Camera movements very choppy since BH patch

karoschmitz​  Please let me know whether this happens in both fullscreen and windowed modes, and in DirectX 9 mode as well as DX11, and with the Eco Footprint disabled (you don't have to save).  Test fullscreen with the game running at your monitor's native resolution.  I'd also like to know whether this happens in all worlds.  You don't need to test every one, but a new save in Willow Creek or Newcrest would be a useful comparison.

For moving the camera at least, some players have reported that right-click and move is smoother than edge scrolling, so please try that too.

Thank you so much for responding and helping, puzzleaddict, I appreciate it so much!! ❤️

I did following tests:

Setup: I tested while having loaded into an area in live mode, it is day time (when it's the worst), and waited until the neighbourhood had spawned some Sims walk-bys. I am loaded into a Sim that has a small business (allowing parents to stay with their kids/tods/infants), and opened the business, as that creates the maximum camera choppiness, so I can best compare the different states (but it also happens when I just play a household without a business, especially bad in community lots). I'm also running "fps on" as it confirms the visual choppiness with a frame rate drop by approx 50-70 fps (goes down to 35-70 when chopping). For testing I 1. use right click panning over the town, and 2. have my Sim drive around with a bicycle and am following her sidewards (by right clicking on her profile image and positioning the cam sidewards of her, as it makes the camera jumping clearest to observe). I play on speed 1 nearly all the time and walls up if that matters, highest graphics options and Vertical Sync on (I tried it with Vertical Sync off too, but didn't see a difference).

1. Right-click to pan the camera: I already am using right-click to pan the camera (Sims 3 cam), I don't have edge scrolling on, so I assume I'm unfortunately already using the most performant one by default. I also use the keyboard WASD to move the camera, sometimes in combination with "holding" the screen with the mouse middle button to rotate and move, but both have the same stuttering effect.
2. Eco footprint disabled: My Game Option "Enable Eco Footprint Gameplay" as well as "Eable NPC Voting" are both always off already. I also have "Build mode items grant gameplay effects" always off. But I strangely still experience a popup sometimes very rarely that tells me that the footprint changed, which is probably a game bug. Because of this bug I do have ALL of my buildings in my whole save have the lot trait "Eco lot", as a way to prevent that the bug moves my worlds into industrial phase and ruins the beautiful atmosphere. Not sure if there is a way to actually fully disable footprint more than what I already have disabled? I definitely don't see the eco footprint UI anywhere in my game, and usually don't have any of the aurora etc effects.
3. Fullscreen: I usually play on "windowed fullscreen" -> I now tested on "Fullscreen" with my native 2560x1440 resolution, but it made no difference, same frame drops and choppiness when panning or following my Sim. I also tested on "Windowed" and it was either even worse or the same (had a drop to 30 fps at some points, but I also observed them in full screen at some rare times). All 3 modes were choppy, compared to what I had experienced in my game all years so far until the BH patch.
4. DirectX 9 / 11: I usually play on DX11. When switching to DirectX9, restarting, and playing at that same point again (with still open business), I still have the same choppiness and frame drop when panning. I feel like the performance with DX9 is even lower, the frame drop went down to 25-35 (10 below DX11) and the general fps while standing still and paused was only at 70-90 (compared to 120-140 with DX11 in the exact same location / perspective)
5. Willow Creek / NewCrest: I tested in my current and a fresh new save:
   In my current save I experience the same choppiness especially in bigger neighbourhoods like the one in willow creek that has the nightclub (Crawdad Quarter), and also in other worlds where i tested in Brindelton Bay at the coast on the biggest lot, or Ravenwood, right neighbourhood on the 30x30 at the water close to the rock head, especially when the festival in the evening starts. FPS goes down till 40-50 when it is choppy, especially when visiting a community lot.
   For a fresh new save file at the start it is completely fluent, the same way as all my main-save neighbourhoods are when I just load in at the start before Sims spawn. To reach choppy levels in a fresh save i had to play for a while and I added 4 random families (in all different ages, incl a horse, dog etc) to willow creek as there were barely any Sims out (and added clubs that can meet in community lots, to make it a bit more similar to my save, even if it is highly reduced). The choppiness is less heavy and long (goes down to 60 fps from normally being 140 fps), but is still happening when panning while playing in a community lot and approx 17 Sims are out and about.

Some additional observations (not sure if they matter) :

• Every time i load into a neighbourhood my game starts 100% fluently and on 140 fps without any choppiness at all. When I pause right at the start in the first second, and then pan around the neighbourhood for how ever long i want, it's fully smooth, no matter how complex my builds are. I can see the different LODS moving in and out without issues, textures loading etc, the frame rate goes down but it doesn't stutter the camera movements, on highest graphics settings. It only starts stuttering as soon as other Sims are spawned in, especially panning over them.
• The camera panning is also choppy when the game is paused in live mode, as long as there are Sims loaded in the streets.
• The camera is panning 100% fluent (choppiness at all) when in build mode (from managed worlds, on the same lot), but it is choppy when using build mode coming from live mode (as long as there are other Sims on the streets too)
• As everything hinted to issues with Sims, I tried to move all my graphic settings that are Sims-related fully down, and deleted localthumbcache: 
  - Sims = Low
  - Uncompressed Sim Textures = off
  - Edge smoothing = off (not sure if that is effecting Sims but i thought i'll try it)
  It still stutters but definitely less when I'm far away panning over the Sims in bird-eye distance, but when coming closer it is as bad as before. And of course it's not an enjoyable state not seeing the faces of my beloved characters, it shouldn't be suddenly necessary if a high level of detail was ok before BH patch..
• My observation of the choppiness coincided with the appearance of the new file localsimtexturecache - I have no idea if it has anything to do with it, just noticed that this got added at the same time as the issue began. Might be a coincidence, but I thought I'll mention it.
  I did try to delete the file (given it's a cache i assume it's safe to delete similar like deleting the thumbnailcache), but didn't notice a difference in performance. I tried observing the file reads/writes into this file while panning, and saw it being written to but not read, but not sure if it's meant to be read during live mode anyway. Happy to test anything if you have any ideas?
• The choppiness is similar to when you place a new build from the gallery on a lot, and try to move the camera before the name of the lot has updated to the new lot name (I assume this is the time the game needs to load all textures / geometry) -> this is a similar choppiness, although maybe half as bad, because it starts choppy, then becomes fluent, then goes back to choppy when i try to move again, and so on.
• My save file is a 4-year long rotational save that includes every DLC, with every single lot of all worlds lovingly placed from gallery (usually not-cluttered builds, as i like simplicity), with 42 played households (121 Sim Count) and regularly cleaned "other households". I have 19 clubs, and my Sims have lots of relationships, inventories that i clean from time to time, especially deleting photos i dont need, they have jobs, skills etc. => This will likely be heavier than a fresh save which could be why fresh saves perform a bit better, but what is strange is that all this had not changed when I updated to the BH patch, and suddenly it was choppy, while it wasn't just before that.. I even tested with the BH world freshly in my main save, without building anything in there, it was starting out choppy right away after the update (another reason why i assume it doesn't have to do with buildings).
  
  

This is all I know so far and have done testing on. I hope it might spark some idea what the issue could be?

Thank you so much again for helping ❤️

I realised i forgot to share the link of some more data i have added to a bug report, when I still thought this is a bug that everyone might be experiencing. In there i had also shared some screenshots of GPU and CPU performance during my tests: Panning camera stutters | EA Forums - 12050871 

karoschmitz​  You've tested most of what I can think of off the top of my head, but I have a couple more suggestions for now.  If they don't pan out, I'll think about it more and maybe ask for a second opinion.

One is to disable Eco Lifestyle entirely, just to make sure it's not the problem.  I understand you probably wouldn't want to do this in your main save, but a new test save would be fine.  Here's how to disable a pack, in case you don't already know:

https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2017/03/disable-single-packs/

Another suggestion is to try letting your GPU render the game at a higher resolution and then scale it down after the fact.  This is called Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR), if you haven't heard of it, and you can enable it through the Nvidia Control Panel.  Right-click the desktop, select the CP, open Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings, find TS4_x64 on the list, and choose the lowest value for DSR you see.  (1 is the current resolution, so anything greater than 1 is higher.)

For reference, 2.25 would be 3840x2160, relative to 2560x1440, which is high but not too high for your RTX 3080 to handle.

If that doesn't help either, some of the graphics edits covered here might:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/55891224

The file apparently hasn't been updated in years, so don't add it to your own game; just look for the LOD changes and apply them to a copy of your own GraphicsRules.sgr.  You can drop your own copy in ConfigOverride rather than editing the original.

For all of these, please test with ultra graphics settings in general.  You can leave Edge Smoothing off if you want, and Post Processing too, but other than that, there's no reason ultra settings shouldn't work.

The localsimtexturecache file stores some data related to rendering sims.  I'm not sure exactly how much, but as with all cache files, it's supposed to speed up loading and can be deleted safely whenever you want.

Hi Puzzlezaddict, thank you so very much for your reply and all the super helpful instructions and support 🙏❤️

I've done above tests now, although need a hint on the last one that failed:

1. I disabled ECO lifestyle, and ran this version of the game on a "save as" backup of my current save file so I can test all the heavy scenarios. I deleted the cache files just in case any eco stuff is in the cache and then tested in several neighbourhoods.
   => Unfortunately I still have the same stuttering in the same intensity. I think we can fully rule out that eco has something to do with it.
2. I switched to DSR 1x78 which was the lowest option, had some monitor flickering when it switched as expected and applied, started the game and re-tested all scenarios in different neighbourhoods. 
   => I could not see any difference again, and had the same camera stuttering.
3. GraphicsRules.sgr - I copied my own GraphicsRules.sgr from the Program Files - EA Games - The Sims 4 - Game - Bin folder, and pasted it into: Documents - Electronic arts - The Sims 4 - ConfigOverride folder (the folder was already there, but empty before) -> Is this the correct place? I then downloaded the newest (but quite old) GraphicsRules.sgr from the Overhaul website you linked, and did a text compare between both, to find the areas that have to do with LOD (Sim and Object LODS). I changed values of existent variables, and added conditions that were in the new file, making sure I always replace the old version of the exact same value. If I was in doubt, I made no change (there were some variable around the LODS that didn't have LOD in it, I wasn't sure if I should change those value too or not?)
   => When I tried to start the game, I got an error popup and the game exited right away.
   => I then took this edited version out again (just moved it to desktop for now), and just tried it with an exact copy of my GraphicsRules.sgr - and even without any edits, the game reacts with the same error! So it seems like the game doesn't like to have the GraphicsRules.sgr in the ConfigOverride - do I have to remove anything from the original file, for it to be accepted as an override? Am I copying the correct file into the correct folder? Did I have to remove the original one to have the override (probably not, given this is an "override"?) Does your game work, when you copy your GraphicsRules.sgr into the ConfigOverride folder and run the game? 
   At the top of the original file is an include "Ts4CommonRules.sgr" (which looks like an import statement) could it be that it tries to find the include relatively to the GraphicsRules file (which is now in a new location) and maybe can't find it?

I got it working! Indeed it was the include -> when I copied the original "Ts4CommonRules.sgr" and also pasted it into the ConfigOverride folder, the game started again - yay!

Now I replaced that original copy with my edited copy, and I can confirm the LODS of objects don't change when i move over them. It's a bit harder to verify with Sims, as they are small enough to not actually notice the worse LODS, but I assume my changes were applying there too.

=> And OOMMGG my game is fluent again!!! I can't believe it, I can actually pan over and follow my sims in those exact situation where it was unbearable and gave me sea sickness, and it's fluent, and even 100-140 fps still.

Sooo, as for next steps, does that mean I have to make these changes on every patch again and should keep this override for now in my game? Or would this lead to a bug report given that this was not necessary before and something might have changed the heaviness of the LOD changes on strong computers?

Ahh, so happy I can at least play again ❤️❤️❤️ I can't thank you enough puzzlezaddict​ !!! 🙏

I have this issue too and I'm struggling to figure out what you did to fix it. I looked at the file you shared and said you used as a reference to edit with, but I'm unsure what I need to do.

karoschmitz​  I'm so glad to hear that your game works the way you want again.  You will only need to update your ConfigOverride files when the originals update to include new content, which happens with some patches but not all.  The point of the folder is that its contents don't get reverted with an update or repair.  However, if the game updates the originals and you don't remove your edited versions, you might see some weirdness, for example the most recent associated problem was not being able to click in-game.

It's simple enough to check the modified dates on the original .sgr files after a patch, and reapply the edits to a fresh copy of the file, although it would be nice if the game didn't require it.

As for making a bug report, you could do it if you wanted.  I would suggest listing the exact changes you made to the .sgr file, and that the problem occurred in all the context I had you test (DX9 vs. DX11, etc.) before you edited the .sgr file.  But you don't have to do that; I can forward your info from here.

By the way. what exact error did you get?  I get this one on my Mac:

Sims 4 Mac crashes with GraphicsRules.sgr file in the ConfigOverride folder | EA Forums - 12188469

But I hadn't seen it happen in Windows, at least not recently and not outside of confirmed user error.

Starlyk​  The idea is to find where the downloaded file changes any LOD value, and change that value in your own copy of the file to whatever the downloaded copy has.  You can use ctrl-F to search the files, or use an app that allows you to compare the two side by side and highlights any discrepancies.

Hi Puzzlezaddict, 

yes exactly, that's the same error I get too! Just paste your original Ts4CommonRules.sgr into the ConfigOverride folder too, and it might work the same way as it worked for me.

Thank you so much for the helpful guidance, I'll make note of my changes and will re-apply if I see the date of the original GraphicsRules.sgr changing 🙏

I'm not sure if all of my changes were necessary, I might do another round of testing with just a partial edit to see if object AND Sims LODS needed to be set to not change, or if one of them is enough to impact the performance so intensely.

puzzlezaddict​ if you are happy to share with the devs, that would be amazing, as that would potentially help them find the performance issues we are experiencing since BH patch - I'll share ALL the changes i had made so far below here (see diffs below). 🙏

For anyone trying below, please be aware that I'm not sure if the changes are all fully making sense, given i have ommitted some of the changes that were further above in the code and that might have been needed for the best experience, but I couldn't find any documentation on the variable's, and to reduce risk kept the changes to only impact LODS as far as I could reason about them myself without documentation ;) If anyone knows a place where some of these variables are documented, please share, I'd love to understand better what I'm doing and what I'm ommitting. 🙏

Here are all the diffs, left side my original file, right side the changes that went into the Override:

In the line 449 I did change the floating number to Ints, as I first thought that was the reason why the game crashed, but forgot to change them back again. They originally had these numbers, which are probably fine too "29999.97, 29999.98, 29999.99, 30000" but I didn't change it back yet as the outcome was already so good that I didn't know if it was needed.

I also just saw a new patch came out and the patch notes write about performance improvements. I can't update right away and will have to play offline until I have waited for the main mods to update, but I this patch might have already made a difference, Starlyk​ maybe try the patch first before playing around with the graphicsRules?

Also forgot to mention that i made the edits for Sims Quality only for the highest Sims quality, as I'm playing on the setting Very High. If you are playing on lower settings, you would need to check the values for the lower ones too and override them there too.