The Sims 3 display darkening when fullscreen mode

[muffinlover]

Yes hello. This is a pretty minor issue, but it's gotten irritating. A couple days after I bought my game and a few expansion packs and installed all of them (they work perfectly fine) I noticed that upon changing the display to fullscreen mode, the whole game would darken, as if someone had turned down the brightness of the game. It wouldn't bother me too much expect for the fact that it makes things difficult to see, especially when it's nighttime. I'm not sure what's causing the problem, as when it's not set as fullscreen it's perfectly normal. None of my game settings are set particularly high, and my assumption would be that if my settings were affecting game performance it wouldn't just affect fullscreen mode, but I don't know what to think. 

Any ideas as to what might be causing the problem?

[crinrict]

• What's your operating system ?
• Are your graphics drivers up-to-date ?
• Are you on a desktop or laptop computer ?

[muffinlover]

My operating system is Windows 8, and it's a brand new (maybe a month old) laptop. My graphics card is just as new as the computer itself. 

[crinrict]

Most often graphic drivers need updating, no matter how new the computer is.

Are you running the game on batteries when it happens or also when you're plugged in ?

[muffinlover]

I did a diagnostics check on my computer and nothing came up as problematic with the display. The game itself doesn't seem to be affected with the computer plugged or unplugged--though for the most part I keep it plugged in. 

[crinrict]

I don't know then.

I'll check with someone else that might be able to help you better.

[roberta591]

I had symptoms as you describe some time ago. Adding lights would make the game playable. I think this only lasted a short time and either a video device driver update or a game update fixed the problem. This probably happened on a computer that had an Nvidea 9800 GT card in it (not sure but all I have are Nvidia cards). Have you upgraded to Windows 8.1? Windows 8 video driver are a little tricky. I recommend upgrading to Winodws 8.1. This resets many of the drivers and you may have to reinstall some applications. If this doesn't correct the problem you'll have to go to your computer's support site and see if they have any updated video drivers. And if that doesn't work you may need to go to the video chip makers site (Nvidia, ATI, Intel) and try their refernece drivers. You may even find an older Windows 7 driver may fix the problem. Make sure the game is recognizing your video chip correctly.