Sims 3 white lines

by Bts152
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Original Post

Re: Sims 3 white lines

@SunflowerSimmies  None of this sounds stupid, and in fact it might be very relevant.  I'm surprised that vsync in the Control Panel caps fps at 60 though, since your monitor is currently running at 165 Hz, according to your dxdiag.  Have you checked in-game?  The cheat to show in-game fps is fps on, and the number should appear in the upper right corner of the screen.  Or you could enable the fps counter in Origin; it's under the Origin in-game section of Application Settings.

 

In your position, I'd experiment with having only Gsync on, only vsync on, both, and neither; the Control Panel has a Max Frame Rate setting under Global settings that you can use instead.  I'd also try setting your monitor to run at a lower refresh rate which you can do through Advanced Display Settings.  You'll see a variety of supported refresh rates listed, for example I'd expect 60, 120, and 144 Hz to all be available options.  Restart your computer after changing the setting and before testing the game.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 41 of 86 (977 Views)

Re: Sims 3 white lines

[ Edited ]
★ Apprentice

I use another in game fps tracker and I always have it on, the game goes up to 61fps highest and drops when moving around the camera. However I did just remember that I have the fps set to 60 in game, silly me! Turns out vsync isn’t capping it, I can choose higher options. Now I’m remembering that I tried the higher options to test if the problem carries on in higher fps and it does. I’ve seen a lot of people say that you should cap sims 3 at 60fps to stop stuttering, which I used to do and thats why I automatically set it to 60 in in game settings, by habit. This doesn’t still apply to me if I have a high refresh rate monitor and gsync does it? Can I play at high fps set in game without it lagging with bad fps drops or anything like that? Does any of this affect the edge smoothing in game though, since that seems to cause the issue, but I hate using any other thing for anti aliasing since it just looks so much worse than the in game setting. Do you still think the monitor/fps is whats affecting the edge smoothing somehow? I’ll test out what you said about playing around with vsync/gysnc on or off and seeing if it does anything. I don’t really want to change the monitor refresh settings though because my boyfriend uses 165hz to play his shooting games and I don’t really want to mess with his monitor settings too much. Besides, the old monitor we used was 60hz and still had the problem so I don’t know if changing it would make a difference. It’s such a strange problem. 

Message 42 of 86 (964 Views)

Re: Sims 3 white lines

@SunflowerSimmies  Stutter can happen when fps is higher than the monitor's refresh rate; or it can happen because the graphics card's workload is high enough for it to struggle, whether that's typical or because of some temporary high-demand situation in-game; or because the game engine is preoccupied with some other issue (e.g. routing) and dragging down performance; or because some graphics cards seem to have a lot of stutter in-game without high workloads and for really no good reason.  Point is, "stutter" is a symptom of a lot of problems, some of which are more serious than others and none of which can be diagnosed by the stutter alone.

 

It would be useful to lift the 60 Hz cap and try other interventions, even if they lead to stutter, just to see whether anything gets rid of the lines.  Then you could try to find a combination of settings that leads to neither lines or stutter.

 

The monitor settings are very easy to switch back and forth: right-click on the desktop, select Display settings > Advanced display settings > Display adapter properties > list all modes, and choose a different one.  Among the reasons I think it might be helpful is I've seen two people with monitors that can be overclocked to 165 Hz say they had flickering in Sims 4 until they switched the monitor to 144 Hz.  I know flickering isn't your issue, but that does suggest that 165 Hz might not be as stable or smooth as the monitor specs would suggest.

 

On a completely different note, I saw a discussion yesterday on another site about a SweetFX profile offered by brntwaffles, who's made some very popular lighting mods for Sims 3.  Links to third-party downloads aren't allowed on this site, but when I googled just now, the page I wanted was the second hit; it has screenshots to go with the description and instructions.  The reason I mention it is because you're supposed to disable edge smoothing in-game and let SweetFX handle it instead.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 43 of 86 (959 Views)

Re: Sims 3 white lines

★ Apprentice

Okay, I’ll try testing this all out tomorrow and get back to you about the results as soon as possible. The sweet fx thing sounds like a very good alternative which I am more than willing to try. I’ve tried reshades edge smoothing but it was no where near as smooth as I wanted it so I hope this one will be better, it also says it has been updated recently to give smoother edges so I’m excited to try this, thank you for the recommendation. 

Message 44 of 86 (954 Views)

Re: Sims 3 white lines

★ Apprentice

Hi, I’m trying to download sweet fx like you said but the download link is broken or they just took the download down & I can’t find an alternate link anywhere

Message 45 of 86 (893 Views)

Re: Sims 3 white lines

★ Apprentice

Hello again, so I did some tests. I tried using sweetfx because I eventually found a download for it but the edges were still so jagged using it and it looked way too over saturated in my game and with my monitor settings so I decided to revert back to how it was before & not use sweetfx. I’ve also tried turning vsync off and choosing different fps in game in the game options other than 60 and just using gysnc instead. The frame rates are going well over 144 which is what I chose in the game settings, in loading screens it goes over 1000fps. The white lines are still happening when I have edge smoothing on. Still no fix :/

Message 46 of 86 (882 Views)

Re: Sims 3 white lines

@SunflowerSimmies  Alright, thanks for letting me know.  I think it's worth experimenting a bit more with gsync and vsync, but please make sure to set a Max Frame Rate in the Nvidia Control Panel at the same time so your card isn't going overboard with the framerates.  Since this isn't a vertical sync setting, it shouldn't affect how the other features play out.

 

If that doesn't help, I think I might be out of ideas, I'm sorry to say.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 47 of 86 (875 Views)

Re: Sims 3 white lines

★ Apprentice

I turned vysnc back on and now use the in game setting of 144hz & it runs pretty smoothly so I’ll probably just stick with this now. I did find an interesting forum about people having what looks to be a similar issue in Unity. I know it’s not related to sims at all, but the issues seem to be the same and are related to AA. When I scrolled through the form about the 14th reply down someone posted a photo of what different AAs looked like on a model and when in 2x MSAA & 4x MSAA there were white lines at the bottom of the model that are pretty much identical to the ones I’m getting in the sims 3. The FXAA one didn’t seem to have the issue and the no AA one was jagged of course. Heres the link to the forum: https://forum.unity.com/threads/anti-aliasing-causes-white-outlines-on-objects.307137/

I’m not sure if this could help, some people were saying it could be to do with issues with ‘directional light shadows’ heres what that person posted: 

https://forum.unity.com/threads/fixing-screen-space-directional-shadows-and-anti-aliasing.379902/

 

maybe there is some way we could translate this problem into the sims and work out whats happening from what these people have said? Sorry if this has been a waste of your time but I really appreciate your help and ideas.

Message 48 of 86 (855 Views)

Re: Sims 3 white lines

★ Apprentice

Yet another thing I found is that apparently this was all introduced with a windows 10 update that caused colour banding and pixelation issues in the sims 3 as it says in this thread:

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/971320/update-9-2-20-has-your-sims-3-game-been-affected-...

if you scroll down the page I have linked to you will see a user called emorrill. At the bottom of their reply you can see a screenshot of the mountains in Moonlight Falls with a white line across it, she says that she has seen them on beds and objects too and asked if anyone else got this after the windows update. I couldn’t find anyone else that did but its interesting as now I know it could be caused by a windows update. Is there possibly anyway to fix this? 

 

Message 49 of 86 (849 Views)

Re: Sims 3 white lines

★ Apprentice

Yet another thing I found is that apparently this was all introduced with a windows 10 update that caused colour banding and pixelation issues in the sims 3 as it says in this thread:

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/971320/update-9-2-20-has-your-sims-3-game-been-affected-...

if you scroll down the page I have linked to you will see a user called emorrill. At the bottom of their reply you can see a screenshot of the mountains in Moonlight Falls with a white line across it, she says that she has seen them on beds and objects too and asked if anyone else got this after the windows update. I couldn’t find anyone else that did but its interesting as now I know it could be caused by a windows update. Is there possibly anyway to fix this? 

 

Message 50 of 86 (848 Views)