I downloaded TS3 the other day because I was so excited to play on my new desktop. However, it said it didn't recognize my graphics card. So I followed the guides online and it still didn't work. I even used an updated "GraphicsRules.sgr" and "GraphicsCard.sgr" file that somebody on Carl's Sims Forum put up so that way people could update their graphics rules. IT STILL DOESN'T WORK :( and the DeviceConfig file is empty no matter what I do :( Please help I really wanna play.

For the most part, the graphics card being unrecognized is not a serious problem. That just causes the game to apply often unsuitable default settings and a few other small things, but the card should still gets used properly. A card being undetected would be a larger issue. But there are better ways to force recognition than by using a third party set of sgr files.The DeviceConfig.log being empty is a sign that those sgr files are flawed or are just not going to work for you. Can you put the original two sgr files back in place so we can start over? Hopefully you saved/backed them up someplace otherwise this gets (a little) more complicated.And to learn more about the hardware set you are working with, a dxdiag report would be helpful. If you could, please run one, post the results on pastebin.com, and provide a link so we can read it.https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-informationThis is assuming you are running Windows. The Mac version of the game would require a different conversation.

Sorry that you had to reinstall, if you are working with an Origin installation we could have (I should have suggested) a Repair Game first. But hopefully we have a good starting point now. Did you clean the Windows Registry using a tool such as Piriform's CCleaner before reinstalling (hopefully yes)? I would suggest setting aside spare copies of those two sgr files so that when we do get to editing them later on you don't have to go through this again if something should go wrong.Space is going to be tight on your C drive as it's only 256 GB. Have you installed the game on C or on D? -- it looks like your secondary much larger D drive is mostly unused. It will also be possible to shift your Windows Documents library, so that will include your TS3 and other user game folders over to D, but if C is a Solid State Drive (SSD) you will lose some SSD benefits of TS3 in particular by doing so. When the primary drive is smaller like that it becomes a tradeoff. This is not an immediate issue really, but Windows and the game are going to need at least 35 or 40 GB of free space to maneuver and you are down to 66 GB already.Your computer has dual graphics. First, unless you have already gone through all of this, we need to specify in the Nvidia Control Panel that TS3 is to use the High Performance card (the Nvidia), not the weaker Intel integrated chip. And while there, Vertical Sync needs to be set in order to help cap the fps as your card is strong enough to throw frame rates that your monitor cannot possibly interpret. Unlike more modern games, TS3 has no functional built-in fps limiter. As the first illustration under the spoiler on this post shows, set up a profile using TS3.exe for Patch 1.69 but TS3w.exe (with the "w") for 1.67.https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/16712708/#Comment_16712708Assuming you can get the game launched, you can check your actual fps with ctrl+shift+C to bring up the cheats console and type fps on (enter). As you play and move the game camera around, to the extent that you can right now, the displayed fps should never exceed the refresh rate of your monitor. Yours is 75 Hz, so that would be 75 fps. To make the display go away, cheats console again and fps off (enter).Vertical sync as per the above only works in full screen mode. If the Control Panel setting is not enough to lock things in, or if windowed mode is required, then we add Nvidia Inspector and set to explicitly cap the frame rate to in your case 75. (second spoiler illustration on the same page)Many players on Win 10 find that they do need to stay in windowed mode and Windowed Borderless is the way to go for them.https://westechsolutions.net/sites/WindowedBorderlessGamingIf you are still getting an all white/grey map after all this (and it's not snowing and really foggy that day I guess if you have Seasons installed), I would begin to suspect your HDMI connection and ask if you have another way to connect your desktop to your monitor such as a standard display port.Once you've gotten all of that squared away, we can move on to doing some magic with the sgr files to get the Nvidia card formally recognized. But again, the game should be playable without that. Does any of the above help get the game launched and does the DeviceConfig actually contain anything once the above are in place?

Hey! That's my old posts! How nice to read. The computer tech guy tried to follow the guide from Carl's, but I don't think it went so well, and my memory is a little fuzzy on this, but I do not think I got the game to work and tried another guide instead, the one in sims wiki I think. It took me two hours, and most of it was tech-panic, but I found out what the problem was, one 'space' and paranthesis missing in the .sgr. The difference (except for the game working) was a slightly better texture quality in clothes, and maybe more sims gathering in places. Okey, sorry to disturb..

Okay, I can't send the instructions by PM because all I get is a never-ending series of CAPTCHA challenges (this is new). These forums are becoming more annoying than helpful for tech support, actually that's true of the entire Internet, but perhaps that's a grumble for a different day. :angry: Here you go, but with the warning to other players reading this that the instructions here are only relevant for this player's exact card and should not be used exactly as is by others.====================================I'm still not convinced that getting this card formally recognized by the game is going to fix everything, but let's give this a try then. The method I use and recommend is much simpler than the one on Carl's Site and elsewhere. A colleague of mine at MTS came up with it years ago and it tends to work (or not work) exactly the same as the much more complicated way of parsing through the code with too many parentheses. What we are going to do is trick the game into thinking that you have an older but still very powerful graphics card that is already in the game's database and allow the GTX 1050 you do have to borrow its profile.It seems you have already located your two sgr files, but let's confirm if we could that we are talking about those for the base game. The EP installs will also have GraphicsCards.sgr and GraphicsRules.sgr files in their Program File subfolders, but those are not the ones we need to edit.Many of us find that the two files need to be pulled out (copied out) of the Program Files or else Windows will not let us edit them. Also a reminder that you want to keep spare copies of the original two files in case this makes things worse and you need to revert.On GraphicsCards.sgr, look for the line that sayscard 0x06cd "GeForce GTX 470"And change it tocard 0x1c81 "GeForce GTX 470"(change the 06cd to 1c81, leave the 0x part in place)Save (As), close, and make this your current GraphicsCards.sgr file by moving it back into the correct spot in the Program Files.I don't know if you are getting the unwanted 32 MB texture memory override because I have not yet seen a DeviceConfig (with the understanding that they were at least at one time being blank on you). But the fix for this is on the other file, GraphicsRules.sgr.On GraphicsRules.sgr, look for the block of lines near the beginning that sayif ($textureMemory == 0)seti textureMemory 32setb textureMemorySizeOK falseendifAnd change the two interior lines toseti textureMemory 1024# setb textureMemorySizeOK false(change the 32 to 1024 and add a hashtag (#) and space to the second line)Save (As), close, and make this your current GraphicsRules.sgr file by moving it into the correct spot in the Program Files.Start up the game. You should see your card recognized with a GTX 470 profile and the 32 MB texture memory override if you had it should be gone (it will say 1024 MB instead) on the revised DeviceConfig.log, if you can get the game to produce one.

Does the game launch at all now, or does it produce an error and quit when you try to start it up (and what exactly do the errors say, if there are any)? Your hardware setup is a little unusual for a desktop but it's not unheard of and many other players have gotten this to work.On the blank DeviceConfig, if you delete it does a new blank one take its place on the next attempted startup? I am beginning to wonder if you have second, unexpected TS3 user game folder hiding someplace that the game is reading and writing to -- perhaps in OneDrive. What happens if you temporarily rename your TS user game folder or pull it out of Documents, does a fresh one spawn and does that behave any differently?Also to confirm, you have tried a different connection to your monitor from a graphics card port (not from the system board, they will be in different places on the back of your desktop) that is not HDMI?If still no success, you may wish to crosspost your issues on EA's TS3 Answers HQ board, linking back to this one for reference, in case those helping out over there see something we've been missing.

Map is white/grey? | EA Forums

igazor
6 years ago
For the most part, the graphics card being unrecognized is not a serious problem. That just causes the game to apply often unsuitable default settings and a few other small things, but the card should still gets used properly. A card being undetected would be a larger issue. But there are better ways to force recognition than by using a third party set of sgr files.

The DeviceConfig.log being empty is a sign that those sgr files are flawed or are just not going to work for you. Can you put the original two sgr files back in place so we can start over? Hopefully you saved/backed them up someplace otherwise this gets (a little) more complicated.

And to learn more about the hardware set you are working with, a dxdiag report would be helpful. If you could, please run one, post the results on pastebin.com, and provide a link so we can read it.
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information

This is assuming you are running Windows. The Mac version of the game would require a different conversation.
igazor
6 years ago
Sorry that you had to reinstall, if you are working with an Origin installation we could have (I should have suggested) a Repair Game first. But hopefully we have a good starting point now. Did you clean the Windows Registry using a tool such as Piriform's CCleaner before reinstalling (hopefully yes)? I would suggest setting aside spare copies of those two sgr files so that when we do get to editing them later on you don't have to go through this again if something should go wrong.

Space is going to be tight on your C drive as it's only 256 GB. Have you installed the game on C or on D? -- it looks like your secondary much larger D drive is mostly unused. It will also be possible to shift your Windows Documents library, so that will include your TS3 and other user game folders over to D, but if C is a Solid State Drive (SSD) you will lose some SSD benefits of TS3 in particular by doing so. When the primary drive is smaller like that it becomes a tradeoff. This is not an immediate issue really, but Windows and the game are going to need at least 35 or 40 GB of free space to maneuver and you are down to 66 GB already.

Your computer has dual graphics. First, unless you have already gone through all of this, we need to specify in the Nvidia Control Panel that TS3 is to use the High Performance card (the Nvidia), not the weaker Intel integrated chip. And while there, Vertical Sync needs to be set in order to help cap the fps as your card is strong enough to throw frame rates that your monitor cannot possibly interpret. Unlike more modern games, TS3 has no functional built-in fps limiter. As the first illustration under the spoiler on this post shows, set up a profile using TS3.exe for Patch 1.69 but TS3w.exe (with the "w") for 1.67.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/16712708/#Comment_16712708

Assuming you can get the game launched, you can check your actual fps with ctrl+shift+C to bring up the cheats console and type fps on (enter). As you play and move the game camera around, to the extent that you can right now, the displayed fps should never exceed the refresh rate of your monitor. Yours is 75 Hz, so that would be 75 fps. To make the display go away, cheats console again and fps off (enter).

Vertical sync as per the above only works in full screen mode. If the Control Panel setting is not enough to lock things in, or if windowed mode is required, then we add Nvidia Inspector and set to explicitly cap the frame rate to in your case 75. (second spoiler illustration on the same page)

Many players on Win 10 find that they do need to stay in windowed mode and Windowed Borderless is the way to go for them.
https://westechsolutions.net/sites/WindowedBorderlessGaming

If you are still getting an all white/grey map after all this (and it's not snowing and really foggy that day I guess if you have Seasons installed), I would begin to suspect your HDMI connection and ask if you have another way to connect your desktop to your monitor such as a standard display port.

Once you've gotten all of that squared away, we can move on to doing some magic with the sgr files to get the Nvidia card formally recognized. But again, the game should be playable without that. Does any of the above help get the game launched and does the DeviceConfig actually contain anything once the above are in place?
DonroaAkashu
New Spectator
6 years ago
Hey! That's my old posts! How nice to read. The computer tech guy tried to follow the guide from Carl's, but I don't think it went so well, and my memory is a little fuzzy on this, but I do not think I got the game to work and tried another guide instead, the one in sims wiki I think. It took me two hours, and most of it was tech-panic, but I found out what the problem was, one 'space' and paranthesis missing in the .sgr. The difference (except for the game working) was a slightly better texture quality in clothes, and maybe more sims gathering in places.

Okey, sorry to disturb..
igazor
6 years ago
Okay, I can't send the instructions by PM because all I get is a never-ending series of CAPTCHA challenges (this is new). These forums are becoming more annoying than helpful for tech support, actually that's true of the entire Internet, but perhaps that's a grumble for a different day. :angry:

Here you go, but with the warning to other players reading this that the instructions here are only relevant for this player's exact card and should not be used exactly as is by others.

====================================
I'm still not convinced that getting this card formally recognized by the game is going to fix everything, but let's give this a try then. The method I use and recommend is much simpler than the one on Carl's Site and elsewhere. A colleague of mine at MTS came up with it years ago and it tends to work (or not work) exactly the same as the much more complicated way of parsing through the code with too many parentheses. What we are going to do is trick the game into thinking that you have an older but still very powerful graphics card that is already in the game's database and allow the GTX 1050 you do have to borrow its profile.

It seems you have already located your two sgr files, but let's confirm if we could that we are talking about those for the base game. The EP installs will also have GraphicsCards.sgr and GraphicsRules.sgr files in their Program File subfolders, but those are not the ones we need to edit.

Many of us find that the two files need to be pulled out (copied out) of the Program Files or else Windows will not let us edit them. Also a reminder that you want to keep spare copies of the original two files in case this makes things worse and you need to revert.

On GraphicsCards.sgr, look for the line that says
card 0x06cd "GeForce GTX 470"

And change it to
card 0x1c81 "GeForce GTX 470"
(change the 06cd to 1c81, leave the 0x part in place)

Save (As), close, and make this your current GraphicsCards.sgr file by moving it back into the correct spot in the Program Files.

I don't know if you are getting the unwanted 32 MB texture memory override because I have not yet seen a DeviceConfig (with the understanding that they were at least at one time being blank on you). But the fix for this is on the other file, GraphicsRules.sgr.

On GraphicsRules.sgr, look for the block of lines near the beginning that say
if ($textureMemory == 0)
seti textureMemory 32
setb textureMemorySizeOK false
endif

And change the two interior lines to
seti textureMemory 1024
# setb textureMemorySizeOK false
(change the 32 to 1024 and add a hashtag (#) and space to the second line)

Save (As), close, and make this your current GraphicsRules.sgr file by moving it into the correct spot in the Program Files.

Start up the game. You should see your card recognized with a GTX 470 profile and the 32 MB texture memory override if you had it should be gone (it will say 1024 MB instead) on the revised DeviceConfig.log, if you can get the game to produce one.
igazor
6 years ago
Does the game launch at all now, or does it produce an error and quit when you try to start it up (and what exactly do the errors say, if there are any)? Your hardware setup is a little unusual for a desktop but it's not unheard of and many other players have gotten this to work.

On the blank DeviceConfig, if you delete it does a new blank one take its place on the next attempted startup? I am beginning to wonder if you have second, unexpected TS3 user game folder hiding someplace that the game is reading and writing to -- perhaps in OneDrive. What happens if you temporarily rename your TS user game folder or pull it out of Documents, does a fresh one spawn and does that behave any differently?

Also to confirm, you have tried a different connection to your monitor from a graphics card port (not from the system board, they will be in different places on the back of your desktop) that is not HDMI?

If still no success, you may wish to crosspost your issues on EA's TS3 Answers HQ board, linking back to this one for reference, in case those helping out over there see something we've been missing.
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
6 years ago
Your dxdiag contains a number of error reports, including for Nvidia Control Panel and a C++ visual runtime library. (There are others I don't recognize, but I can find out.) Before trying to uninstall and reinstall various programs individually, it's probably best to check your Windows system files. There are two commands you should run. (Thanks again to the person who explained all this to me.)

Hit Windows key-X
Choose either “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator),” whichever option is offered
Inside the window that appears, copy “DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth” without quotes and enter
The system will start validating soon. If it throws an error, please list it here
After it reaches 100%, hit Windows key-X again
Again, choose “PowerShell (Administrator)” or “Command prompt (Administrator)”
Inside the window, copy “sfc /scannow” without quotes and enter
Post the message you receive here

Once you're done, pull your TS3 game folder out of Documents and try to launch the game again, perhaps a few times. Then get another dxdiag and link it here. It's pretty simple to replace at least some of the .dll files that are throwing errors, but it's better to first make sure that they're still a problem.
uhlani27
6 years ago
hey! so sorry for the late reply. so i did what you told me to do and it said "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations."
here's my new dxdiag.
https://pastebin.com/dJajahYV
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
6 years ago
No worries about the delay; people get busy and don't have time to troubleshoot.

Between the first and second dxdiags, there are errors for the Visual C++ 2013 runtime library, Nvidia Control Panel, and one that might be related to Origin. (That would be the QtWebEngineProcess.exe.) So it's best to address all three, in that order.

For the C++ library:

Press Windows key-i and select Apps and Features.
Find "Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 Redistributable"—both x86 and x64 versions, and uninstall both, if you have them.
Download and install both from the Microsoft Download Center: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3179560/update-for-visual-c-2013-and-visual-c-redistributable-package

The Nvidia Control Panel errors should be fixed with a clean uninstall and reinstall of your graphics card drivers.

You can download Display Driver Uninstaller from here: https://www.wagnardsoft.com/DDU/download/DDU v18.0.0.6.exe
Download the newest GTX 1050 driver from here: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/143231/en-us
Disable your internet connection entirely, then follow these steps:

Spoiler
Double-click the DDU.exe, take note of where the file will land, and click Extract. If it's easier, you can copy the path and then paste it into the address bar in a File Explorer window. Open the folder and then Display Driver Uninstaller.exe, and you'll get a message that you're not in Safe Mode. Click OK, then go to Options and enable Safe Mode dialog. Here's a screenshot of what your options should look like:
https://i.imgur.com/niFsYfN.png

Close options, and the DDU, and then open the DDU.exe again. For launch options, choose "Safe Mode (Recommended)," and then click Reboot to Safe Mode (you'll need your password, so find it before rebooting). Once you login, you'll see this:
https://i.imgur.com/NWgl7Ts.png

Choose GPU in the dropdown menu (step one), then Nvidia (step 2) if it's not already showing. Then click Clean and Restart (step 3).

Once your computer has rebooted, now back in normal mode, run the driver install .exe in custom mode. Select "perform a clean installation" and install ONLY the GPU driver and the PHYSX software. Reboot again and see if you have any better luck with the game.

Thanks again to the person who helped with this, and provided screenshots to share.

For Origin, just follow EA's guide to uninstalling "the hard way," and then reinstall:
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/origin/origin/manually-uninstalling-origin/#uninstall-advanced

Finally, launch TS3 again. If you're still getting the white screen, try igazor's method for forcing graphics card recognition again.

And if none of this works, post back with yet another dxdiag. Your more recent one has so many errors that are likely Origin-related, any other potential errors are being crowded out. (The dxdiag only lists the last 10.) So a fresh dxdiag might list something that didn't show up before.
SuzyCue72
5 years ago
"m16857;c-17604964" wrote:
Hi all. Sounds like I've been having very similar problems here and I am yet unable to solve them. Firstly, I'm trying to get the game to recognise my graphics card (GeForce RTX 2070 Super) and secondly, I'm getting the 'Hardware not recognised' error on the neighbourhood selection screen.

To top things off, on map view, my map is totally white and grey. However, I can click on a family (blindly though, by randomly clicking on the map somewhere!) and I can see them/inside the house fine. That said, the graphics are poor and all settings are reduced to minimum. When I go into the options to change the sliders to higher graphics settings, I press the tick icon which closes the window. If I were then to open options immediately again, the graphics settings have returned to minimum!

I'm tearing my hair out here. Not sure whether the white map/poor graphics is due to the card being unrecognised? Having little success getting the game to recognise the card though. I've heard I should be duplicating the file of a similar graphics card, but unfortunately due to the age of the game, there are no RTX cards listed.

Any help would be hugely appreciated! I can post my specs if that helps (though I do have a i7 gaming computer with plenty of RAM!). Thanks in advance.

@m16857 Check out my reply with picture in the other thread where you posted about this issue.
uhlani27
6 years ago
Yeah the card isn't being recognized! It also says it doesnt recognize my hardware. :( I can't even pick a house because the map is literally white. If I click on a random house, I can see the neighborhood around me but when I press map view it's white again and it freezes so I have to force close it. I just uninstalled and installed TS3 again to get the original sgr files.

Here's my dxdiag.
https://pastebin.com/nEw0mefF