Memory Boost Technical Issues and Feedback Thread

Just wanted to let you know I disabled the memory booster .  I never enabled it because I did major upgrades $$$$ on my system a few months ago because my games were dragging horrendously.  I was thrilled with the results!   ... and then along came Memory booster. I played it with the temporary setting as it was loaded in my game settings and then I disabled it.  and Wow  🤪 - My system doesn't need it, It actually plays so much better without it. 😁

Just a general heads up, I would suggest automatic be disabled as default, because I was very confused as to why my gallery wasn't loading until I saw the post on discord that a new feature was put in. You really do need to do the first step (antivirus) first to make it work, otherwise it starts messing with your game. 

My memory boost mode tests with some happy surprises:

Today I tried out the memory boost mode, because yesterday my save file corrupted, reverting all lots to default, which I documented here and already sent my save file to EA_Solaire for: Neighboring Houses show as Default/Empty | EA Forums - 11903590 

I was curious if the memory boost would have any impact, and wanted to share my experiences with the boost so far. I only played 2 hours with it, mostly testing out a range of usual activities, like building, placing lots from gallery, live mode, first person cam, travelling, small businesses, general camera panning and other movements, etc.:

1. Surprisingly when opening my corrupted save file that previously showed all surounding lots as default lots -> I suddenly could see the actual lots I've built, recovered from the reverted default view!! This is an incredible improvement and I'm surprised the dev team did not mention anything about this in the instructions / info pages about memory boost? I was able to travel to those previously reverted lots and iteract with them in build mode, that's crazy!! Could this be the fix we were waiting for since years? 
2. To test this even more, I started placing more heavy builds into the worlds, replacing smaller / lighter ones with castles and all that stuff that usually breaks your save. I did not reach a point where lots were reverting to default again, but I have to admit that my game just ended up in an endless loading screen after trying to exit one of the bigger builds again. So while it did not "crash" I had to force quit it anyway => This issue of random gallery lots endlessly loading is unfortunately not solved yet
3. I also tested another issue that is reported here, that is similar to the one above with the reverting lots to default lots, but with apartments: Loading into any apartment in San Myshuno will render all apartments that are in the same building as 0 simoleons worth of furnishings, and create bugs in gameplay. Unfortunately this memory boost is not fixing this problem, all apartments around my current one are still losing their furnishings: [CL] Apartments lose furniture when loading into adjacent apartment | EA Forums - 11849597 
4. In live mode i experienced something strange as well: I have a strong gaming PC with fps usually around 90 - 140, but panning with the mouse through the neighbourhood (Sims 3 cam, using middle and right mouse button) or following my Sim with rightclick on their portrait, often had heavy stutters and camera jumps, as if the main thread was blocked with some loading of textures or game mechanics blocking camera movements. The performance felt really bad for some seconds, then went good again, then bad again, and so on, and the stutter made me feel sea sick. Something feels not well optimised during live mode when the camera moves. 
   I experienced such an issue also after Businesses and Hobbies patch and got support on the forum here, that recommended me to override my GraphicsRules in the ConfigOverride, and learned how to remove LOD switching. I did that and since then it was working like a dream again (like pre-BH patch and earlier), everything was fluent finally again! (I forced Sim quality and Object quality to always use the highest quality LOD and not do LOD switching - which fixed that heavy stuttering that got introduced by BH patch) - but unfortunately even with the GraphicsRule override in my folder when testing now it went back to being stuttering again, even though I can confirm the LODs are not changing. This time it also happens rather when live mode is playing, while there is no stuttering when the game is paused. Even while stuttering my fps is still above 100 but the camera movements jump to a sickening degree :(
5. In general I felt like my fps went down a whole lot when i was visiting big lots, like a 50x50 or 64x64, no matter if in live or build mode. It went unusually down to 30 fps, which i rarely every had before. I haven't tested yet if this is only in boost mode or if this is an issue with the latest AA patch though, will need to compare the same lot later without the boost.
6. A few more things I tested, which all had no issues:
   1. First person cam worked well and without fps drops (but the EA eye lashes are still hanging in front of the camera and not hiding in that view, which is a bug since love struck)
   2. Traveling of Sims, loading into lots of lots of all types, using small businesses and retails, interacting with other Sims.. all this had no issues
   3. I used CAS and the gallery without isses
   4. Placed lots without issues (except the already mentioned bug about endless loading, that are still happening)

Platform: Windows 11, AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12 Core, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, 32GB Ram, 2TB SSD
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Read above
What is your current game version number? latest to date, 1.118.257.1020 DX11
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? ALL possible
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Read above
What happens when the bug occurs? Read above
What do you expect to see? Read above
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Usually yes, and tested with and without

Hope this info helps the dev team, and hope we can improve on the camera performance during live mode as well, as it creates nausea to play like that. But incredibly excited that the reverted lots issue seems to get fixed in this mode, that gives me hope that I can still play my game when the next EP comes out and more lots will be added to my save. 
Thank you so much for creating this Sims dev team!! ❤️

karoschmitz​ Excellent post.  Wish I could give it more than one like!! 😁

Memory boost activated itself on the second to last update for me. I did not activate it, it just turned itself on. If this is not intended, that's probably a bug.

I only found out it was activated because my game was lagging so much (it never lagged before), so I went to see if settings had been changed in the update, and found memory boost on. Turned it back off and the lagging went away immediately. Reactivating it made the lagging return. Sims stood around doing nothing, pie menues took forever to load, interactions cancelled and reset, graphics stuttered. Without memory boost my game runs smoothly without any of these issues at my chosen settings. 

Win 10 on extended support, 8GB RAM, Nvidia graphic card with 4 GB graphics memory. 

Platform: Windows
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Whenever I use Memory Boost
What is your current game version number? 1.119.109.1020
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? all except  the most recent three kits
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Unknown. Doesn't seem universal. For me, start the game and play the game.
What happens when the bug occurs? Increased loading times compared to without Memory Boost enabled.
What do you expect to see? Similar loading times (or less, but that might be asking too much) as without Memory Boost enabled.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Yes. The same mods and cc as without Memory Boost enabled.

I'm playing a save I don't really care about so I thought it would be a good time to test the new feature. I noticed no improvements anywhere, but loading times were greatly increased in the same save file with everything else unchanged. After disabling Memory Boost, loading seems to be back to normal. I know people who've had the opposite experience, but I guess it's not helpful to me at this point.

Does anyone know if when playing with Memory Boost ON and saving over several weeks new save file versions, if I then can decide to play without it again and just load into one of these latest Memory boosted save files but with Memory Boost OFF - without issues? 

Or does Memory Boost change the structure of the save file in some way that is lossy or incompatible with playing with Memory Boost OFF?

I'm considering using the boost as it is solving a retail issue I'm experiencing ([GTW] Retail: Shops lose selling functionality | EA Forums - 13072851 ) but am wondering if I can change my mind later on down the line in case I find major issues with it? Or would I then have to go all the way back and play with the last save that I made today before switching Memory Boost ON, losing progress I made from then?

(And btw I tested if every Memory Boost save file creates a non-boosted recovery save, but it doesn't - it only creates the memory boosted save file when I save - so that is not an option, there won't be backups that are non-boosted created automatically)

karoschmitz​  The goal is that saves that have used Memory Boost will be viable with the feature disabled as well.  But given that it's still in the beta phase, I wouldn't consider that a guarantee.

Your question isn't answered specifically in the FAQ:

Memory Boost - Early Access - FAQ | EA Forums - 12559451

But you can tell by the wording that saves are supposed to be playable after reverting.

Thank you so much puzzlezaddict​ , really appreciate it!! 🙏

Hope the dev team moves it out of early access soon, as it seems to be a very helpful feature that solves some long-term issues. 🤞