Trees and Bushes Displayed as 2D Billboards in Almost Every World

praisethebastii​  I've seen this a couple times before, but at least one of the affected players said that a repair worked, so I'm not sure what the issue is here.  I would suggest a more targeted repair though, just as an experiment—we know that sometimes it's necessary to reinstall a single pack.

Please close the EA App and kill the EABackgroundService in the Task Manager.  Open [install location]\The Sims 4 and delete the EP14 folder inside.  Open the Delta folder and delete the EP14 folder there too.  Then clear the EA App's cache, repair the game, and reinstall Horse Ranch.

Please test in both fullscreen and windowed modes, quitting and reloading after changing the setting and before testing.

If this doesn't help, please try playing in a clean boot.  I realize that this happened on two different systems, but it's certainly possible that they have software in common.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd

The one service to leave enabled is the EABackgroundService, which the EA App needs in order to run.  Disable the rest as described.

When you reboot your computer, go through the Task Manager's background processes list shutting down any service that doesn't absolutely need to be running, for example anything from MSI Afterburner to RGB software might still be enabled.  If you accidentally kill a critical process and it doesn't restart on its own, just reboot your computer again.

Don't open anything other than Sims 4 and the EA App while testing, not even a browser window.

If this helps, you can selectively reenable services until you find the culprit, then either leave that disabled or (if it belongs to an app you want to keep using) let me know what it is so we can try to fix the underlying issue.

Unfortunately neither of your suggested solutions worked. I did everything just the way you described. I tried the clean boot several times.
puzzlezaddict​ Thank you tho!

praisethebastii​  So even the trees in the Horse Ranch world still looked 2D?  If so, I'd like a dxdiag from this computer, and from the other one if you still have access.  Even though it happening on two different PCs typically points to a game issue, I'd expect the problem to be reported a lot more if it were only about the game itself.

Yes even the Horse Ranch trees were still 2D. That's where I tested it every time. I don't have the old computer anymore unfortunately. I disassembled it. I hope I did everything correctly to get the dxdiag from my current computer! 

Overall here is a list of troubleshooting I did since my first post:

• deleting & reinstalling EP14
• deleting the graphicsrule.sgr file & repairing the game (cause that was the solution for a similar report)
• tested in fullscreen & window mode
• turning post processing on/off
• reinstalling my graphics driver
• a safe boot of windows

praisethebastii​  Try running the game in DirectX 9 mode instead.  You can just check the box for it with the other graphics options.

It's also worth disabling Game Mode and Game Bar, under Windows Settings > Gaming, since the XBox game overlay crashed at least once recently.

As a side note, is it true that this PC doesn't have a dedicated graphics card?  I don't see one, or a driver for it, and while that's fine, I figured I'd ask, especially since I guess your old computer had an Nvidia GPU.

• DirectX9 did not solve it
• Deactivating Game Mode & Game Bar had no impact

I am not that educated on my PC specs, but I think it's an integrated graphics chip (?). The amazon site says it's a AMD Radeon RX Vega 8. My old computer had a Nvidia Geforce GTX 960. I remember vividly hoping the trees would look right again, when I installed the game on my new setup.

praisethebastii​  The processor does come with a Vega 8 graphics chip, but I was wondering whether you had a discrete card in there as well.  The GTX 960 is a decade old but still much faster than the Vega 8, not that the latter is incapable of running Sims 4.  Still, it's a significant downgrade in terms of gaming performance even if the system is probably noticeably faster in everyday use.

I really don't know what's going on here.  I would suggest trying deleting the folders for another expansion, just to see what happens, for example maybe the Horse Ranch world is more sensitive than others.  (In another case of this, that world was the only one affected, so it's possible.)  The repair replaces the folder in Delta, and then you'd redownload the pack itself.  And I'd try playing in a clean boot again immediately afterwards, with your antivirus disabled, to be as thorough as possible.  As long as you don't do anything else at the same time, your computer should be safe, and then you can reenable the AV when you're done.

If that doesn't help, my only other suggestions for the moment would be to try an older graphics driver and to clean-uninstall and reinstall the game.  For older drivers, you'd need to use Display Driver Uninstaller to remove your current version, as described here:

https://crinrict.com/blog/2019/02/clean-re-install-of-graphics-drivers-with-display-driver-uninstaller-ddu.html

You can find older drivers here:

https://www.amd.com/en/support/downloads/previous-drivers.html/processors/ryzen/ryzen-5000-series/amd-ryzen-7-5700g.html

I wrote out how to clean-uninstall the game in the accepted solution of this thread, which is for a different issue, but the process is the same:

[CURRENT ISSUE] Sims 4 DLC shows as installed, won't load in-game | EA Forums - 11831673

If none of this helps, let me know, and I'll ask someone else to take a look, as a second opinion.

I finally found some time to do all of that and.. well, nothing. Still got my lovely billboard trees everywhere.

First I uninstalled the game through the EA App - nothing. Then I clean uninstalled and installed the game like you described, also no effect. And before that I uninstalled my driver and reinstalled it, following the crinrict tutorial.

Oh and I tried the clean boot several times throughout the process! I feel like I'm stuck with it until I upgrade my graphic card...

I wanna add something to this report, cause I think it might be connected and maybe if we can solve this problem, the other one will be solved as well. While testing out all these different methods in the last few weeks I payed a lot more attention to the environments in the game & I realized that my view/render distance seems to be off. Trees and other world objects that are pretty close are rendered in low LODs or disappear, but change to high when I am super close. Sometimes the terrain is clipping. I don't remember these things disappearing/changing their details so quickly, while going through the world.

Here is a video from today, when I started up my game to play Adventure Awaits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCEN0F6UT0Y

Important Note: This is DIFFERENT from what is happening in the other worlds, my original issue, where trees are stuck in their low LOD billboard style and don't change.

praisethebastii wrote:

Trees and other world objects that are pretty close are rendered in low LODs or disappear, but change to high when I am super close.

This would of course be normal if the distance where it changed was a bit further out.  Do you have any files in ConfigOverride, or did you edit your GraphicsRules.sgr at any point after deleting it and repairing?  And does the behavior change at all (whether it's a fix or not) when you disable Post Processing?  I realize it didn't help before, but the problem has changed a bit.

Does the behavior change at all if you slow down the camera movement or if you're zoomed in more overall?  In your video, there are a LOT of objects on-screen, and they keep changing quickly as you move the camera.  Your Vega 8 iGPU is not wholly incapable, but you're asking it to handle a very high workload compared to its processing power.  The video you've posted is the kind of context where I often see or hear players complaining that objects are taking too long to render, when the issue is really that there are too many objects for their GPU to render in the amount of time they expect.

Please also let me know what drive Sims 4 is installed on currently.  If you have time and it's not already on the system drive, please install it there.  Even though you have a secondary SSD, it's not as fast as the C drive, and it's always possible that there's a small problem with a cable or connection.