Doubt this problem would be any different on PC, but I'm on a Mac so just in case. Tried searching everywhere for an answer to this but couldn't find anything.

I'm scratching my head here...I'm playing on a 2011 iMac at patch 1.34 with all EPs and SPs installed minus Sweet Treats. Here are my specs:

iMac
27-inch, Mid 2011
Processor 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512 MB
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4

Shouldn't that be enough to have the game show 12 highly detailed lots at once? Yet for some reason by default I can only set the high detail lots slider to 4. I tweaked the MaxActiveLots section within the base game graphicsrules.sgr file trying to force the limit higher. I aimed for 6 and and the slider expanded to 8 oddly enough, but the game still refuses to actually render more than 4 lots at once even at what is supposed to be the higher setting. I've even tweaked the seti cpuLevel to have all levels at 4 which is what some people did to bring more sims to clubs. Made sure I removed the mods folder and deleted the scriptcache file before I started the game but that didn't help either.

For reference, here's the part that I changed to make the slider increase to 8:

end
if ($os64Bit == 1)
setOption NumMaxActiveLotOptions 6
else
setOption NumMaxActiveLotOptions 4

Changing the "else" line from 4 to 6, the slider increases to 8. If I type 8 in that same line, I get a weird glitch where if I go to the options menu it appears for a split second and then disappears. Haven't tried typing anything higher than 8. Experimented with the option MaxActiveLots setting 1, setting 2, setting 3 etc. lines but they don't help me see more detailed lots either. Also tried the if (($cardLevel >= $cardLevelUber) and ($gpumemLevel >= $gpumemLevelHigh) and ($ramLevel >= $ramLevelUber) and ($cpuLevel >= $cpuLevelUber)) setOption MaxActiveLots 4 and those high and medium lines below it, those also don't seem to help.

There must be something I'm missing here. I figured my iMac could display more than 4 detailed lots at once even if it were to make the game run a bit slower. I do recall the Late Night patch reducing the high detail lot options down to 4 when I used to play the game on my MacBook so maybe it's a programming bug? I know messing with this file isn't the safest thing to do (yes, I did make a backup of the original graphicsrules), but I'd really like to get the most out of my game. Some help from somebody a bit more tech savvy than me would be much appreciated.

That's an i5.
It may be possible with an i7 and stronger card like a 68xx/78xx (as long as not a dual-chip GPU). Though with Sims, maybe only an Intel i7 Extreme would cut it.

I suppose if you want to max out the High Detail Lots, you need to sacrifice another graphics intensive setting - like Advanced Rendering or Texture details - things like that.

Tweaking the ini files, need some very careful precise values which we're not privy too, and doing it by trial and error is quite risky. Plus, we're not sure which lines are dependent on which others, you know? As evidenced by the glitches you experience when you tweaked a value but not others, or used the wrong value that the engine does not recognize.