ZeeGee wrote: ↑

April 8th, 2021, 1:20 pm

When I went in game there was pixilation on sims' clothing and color banding on sims' faces (especially darker skinned sims) that WAS NOT THERE THE NIGHT BEFORE!

And you can't prove it. If it was some kind of bug with the game, graphics drivers, or the operating system, then it could be reproduced. But it's not reproducible because the game looks the same, with pixilation and banding on all PCs.

Pixilation is caused by texture compression and it has always been there.


Banding in addition to pixilation occurs when a low resolution (32x32, 64x64) environment cubemaps is blended with textures.

I've noticed the same pixelation and banding effects as well.

However, looking at past screenshots, my game has always had these since I've started playing in January 2018.

I've played on three different graphics cards; AMD R7 250, NVidia GTX 1050ti, and currently, an NVidia RTX 2070. I play on 1440p but used to play on 1080p since I got a 4k monitor this past summer. I'm on the newest drivers.

Therefore, I believe these issues are part of the game's graphics engine itself (unless a Win 10 update or AMD/Nvidia driver change from before 2018 lead to aforementioned noticeable pixilation/banding effects). Back when the game was made, most GPU's only had around 512mb of memory, so textures had to be compressed by quite a bit.

Whether or not one notices the pixelation/banding much may depend on which monitor is being used to play.

I personally do not know the technical aspects, but I do believe Guzz is correct based on my observations. When I look at my screenshots way back from 2009 through 2021, there is not really a difference except in graphical settings and resolution. Most of the past computers I had has a NVidia GPU. All of my past and present screenshots showcases color banding/pixelation/dithering/artifacts. My first computer having an incompatible integrated Intel video card.

Looking at my screenshots I tend to also notice the higher the resolution, the more color banding/pixelation/dithering/artifacts is made more prominent. But to me, clearly something that has always been as also RobbyC mentioned. In addition, also setting the NVidia Control Panel anisotropic filtering to 2x or 4x or 8x or 16x will of course bring way more clarity to TS3 and again make those unwanted visuals stand out even more.

To confirm, I currently have a NVidia RTX 2070, Win 10, 8-Bit color depth monitor at native resolution of 2560 x 1440 @ 144 refresh rate. Right now I am not up-to-date because doing so resets TS3 options in which I have to reapply my custom settings, but soon because I'm guessing RE8 will get updated on the Geforce Experience, etc so I'll just wait until then like I did with Cyberpunk 2077. Anyway, updating should not affect TS3 because I too believe these visuals were already there since day 1 made worse, in my opinion and observation, with higher resolutions/Control Panel settings. Possibly even HQ mods as well or any sort of image sharpening.

Personally, I do not care about the visual shortcomings as The Sims 3 is still among one of my favorite video games of all time. It may not be the most beautiful compared to the modern games I'm used to that put graphics and gameplay high up on the list, but nonetheless an oldie and goodie for sure.

However, you know, if anyone out there is into a brand new realistic life simulator that is like a combination of all the best features of TS2 and TS3 but so much more ambitious and geared toward a mature audience with high-end hardware in mind for full potential, no holding back...I would love that. Of course, I will not hold my breath though. I am quite happy and content with what I deem is the best and most advanced life simulator, TS3.

sittingbear post_id=81035 time=1615270693 user_id=16428 wrote:You can really only play Fallout 4 with the older 10 series Pascal cards or an AMD card.

You can actually fix the crash issue in Fallout 4 by turning off Weapon Debris in the launcher's Advanced Graphics options, for what it's worth.

sonic65101 wrote: ↑

June 4th, 2021, 9:28 am

sittingbear post_id=81035 time=1615270693 user_id=16428 wrote:You can really only play Fallout 4 with the older 10 series Pascal cards or an AMD card.

You can actually fix the crash issue in Fallout 4 by turning off Weapon Debris in the launcher's Advanced Graphics options, for what it's worth.

That actually doesn't work for the 1660 Super which is what I had. I actually had to turn off several things in the Fallout4Prefs INI as well as run it in window mode. But window mode gives me migraines.