@Cororon I tried to post and add pictures to your thread at the Nvidia forum but it wouldn't post. I kept getting an alert about spam, as if they think I'm a spammer for some reason. Anyway, just wondering if you've discovered anything new? I've just updated my Nvidia driver to 461.92, booted up a fresh game with no CC and the issues are still there.
@Cororon I tried to post and add pictures to your thread at the Nvidia forum but it wouldn't post. I kept getting an alert about spam, as if they think I'm a spammer for some reason. Anyway, just wondering if you've discovered anything new? I've just updated my Nvidia driver to 461.92, booted up a fresh game with no CC and the issues are still there.
Aw, that's weird. If you use a VPN service you could try to post with that turned off. Some IPs you get with a VPN are banned for spam on some sites. I've been checking the thread on the Nvidia forum daily, waiting for someone to post. I don't want to bump the thread when I don't have anything to add.
I still think simmers with this problem who have Twitter should contact SimGurus and point to this thread. I know they are occupied with Sims 4, but they did upgrade Sims 3 for Mac, and maybe someone will listen and pull the right strings... Here are some SimGurus:
My game has been affected but it doesn't bother me
One more thing.
I believe @KevinL5275 mentioned this mod before, but I couldn't help looking back on it.
Have any of you tried it - or have it in game - along with your Nvidia Graphics Card and feel like it makes a difference with all the pixelation issues? See top post here
Burnt Waffles "SweetFX"
I could see in the first picture of the sim that a lot of blockiness could be seen on her neck and cheeks so I'm thinking, maaaaaybe it doesn't work so well... Or it might make the issues look worse? It's just the "Features" listed sounded like it might be beneficial in masking the issues.
I'm not sure if I'm daring enough to try it because anything you gotta do in the Program Files kinda makes me nervous. (I know they suggest to back up everything, but still. ) And let's face it, I often don't know what I'm doing when it comes to mods like this.....
@emorrill I mean, I really don't think you need more evidence to know it doesn't provide improvement. The only difference I see between most of those pics is vibrancy. In fact, I'd argue the SweetFX makes the pixelation on the skin even more noticeable.
Also, I've mentioned multiple times that you can enable experimental features in Nvidia GeForce Experience, which will enable you to use Freestyle to apply filters to your game. Filters that could help minimize the appearance of the artifacts. Unlike ReShade, Freestyle can be used fullscreen, so you won't have that issue either.
But, really, the only thing I've noticed that makes a substantial difference is using an edited GraphicRules that ups the texture sizes for sim details for very high graphic settings. Alas, it ups memory usage, so isn't ideal for normal gameplay. But, I figure the most these artifacts will annoy people is when they are taking pics and making stories and stuff, so pretty simply, my suggestions are - use Freestyle settings to minimize the artifact appearance during normal gameplay, use an HQ edited GraphicRules file if you're making something that you want the pics or video of to be mostly free of said artifacts.
The only difference I see between most of those pics is vibrancy. In fact, I'd argue the SweetFX makes the pixelation on the skin even more noticeable.
^I really agree.
I do remember you mentioning GeForce Experience now, sorry my memory has been so wonky. I might ask you how to access the features of Freestyle if I can't figure it out on my own. I'm sure it's easy. (I do wish I was more computer literate...I will admit I'm much better than I used to be. )
Unlike ReShade, Freestyle can be used fullscreen, so you won't have that issue either.
Right on. 👍
I'll have to give it a try.
Thanks for the info.
Darn that the edited graphics rule can really roast your card...I've always found that to be a bummer.
@KevinL5275 You mentioned having an ATI graphics card right? That's probably why you aren't seeing the issues more than having the Sweet FX in your game. 👍
Based on what they were talking about in Cororon's thread on NRaas here.
@KevinL5275 You mentioned having an ATI graphics card right? That's probably why you aren't seeing the issues more than having the Sweet FX in your game. 👍
Based on what they were talking about in Cororon's thread on NRaas here.
I used to have an ATI 7770, now I have a Geforce 670
I'm a 48 year old married man, with a beautiful wife, a cat, and a simverted personality.My Sims 3 Pictures
I used to have an ATI 7770, now I have a Geforce 670
@KevinL5275 That's right......you said that too. Geez, curse my brain lately...
#depressionsucks
Why'd you switch?
I'm downloading GeForce Experience and will play around with it and let y'all know how that goes. If I'm slow getting back about it, it's just because I'm slow doing anything right now.
Spent most of today trying to figure out how to eliminate the blocky pixelated shadows on the neck of my sims.
Did what @puzzlezaddict said to do...to manually get my game to recognize my chipset. My Radeon R5 Integrated Graphics Chip - and then went into my AMD Graphics settings to see what I could do. Going to restart the game...and see if any of my
adjustments did anything to fix this problem.
I don't know how my son did it, but he managed to get a hold of a RTX3090. I'm dripping green with envy. But at least he'll build my computer when I get all the components for it.
Post edited by Nikkei_Simmer on
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
Amazing that your son managed to get that high-end card! Funny though that it might be worse for Sims 3 than a five years old mid-range card with old drivers.
My game has been affected but it doesn't bother me
Hey everyone.
So I went in game and played around with the Freestyle filters from GeForce Experience and none of them did anything to mask the issues. (Surprise, surprise. ) They were more photo enhancement features than anything. I even clicked to "Optimize" the game on the Home page and all that does is max out the game's graphics settings.
Maybe there's something I'm not doing right with the Freestyle settings or something I'm missing, but I poked around in all areas of it and from what I've seen: GeForce Experience does nothing to fix or mask the issues, but does add some nice features to enhance your gameplay and in game photos. So that's a nice touch.
At this point, I'm just giving up on it again. Until Nvidia decides to throw out an option to turn Dithering on or off in their graphics cards control panel. If not, hopefully someday I can land a nice ATI/AMD Radeon card at a good price. But for now, I'm just gonna love and enjoy my game because these issues consume me and I can't deal with it anymore.
I'll still follow this thread of course for any updates from y'all. Thanks everyone.
Here is my latest picture. I can see a little bit of problem in the doors, and that blue streak on the fender might just be the light reflection? It only bothers me when I zoom in.
I'm a 48 year old married man, with a beautiful wife, a cat, and a simverted personality.My Sims 3 Pictures
My game has been affected but it doesn't bother me
@Nikkei_Simmer Are your in-game graphics maxed out? Especially on Shadows and Sim Detail? If so, you shouldn't get the blocky shadows like you've been getting. (At least I'm pretty sure, only cause I would see that on my sims when my graphics were low on my old computer). Sorry if that's a silly question. I sure hope you can figure it out. 🤞
@KevinL5275 That Hummer or whatever it is looks pretty darn good in your game! I've got faint, odd colored lines that go over the entire vehicle in my game, as well as little pixel blocks. I'll have to snag a picture as proof later.
Pretty lady sim too.
Could you do me a favor? (Since you have SweetFX). Could you get a real close up picture of one of your sim's faces; a darker skinned sim would be best. Just so I can see if SweetFX really helps with hiding the pixels on sims faces cause in burntwaffles picture there on the download page I could see blocks all over that chica's face and neck. Your lady sim there - I was looking real hard - I couldn't see any of that. Then again she's standing in the dark and I also get the feeling you would've noticed something like that before. So yeah if you don't mind snapping a couple of close up pictures of Sim faces with SweetFX that would be great. No rush.
@Nikkei_Simmer Are your in-game graphics maxed out? Especially on Shadows and Sim Detail? If so, you shouldn't get the blocky shadows like you've been getting. (At least I'm pretty sure, only cause I would see that on my sims when my graphics were low on my old computer). Sorry if that's a silly question. I sure hope you can figure it out. 🤞
@emorrill - This is my current settings. But of course, I'm on an R5 graphics chip.
I FINALLY... managed to get my game to recognize my graphics chip and it started reading my settings at max. But that's going to have to do until I manage to get myself my gaming desktop "of my dreams".
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
My game has been affected but it doesn't bother me
@KevinL5275 Thanks for sharing.
Hee hee, I might've not seen the link to your sims pictures in your siggy... I did look through some of them and I'm really not seeing any horrible pixel blocks on any of your sims faces. (Like I said, I think that's something you would've noticed by now. ) I think I will give SweetFX a try just to see how it affects my game (and definitely make backups beforehand! 👍 )
I got a couple of pictures for you to show what I was talking about on my sim's vehicles and another graphics issue.
So I was in the save where everyone is residing at the girl's house and it was the truck at the guy's house that really had the color line issues, but I was too busy in this save - and maybe a little lazy - to switch over just to get a picture. I could've plopped down the same truck with the same coloring in the ladies save, but like I said...I was feeling lazy. Not completely of my own accord......
But anyhoo, so I snapped a shot of the car at the girl's house and it looks better than the truck does, but if you look right underneath the side mirror, you can see a block of a different color (it's faint):
^There's tiny faint pixel blocks all over it too when it should look smooth. Those blocks are always prevalent when you use a flat color on any surface. (Like what you find in the Misc pattern category). It is nice that textured patterns can mask it, but if you're like me, I don't want textures on all my surfaces, especially cars that don't have textured paint, you know?
Also I captured 3 different color lines on this single chair. *I really think the lighting got messed up from these driver updates as well and that's what causes this:
As well as nasty shadows on my sim's bare skin like this:
^I mean, yuck right!? Especially when he has such a beautiful chest. Anyway!
That's kinda why I'm thinking SweetFX might be a fix for that because it's basically a lighting enhancing mod. I'll never know until I try it out.
@Nikkei_Simmer I see. I hope someday you can get the gaming desktop of your dreams too. 🤗
This desktop is the gaming computer of my dreams. I got it specifically so I could run Sims 3 on max graphics with no problems. My game looked so gorgeous and pristine that first year, until the Dec 2019 Windows update and graphics driver update from Nvidia. And now it doesn't look that way anymore. Most of it is still pretty and pristine and I feel blessed and am indeed thankful (because the graphics still look better than what I was able to get on my old Windows 7 computer), but these little issues keep popping up around the corner whenever I'm playing or taking pictures and I'm like, "Ugh! I miss my old, pretty graphics."
Here's another issue that I was discussing with a friend that we feel may have also come along with some kind of Driver update in the past as well. Certain hairs going invisible at the tips while your sim is in front of a window...
(Look carefully at Sebastian's hair. Y'all know it's more spikey than that.)
^Isn't that crazy?
Now, I have noticed that it happens more with certain CC hairs (I have yet to snap a picture of EA hair in front of the glass) like the ones from Plumblob's Retexture Catalog and Kijiko Hairs.
Penny's hair there is from Newsea and it doesn't look as faded as Seb's, but you can see a little fade on the tip of her curly pigtail there.
I hope all of this is making sense.
Have any of you noticed your sim hairs doing that in your game too? if so, please share.
I feel a few of my CC items don't look as well in game anymore since the Win 10 and Driver updates and I keep wondering why that is? Guess it will forever be a mystery...
@Cororon i don’t have a VPN so I don’t know what the problem is. I’ll try again tonight.
Can everyone posting here PLEASE go to Nvidia forum to Cororon’s post and post your pics of the pixilation and color banding? We need to make some noise about this! Link is in the first post of this thread. We need to keep that thread bumped!
Comments
I wonder if it’s just desktops then
https://graceymanorsims3.tumblr.com/
Mine is a desktop build/maintained to play sims too so are we wondering if that's the issue now? Hopefully it cannot be that
I stupidly nearly grabbed my credit card to go a hunting lol
Aw, that's weird. If you use a VPN service you could try to post with that turned off. Some IPs you get with a VPN are banned for spam on some sites. I've been checking the thread on the Nvidia forum daily, waiting for someone to post. I don't want to bump the thread when I don't have anything to add.
I still think simmers with this problem who have Twitter should contact SimGurus and point to this thread. I know they are occupied with Sims 4, but they did upgrade Sims 3 for Mac, and maybe someone will listen and pull the right strings... Here are some SimGurus:
https://twitter.com/simgurugraham
https://twitter.com/simgurusteph
https://twitter.com/simgurulyndsay
https://twitter.com/simgurunick
https://twitter.com/simgurufrost
https://twitter.com/simgururad
Also, to those of you who have an ATI/AMD Graphics Card could you share with me which one you have? Thanks.
I believe @KevinL5275 mentioned this mod before, but I couldn't help looking back on it.
Have any of you tried it - or have it in game - along with your Nvidia Graphics Card and feel like it makes a difference with all the pixelation issues?
See top post here
Burnt Waffles "SweetFX"
I could see in the first picture of the sim that a lot of blockiness could be seen on her neck and cheeks so I'm thinking, maaaaaybe it doesn't work so well... Or it might make the issues look worse? It's just the "Features" listed sounded like it might be beneficial in masking the issues.
I'm not sure if I'm daring enough to try it because anything you gotta do in the Program Files kinda makes me nervous. (I know they suggest to back up everything, but still.
Let me know what y'all think.
@ZeeGee @Cororon @Emily4331 ?
Also, I've mentioned multiple times that you can enable experimental features in Nvidia GeForce Experience, which will enable you to use Freestyle to apply filters to your game. Filters that could help minimize the appearance of the artifacts. Unlike ReShade, Freestyle can be used fullscreen, so you won't have that issue either.
But, really, the only thing I've noticed that makes a substantial difference is using an edited GraphicRules that ups the texture sizes for sim details for very high graphic settings. Alas, it ups memory usage, so isn't ideal for normal gameplay. But, I figure the most these artifacts will annoy people is when they are taking pics and making stories and stuff, so pretty simply, my suggestions are - use Freestyle settings to minimize the artifact appearance during normal gameplay, use an HQ edited GraphicRules file if you're making something that you want the pics or video of to be mostly free of said artifacts.
I do remember you mentioning GeForce Experience now, sorry my memory has been so wonky.
I'll have to give it a try.
Thanks for the info.
Darn that the edited graphics rule can really roast your card...I've always found that to be a bummer.
@KevinL5275 You mentioned having an ATI graphics card right? That's probably why you aren't seeing the issues more than having the Sweet FX in your game. 👍
Based on what they were talking about in Cororon's thread on NRaas here.
I used to have an ATI 7770, now I have a Geforce 670
@KevinL5275 That's right......you said that too. Geez, curse my brain lately...
#depressionsucks
Why'd you switch?
I'm downloading GeForce Experience and will play around with it and let y'all know how that goes. If I'm slow getting back about it, it's just because I'm slow doing anything right now.
Did what @puzzlezaddict said to do...to manually get my game to recognize my chipset. My Radeon R5 Integrated Graphics Chip - and then went into my AMD Graphics settings to see what I could do. Going to restart the game...and see if any of my
adjustments did anything to fix this problem.
I don't know how my son did it, but he managed to get a hold of a RTX3090. I'm dripping green with envy. But at least he'll build my computer when I get all the components for it.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
Amazing that your son managed to get that high-end card! Funny though that it might be worse for Sims 3 than a five years old mid-range card with old drivers.
So I went in game and played around with the Freestyle filters from GeForce Experience and none of them did anything to mask the issues. (Surprise, surprise.
Maybe there's something I'm not doing right with the Freestyle settings or something I'm missing, but I poked around in all areas of it and from what I've seen: GeForce Experience does nothing to fix or mask the issues, but does add some nice features to enhance your gameplay and in game photos. So that's a nice touch.
At this point, I'm just giving up on it again. Until Nvidia decides to throw out an option to turn Dithering on or off in their graphics cards control panel. If not, hopefully someday I can land a nice ATI/AMD Radeon card at a good price. But for now, I'm just gonna love and enjoy my game because these issues consume me and I can't deal with it anymore.
I'll still follow this thread of course for any updates from y'all. Thanks everyone.
@KevinL5275 That Hummer or whatever it is
Pretty lady sim too.
Could you do me a favor?
That's an in-game Electrol 3X from Showtime. It came with the guy when I moved him in with her.
I think I posted this picture earlier in the thread but this is probably the closest I have to a "real close up" picture of one of my sims.
You can also click on my pic link in my sig and check out all my pics.
@emorrill - This is my current settings. But of course, I'm on an R5 graphics chip.
I FINALLY... managed to get my game to recognize my graphics chip and it started reading my settings at max. But that's going to have to do until I manage to get myself my gaming desktop "of my dreams".
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
Hee hee, I might've not seen the link to your sims pictures in your siggy...
I got a couple of pictures for you to show what I was talking about on my sim's vehicles and another graphics issue.
So I was in the save where everyone is residing at the girl's house and it was the truck at the guy's house that really had the color line issues, but I was too busy in this save - and maybe a little lazy - to switch over just to get a picture.
But anyhoo, so I snapped a shot of the car at the girl's house and it looks better than the truck does, but if you look right underneath the side mirror, you can see a block of a different color (it's faint):
^There's tiny faint pixel blocks all over it too when it should look smooth. Those blocks are always prevalent when you use a flat color on any surface. (Like what you find in the Misc pattern category). It is nice that textured patterns can mask it, but if you're like me, I don't want textures on all my surfaces, especially cars that don't have textured paint, you know?
Also I captured 3 different color lines on this single chair. *I really think the lighting got messed up from these driver updates as well and that's what causes this:
As well as nasty shadows on my sim's bare skin like this:
^I mean, yuck right!?
That's kinda why I'm thinking SweetFX might be a fix for that because it's basically a lighting enhancing mod. I'll never know until I try it out.
@Nikkei_Simmer I see. I hope someday you can get the gaming desktop of your dreams too. 🤗
This desktop is the gaming computer of my dreams. I got it specifically so I could run Sims 3 on max graphics with no problems. My game looked so gorgeous and pristine that first year, until the Dec 2019 Windows update and graphics driver update from Nvidia. And now it doesn't look that way anymore.
Here's another issue that I was discussing with a friend that we feel may have also come along with some kind of Driver update in the past as well. Certain hairs going invisible at the tips while your sim is in front of a window...
(Look carefully at Sebastian's hair. Y'all know it's more spikey than that.)
^Isn't that crazy?
Now, I have noticed that it happens more with certain CC hairs (I have yet to snap a picture of EA hair in front of the glass) like the ones from Plumblob's Retexture Catalog and Kijiko Hairs.
Penny's hair there is from Newsea and it doesn't look as faded as Seb's, but you can see a little fade on the tip of her curly pigtail there.
I hope all of this is making sense.
Have any of you noticed your sim hairs doing that in your game too? if so, please share.
I feel a few of my CC items don't look as well in game anymore since the Win 10 and Driver updates and I keep wondering why that is?
Keep calm and Sim on everyone.
Can everyone posting here PLEASE go to Nvidia forum to Cororon’s post and post your pics of the pixilation and color banding? We need to make some noise about this! Link is in the first post of this thread. We need to keep that thread bumped!