you very much for the reply and the link to the tutorial. Lowering the water level looks like it'd be easy enough, I might go that route if it doesn't impact my lakes and ponds too much. If it does I can just level out this area a little bit. From map view it seems to affect just this small little dip in the landscape but the rest of the world seems fine.

Thank you again for your help ^^.

kellycot1

You're welcome! I hope it goes smoothly for you.

As a warning, I believe lowering the water level MAY impact the ability to have diving lots. I've never gotten that far in CAW to worry about these specifics, so I don't know what doesn't work if the water is too shallow.

If you have IP and want to put dive lots in your world, it would be a good idea to look into how high the water level must be or, while you're testing other things, test the dive lots too.

EDIT: As for your ponds and lakes, if lowering the sea level affects them, you could try putting in a water plane object. Again, not something I've actually done, but there are quite a few tutorials around the forums here and at Mod the Sims.