I'm on 456.71 and have no problems, but I get random BSODs and the minidumps give an unclear reason for the crashes and only says that the driver is ntoskrnl.exe and crash address ntoskrnl.exe+3f5a80. I have googled and googled and people just say that it could be any driver or a faulty RAM stick. I have run MemTest86 and my RAM passed with no errors. So now I'll try to update the drivers, and the graphics card one is one of them. I'm scared of installing a newer driver that might cause this colour banding problem.
Edit: Ok, I installed the latest driver and my game looks as before. No horrible colour banding.
@Cororon Glad you were able to update with no issues. The problem started for me in December 2019 but reverting to an earlier driver didn’t help so still not entirely sure what happened. I was determined to find a fix but exhausted every resource (and many who tried to help 😬) I even got big ideas about switching to Linux (lol) but finally gave up and accepted it.
I got those pixelation issue on a disc version as well but it was installed on Windows 8 machine with ATI Radeon HD 4650 back in the day, disc version on my Win10 machine works fine though.
I get terrible graphics on my digital S3 game playing through origin on my windows 10 desktop PC but not through my S3 disc game on a seperate windows 7 hard drive (non internet) in the same desktop.
I can play sims 2 UC on windows 10 no issues at all and of course S4 but when i read from other players that keeping origin on windows 10 was causing issues for the 3 disc game I decided at the time it was better to remove my 3 game to the disc version of the game to a non internet windows 7 hard drive. I can still play my sims 2 UC and occasional sims 4 game through origin on windows 10. I hope that makes sense lol Could you tell me if you have origin installed on your windows 10 while you are playing sims 3 disc version of the game and if you have any other version of the sims games installed on 10m as well?
@SPARKY1922 Yes I do have Origin installed on my system as well as I still have Sims 4, I have another version of Sims 3 (a steam version, but currently not installed) and when I tried that version back in 2018 I didn't have the pixelation issue either.
I have the origin version of S3 on win 10 which is graphically unplayable now but I also bought the whole of the 3 series on steam when they had a sale a couple years ago and when my origin game started playing up I reverted to steam and experienced the exact same issues I was having with origin S3. The more we discuss issues as players the more I realise it's like a roll of the dice as to whether our games appear to work or not-)
So you are a very lucky player if neither win10, origin or your graphic card causes you any issues then. I am not envious by nature but I am when I read that back
So you are a very lucky player if neither win10, origin or your graphic card causes you any issues then. I am not envious by nature but I am when I read that back
^Same.
I am playing only on disk on my Windows 10 gaming computer here and I have pretty much all the issues mentioned. So it can happen with disk playing as well. Just wanted to throw that out there.
Then some of the issue has to be which version of windows OS the game is being played on then as although I haven't tried my disc game on windows 10 yet because I thought origin or a combo of origin/windows 10 might naff the game up as soon as I placed the disc game on a windows 7 hard drive it plays beautifully without all the graphical issues I experienced when playing digital via origin. Other players have also mentioned that their game has improved when playing on an older OS so maybe it's the OS thats causing most problems for players then and not whatever version of the game being played?
I also tried making the game compatible with earlier versions of the OP but that and a 1000 other things i tried never worked either
I have personally tried using the guide you link to and it did not work for me but I am pleased it works for you and hopefully it might work for others too. I have also tried DDU and loads of other things that never worked over the course of a whole year so now just play on disc but would really love to be able to play on digital. I have a reasonable PC setup and my Graphics card is the Nvidia Geforce 1070. Nvidia used to try and help until they realized i could play sims 2 without any issues and told me it's not my card at fault when it's fine for the 2 series lol
My game has been affected but it doesn't bother me
@SPARKY1922 Oh it's totally the Windows 10 OS that causes all the issues. My issues began with the Dec 2019 Win 10 update 1903 (the same with the OP @ZeeGee ) and I was on the disks then as well. I reverted to a previous driver, but that didn't do anything and updating my drivers made it worse. I don't even remember which driver I'm on at the moment. But yeah, the OP and I have exhausted all options out there to fix it...
We concluded that Nvidia taking away Dithering and not allowing it to be enabled in the Control Panel could be a big reason for the banding and pixels on walls and clothes as well. I hope if people put up enough of a stink, they'll roll out a driver update for Dithering to be enabled. We can only hope. 🤞
If I could go back in time, I would disable the automatic updates at that time of the Dec 2019 update and never update my computer again. Then again, I went a LONG time without updating after that incident and my computer began to run super SLOW... So eventually I had to bring it up to date.
I've just learned to deal with it and find ways to change textures on walls and clothes so I don't see all the blocky pixelation and try to not capture flaws on certain things when I'm taking pictures for my story. It works and I'm happy. (Still get frustrated sometimes about it, but I love the game too much to just quit because there's some graphics issues. It's better than the 8 and 16 bit graphics right? )
My game looked beautiful playing with disks on my Windows 7 computer. Never any graphics issues like the Win 10 update brought on this computer. I couldn't max out my in game graphics on it though as it would slow my game way down, but it was still beautiful anyway. Don't know if that's helpful to share, but thought I would just in case.
What really peeves me about the whole situation is that with a tiny little bit off tweaking my S2 ultimate game through origin/windows 10 has fabulous graphics.. So I can never wrap my head around why my sims 3 game is so bad..Now I dare not upgrade or touch anything on this desktop in case it messes with something else again lol as both my win 7 OP and 10 are on separate hard drives in the same desktop and I just flick from one to another. I am in the process of trying to compile all my disorganized game saves/mods/cc into some sort of order on an external head drive just in case anything breaks down
My game has been affected but it doesn't bother me
Question to all of you whose games have been affected by the Windows 10 update ridiculousness...
Have you noticed more glare on your Sims glasses? I am seeing a lot more of it since the Windows 10 updates (after Dec 2019).
It looks awful...you can't see their pretty eyes and makes taking good pictures difficult.
Example pics here:
Another angle:
Hers don't look as bad here, but they've been bad in other rooms depending on the lighting:
I read somewhere that debug lighting can cause nasty glare on sim glasses, but...I've never really noticed debug lighting doing that before, so... 🤷♀️
@emorrill I haven't noticed TBH. I rarely put glasses on my Sims unless they are elders, so that's probably why. I'll pay more attention next time I am playing.
@emorrill, @Kynan - Yep... Photographers have that complaint all the time. We have to use technique to get rid of lens-flare on glasses.
1. Do not have the sun at your (the photographer's) back where it glares right into the face of the subject. Shoot at angles.
2. Position your sim's heads away from the windows where there is a lot of light. Shoot parallel to the windows.
3. Have your sims take their glasses off. :evil grin:
Yes...that's how we photographers have to deal with lighting... No lighting mods available to cut down glare.
I'll test it in game to see if it affects the sims there in any way - or whether the lighting is any way reminiscent of the way real-life lighting works.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
My game has been affected but it doesn't bother me
@Kynan Thank you for looking into it and snapping a picture. Man, that's awful! I swear the glare was never that bad on sims glasses before the Windows 10 updates because I've played a few sims over the years who wore glasses and never noticed such bad glare...being outside or inside by windows even. (And I notice imperfections like that. )
I have noticed that hair (especially EA hair) looks shinier in CAS now due to the updates so maybe the glasses have been affected to? I dunno...
@Nikkei_Simmer Lol! I did have the thought that that's what photographers have to deal with in real life, and when taking pics of my sims with glasses I've shot at angles and all that stuff to avoid it, but it's been hard to lately. My little family and I snapped a silly selfie on the couch and lo and behold the tv screen glare was on my glasses! D'oh! I should've remembered to remove them.
I wish there was a mod to fix it on the sims...
@Nikkei_Simmer Lol! I did have the thought that that's what photographers have to deal with in real life, and when taking pics of my sims with glasses I've shot at angles and all that stuff to avoid it, but it's been hard to lately. My little family and I snapped a silly selfie on the couch and lo and behold the tv screen glare was on my glasses! D'oh! I should've remembered to remove them.
I wish there was a mod to fix it on the sims...
@emorrill, Just remember that there's always some reflection...no matter what. Because number one, you're shooting through a partially reflective surface...and there's always some light reflection that will happen (if your subjects have glasses on). I think that what you have is pretty mild and I can still see Harvey's and Maru's (is it?) eyes. That's a mild reflection compared to some of the shots that I've seen from some photographs that I've seen in real life photography.
I'm not sure where @Kynan's shot was from, in terms of where the angle of the sun in direct relation to the subject was so I can't really comment on that shot.
Notice how in this shot, the subject of the shot has NO flare on his glasses and the sun is out but at a direct 90 degrees to the angle of the shot.
Ultimately though...the best way to shoot through glasses...is not to have to shoot through glasses. Sims, fortunately, aren't picky like REAL human beings and you can tell them to "take it off..." without them belly-aching about. "I don't look good without my glasses on...but but...it makes me look so much more distinguished." - It's not going to matter how distinguished your glasses make you look, bub, if you can't see your eyes in the photograph!
Yes, we photographers (like chefs) are a touchy lot.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
I caught the reflection in the glasses intentionally so that @emorrill could see the results in my game. It would have defeated the purpose to move the camera around to avoid capturing the reflection when that is what she was concerned about.
ETA: @emorrill YW for checking. I was curious myself after you pointed it out.
@Kynan - Yes...I know that the glare is there and that it was your intention to capture it. My question is "how did it come about?" Sometimes there is no way to remove glare from your image...but also photographic principles come into play here as well. If you're going to shoot with the sun (the Sims sun is just like the RL sun and will behave the same way) behind your back or the sun directly into the camera lens (in this case your screen-capture key) - remember that you're treating this like a camera - taking screen caps.
My goal is to find a solution so that the glare can be reduced enough so that it won't become a problem but in order to do this, those who find this problem are going to have to find a way to use technique in capturing screencaps to reduce that glare.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
And I'm not happy. I wonder why it happened so suddenly? I updated the nVidia driver in mid February and everything was fine. And I don't think Windows 10 has updated since yesterday. The only thing I did today was disabling the Game Bar in Windows and trying a mod, but I don't think the mod caused it (it just removed some effects from the game, and removing the mod didn't change anything).
Comments
I'm on 456.71 and have no problems, but I get random BSODs and the minidumps give an unclear reason for the crashes and only says that the driver is ntoskrnl.exe and crash address ntoskrnl.exe+3f5a80. I have googled and googled and people just say that it could be any driver or a faulty RAM stick. I have run MemTest86 and my RAM passed with no errors. So now I'll try to update the drivers, and the graphics card one is one of them. I'm scared of installing a newer driver that might cause this colour banding problem.
Edit: Ok, I installed the latest driver and my game looks as before. No horrible colour banding.
I get terrible graphics on my digital S3 game playing through origin on my windows 10 desktop PC but not through my S3 disc game on a seperate windows 7 hard drive (non internet) in the same desktop.
I can play sims 2 UC on windows 10 no issues at all and of course S4 but when i read from other players that keeping origin on windows 10 was causing issues for the 3 disc game I decided at the time it was better to remove my 3 game to the disc version of the game to a non internet windows 7 hard drive. I can still play my sims 2 UC and occasional sims 4 game through origin on windows 10. I hope that makes sense lol Could you tell me if you have origin installed on your windows 10 while you are playing sims 3 disc version of the game and if you have any other version of the sims games installed on 10m as well?
outrun / blog / tunglr
I have the origin version of S3 on win 10 which is graphically unplayable now but I also bought the whole of the 3 series on steam when they had a sale a couple years ago and when my origin game started playing up I reverted to steam and experienced the exact same issues I was having with origin S3. The more we discuss issues as players the more I realise it's like a roll of the dice as to whether our games appear to work or not-)
So you are a very lucky player if neither win10, origin or your graphic card causes you any issues then. I am not envious by nature but I am when I read that back
https://graceymanorsims3.tumblr.com/
I am playing only on disk on my Windows 10 gaming computer here and I have pretty much all the issues mentioned. So it can happen with disk playing as well. Just wanted to throw that out there.
Then some of the issue has to be which version of windows OS the game is being played on then as although I haven't tried my disc game on windows 10 yet because I thought origin or a combo of origin/windows 10 might naff the game up as soon as I placed the disc game on a windows 7 hard drive it plays beautifully without all the graphical issues I experienced when playing digital via origin. Other players have also mentioned that their game has improved when playing on an older OS so maybe it's the OS thats causing most problems for players then and not whatever version of the game being played?
I also tried making the game compatible with earlier versions of the OP but that and a 1000 other things i tried never worked either
Also, I used this guide every time I'm installing Sims 3: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1131162350
Maybe one of them will eliminate the pixelation issue you guys are having
I have personally tried using the guide you link to and it did not work for me but I am pleased it works for you and hopefully it might work for others too. I have also tried DDU and loads of other things that never worked over the course of a whole year so now just play on disc but would really love to be able to play on digital. I have a reasonable PC setup and my Graphics card is the Nvidia Geforce 1070. Nvidia used to try and help until they realized i could play sims 2 without any issues and told me it's not my card at fault when it's fine for the 2 series lol
We concluded that Nvidia taking away Dithering and not allowing it to be enabled in the Control Panel could be a big reason for the banding and pixels on walls and clothes as well. I hope if people put up enough of a stink, they'll roll out a driver update for Dithering to be enabled. We can only hope. 🤞
If I could go back in time, I would disable the automatic updates at that time of the Dec 2019 update and never update my computer again.
I've just learned to deal with it and find ways to change textures on walls and clothes so I don't see all the blocky pixelation and try to not capture flaws on certain things when I'm taking pictures for my story. It works and I'm happy.
My game looked beautiful playing with disks on my Windows 7 computer.
What really peeves me about the whole situation is that with a tiny little bit off tweaking my S2 ultimate game through origin/windows 10 has fabulous graphics.. So I can never wrap my head around why my sims 3 game is so bad..Now I dare not upgrade or touch anything on this desktop in case it messes with something else again lol as both my win 7 OP and 10 are on separate hard drives in the same desktop and I just flick from one to another. I am in the process of trying to compile all my disorganized game saves/mods/cc into some sort of order on an external head drive just in case anything breaks down
@izecson
Thank you. I wish you could help too it's just so frustrating
Have you noticed more glare on your Sims glasses? I am seeing a lot more of it since the Windows 10 updates (after Dec 2019).
It looks awful...you can't see their pretty eyes and makes taking good pictures difficult.
Example pics here:
Another angle:
Hers don't look as bad here, but they've been bad in other rooms depending on the lighting:
I read somewhere that debug lighting can cause nasty glare on sim glasses, but...I've never really noticed debug lighting doing that before, so... 🤷♀️
Edited to add pictures. ^^^
1. Do not have the sun at your (the photographer's) back where it glares right into the face of the subject. Shoot at angles.
2. Position your sim's heads away from the windows where there is a lot of light. Shoot parallel to the windows.
3. Have your sims take their glasses off. :evil grin:
Yes...that's how we photographers have to deal with lighting... No lighting mods available to cut down glare.
I'll test it in game to see if it affects the sims there in any way - or whether the lighting is any way reminiscent of the way real-life lighting works.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
I have noticed that hair (especially EA hair) looks shinier in CAS now due to the updates so maybe the glasses have been affected to? I dunno...
@Nikkei_Simmer Lol!
I wish there was a mod to fix it on the sims...
@emorrill, Just remember that there's always some reflection...no matter what. Because number one, you're shooting through a partially reflective surface...and there's always some light reflection that will happen (if your subjects have glasses on). I think that what you have is pretty mild and I can still see Harvey's and Maru's (is it?) eyes. That's a mild reflection compared to some of the shots that I've seen from some photographs that I've seen in real life photography.
I'm not sure where @Kynan's shot was from, in terms of where the angle of the sun in direct relation to the subject was so I can't really comment on that shot.
In real life, just remember that the ideal is 90degrees perpendicular to the position of your lens at the subject.
©2009 FalconRose Photography, Haruo Chikamori, Photographer. - ~evil grin~ there's a reason why my Legacy is called the Selfacy.
Notice how in this shot, the subject of the shot has NO flare on his glasses and the sun is out but at a direct 90 degrees to the angle of the shot.
Ultimately though...the best way to shoot through glasses...is not to have to shoot through glasses. Sims, fortunately, aren't picky like REAL human beings and you can tell them to "take it off..." without them belly-aching about. "I don't look good without my glasses on...but but...it makes me look so much more distinguished." - It's not going to matter how distinguished your glasses make you look, bub, if you can't see your eyes in the photograph!
Yes, we photographers (like chefs) are a touchy lot.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
ETA: @emorrill YW for checking. I was curious myself after you pointed it out.
My goal is to find a solution so that the glare can be reduced enough so that it won't become a problem but in order to do this, those who find this problem are going to have to find a way to use technique in capturing screencaps to reduce that glare.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
And I'm not happy. I wonder why it happened so suddenly? I updated the nVidia driver in mid February and everything was fine. And I don't think Windows 10 has updated since yesterday. The only thing I did today was disabling the Game Bar in Windows and trying a mod, but I don't think the mod caused it (it just removed some effects from the game, and removing the mod didn't change anything).