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.

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. 

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

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 :/

@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.

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.

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-by-the-recent-pixilation-issues/p11

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? 

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-by-the-recent-pixilation-issues/p11

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? 

@SunflowerSimmies  Thanks for the links to the Unity forum; I'll take a look and see if I can find anything that might apply to Sims 3.  This is outside my comfort zone, so I don't know whether I'll be able to figure out what's going on.

I know about the forums.thesims.com thread; if you read through the whole thing (don't do that, really), you'll notice I posted there too.  The lack of dithering, which accounts for the color banding and pixellation, is a universal issue having to do with Windows 10 updates and recent graphics drivers.  It's not necessarily related at all to the white lines—I don't have those lines, nor do most of the people posting about the dithering issue.

The white line along the mountains in Moonlight Falls is yet another probably separate issue, one that's been around longer than the others and is also quite common, if not universal.  I think it has to do with how the world was made rather than the graphics rendering per se.