Sure, it could be due to the horses. However, if there are no horses in the household, the image should behave normally as it was before the 7/18 update. The gallery was set up in this manner for cats and dogs. It zooms out a bit if there is a cat or dog and zooms more depending on the number. So, in the case of horses, image should adjust only if there is a horse in the household. It's not a good look to have tiny sims without a horse in the image as well. Look at this screenshot I took before the EP dropped. You'll see how some of the shared households are at the normal zoom thumbnail view and some others are at this new tiny view. I think the OP of this bug report is onto something. I suspect it does have to do with if it's an already played household or a merged household brought back into CAS a second third or more times.
Just a few points to add:
I don't think this is related to whether it's an old or new household.
I think the reason that people are noticing this when editing a household or moving sims, is simply because that's when the game is forced to generate new thumbnails for the household.
The game uses old thumbnails as long as the household doesn't change.
I'm also noticing that this starts happening when there are at least 5 adult sims in the household (haven't tested other household constellations so far). The zoom for 1-4 sims is still the same as it was before (I'm gonna call it zoom level 1). But as soon as the game changes to zoom level 2 with 5 or more sims, it now applies a larger zoom out than before.
I do think this is (indirectly) related to horses, but I don't think this is an intended feature, but more likely an oversight.
I can confirm that I tested households with 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 sims and you seem to be correct. Everything is as it was before for households under 5 sims and the larger households all have this new zoom level. Hopefully if it was an oversight, it'll make it on the radar to get fixed. I'm going to hold off on gallery uploads for a while and see what happens because it will definitely trigger me if they're not all uniform down the road. 😳
I'm adding this new issue here as it's a similar concern regarding gallery images/thumbnails. The secondary pose is out of focus/alignment too but in different ways for our horses. The adults are pretty good but in my opinion need more work to get centered etc. It's the foals I'm mainly concerned about. All the foals are getting cut off in the second gallery image. They are way to far down towards the bottom of the frame. This thumbnail really needs work! Here is a sample. I'm not exactly sure how many second thumbnails for foals there are but I'm thinking they are all like this.
I investigated this issue and found the culprit (thanks to MizoreYukii for helping me!):
The update changed the camera settings in these two files:
(One is used for households with even number of sims, the other one for households with odd number of sims.)
Changing the parameters back to the way they were before the update fixes the described issue.
However, I now also believe EA actually did this on purpose to account for horses. Although, as far as I can tell, they could have done it differently and I don't think this is an appropriate solution:
Households with 5+ sims and a horse use the same settings as 5+ sims households without horses. (Although there are extra settings for a lesser amount of sims which, in my opinion, would be also the preferred option for bigger households!).
This means though, as Crinrict suggested before, that when you apply the old settings, the horse doesn't always fit properly.
I shared a mod fix with the old settings as well as an adjusted version with a compromise/in-between version that zooms out a bit more to account for the horses but not as much as EAs solution. You can find it on my Tumblr (can't link it here as it's against the rules).
But I still think this needs an official fix, even if done on purpose. Ideally, households with horses would always be treated differently than households without horses. The way it is now is not a good look for the game - to the degree where people assume that something's broken. (Also, same thing for the foal thumbnails, it looks like they need some recalibration at least.)
On a personal note, I cared enough to investigate this issue because, on top of household thumbnails being messed up in general, this change also damaged some of the custom Gallery poses (mine as well as those from other creators) and people have been messaging me about it (and probably will continue to).
@SimplyAnjuta you are a superstar, thank you! The disparity in scale has been really bugging me, I'm off to download your fix now ❤️
Thanks so much for investigating this! I'm on console, so unfortunately, I can't use the mod-- but it's cool that will help PC players in the meantime while we wait for this to (hopefully) get an official fix!! 😃
