There's several pictures in this post, but bear with me. I've noticed some graphics glitches in my game that are... Interesting. And kind of annoying.

First of all, my pets (cats and dogs) fur doesn't show properly. The "furry" layer that's supposed to have all the detailed hairs is just a transparent bubble around the body. See Exhibit A:


(This photo is from Chadologic, but it's the same issue present in my game)



As you can see from the second picture, it also makes some pets (when dark or black colored fur is around their eyes this is most noticeable) have see-through eyelids, or the fur around their eyes is transparent, like the fuzzy layer of fur. It's really creepy.

I've heard from others that the solution to this problem is to turn on Advanced Rendering in the options menu, but mine was never turned off (I even turned it off and then on again to see if that fixed it. It did not)
___________________

Another thing I just noticed now is that horses seem to spawn giant triangles of godly wrath from their heads, shooting into the sky. This is highly hilarious, but also very noticeable:



Even when zooming out to the neighborhood view:



____________________

I enjoy this game very much, even though I have a tendency to play for a while, and then stop for a few weeks, miss it, and pick it back up again. And little things like this simply aren't acceptable. My computer is hardly top-notch (actually it's a 2004 Dell XPS Gen 5 if you wanna google it) and I have noticed a steady decline in performance for years now. However, in regard to the pet fur issue, when I was using the Demo version of Create-a-Pet, this issue was different. Instead of a transparent layer of "fluff" there was no fluff. Instead, I had puffy, fat looking dogs and cats with no differentiation in layers of fur, like Kilan does now:



This probably has something to do with changes to the game between the demo and the actual release. Anyway, here's my relevant computer specs:

CPU: Pentium 4 @ 3.4Ghz (Single core, gurl... I know)
GPU: ATI Radeon x850 256mb
RAM: 5GB (I think my computer only recognizes this as 3.5GB, though, but I've never fixed it)

It's quite possible these issues are just my computer, but considering other people have experienced the same issues, I'm inclined to believe it's not. If anyone else is having these issues, let me know. If you've fixed this problem (other than turning on Advanced Rendering), then please explain. Thanks for all your help/advice in advance!

I'm very much inclined to blame this on your graphics card. It appears to be fairly old, and I'm seeing benchmarks placing it below the GeForce 6800 - which makes it very, very underequipped to play TS3. Your only solution may, I'm afraid, be to uninstall Pets or upgrade your hardware.

As regards the question of RAM, if Windows only recognises 3.5Gig of it, then you probably have 32-bit Windows. 32-bit can never see more than 4Gig of memory in total, so that's 256MB on your motherboard + 256MB on your graphics card + 3.5GB of your actual RAM = 4GB in total. The only way to fix that is to upgrade your OS.

I know my graphics card is underequiped to play the game, which is why I'm lucky that I even can. So I'm not surprised to hear you say that. Though, I've managed to tweak settings to allow me to play the game pretty well. I just thought I'd point these issues out, regardless.



I'm using Windows 7 64-bit, which recognizes the amount of RAM as 5GB, but I remember seeing somewhere that it only effectively uses 3.5 because it's a single 2GB stick, I believe. It's been years since I made the upgrade, I don't entirely remember. But I've never bothered to mess with it.

I am know also looking forward a solution to this issue :/ Actually the only glitch I have is the "transparent" fur, but I still don't know how to fix it!

What I have is less buggy: the pets are okay, but do you know the floating head that follow the option you highlight that appears when you click on something to perform anything? They're all deformed. It's just an annoyance, since the pets are okay, but it's still creppy.

I had the same thing as your first problem, with the weird transparent fur. Enabling advanced rendering and restarting the game fixed it immediately. So...I don't know why it didn't for you.

what is advanced rendering ???

It's a ticky-box in the game's graphics options.

I found it

OMFG IT WORKED!!!!
SXXT!! IT FXXKING WORKED!!!!!
thank you so much

sorry for bumping, but i didn't want to start an entirely new thread for the same problem so i'm not sure what the rules are. anyway..

other then the advance rendering box, are there any other known fixes for this? my computers fine, the pets were appearing normaly at first, but suddenly the dogs and cats have the transparent fur thing, but the horses are ok.
i really want this fixed. i also really want to find the person in charge of the sims 3 right now and punch them in the face.

what a nice person you are

well, if it was any other product that wasn't playable without a ton of work from the people buying the damn thing, it would be recalled off the shelves or not put out in the first place. but apparantly, its just fine for EA to put out sims expansion after expansion that doesn't even run without a ton of mods from the ingenious people here and creators like twallen.
also, i'm english. i wouldn't really punch them in the face, i'd send them an angry letter and use exclaimation marks!!

I'm Dutch - I would punch.
(I'm also very much overweight, so maybe it'll be enough if I just stand on their foot. In heels.)

What are your Game Help:System Specs^wiki?

i have a ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M card its been just fine untill pets

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Ra...00M.2175.0.html

Not surprising that it can't handle Pets, then.

I have the same problem with weird fur that's see-through. I also have another weird thing, all the dogs I'm creating has a black "mask" on their faces. Looks odd. Like som sort of restraining thingy.
Their whole face is black, and there's some sort of band across their necks, really looks like a mask. First, I thought it was a odd looking collar I accidentally downloaded, but it's stuck. So now I have to create dark dogs, so bye bye little white fluffy ones.. :/
Anyone who knows how to solve any of these things...?

anniegetyourgun, do you have a supported video card, and does your computer meet specifications?
Game Help:TS3 System Requirements^wiki

I've just installed Generations: suddenly I'm having the triangles of god which the first poster also mentioned. It's making it impossible to play.
Anyone know what causes the issue and what I can do to fix it? I've got the necessary graphic power required.