Re: Sims 4 64 Bit - Advanced Rendering Glitch

Hello, I can hear the fans when I play sims 4 and they are definitely working there - though I do not hear them in the little time I can play sims 3 before it crashes. And yes, the computer is physically cool. 

Thank you so much for trying to help me out 🙂

@Nyyerd  Try lowering the lighting and tree detail settings to the minimum; that helps some players with hardware similar to yours.  Make sure to change the settings at the Main Menu and then quit to desktop before loading a save, or you might see some very concerning graphics glitches.  That goes for the advanced rendering setting as well.

You can also try switching between fullscreen and windowed modes, which you can do with cmd-return whenever you want.

By the way, please let me know what operating system you're running.  It's listed in the first part of the deviceconfig, which you didn't include, but you can find it in any number of places.  I'm looking for not just the overall OS (e.g. Catalina, Big Sur) but also either the build number as seen in the deviceconfig or the version number as seen in the About This Mac info.

I noticed this in the deviceconfig.log file

(Name (Database) Intel Graphics 550 [Found : 0, Matched : 1]

And I am wondering if that's what is causing it.

The game runs decently if I turn off advanced rendering - just wondering if there's a way to fix that.

My mac...

Macbook 13 inch, 2016

macOS Big Sur Version 11.2

Thank you again!

@Nyyerd  The Found: 0 value means that your graphics chip isn't in the game's database, and the Matched: 1 is because the database says for any identified Intel card not found, set Matched to 1 and impose the default low settings profile.  You could add your card to the database if you want, but I don't know whether this version of the game even reads the associated files.  If you'd like to try anyway, let me know, and I'll post instructions.

I'd love to try to add my card to the database if you're willing to send over the instructions - it's hilarious that they changed the game to work on mac yet it won't recognize the mac graphics cards.

Do you think adding my card to the database will help the issue?

Thank you.

@Nyyerd  I don't know whether adding your graphics chip to the database will change anything.  The database was actually not updated at all for the 64-bit version, but something else changed, because now all AMD graphics cards are recognized, despite the fact that they're not listed in the original .sgr files.  So I don't know whether the game even reads the files anymore—maybe it doesn't, maybe it does and there's an additional override somewhere.  I did poke around a couple times looking for other files that might be serving the same purpose but didn't find anything useful.

At any rate, adding your chip is simple enough to do.  The two files you would normally edit are graphicscards.sgr and graphicsrules.sgr, located within the game's package contents.  It turns out though that you may only need to edit graphicscards.sgr, which makes things simpler.  The full file path will start with either Applications or Users > your username > Applicaitons, and from there it goes like this:

The Sims 3.app > Contents > Resources > The Sims 3.app > Contents > Resources

To open an .app, right-click on it and select "Show Package Contents."

Before you do anything else, please right-click on graphicscards.sgr and select Copy, then right-click on your desktop and select Paste.  This way, if the edit doesn't work, you can trash the copy you changed and put this one back, no harm done.

These instructions only apply to the original poster's graphics chip.  If you'd like to get your card recognized, please create a new thread and ask for help.

Open graphicscards.sgr, use cmd-F to search for 8086, and you'll land here:

vendor "Intel" 0x8086
    card 0x0042 "Havendale"
    card 0x0046 "Havendale"

Below the line with "Intel" in it, create a new line and copy and paste this:

    card 0x1927 "Iris Graphics 550"

Save, quit, launch the game, quit, and see whether your card is recognized.  You should see a Found: 1 value in the deviceconfig.

If this doesn't work, let me know, and we can tweak the edits.  Like I said though, the game may not care what's in this file at all.