My game has been affected but it doesn't bother me
@Cororon I'm so sorry. I feel your pain - as do many others here - so you aren't alone. It frustrates me to NO end! Especially when I bought this computer just so I could play Sims 3 on maxed out graphics and have a gorgeous looking game! It did look gorgeous for a short time, and I was on top of the world, until the Dec 2019 system update (which included a driver update) and nothing has been the same since...
So many of us have exhausted all options and there's just not anything we can do...unless go back to playing the game on Windows 7... It royally su'cks. I even spent hours on the phone with Windows about these issues and...they just don't care.
One conclusion that's been made: Unless Nvidia allows the option to "allow Dithering" in the Control Panel, I think we're going to be dealing with these graphics issues from here on out.
@Cororon I'm so sorry. I feel your pain - as do many others here - so you aren't alone. It frustrates me to NO end! Especially when I bought this computer just so I could play Sims 3 on maxed out graphics and have a gorgeous looking game! It did look gorgeous for a short time, and I was on top of the world, until the Dec 2019 system update (which included a driver update) and nothing has been the same since...
So many of us have exhausted all options and there's just not anything we can do...unless go back to playing the game on Windows 7... It royally su'cks. I even spent hours on the phone with Windows about these issues and...they just don't care.
One conclusion that's been made: Unless Nvidia allows the option to "allow Dithering" in the Control Panel, I think we're going to be dealing with these graphics issues from here on out.
We shouldn't give up. I want EA to acknowledge that this is a problem at that they take it seriously. EA is a big company and they can put pressure on Nividia or Microsoft if they want to.
My game has been affected but it doesn't bother me
@Cororon That's the key part: If they want to. They haven't cared much about what the players of Sims 4 want, let alone asking companies like Nvidia to make the previous iteration go back to looking as beautiful as it did before... *Sigh* Sorry, I'm not trying to sound negative, it's just been one of those days.
Maybe someone will be the squeaky wheel enough for EA or Nvidia to give us the grease. 👍
@emorrill *hugs* How do the most engaged simmers contact EA? Through Twitter? Maybe simmers who have already been in contact with EA should try to get their attention.
There seems to be some kind of attempt to dither the graphics, probably by the game itself, but it's not successful. Look at the dot, line and cross patterns on the shirt here and compare them to the dither pattern "ordered" on the pic I borrowed from Wikipedia. It's not just compression artefacts. The compression artefacts look bad too, of course. These things combined make me wonder if there is something in the game's graphics settings that conflicts with either the graphic card's drivers or Windows 10?
If it is some kind of conflict, then perhaps it could be fixed with a small patch.
I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but those dithering-looking patterns are only seen in gameplay. In CAS there's still colourbanding, but the compression doesn't look as bad. I made the stockings in the second pic and I made the base texture very smooth. After saving it as DXT5 in production quality it had no compression artefacts. It's the game that adds them. Is it showing textures in the wrong resolution during game play on the highest settings?
I honestly gave up and just continues to play though it does make me sad because I bought a gaming desktop.Considering taking the pc back and going back to laptop since games the same either way.What baffles me is white lines that appear on objects but disappear if you turn off edge smoothing.
Those pics remind of how horrible my sims look in cas and in game via origin on windows 10. If you take a look at page 20 of this thread you will see I have posted pics of just how horrible my sims look in cas/game and then how good they look on windows 7 with the disc version of the game instead. As for other texture issues other players appear to be experiencing mine seem okay it's just the sims that are awful and why in the end I gave up playing the origin version of the game on 10 as I could just not ignore just how bad my sims looked and carry on playing. My sims 2 UC game is perfect on windows 10 via origin and that's the thing I cannot understand. Sorry i have said this a few times on this thread because I cannot understand how an older game can look better than the later one with the same graphics card.
My game has been affected but it doesn't bother me
@Cororon Thanks for the hug.
I honestly don't know how to properly contact EA anymore. I think they have the EA games website still which is the best way to reach them if I remember... But the work around is ridiculous. https://help.ea.com/en/contact-us/
These things combined make me wonder if there is something in the game's graphics settings that conflicts with either the graphic card's drivers or Windows 10?
^That may very well be the case. Great observation! 👍
It could totally be fixed with a small patch, I'm sure of it! If EA will care and do it...
That CAS comparison pic you did is awesome, I see all those nasty blocks on the clothes in live mode as well. True they aren't as prominent in CAS, but my sims have jagged edges around themselves in CAS and that was never there until all this windows 10 update junk.
Look real closely at this picture, you'll see the jagged edges all around her. (Especially on her arms)
^If I zoom in closer they kinda go away. Oh and see the nasty shadow there on her left arm? I've been getting those nasties in CAS since this whole fiasco as well. And forgive her Zombie eyes, I dunno why they suddenly showed up on her and I was going to ask about it in another thread.
Is it showing textures in the wrong resolution during game play on the highest settings?
^That may be possible as well and I have yet to test that, but I just might actually do it now that you've mentioned it.
Thanks for all this great info!
What baffles me is white lines that appear on objects but disappear if you turn off edge smoothing.
^Really?? But then if you disable Edge Smoothing do your sim outlines (of their bodies) and outlines of objects look jagged? I can't STAND that! (^See comment above to Cororon) Should not even be an issue anymore on the gaming computers we have... *sigh*
My sims 2 UC game is perfect on windows 10 via origin and that's the thing I cannot understand. Sorry i have said this a few times on this thread because I cannot understand how an older game can look better than the later one with the same graphics card.
^I think I noticed that too when I was playing Sims 2 on here and I don't understand it either. It upsets me.
Before bed I set DSR-factors to 4x and DSR-smootness to 0 in the Nvidia Control Panel and started the game. Now the Nvidia drivers played the game at 5k and scaled it down to my native resolution 2560x1440. Wow, how sharp and crisp everything was! Now if I had created a 5k custom resolution and played at that for screenshots, they would be 5120x2880 pixels. The pictures would be easier to edit in Photoshop, to get everything right. Then cropped or resized if needed. If you have a 1080p monitor then DSR-factors at 4x would be 4k.
@emorrill Anti-aliasing/edge smoothing is turned off in CAS/CASt so it's normal to see jagged edges.
Those pics remind of how horrible my sims look in cas and in game via origin on windows 10. If you take a look at page 20 of this thread you will see I have posted pics of just how horrible my sims look in cas/game and then how good they look on windows 7 with the disc version of the game instead. As for other texture issues other players appear to be experiencing mine seem okay it's just the sims that are awful and why in the end I gave up playing the origin version of the game on 10 as I could just not ignore just how bad my sims looked and carry on playing. My sims 2 UC game is perfect on windows 10 via origin and that's the thing I cannot understand. Sorry i have said this a few times on this thread because I cannot understand how an older game can look better than the later one with the same graphics card.
It's interesting how this problem affects the sims for some players but only the clothes and objects for others. I wonder what's causing this? Why Sims 2 looks better for you, I don't know, but I think they handle the graphics differently. Maybe Sims 2 is more DirectX dependent, and then, of course, Microsoft have kept it working fine through all updates and Nvidia just wouldn't dare breaking it.
I recommend that more of us simmers register on the Nvidia forum to complain and nag, nag, nag. Nvidia have updated their drivers frequently since I got the GTX 1060 card (uhm, not because I got it, but anyway...) so their team is quite busy and working hard, and it's not impossible that they start working on correcting this problem.
@Cororon I'm sorry you're experiencing this issue too. The pictures you posted show exactly the pixilated junk that we get. It sounds like you really understand the mechanics behind this and might could figure out a solution and that is hopeful. It is so strange that after all this time suddenly you are experiencing it too. Way back on this thread (I'll try to find a link and edit this post when I'm done) someone figured out it had something to do with textures and Nvidia dithering, but I remember thinking it had something to do with Windows also so that wasn't the complete answer. I also posted a link to a complaint form on the Nvidia forum for all of us who had problems to fill out. I'll try to find the link to that also and see if it's still active.
Before bed I set DSR-factors to 4x and DSR-smootness to 0 in the Nvidia Control Panel and started the game. Now the Nvidia drivers played the game at 5k and scaled it down to my native resolution 2560x1440. Wow, how sharp and crisp everything was! Now if I had created a 5k custom resolution and played at that for screenshots, they would be 5120x2880 pixels. The pictures would be easier to edit in Photoshop, to get everything right. Then cropped or resized if needed. If you have a 1080p monitor then DSR-factors at 4x would be 4k.
Wait, did you find a fix?! Hope so! I'm going to try these settings and boot up my game.
ETA: Oh and the reason we thought it wasn't entirely Nvidia's drivers is because rolling back to a previous version of the driver, even really old ones, didn't work.
@Cororon I'm sorry you're experiencing this issue too. The pictures you posted show exactly the pixilated junk that we get. It sounds like you really understand the mechanics behind this and might could figure out a solution and that is hopeful. It is so strange that after all this time suddenly you are experiencing it too. Way back on this thread (I'll try to find a link and edit this post when I'm done) someone figured out it had something to do with textures and Nvidia dithering, but I remember thinking it had something to do with Windows also so that wasn't the complete answer. I also posted a link to a complaint form on the Nvidia forum for all of us who had problems to fill out. I'll try to find the link to that also and see if it's still active.
*hugs*
It's frustrating, but I'm also happy to be in the same boat with you all now. I like investigating things and solving problems, and now when I have this ¤%#& myself it's easier to experience what's going on.
Before bed I set DSR-factors to 4x and DSR-smootness to 0 in the Nvidia Control Panel and started the game. Now the Nvidia drivers played the game at 5k and scaled it down to my native resolution 2560x1440. Wow, how sharp and crisp everything was! Now if I had created a 5k custom resolution and played at that for screenshots, they would be 5120x2880 pixels. The pictures would be easier to edit in Photoshop, to get everything right. Then cropped or resized if needed. If you have a 1080p monitor then DSR-factors at 4x would be 4k.
Wait, did you find a fix?! Hope so! I'm going to try these settings and boot up my game.
It's not a fix, but it makes the game sharper and crisper. It still uses the same textures, and the artefacts are still there. With the DSR-factors at 4x the graphics card will put out four times the amount of pixels, and scale down the picture to fit your monitor's resolution. You might get fps drops if your card isn't fast enough. And your screenshots will look the same as before if you don't increase your monitor's resolution as well. That would make the GUI much smaller. But it can be useful temporarily for those special screenshots.
I started a new thread on the NVIDIA forum, in the Game-Ready Drivers section. If you are a member there, hop in and show support and your take on this.
I just looked back at some older pictures from before all this and compare this picture to the one above...
Shaper, cleaner edges:
The jaggies are more noticeable if the contrast between the sim and background is big or if you have a large screen with low resolution (like 1920x1080 on a 27" screen) because then the distance between the pixel is greater.
Did you have anti-aliasing turned on in Nvidia Control Panel back then? Maybe it overrode the Edge smoothing in the game.
My game has been affected but it doesn't bother me
So I did some testing to see if lowering the graphics in the game's graphics settings might somehow be the fix to getting rid of those awful pixels that show up on sims clothing and the plain walls... I mean, Windows 10 is strange and it was worth a shot right?
-I turned Edge Smoothing Off and honestly, it made the edges on everything, including sims, look more jagged in my game. Nope!
-Lowering the Texture Detail did nothing.
(I had a feeling lowering Sim Detail would make the pixels on sims faces worse in shadows so I didn't even try it.)
-Turned off Advanced Rendering and yeeeeeah, the outdoors looked like one big green glob and no way am I playing my game like that! (No offense to those who do for performance purposes. )
In fact, turning off AR actually increased the nasty pixel look on Maru's pants here...
...and see how much better her pants look when I turned it back on. (However Alex's pants then looked worse.)
I dunno. 🤷♀️
Dunno if this is helpful to anyone so I thought I would share.
It's frustrating, but I'm also happy to be in the same boat with you all now. I like investigating things and solving problems, and now when I have this ¤%#& myself it's easier to experience what's going on.
@Cororon Thanks for the hugs and we're SO happy to have you onboard investigating. I've added a link to your post on the Nvidia forum to the first post on this thread so it doesn't get lost in all these pages. I've posted over at Nvidia and will add pics tomorrow when I'm at my other puter.
@emorrill Interesting test! Simmers have tried experimenting the the settings both in the game and in Nvidia Control Panel before and couldn't find a solution that fixed this, sadly.
Are you playing on 1024x768 or are you resizing the pics? 1024x768 is a rare resolution these days when everyone has widescreen.
Thank you everyone for your further info on this. I am honestly so sad right now that only the sims 3 game appears to be so badly affected this way and while I can play with discs perfectly fine I still long for the day I when I could just fire the game up in origin and it be as graphically beautiful as it used to be..
I think you guys keep forgetting that this is directly caused by DXT compression. The fact is, this is a very old method of texture compression and will continue to look bad when up against more and more modern GPUs/GPU Drivers/etc. Because these modern drivers aren't concerned with support of archaic texture compression. This isn't broken. DXT compression just looks bad, especially when GPU drivers don't care to mask it anymore. Using uncompressed textures isn't a good idea for a game that can barely allocate enough memory for how big it is already, and The Sims 3 can't handle more modern texture compression (I've tried using BC7 compressed textures), so the only way EA can "fix" this is to make a remastered Sims 3 with better, more modern texture compression.
Otherwise, your only option is to mask it on your end as much as you can. There have been many suggestions throughout this thread to help minimize it. Because that's exactly what something like dithering does, it just masks the grossness of DXT compression. The reason it's more noticeable on lower settings is because those settings tell the game "hey, render the smaller texture sizes" and the smaller textures have already lost detail from being small, so the look of DXT vomit is just that much worse. That's also the reason it's less noticeable when you're in CAS, or use an HQ GraphicRules, because those are rendering higher resolution images which are already better quality.
And, actually, some of you have pointed this out even if you didn't realize. All EA textures in TS3 (to my knowledge) are 1024x1024. One of you noted that it doesn't look as bad on CC skin and the reason is that the creators likely used higher resolution textures to begin with. In a battle between 1024x1024 vs 2048x2048, 2048 is going to win in quality whether compressed or not because it looked better to begin with. But, the issue is that these smaller, compressed textures are necessary because TS3 is old and literally can't use enough memory to render larger or uncompressed textures. (for an extended period of time, at least. Because they will likely spike memory at some point and cause the game to crash).
So that was a lot of words to just say: Games normal textures are old and poopy, try some filters or something.
@Emily4331 DXT compression is only a part of it, and small compression artefacts have been seen in the game since the beginning. I sometimes work on textures with the base textures saved as DXT5 at production or highest settings, and they show no to minimal compression artefacts. But in game they now get blocky artefacts with dither patterns that weren't present before the Nvidia driver update. Same with the colour banding. There has always been a small amount of it, but it has gotten much worse and especially on clothes and sometimes also on the skin of sims.
I wouldn't have reacted if the graphics were the same as before. I was OK with the normal compression artefacts for 11 years, and it was first after installing the latest Nvidia driver things got worse. It happened basically over night, so Sims 3 being an older game is not an explanation.
The reason it's more noticeable on lower settings is because those settings tell the game "hey, render the smaller texture sizes" and the smaller textures have already lost detail from being small, so the look of DXT vomit is just that much worse.
Yes, when you set to lower graphics setttings the game then chooses the smaller textures from the mipmaps. All my graphics settings are set to highest. I wrote earlier "After saving it as DXT5 in production quality it had no compression artefacts. It's the game that adds them. Is it showing textures in the wrong resolution during game play on the highest settings?" because I suspected that the game now uses the next-to-largest textures, 512x512, in gameplay but the biggest, the highest resolution, ones in CAS. It shouldn't do that to sims and objects that are close to the screen.
Comments
So many of us have exhausted all options and there's just not anything we can do...unless go back to playing the game on Windows 7... It royally su'cks. I even spent hours on the phone with Windows about these issues and...they just don't care.
One conclusion that's been made: Unless Nvidia allows the option to "allow Dithering" in the Control Panel, I think we're going to be dealing with these graphics issues from here on out.
We shouldn't give up. I want EA to acknowledge that this is a problem at that they take it seriously. EA is a big company and they can put pressure on Nividia or Microsoft if they want to.
Maybe someone will be the squeaky wheel enough for EA or Nvidia to give us the grease. 👍
There seems to be some kind of attempt to dither the graphics, probably by the game itself, but it's not successful. Look at the dot, line and cross patterns on the shirt here and compare them to the dither pattern "ordered" on the pic I borrowed from Wikipedia. It's not just compression artefacts. The compression artefacts look bad too, of course. These things combined make me wonder if there is something in the game's graphics settings that conflicts with either the graphic card's drivers or Windows 10?
If it is some kind of conflict, then perhaps it could be fixed with a small patch.
https://graceymanorsims3.tumblr.com/
Those pics remind of how horrible my sims look in cas and in game via origin on windows 10. If you take a look at page 20 of this thread you will see I have posted pics of just how horrible my sims look in cas/game and then how good they look on windows 7 with the disc version of the game instead. As for other texture issues other players appear to be experiencing mine seem okay it's just the sims that are awful and why in the end I gave up playing the origin version of the game on 10 as I could just not ignore just how bad my sims looked and carry on playing. My sims 2 UC game is perfect on windows 10 via origin and that's the thing I cannot understand. Sorry i have said this a few times on this thread because I cannot understand how an older game can look better than the later one with the same graphics card.
I honestly don't know how to properly contact EA anymore. I think they have the EA games website still which is the best way to reach them if I remember... But the work around is ridiculous.
https://help.ea.com/en/contact-us/ ^That may very well be the case. Great observation! 👍
It could totally be fixed with a small patch, I'm sure of it! If EA will care and do it...
That CAS comparison pic you did is awesome, I see all those nasty blocks on the clothes in live mode as well. True they aren't as prominent in CAS, but my sims have jagged edges around themselves in CAS and that was never there until all this windows 10 update junk.
Look real closely at this picture, you'll see the jagged edges all around her. (Especially on her arms)
^If I zoom in closer they kinda go away. Oh and see the nasty shadow there on her left arm? I've been getting those nasties in CAS since this whole fiasco as well. And forgive her Zombie eyes, I dunno why they suddenly showed up on her and I was going to ask about it in another thread.
Thanks for all this great info!
@GraceyManor ^Really?? But then if you disable Edge Smoothing do your sim outlines (of their bodies) and outlines of objects look jagged? I can't STAND that!
@SPARKY1922 ^I think I noticed that too when I was playing Sims 2 on here and I don't understand it either. It upsets me.
Ok, I looked real closely at this picture of Haley, and then I forgot what I was supposed to do next.
@emorrill Anti-aliasing/edge smoothing is turned off in CAS/CASt so it's normal to see jagged edges.
It's interesting how this problem affects the sims for some players but only the clothes and objects for others. I wonder what's causing this? Why Sims 2 looks better for you, I don't know, but I think they handle the graphics differently. Maybe Sims 2 is more DirectX dependent, and then, of course, Microsoft have kept it working fine through all updates and Nvidia just wouldn't dare breaking it.
I recommend that more of us simmers register on the Nvidia forum to complain and nag, nag, nag. Nvidia have updated their drivers frequently since I got the GTX 1060 card (uhm, not because I got it, but anyway...) so their team is quite busy and working hard, and it's not impossible that they start working on correcting this problem.
Wait, did you find a fix?! Hope so! I'm going to try these settings and boot up my game.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/geforce-graphics-cards/5/395894/horrible-color-banding-texture-handling-and-dither/
The link to the form to fill out for Nvidia:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSewHJk1xP-C5elLBRCDLTLpNQZ9eiefrdZmUGP9hMCN6gKssA/viewform
ETA: Oh and the reason we thought it wasn't entirely Nvidia's drivers is because rolling back to a previous version of the driver, even really old ones, didn't work.
*hugs*
It's frustrating, but I'm also happy to be in the same boat with you all now. I like investigating things and solving problems, and now when I have this ¤%#& myself it's easier to experience what's going on.
It's not a fix, but it makes the game sharper and crisper. It still uses the same textures, and the artefacts are still there. With the DSR-factors at 4x the graphics card will put out four times the amount of pixels, and scale down the picture to fit your monitor's resolution. You might get fps drops if your card isn't fast enough. And your screenshots will look the same as before if you don't increase your monitor's resolution as well. That would make the GUI much smaller. But it can be useful temporarily for those special screenshots.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/438312/sims-3-colour-banding-and-artefacts-with-nvidia-dr/
Her zombie eyes didn't bother you then?
@Cororon ^Oh. But the thing is I swear my sims looked sharper with nice fine edges in there before this whole fiasco. I know it.
I just looked back at some older pictures from before all this and compare this picture to the one above...
Shaper, cleaner edges:
Or maybe you don't see a difference, but I totally do...
I has a sad.
Thank you for starting that thread on Nvidia!
Zombie eyes? You mean the dark circles? No I just figured that was makeup.
The jaggies are more noticeable if the contrast between the sim and background is big or if you have a large screen with low resolution (like 1920x1080 on a 27" screen) because then the distance between the pixel is greater.
Did you have anti-aliasing turned on in Nvidia Control Panel back then? Maybe it overrode the Edge smoothing in the game.
CAS jaggies, enlarged:
-I turned Edge Smoothing Off and honestly, it made the edges on everything, including sims, look more jagged in my game. Nope!
-Lowering the Texture Detail did nothing.
(I had a feeling lowering Sim Detail would make the pixels on sims faces worse in shadows so I didn't even try it.)
-Turned off Advanced Rendering and yeeeeeah, the outdoors looked like one big green glob and no way am I playing my game like that!
In fact, turning off AR actually increased the nasty pixel look on Maru's pants here...
...and see how much better her pants look when I turned it back on. (However Alex's pants then looked worse.)
I dunno. 🤷♀️
Dunno if this is helpful to anyone so I thought I would share.
^I'm almost positive I didn't. I never messed with the control panel much back then.
Thanks for the close up of the CAS jaggies. I so dislike.
@Cororon Thanks for the hugs and we're SO happy to have you onboard investigating.
Let's make some noise!!
Are you playing on 1024x768 or are you resizing the pics? 1024x768 is a rare resolution these days when everyone has widescreen.
The ground on the first pic reminds me of Sims 4.
Otherwise, your only option is to mask it on your end as much as you can. There have been many suggestions throughout this thread to help minimize it. Because that's exactly what something like dithering does, it just masks the grossness of DXT compression.
And, actually, some of you have pointed this out even if you didn't realize. All EA textures in TS3 (to my knowledge) are 1024x1024. One of you noted that it doesn't look as bad on CC skin and the reason is that the creators likely used higher resolution textures to begin with. In a battle between 1024x1024 vs 2048x2048, 2048 is going to win in quality whether compressed or not because it looked better to begin with.
So that was a lot of words to just say: Games normal textures are old and poopy, try some filters or something.
I wouldn't have reacted if the graphics were the same as before. I was OK with the normal compression artefacts for 11 years, and it was first after installing the latest Nvidia driver things got worse. It happened basically over night, so Sims 3 being an older game is not an explanation.
Yes, when you set to lower graphics setttings the game then chooses the smaller textures from the mipmaps. All my graphics settings are set to highest. I wrote earlier "After saving it as DXT5 in production quality it had no compression artefacts. It's the game that adds them. Is it showing textures in the wrong resolution during game play on the highest settings?" because I suspected that the game now uses the next-to-largest textures, 512x512, in gameplay but the biggest, the highest resolution, ones in CAS. It shouldn't do that to sims and objects that are close to the screen.