Hi all. Not necessarily a problem here, but I have a question: why do some objects lose their detail when zoomed out? Especially in plants or objects with very small parts. I don't know how to explain it further, so I'll just have some screenshots. To finalize my question: is it the graphics card's capability, or some other factors? I'l include my specs as well

I think that's normal and determined by whatever detail an object's creator decided to give with regard to distance. Every object has, I think, 3 different meshes, textures and everything. The smaller, or further away they are seen the less detailed they will be.

Agreed.
Would also like to add that meshes that have planes with a texture applied to the plane (like parts of the fence and the glass in the door) are more likely to do that since those parts aren't detailed meshes. If that makes sense and is understandable.

EA designed the game this way because your computer would melt whenever you zoomed way out, if it had to render every single object in view with full detail.

You might also notice the same thing happening in real life, unless your eyesight tends toward distance vision and it's closer objects that get less detail.

I think that The Sims 4 tries to mitigate this by introducing depth-of-field visuals, meaning that the distance becomes blurred. That way you won't really notice that distant objects are actually low quality for the sake of performance.

Thank you for your responses. (silly me why did I post this in the first place :giggler . At least I got my question answered. Especially about the fence, I was worried the lines were disappearing everytime I zoom out I thought there's a problem or that my graphics card is still not enough to render Sims 3 nicely. Next time I'll just avoid zooming out too much. Thanks again all!

Objects mostly have LOD meshes, a high LOD and a medium LOD. Ultra high and low LODs meshes are reserved for CAS items AFAIK. Certain objects like rugs only have one LOD mesh. They all share the same textures, UV/maps, etc, though materials can be assigned independently. Another difference is that drop shadows only appear in high LOD meshes.