Why are my graphics suddenly pixelated?

"ZeeGee;c-17345098" wrote:
@ScottDemon Sorry you're having to suffer through this too. Nvidia is asking if it is affecting other games besides Sims 3. I don't have any. Do you? And if so, are they being affected?

Yeah I have some other games they are affected to an extent but it's not as noticeable. Except this one game which makes use of the Gamma Channel for glowing affects on certain patterns and those seem to not only be much brighter but the coloration is also off.

I'm beginning to think it's not so much the red and green color spectrums but the gamma effects that the game uses on them. To test my theory I played Midnight Hollow in the winter. Not sure if you've ever played Midnight Hollow but during the winter it's hard to tell if it's night or day due to how bright the lighting effect is on the snow. And sure enough at least for me it was a lot brighter almost got blinded from the brightness when I went into town view.

@ScottDemon I've not ever played Midnight Hollow. I think maybe your original assumption that it had to do with red and green was correct because in this picture of a totally gray fridge I'm getting red and green color stripes if you can see it.

https://i.imgur.com/YOwNVp7.jpg

@puzzlezaddict I've tried the different settings on Control Panel. GeForce won't recognize Sims 3 as a game which will accept their new cool filters. I've been through two extensive chates with Nvidia. They've told me to contact the developer. Ha ha ha.

Did you enable experimental features in GFE? I think that's still required in order to use the filters, or maybe it's only required for certain games. The option is under Settings > General. The filters do work in TS3 though... at least, they work with a different Nvidia card.

It doesn't really matter though. Even with a different card than yours, and a different driver, and a different Windows build (1809), the same color distortion you saw is still present. None of the default filters removed it (even the ones that adjust gamma), although now that it's possible to import more filters from Reshade, there may be better options. None of the Control Panel settings made a difference either. So I'm not sure what's going on, but it's definitely not isolated to only some narrow circumstances.

I'll keep looking though, and let you know if there's something else worth testing. Nvidia Inspector might still be helpful, although at this point, it doesn't seem all that likely. Sorry I don't have a better answer.

"ZeeGee;c-17346824" wrote:
@ScottDemon I've not ever played Midnight Hollow. I think maybe your original assumption that it had to do with red and green was correct because in this picture of a totally gray fridge I'm getting red and green color stripes if you can see it.

https://i.imgur.com/YOwNVp7.jpg

No, I do think it's the Gamma Channel by switching patterns and keeping the same grey color I was able to eliminate the effect and that particular grey is a "warm" grey so it sits in the warm color spectrum like red and green. And I also changed the floor to that same color and never saw the red and green stripes. Some of the games patterns use the Gamma Chanel to higher degree than others and some don't use it at all.
Plus with that other game I mentioned it wouldn't explain why a glowing blue turned to a glowing white if it was the red and green color spectrums it takes a breaking of the Gamma Effect to cause a glowing blue to go glowing white.

*Edit*
But it could also be the difference in our graphic cards as I use a Radeon. So it could be that it broke the red and green spectrums for Nvidia while breaking the Gamma for Radeon which is totally possible.

I know that The Sims 3 doesn't like newer graphics cards, so you'll more than likely have to go into the game's graphicsrules.sgr and change some stuff around in there. The game doesn't like my 2080 Super at all so I've got to sort it out somehow. It's always pegged at 100% and squeals louder than a pig.

"TheGreatCabal12;c-17348003" wrote:
I know that The Sims 3 doesn't like newer graphics cards, so you'll more than likely have to go into the game's graphicsrules.sgr and change some stuff around in there. The game doesn't like my 2080 Super at all so I've got to sort it out somehow. It's always pegged at 100% and squeals louder than a pig.

You need to cap the FPS otherwise the game will burn that card out as the game doesn't have a built-in FPS limiter.

> @ScottDemon said:
> (Quote)
>
> You need to cap the FPS otherwise the game will burn that card out as the game doesn't have a built-in FPS limiter.

I've tried Rivatuner and using Geforce control panel yet nothing will work to limit the FPS. I'm wondering if I have to add an entry in graphicsrules.sgr to get it to work

@TheGreatCabal12 - Whoa there, yes @ScottDemon is correct. If your fps rates haven't been managed and the GPU is making high-pitched squealing noises, then it is throwing wildly high frame rates that no monitor can ever interpret. That can indeed burn out the card over time and do damage to the system board. It's not that TS3 doesn't "like" newer or higher end graphics cards, it's that back in 2008-09 when the game was designed there weren't many home consumer grade GPUs that would be capable of throwing fps rates like that. Things have changed.

The usual route to take is to use the Nivida Control Panel to arrange vertical sync for TS3.exe (for Patch 1.69) or TS3W.exe (with the "W" for Patch 1.67), Triple Buffering On, and then if that still doesn't work add Nvidia Inspector to explicitly set the frame rate limit to the refresh rate of your monitor. Most are 60 Hz, so that would be 60 fps (some can run a bit higher). To see the actual frame rates you are getting in-game, Ctrl+Shift+C to bring up the cheats console, and type fps on (enter). To make the display go away, cheats console again and fps off (enter).

GeForce itself doesn't do this, it's the Nivida Control Panel. The sgr file hocus pocus to grant formal recognition of the card is much less important and is not going to fix this. It's odd that RivaTuner (RTSS) is not working for you, that one usually does a fine job as well although that gives kind of an emergency max cap on the fps, not vertical sync. Are you certain that RTSS remains running when you launch the game? Unlike all of these other tools, if you "X" out after looking at or changing its settings, then it won't be running and will have no impact.

@igazor
Ah...
That's a good point. I found that Rivatuner doesn't stay running in the background. Didn't realize that closing it using the X button would end the process.

"TheGreatCabal12;c-17348031" wrote:
@igazor
Ah...
That's a good point. I found that Rivatuner doesn't stay running in the background. Didn't realize that closing it using the X button would end the process.

One thing to do with RivaTuner is to turn on Show Own Statistics which will display your FPS that way you'll know if you accidently closed out the program or used the wrong .exe cause if you did either of those you won't see your FPS.