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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 27th Jul 2011 at 1:44 AM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 3, World Adventures, Ambitions, Late Night, Generations, Pets, Showtime, Supernatural, Seasons, University Life, Island Paradise
Default Textures on objects load slow when zooming in from Town
Sorry for the long Title, but it is hard to explain. This has recently started to happen and it happens on a new game with no Mods installed as well (so it is not a mod issue). I *think* it might have started when i installed Generations, but i am not completely sure now.

As for detailed description:

When you zoom out of the household, and then zoom in again (actually anywhere on the map), all objects are missing the textures, and take a second or two to display the proper surface texture. This happens in all save games, as well as in new games with or with no custom content. It definitely is not a system issue, but in case you doubt, here are my specs:

Ati Radeon 6950 x2 in Crossfire,
AMD Quad Core 965+ BE (@3,9 Ghz)
16 GB DDR3 Ram on Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
Windows is installed on a SSD
Sims and all expansions is installed on a different HDD

I really do not know what the problem could be? I cleared caches with Delphy's Dashboard, then started a new game, saved it, restarted etc. Tried pretty much everything. Obviously it is less noticable on lots with fewer objects, but it is always there. When i pan over the city, it also happens with other objects in town, like cars moving on the streets. Also it is NOT only the first time this happens, but everytime i zoom out and in again. That is why it is so annoying (imagine having a sim of the family in a community lot and one at home, zooming back and forth and always i get the gray textureless objects...)

If anybody can help i would be very grateful indeed
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In the Arena
retired moderator
#2 Old 27th Jul 2011 at 3:21 AM
Sims 2 used to have issues with SLI/Crossfire configs and on dual-GPU cards. I wonder if Sims 3 is the same...

Do you get the same issue if you disable Crossfire and one of the cards?
Do you have everything on high settings in Options?
Do you remove the 4 cache files everytime you start a game?

With no custom content, you're including .Sims3Pack & .sim with the mods .package files, yes? So happens in 100% vanilla games too?
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 27th Jul 2011 at 3:39 AM Last edited by osanomina : 28th Jul 2011 at 9:35 PM. Reason: Additional Info
Since i posted this i did a complete reinstall, this time putting the sims on the SSD as well, thinking that maybe the HDD was too slow. That was not the case as the issue still is the same.

To answer your questions in order:

Yes, happens when i turn off Crossfire as well,
no i have set everything to lower settings and have the same results (in fact i can put everything on the max and have no slowdown at all, except for this issue).
no i do not do that always, only when installing or removing custom content.
yes, it happens in 100% vanilla, all updated to the patches before 1.24 (which i just saw an hour ago existed).

I would upload a video so that you can see what happens. Do you know where i could do that?

Once the textures are loaded the lot is fine, and no lags happen at all, but when i zoom out again and then in once more, it is the same issue. Not really a deal breaker, but a little baffling...

EDIT after here:

I just took out the second graphics card completely and there is no change at all, the issue is still the same. I said above it is not a deal breaker, however since then i tried some things and what is really really bad is when the sim is moving by car or bike through the neighborhood. Because there is a small lag before the textures are loaded, everytime a new house comes into view, the lag is there again. So that means a LOT of stuttering while traveling.

It almost seems like it loads the textures, but then immediately forgets about them again. If that happened only the first time i see a lot that would be fine, but since it happens EVERY time i view a lot in close (and every time a new lot comes into view) it makes it basically impossible to follow a sim around if they move to community lots and back home and such. And that IS a deal breaker.

I have uploaded two videos on YouTube, so anybody wanting to help can see what i mean exactly:

First time zoom, minor lag

Now with a much more noticable lag

This is both on a completely new install, with no mod content (not even framework setup yet). It is in the game default "Sunset Valley" with a new game started just seconds before doing the zooming experiment. The only thing i did was order the sim to move inside the house... the video quality in the second is worse, because it is recorded with the game defaults (so to have a smaller file size), but you can still see the problem very well i think.
In the Arena
retired moderator
#4 Old 1st Aug 2011 at 5:00 AM
The videos don't show much lag to me, just what I'd expect from capturing videos while playing.
Are you putting to much stock on the fast machine? Even if the PC is too powerful, if the coding is not done to take advantage of the extra horsepower, that speed is not utilized optimally no matter what you attempt or use mods to cheat the game into thinking...it is still a 32-bit game and I don't know how much multi-threading capabilities is in the coding.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 3rd Aug 2011 at 8:23 AM
You do not think that is much lag? I agree the first is not unbearable, but the second? Isn't it odd that the textures and items build itself up slowly? I never noticed that in any game before...

And that is not from capturing the videos, that is how it happens in game always. If you can live with that, you are a patient person indeed As i said i do not mind that when i zoom in once, but it becomes increasingly unbearable when moving through the town (and it gets worse with repeated zooms).

I am not putting much stock on my computer, since i KNOW for a fact that i did not have this lag when i last played the game (which was before getting Generations, and Outdoor Living, might have been even before Late Night, not sure about that)...
If you are saying though that this happens in your game as well, and it is normal than i think that is very poor programming by EA.

Okay try this video which shows the zoom problem in all it's glory after just the third zoom out and in. It again is a new game in Sunset Valley with the Sim just moved in (the papergirl just appears for the first time in this) it is from a completely unmodded game:

That is not bad?

Mind you, i am still playing and enjoying the game, but i would like to see and hear if anybody else has experienced that and maybe has a solution, because i do not know what it could be. It is not my hardware, i am sure of that...
In the Arena
retired moderator
#6 Old 3rd Aug 2011 at 10:25 AM
Here's my vid for comparison. New game, fresh caches.
The lag on a single-Sim Household is barely noticeable, but more obvious on the 5-Sim Household in a bigger Lot; which makes sense.

Take 2. This is after quitting, and reloading saved game from above test. Caches not removed. Direct Quit and Reload.

My Specs, to put the comparison in context: i7-950 @3.07GHz, 6GB RAM, MSI GTX 460 Hawk 1GB

I don't zoom in and out frequently during gameplay, unless I'm testing maps, CAW, and routing stuff. Mind you, while I recorded those 2 vids quickly, I have CAW, S3PE, Gimp, Firefox, a screencap and video recording apps, plus my AV and Firewall all running. Still, the lags are not that bothersome to me, when I do tab-in into the game to play it. Well, more like I cannot do anything about it at this time, as that is the way the game is. I can mess with the .sgr perhaps and tweak stuff perhaps, but better performance is at the expense of quality graphics and vice versa, so I just leave it be. I have more issues to deal with like pesky bugs and buggy routing.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#7 Old 5th Aug 2011 at 12:25 AM
Hello again,

thank you for posting these videos, yeah that is pretty much like what is happening with me. So if you say that is actually normal then i am a little relieved (although still annoyed by the game a little

However, have you tried sending one of your sims through town (on bike or taxi)? Are you roads also really unfocused at first and need some time until the texture is loaded? It seems weird to me that this should be happening in the game at all, i was so sure that this is something of an abnormal behavior, but i guess not? It had been some time since i played the game before this time and i was very sure it was not like that when i played before. But maybe my mind was playing tricks on me.

Thank you for alleviating my worries that it could be something about my hardware (i was actually looking at prices for an alternative graphics card, because i thought maybe it was something wrong there, but my budget would not allow that at all at the moment

Once again, many thanks for your help
Test Subject
#8 Old 6th Aug 2011 at 12:49 AM
I get the same issue as well. All textures are a little slow loading. Doesn't seem to be any pre-cacheing of textures in the game.
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retired moderator
#9 Old 6th Aug 2011 at 1:24 AM
For the EA worlds (Sunset, Twinbrook, Bridgeport and the vacation worlds), there are static object caches in the game data files which the game uses. For custom worlds including Barnacle Bay and Riverview, the game uses the WorldCaches folder. So, if you are using Sunset, the speed at which your game would render objects in a fresh game would depend on how quickly your hard drive reads, and how quickly your computer can buffer that information. In the custom worlds, from a new game, your computer has to write the caches too.
Inventor
#10 Old 10th Aug 2011 at 9:05 AM
I am so glad I found this thread as I am having the same issues. My graphics card is also a Radeon HD6950 and I have the AMD Phenom II x4 965 (4CPU's, ~3.4Ghz) and 6GB DDR2 800Mhz RAM. So this should be perfect for Sims 3 but it isn't. At least I thought that it is not optimal for the game until I found this thread.

Textures are taking long to load and yes it's not such a big issue but it's annoying that the game doesn't run smooth on a good PC.

But when there's nothing we can do against it because it's really the game's fault than I should cope with that. The problem was that I really thought it was my PC and I asked in experts forums and tried this and that and nothing ever helped.

But if someone knows what might help, please tell us!

@simsample: I think the game runs better in EA worlds than in custom made worlds.

You never know what’s comin’ for ya.
Test Subject
#11 Old 26th Aug 2011 at 4:54 PM
I'm almost inclined to believe something in Town Life is causing the game to lag when its loading textures/meshes on screen. I did a complete re-install of the game and excluded the new expansion and it loads just fine (takes a few seconds to load objects on screen). However as soon as I install Town Life and try again it takes literally 30 seconds to a minute to load. What is up with that?
Lab Assistant
#12 Old 26th Aug 2011 at 6:49 PM Last edited by Bufu : 26th Aug 2011 at 6:59 PM.
I have this aswell, tho i dint pay much atention to it. It doesnt slow down my game play at all, tho it does happen on all useable objects in game. Static tree's and ground brushes etc are not effected by this for me, also lot size seems to be a big part in this, when my house was only single floored and cheaply decorated there where non to little issues with loading the few objects on the lot. Also following a sim doesnt seem to be a problem to ground textures unless i speed up the game higher then 2, and even with speed on 2 and a fast car it has handling issues.

Looking at the videos most of you have more loading issues then me tho, i just see white shapes and all objects are allready spawned. On some videos i see that last one is a problem aswell, and those lots are smaller then mine :P

When looking at game content, i think town-life brought nearly most iff not most new things to TS3, same goes for late-night. That might explain the longer loading times, tho i also think its rather long ever since that EP. However just to side note i still think its loads better then when i had TS2 fully installed with same amount of costum content.

To stay on-topic: aslong as i dont get lag loading the objects that turn up white and textureless i wont bother getting it solved. However im gonna have some fun after the holidays trying diff thing with reinstalling seeing where it gets worse and iff its limited to things to load on a lot/town/world or just crap from the start. Dint play vanilla base-game to long yet, so i cant tell iff i had it there aswell, was paying attention to other things back then

The 3D Studio Max Meshing guides: Part 1: Simple Meshing in 3D Studio Max
Iff freedom was outlawed only outlaws would have freedom.
True piracy is an art, having a Amiga tune doesn't make you the old school pirate.
Lab Assistant
#13 Old 30th Aug 2011 at 10:08 AM
After starting a reinstall of TS3 i noticed the following:
(Tested on high graphics with a Radeon HD 5570 1GB, and core 2 DUO E8200 2.66GHz.)
  • TS3 no patches
    • Slow loading roofs and terrain paints
    • Popup mssg about my videocard not being known by the game
  • TS3 patch 1.24.3
    • Issue solved more or less, you can see a small draw when zooming in, but it looks natural no untextured objects or slow loading roof pans nor terrain textures.
    • No popup about the video card annymore, but maybe that only comes once.
  • TS3 1.24.3 & WA
    • 1 or 2 untextured object when the house starts loading, but only a split second only once you land there loaded for sure.
    • The Science-Dome is still in full textured glory tho.
  • TS3 1.24.3 & WA & HELS
    • 1 or 2 untextured object when the house starts loading, but only a split second.
    • Some trees around town take a split second longer to load
    • The Science-Dome is still in full textured glory tho.
  • TS3 1.24.3 & WA & HELS & AMB
    • Small increase in texture load in Sunset Valley, 2/4 object now have no textures on zoom in.
    • Town graphics aside from the stray 2 or 4 trees have no loading issues yet.
  • TS3 1.24.3 & WA & HELS & AMB
    • Big increase in texture load in Twinbrook town only, verry slow loading lot objects.
    • Small increase in texture load in Sunset Valley, 4/8 object now have no textures on zoom in still not loaded on the landing but a second after that.
    • Town graphics aside from the stray 2 or 4 trees have no loading issues.

I could go on but, i think its save to say you need a damn good rig to run it smooth on high settings :P
But i did notice the base-game & patch 1.24.3 was best (most smooth, nearly seemless) combination i tryed so far.
Funny fact is that the load has be changed (atleast for me) from roof and ground texture to on the lot (useable) items, soon as you leave the base-game for a patch (1.24.3)(am to lazy to test each patch and see where they did that).
Funny tho how the game still doesnt know my graphics cards cause its to new (yes thats what the popup was tellig me), but still preforms this way.

Also everything past Ambitions is a drama for me on high graphics, the initial load is major (not talking game load but world/lot load), and then its just texture loading. Im not getting anny gameload increase at specific EP/SP installs tho, only with extra (or faulty) installed Store content or costum content.

Also i thought small/big lot made a diffrence, but it doesnt really seem to bother unless its really really major 4 story house with basement that covers nearly the whole 64x64 lot, then i slowly get objects that need to be placed and drawn on zoom in.

PS: Town graphics went down the drain just after Ambitions aswell

The 3D Studio Max Meshing guides: Part 1: Simple Meshing in 3D Studio Max
Iff freedom was outlawed only outlaws would have freedom.
True piracy is an art, having a Amiga tune doesn't make you the old school pirate.
Lab Assistant
#14 Old 27th Dec 2014 at 11:50 PM
Here's hoping I can revive this thread and that someone's come up with a solution.

I'm running more or less the same rig as Bufu mentions above, so there shouldn't be any hardware trouble. I've got every EP and SP installed and updated, just FYI.

I'm having the same problem as everyone else in this thread, so since this hasn't been active for 40 months, I've gotta ask: Is it because it was fixed somehow, or did everyone just decide to learn to live with it?
Lab Assistant
#16 Old 29th Dec 2014 at 11:30 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
There's nothing you can do about this. This is how the game is. This is not a glitch either. Sims 3 is one of the most resource hoggin' game I've ever had the pleasure of loading. It is an open world engine and pushes your computer to the limit so obviously the more mods and EPs you are running the worse it gets.

The higher end and better your computer is, obviously the less this is. This is purely a performance thing. However, because of the 32-bit restriction, even if you have a super high end computer, it will still have this issue.

What can help? Improve the performance of your computer.

First, having 6 gig of RAM helps. You need 4 gig dedicated to the game, 2 gig to run your operating system and other background programs.

2nd, having a dual/quad core helps. If not, turn off any additional programs such as antivirus.

3rd, graphics card is definite a biggy. Get a card that has a lot of dedicated memory.

4th, it does actually make a difference what is the speed of your RAM.

---

Now, if you can't change your computer specs:

1) Mods will sacrifice your performance. So you have to decide which mod is worth it. Some mods are heavier than others. NRAAS dresser, SP, etc... are very heavy mods

2) EP, not all EPs are the same. Some EPs will demand more out of your computer. Seasons is probably the biggest one, followed by generation/showtime/ambitions, etc...

3) changing your game setting, reducing quality for performance helps. Refer to this Link (Has a couple of popups, use adblocker)

4) Not running LARGE worlds help. Also reduce your sims population. Basically anything to cut the game down a bit.

Anyhow, as I've said... even with all the above mentioning, you cannot avoid this. This is simply how the game works. Read this: Link

I'm running an i7 quad core with 16 gig of memory and I see this all the time. I have loads of EP and I'm running several heavy NRAAS mods and my current hometown has over 300 residents (I think approx 1000 in total population including npcs etc...). Of course when I travel to a vacation world with less population and smaller world, this issue lessens and sometimes hardly noticeable. In my hometown, I almost have to "pause" the game each time I load a lot for a couple of secs. I've begun to do this habitually that I don't even notice I'm constantly pausing the game just to let it finish loading the textures.



Thanks for taking the time to answer

Seems like there's not much I can do about this, except maybe get rid of a few EP's that have features I don't use much. Frankly, Seasons and Supernatural just bug me, so those will probably be the first to go. My computer specs aren't as good as yours, but they're not bad either, so I'm not gonna shell out a lot of cash on upgrading my rig if you're having trouble even with the rig you're running.

Do SP's and Store content have any major influence on performance, or are those negatable compared to EP's and CC?
Lab Assistant
#18 Old 31st Dec 2014 at 7:44 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
I actually don't have any SPs or much store contents to give an accurate account. But theoretically, objects etc... should not affect the game off camera, meaning they won't affect the performance directly (at least not that much to be noticeable). They are loaded when they're on camera, so they do affect in-game loading time. However, I don't think they would really affect your game as much as an EP or heavy mods, especially seasons. I love seasons, so I'm keeping it, but a winter blizzard... is pretty much pushing my game to the limit. I get error 12 when I try to save during winter if I play more than 30 mins. Ironically, if I play past winter until spring, I can save again. I reduced winter in my hometown to 3 days.

If all you are seeing is grey mesh that takes a few moment to load the texture, just adopt a habit of pausing when you goto a lot. It isn't that bad once you get use to it. The greater issue is when game start to lag and stutter. I didn't like how my sims weren't mating, so I manually went to each household to make babies... and kinda overdid it. Now it is like a rabbit explosion and the lag is severe. I'm hoping to wait a few generations, some might not have kids and the population will go down. Else, I have to seriously take a look at those murder mods.


I've been doing the "pause to load" action for years, so I'm used to that.

As far as killing off your sims if you get too many, do you have Nraas MasterController? If you do, there are options to "Force Kill" or "Annihilate" sims with a few clicks of your mouse. "Force Kill" kills them in-game, meaning that their widows, kids and friends will mourn them, they might turn into ghosts and so on. The "Annihilate" function (I think it's actually "Total Annihilation", if I'm not mistaken) will completely wipe the sim from existance, meaning that life will go on like that sim never existed to begin with. They'll even be wiped from the family tree. I used this function once on a sim in Shang Sim La who kept getting stuck no matter how many times I tried to reset him. Using "Force Kill" only worked for a couple of sim days, after which he was mysteriously revived and got stuck again. The problem went away after using the "Total Annihilation" option.

EDIT: BTW I did the "factory reset" of my game, started a new one and started adding in my old CC a little at a time. So far I've added back about a third of all the packages, including slider mods and Nraas MasterController, but not a single sims3pack. My game only takes about 4-5 minutes to load now and the in-game lag has decreased dramatically, so there was definitely some wonky CC somewhere. I have this sneaking suspicion that my troubles will return once I add the folder I've named "TSR Clothing". I don't know why, but I think it might be something in there... If it's not that, I'm guessing a couple of old hair retextures by Anubis or some XML tuning mods I got here at MTS.

If I successfully add all my packages and there's still nothing wrong, it's definitely a sims3pack.
Lab Assistant
#20 Old 1st Jan 2015 at 1:39 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
I'm not trying to be sadistic, but I want them to "really" die in the game? I treat my TS3 like a digital aquarium, so I want things to run its natural course. I was just kidding about the murder mods, using cheats to kill them seems too .... cheaty.


As I said, the "Force Kill" option let's them "die naturally", making everyone who's left behind act as if they'd died of old age, drowned, been electrocuted or whatever, so it's not THAT cheaty

Of course you could always go into options, reduce the lifespan of all adults to something like 20 days and of all elders to 2 days. That way you can get a lot of sims to die of old age pretty quickly and be left with young adults and down. That should clean out your town.


Well, you are taking the debugging steps like an engineer! My TS2 has a lot of broken and outdated mods, I should go through them too. But it was when I was younger and I have just too many of them in there unsorted, they're all literally dumped in 1 directory. I wish I started my TS2 the way I did with TS3 and organized my mods so I can better track them.[/QUOTE]

I've learned the hard way that organizing as I download is the best way to go. A couple of years ago I had so much buggy CC crammed into one folder (well, two... Mods\Packages and Downloads) that it was impossible to figure out what was causing which problems. I had to completely delete over 3 GB of CC, reinstall the game from scratch and start my download hunt all over. I'm never doing that again!

BTW, do you use CCMagic?
Lab Assistant
#22 Old 4th Jan 2015 at 1:12 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
That's actually a pretty good idea. I'm almost there though, the town is now mostly elders now... a bunch of them die off each day.




No, for TS3 I'm simply trying not to use that many mods and ccs, unlike TS2 where I had tons and tons. Mostly I use mods that are necessary to remove annoyances in the game, like plumbots scanning sims while they're sleeping and waking them up... etc.. I'm trying to keep the game as clean as possible, but even with a few mods ... some of them are really heavy ones and takes too much out of the performance. I recently retweaked my NRAAS dresser. Originally I had it set to check on age up, but in a town of hundreds it is constantly lagging and checking. Now I have it set only to check manually when I want to. So I can pause the game and check every now and then while I go and do something else for a few mins.


Fair enough. Guess I'll have to go elsewhere for the info I'm looking for on that then

Thanks for all your help though. If nothing else, I've found out which annoying parts of the game I'll just have to learn to live with and that it's not necessary for me to go out and upgrade a whole lot of hardware to make it better, since that won't work anyway, so I think you might just have saved me a lot of money there
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