Graphics Settings
simsfreq:
Having finally upgraded my computer and being able to play for longer periods of time without my graphics card melting and causing my sims to also appear as though they are melting, I was wondering:
Who here plays with "smooth edges" turned on? What kind of specs do you need for this option to become available?
What graphics setting could you not live without and why?
Will playing at 1024x768 really cause as much of a problem as my phobia of it tells me it will? Is it worth it for the less-noticeable squariness of edges or do the sims just look about as tall as a sim matchstick? (Screen resolution within Windows goes up to 1600x1200, though this renders internet text unreadable without squinting.)
How do I tell if my graphics card is even capable of displaying bump maps, and how do I turn them on, if so?
Should I be wary about re-installing Seasons due to its graphical hugeness? Currently running OFB only, planning to put Uni on when I can steal borrow it back from my sister. Umming and Ahhing about getting NL.
jolrei:
What sort of graphics card did you get? I play with an onboard ATI Radeon X300 card (old and obsolete now, I'm told). I always play at 1024x768 with edge smoothing on. I reduce shadows to medium, because I don't care about shadows and it appears to make no difference to the look of the game onscreen anyway. Considering this, your resolution phobia may be just that - try 1024x768 and see what happens. The worst case is that you'll have to switch back to some other resolution. As this is a standard resolution, it does not distort the look of sims (i.e. they don't look like tall thin matchstick people).
If your old unupgraded rig could play Seasons, why should your upgraded compy not do it? If you upgrade to a system that won't even do what your old one did, ur doin it wrong (kitteh macro anyone?).
simsfreq:
Well when I say upgraded, I really mean installed some RAM, as the system was fine apart from it's measly 256mb. (It now has 1gb and has been formatted as the whole computer was secondhand and had been swiss-cheesed because I couldn't be arsed to format it from the beginning, meaning that putting more than 256mb RAM in it caused the computer to restart after 10 minutes.) I could just about run seasons on that, but after a while (ie, about 2 hours of playing, time varied though) it would get glitchy, making the neighbourhood screen flash when I was loading a house, making sims disappear to look like floating hair/teeth. I don't want to have to go back to low graphics settings to get it to run at all.
I've just realised how much I fail with the resolution question too, since it is possible to change the in-game resolution from the shortcut without even loading the game, so if it makes everything die I can just do that. Oh, and pre-format/RAM upgrade I only had seasons with no other EPs and no custom content, which I miss. (My previous system (even ancienter and worse graphics-wise) belongs to my mother and since I moved out I lost Uni to my sister as she needs that disc to play.) I didn't really mean stretched sims by the way when I said matchstick, I was trying to mean small - I like to get up close and personal for photos etc. But the stretched look REALLY bugs me, so I'd have spent ages fiddling with my monitor settings if that had been the case. Bleargh! I talk too much!
Currently I have an NVidia Geforce 4 440 and have been told that it's not ideal, BUT it is in the supported graphics cards list, which my mum's computer's graphics card wasn't, so it's a start for skint me. Oh and edge smoothing has never appeared, ever. It's always greyed out. It has the latest drivers, which again I'm told are quite old. I considered using third-party drivers for it but my OH seemed wary about me doing that and he's a compy technician so I decided to trust him rather than the internet.
swampcandy:
I have a GeForce 8600 and I don't have my smooth edges slider. My old GeForce FX 5200 did, though. For my 8600, I just went into the Nvidia tools and set the antialiasing to 4x. Huge difference.
nil:
Quote from: simsfreq on 2007 November 28, 15:02:09
...
Currently I have an NVidia Geforce 4 440 and have been told that it's not ideal, BUT it is in the supported graphics cards list, which my mum's computer's graphics card wasn't, so it's a start for skint me. Oh and edge smoothing has never appeared, ever. It's always greyed out. It has the latest drivers, which again I'm told are quite old. I considered using third-party drivers for it but my OH seemed wary about me doing that and he's a compy technician so I decided to trust him rather than the internet.
Yeah, it might have been supported by running some courses badly tuned fallback functions.
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