Blurry road textures/Low quality Lots - On max settings

[llongaotian]

Hi, so after having a few issues with my Sims 3, i completely uninstalled all of my expansion packs and the base game. I re-installed them but now when I go into Map View, the road textures are all blurry and the lot detail isn't very good.

My computer is good enough to handle the game and all my graphics settings are on max so im not quite sure why this is happening. Any ideas?

[puzzlezaddict]

@llongaotian  There's a lot of distance between a computer that can run the base game and a couple of packs on low settings, and one that can carry the entire game without a problem.  Could you list your computer's specs, or better yet, run a dxdiag?  You can attach it to a post using the paper clip icon.

https://answers.ea.com/t5/The-Sims-3/HOW-TO-DxDiag-PC-Only/m-p/1049584/thread-id/47181

Also, if you have a powerful graphics card, you'll need to cap the frame rates, if you haven't already.  The best tool to do so depends on your card and whether you play in windowed mode.

[llongaotian]

@puzzlezaddict 

[puzzlezaddict]

@llongaotian  You're right, your computer is plenty powerful to run the entire game.  (I have to ask, as some people aren't so familiar with their hardware.)  Have you checked your fps in-game?  (crtl-shift-c to bring up the cheat console, then enter "fps on" without quotes, and your rate will show up in the upper right corner; "fps off" will make the number go away.)  It should never go above 60, the refresh rate of most monitors.  TS3 doesn't have a built-in fps limiter, so you'll need to limit it yourself, if you haven't already.  Also keep in mind that Nvidia Control Panel won't limit fps in windowed mode, so you'll need Inspector.  Here's a post with some useful instructions:

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/16540301/#Comment_16540301

The other question is which world you're in when you see these issues.  IP in particular is a mess, and Bridgeport is only somewhat better, whereas SV and Riverview are good for testing.  Does the problem occur only in one ongoing game, or in any new save, in any world?

[roberta591]

@llongaotian  You do not have enough free space on the system drive. IMO a 128Gb is not big enough for the casual Windows gaming machine. This needs constant monitoring and knowledge of the Windows operating system as to why the proper amount free space is required. This is why you have a 2Tb data drive to off load data from a very small ssd.

[llongaotian]

@puzzlezaddict  So my frame rate was averaging 100-300fps so I turned on vsync , now its at 60 but unfortunately that didnt fix the problem. This issue is not specific to any world either, i have the same problem in any new save in all of the worlds.

[puzzlezaddict]

@llongaotian  I'm glad you got the fps issue fixed, as that's the kind of thing that can destroy your graphics card if left unchecked.  But roberta is absolutely right about your lack of space—without enough room to maneuver, the game won't run properly.  Windows itself may give you problems if you don't make more space for it.  I'm not the expert on this issue, but the people who know this stuff say that you need to leave 35-40 GB free at a minimum.  You have large secondary drive with a lot of free space.  Can you move all nonessential files there instead?

[llongaotian]

@puzzlezaddict Previously, I have had all of my expansion packs installed on this computer with only a couple of GB free and the game still ran flawlessly so I'm not certain that is the issue. Regardless, I deleted some files off my C Drive which now has 36GB free (should definitely be enough), but the issue still persists. At this point, I really don't have any clue as to why this would be happening.

[puzzlezaddict]

@llongaotian  Maybe that's not quite enough space; like I said, I'm not the expert.  Is there anything else you can clear or temporatily move elsewhere, just as a test?  Additionally, you can try clearing the five cache files from your game folder in Documents.  (for reference: CASPartCache.package, compositorCache.package, scriptCache.package, simCompositorCache.package, and socialCache.package)

If that doesn't help, perhaps a clean folder will.  You can drag your entire TS3 folder out of Documents and onto your desktop, and when you launch the game again, a new folder will spawn with no content.  See what a new save looks like in this folder, and if things look good, you can move your saves and other content into it from your old folder.

[llongaotian]

@puzzlezaddict yep tried it. I managed to find only one thread that seemed to have the same problem, http://forums.thesims.com/en_uS/discussion/545957/blurry-roads it was never resolved though.