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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 28th Mar 2019 at 11:36 AM
Default Graphics
Good morning,
there is a Hack or something, to make the graphics of the sims 2 more realistic?
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Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#2 Old 28th Mar 2019 at 12:12 PM
There are lots of mods that improve graphics.

Make sure first up that you have all the technical stuff taken care of like the 4 gb patch, graphic rules and virtual memory.

After that set graphic settings on high if your computer can deal with them.

Then you will want a camera mod, lighting mod, skydome, perhaps moving clouds, water mod/s.

There isn't just one mod but a huge array.

If you mean the sims themselves you will want CC. Skins, eyes, hair, makeup, clothes, accessories.

First make sure your computer is set up to play the game well then decide on an area to work on so we can answer you more specifically because you can end up with literally thousands of custom made files. if you are new to the game I would suggest finding some default eyes first, but that is just my preference

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#3 Old 28th Mar 2019 at 12:52 PM
Hi, I'm sorry to ask you these questions.
1 - What is the 4 GB patch for? Does it improve graphics or is it just a matter of space?
2 - I bought a new pc two months ago, it should be suitable for all kinds of things, but if I can, I copy the PC data here, so I can see if my computer can handle it
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#4 Old 28th Mar 2019 at 2:15 PM
Because the Sims 2 is an old game (2004) it need help with newer hardware. So while new games may run like a breeze on your new PC Sims 2 may not.

1) This video explains what the 4 gb patch is and how to apply it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0iwuLZyjMg
But basically Sims 2 only uses 2 Gb of memory and the patch will allow you to use 4 Gb of virtual memory and this is needed to load and process textures. One common thing we get these days is the dreaded pink flashing because we are asking more of the game than was originally intended with reflective water mods and sims 3 horizons or whatever type of texture mods you want to add.

2) Yes, your computer specs would be helpful.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Lab Assistant
#5 Old 28th Mar 2019 at 2:21 PM Last edited by Vvg : 16th May 2020 at 12:04 AM.
@letiziaa, try to follow these tutorials:
How to give The Sims 2 an open world feel
Starter pack guide

You & I, we are just like sims, will live forever
Cars for TS2: FPC | VoVillia Corp. I (fixed), II (guide), III | Gingers Sims | Psychosim's Cars I, II, III | Sims2Designs | EA Store Cars I, II, III | MaximumSpider | Sims2Carsource
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#6 Old 28th Mar 2019 at 2:28 PM
Those are good links, but they need to get the technical things done first or their game will crash and burn.

Also on the tech side
Make sure your Virtual Memory amount is set high enough in Control Panel > System > Advanced settings > Advanced tab > Performance settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory. Set the custom amount for your main drive to be 25,000-30,000 and click “Set”. You may be able to do more, mine is set to 35-40,000.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#7 Old 28th Mar 2019 at 2:38 PM
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#8 Old 28th Mar 2019 at 3:03 PM
Performance (not modified)
http://prntscr.com/n467oh
Mad Poster
#9 Old 28th Mar 2019 at 3:22 PM
1.99GHz ...Will it be enough? *asking without exactly knowing...*
I have 3.50GHz

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#10 Old 28th Mar 2019 at 3:53 PM
I think 2GHz is considered the minimum so it's really pushing it. It's really late here and that picture is too small for me (better to post it directly to MTS) Go advanced and upload picture.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Scholar
#11 Old 28th Mar 2019 at 9:38 PM
i second that, there's nothing to see.

BTW: if the OP wants beautifications (hi-res textures, ultra high view distance and such) the primary concern is GPU - some of these mods are really "pushy" and if someone want's to see "realistic, openworldly, supercute Sims 2" the serious GPU power will be needed. The CPU is not that crucial in this case, until configuration will be seriously unballanced (low power CPU - very high power GPU) when CPU may create bottleneck.


favorite quote: "When ElaineNualla is posting..I always read..Nutella. I am sorry" by Rosebine
self-claimed "lower-spec simmer"
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#12 Old 28th Mar 2019 at 11:30 PM
@letiziaa don't make the same post on more than one board. You have also asked this on the general sims 2 chat area as well. If you watch the video I linked you to, pause it and follow the steps. Jessa shows you exactly how to get and apply the 4 gb patch. Her post about it is a sticky post on the help board.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#13 Old 28th Mar 2019 at 11:56 PM
Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
@letiziaa don't make the same post on more than one board. You have also asked this on the general sims 2 chat area as well. If you watch the video I linked you to, pause it and follow the steps. Jessa shows you exactly how to get and apply the 4 gb patch. Her post about it is a sticky post on the help board.


Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do any more posting.
I thought I was in the wrong section.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#14 Old 29th Mar 2019 at 12:23 AM
Well since this turned into more of a help question it kind of belongs on the help board but kind of not since it's also a WCIF. The chat area is for general chat about your game.

You won't be able to run your game with high graphics and a ton of texture mods due to the 1.9Ghz, its too low.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Scholar
#15 Old 29th Mar 2019 at 1:43 AM
actually - in that matter, not the CPU (it's 4 core/8threads i& with single core turbo to 4 Ghz, it can easily run with 2.5 GHz load upspeed if the termal solution on this mashine is not screwed) but GPU may be a factor - it's one of these Nvidias rebranded GT 740 or GT 840 ones. If put into heavy stress (hi-res textures etc) they may got into thermal trouble and throttle. It really depends of the quality build of the machine in question. And there's also Windows 10 - so i'ts probably already burdened and bloated with ugly mess.

It would be probably the best if the OP (if she insist) take careful approach: one beautification at the time finding the sweet-spot between beauty and power. It won't be rather fun to play the game while fan screams and the computer gets unpleasantly hot leading to degrade performance.


favorite quote: "When ElaineNualla is posting..I always read..Nutella. I am sorry" by Rosebine
self-claimed "lower-spec simmer"
Undead Molten Llama
#16 Old 29th Mar 2019 at 3:22 PM
I agree with ElainNualla that the processor is not an issue. As I understand it, the 2.0GHz requirement is for the single-core processors that the game is meant for because multi-cores didn't exist when the game was developed. Multi-core processor speeds are measured differently, and what the OP has is more than sufficient. Overall, the game is a GPU hog, not a CPU hog, in any case, and as ElaineNualla said it's going to be the bottleneck, not the CPU. That being said, sometimes the game can lag when running on newer multi-core processors because the game simply doesn't understand how to use them properly. If that is the case for the OP, then it might be necessary to reduce the number of processors that the machine uses when running the game and then the speed may or may not become an issue.

To run the latest pretty-fying CC and enabling all the cheats that those tutorials that have been linked to recommend is all on the video card, not the processor. In that respect, the OP's machine is weak because it is not a gaming machine with a video set-up meant for gaming, and they should A) add stuff slowly until they find the level their system can tolerate and B) Make sure they use the Graphics Rules Maker or manually adjust their graphics rules to force the game to use more than the 32MB of graphics memory that it will use by default because THAT (aside from issues related to #$&!ing Win10 and newer graphics drivers or mistakes made installing lighting mods and various shader mods) is the root cause of pink flashing.

Speaking of which: The 4GB patch has NOTHING to do with pink flashing. It has to do with allowing the game to access more SYSTEM memory, not texture memory. Without it, if the game tries to access more than 2GB of system RAM -- and it will do so, when playing a large, heavily-populated, and heavily-decorated neighborhood and/or when playing large lots, especially large community lots -- the game will crash. Pink flashing is a different issue, one that the 4GB patch does not address. It will not solve a pink flashing issue, if you have it, but it will likely solve the most common cause of the game crashing, especially if it does so when exiting or entering lots, especially large lots.

I'm mostly found on (and mostly upload to) Tumblr these days because, alas, there are only 24 hours in a day.
Muh Simblr! | An index of my downloads on Tumblr.
Field Researcher
#17 Old 29th Mar 2019 at 3:45 PM Last edited by cows : 29th Mar 2019 at 4:03 PM.
@iCad what solves the pink flashing issue? does anyone know?
Alchemist
#18 Old 29th Mar 2019 at 3:53 PM Last edited by Sunrader : 2nd May 2019 at 2:13 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by cows
@iCad what solves the pink flashing issue? does anyone knows?


She was telling you, allocating more texture memory from a better graphics card.

Quote: Originally posted by iCad
To run the latest pretty-fying CC and enabling all the cheats that those tutorials that have been linked to recommend is all on the video card, not the processor. In that respect, the OP's machine is weak because it is not a gaming machine with a video set-up meant for gaming, and they should A) add stuff slowly until they find the level their system can tolerate and B) Make sure they use the Graphics Rules Maker or manually adjust their graphics rules to force the game to use more than the 32MB of graphics memory that it will use by default because THAT (aside from issues related to #$&!ing Win10 and newer graphics drivers or mistakes made installing lighting mods and various shader mods) is the root cause of pink flashing.


We've had a few threads on this, but to change the allocation of graphics (texture memory) you add another bit to the latest GraphicsRules.sgr file. The default allots 32MB, but as an example, my graphics card is old, but has 2GB available, so mine says this:

if (not $useSoftwareRasterizer)
# failed to obtain device texture memory size, force to 32MB
if ($textureMemory = 0)
seti textureMemory 2048
# setb textureMemorySizeOK false
endif

I added this to my latest file, which, for me, with UC, is here:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Fun with Pets\SP9\TSData\Res\Config"
Field Researcher
#19 Old 29th Mar 2019 at 4:02 PM
@Sunrader ah, okay. i did that a long time ago but it didnt help. thanks anyway.
Alchemist
#20 Old 29th Mar 2019 at 4:14 PM
Quote: Originally posted by cows
@Sunrader ah, okay. i did that a long time ago but it didnt help. thanks anyway.


Awww, sorry, maybe you have one of the other issues iCad mentioned, or maybe you just still have too much CC with high-res textures? I hear custom hair can be really bad about that.
Undead Molten Llama
#21 Old 29th Mar 2019 at 6:10 PM
@cows
The pink flashing is basically a symptom of the game's inherent texture-memory processing issues, the main issue of which is that the game caches textures and never clears them, resulting in them accumulating as you play. This was done deliberately, to reduce lot-loading times, and at the time it was fine because people weren't stuffing a bunch of high-res stuff into the game to make it look like something it was never meant to be. The longer you play and the more stuff you have in the neighborhood you play and the more often you switch between lots in that neighborhood, the more texture accumulates in the cache until it reaches a point where it can cache no more and stuff starts being ejected, never again to be reloaded in that play session. The ejected stuff flashes pink. Assuming that no other issues are affecting this, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING you can do to entirely fix this problem. You can only stave it off.

Now, if you're running Win10, Windows updates have been known to cause pink flashing. So can updating graphics card drivers. In both cases it's because the game doesn't understand those things and then things go screwy. As I understand it, you can't do anything about the Windows updates, either rolling back or stopping them from happening, but you could try rolling back your graphics driver to an older one IF you aren't running newer games/software that require a newer driver. Another thing known to cause pink flashing is improperly installed lighting mods and their associated shaders, if the lighting mod requires any. If you use a lighting mod, try switching back to Maxis lighting, see if it helps.

Beyond that, it's a matter of streamlining. Don't use so much high-res CC in your neighborhoods. Be choosy. Don't forget that pretty much ALL custom hair and most clothing that's been made in the last few years have high-res textures, as does most furniture converted from the newer games, in addition to the obvious things like high-res terrain/road defaults and skyboxes/horizons and/or default skies. If you use a lot of that stuff and don't want to compromise, modify your playstyle so that you're not often switching between lots in one session. Basically, just make your game load fewer textures in a single play session. And when all else fails, just accept that you're going to have to do a lot of exiting and reloading the game and also rebooting your computer in order to entirely clear out the texture memory cache. If that's what you're down to, you may want to reduce the total amount of CC that you have, in order to reduce game-loading time.

I'm mostly found on (and mostly upload to) Tumblr these days because, alas, there are only 24 hours in a day.
Muh Simblr! | An index of my downloads on Tumblr.
Forum Resident
#22 Old 30th Mar 2019 at 8:13 AM
Quote: Originally posted by iCad
@cows
The pink flashing is basically a symptom of the game's inherent texture-memory processing issues, the main issue of which is that the game caches textures and never clears them, resulting in them accumulating as you play. This was done deliberately, to reduce lot-loading times, and at the time it was fine because people weren't stuffing a bunch of high-res stuff into the game to make it look like something it was never meant to be. The longer you play and the more stuff you have in the neighborhood you play and the more often you switch between lots in that neighborhood, the more texture accumulates in the cache until it reaches a point where it can cache no more and stuff starts being ejected, never again to be reloaded in that play session. The ejected stuff flashes pink. Assuming that no other issues are affecting this, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING you can do to entirely fix this problem. You can only stave it off.

Now, if you're running Win10, Windows updates have been known to cause pink flashing. So can updating graphics card drivers. In both cases it's because the game doesn't understand those things and then things go screwy. As I understand it, you can't do anything about the Windows updates, either rolling back or stopping them from happening, but you could try rolling back your graphics driver to an older one IF you aren't running newer games/software that require a newer driver. Another thing known to cause pink flashing is improperly installed lighting mods and their associated shaders, if the lighting mod requires any. If you use a lighting mod, try switching back to Maxis lighting, see if it helps.

Beyond that, it's a matter of streamlining. Don't use so much high-res CC in your neighborhoods. Be choosy. Don't forget that pretty much ALL custom hair and most clothing that's been made in the last few years have high-res textures, as does most furniture converted from the newer games, in addition to the obvious things like high-res terrain/road defaults and skyboxes/horizons and/or default skies. If you use a lot of that stuff and don't want to compromise, modify your playstyle so that you're not often switching between lots in one session. Basically, just make your game load fewer textures in a single play session. And when all else fails, just accept that you're going to have to do a lot of exiting and reloading the game and also rebooting your computer in order to entirely clear out the texture memory cache. If that's what you're down to, you may want to reduce the total amount of CC that you have, in order to reduce game-loading time.


Oh dang.. I’ve been building my neighborhood for around 1,5 years now (it sounds really fancy but really, it’s not lol) and I’ve been going in and out of lots a lot.. (no pun intended) I’ve never had the pink flashing, but that shit really scares me haha.

And recently I’ve come to the point where I soon can move in sims and start playing, but now I’m afraid to do so ha-ha :’( I have like 6GB of cc too, and I know I have some hi-res hairs in there, I should look through all my cc once again.
Undead Molten Llama
#23 Old 30th Mar 2019 at 4:26 PM
You need not be afraid @vegan-kaktus. If you have a decent video card with a good amount of texture memory and you've set up your graphics rules so that the game is forced to use all of it -- or at least a lot more than the 32MB it'll use by default -- you can shove a lot in before you flash pink. For me, with a 4GB graphics card and the game set to use all of it, I only have the issue in one of my neighborhoods, one that is deliberately designed to push the limits in terms of this issue AND that has a ruleset that requires lots of community lot visitation. Even then, I can play that neighborhood for several hours before it starts to flash pink, and when it does I save, exit the game, reboot the computer, and re-enter the neighborhood and then I can play for another several hours if I want to. But I only have the issue in that one neighborhood. I've never pinked in any of my other neighborhoods, and I certainly don't skimp on the high-res stuff, considering that I MAKE high-res stuff!

Now, I DO have an hypothesis (totally unsupported except by anecdotal evidence reported by other players) that the combination of Win10 + TS2 or maybe Win10 + new graphics drivers + TS2 somehow makes it such that the game can't access all the texture memory it's set to access. I think this because newer computers seem to be more vulnerable to the issue. Also, the UC seems to occasionally be more vulnerable. For instance, I know that after the update that removed SecuROM from the UC, many people who were fine before the update started flashing pink without changing anything else in their set-up, until another update fixed the issue. My Simming computer is an older model with a 3.2GHz Core2Duo processor (state of the art...in 2009 ), upgraded to 8GB of system RAM (its max) and a 4GB NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti video card that's using a driver that's about three years old, I think. (The game didn't like newer drivers, so I rolled back.) It runs Win7. My graphics rules are set to force the game to use all of the graphics card's 3.7GB of texture memory. My game has all EPs/SPs, but it's installed from good ol' disks, not the UC. So, I don't have any possibility of EA "helpfully" updating my game. My CC runs about 8.5GB these days in my "general" Downloads folder that isn't specifically for a certain type of neighborhood. And like I said, I generally don't have pinking issues. But, people who have newer machines/OSs/driver software seem to have issues more often. I don't know if those things actually cause issues or if the users just haven't correctly optimized their set-up. That's the unknown when it comes to my hypothesis.

For the record, the total amount of CC you have in your game doesn't affect pink flashing. Nothing gets cached in texture memory until it's actually used, meaning placed on a neighborhood terrain or a lot or put on a Sim that is then released into a neighborhood. So, what matters is what you've used in the neighborhood you're playing and on the Sims who inhabit it. (And I believe it's actually Sims that ultimately cause the most drain, because heavily-populated neighborhoods -- those with lots of playables + lots of townies/downtownies/etc. + lots of NPCs -- seem to be more vulnerable than heavily-decorated but lightly-populated neighborhoods.) If you don't use any high-res stuff and just stick to the (mostly) low-res Maxis objects and CAS stuff, then you can probably have a huge, infinitely-decorated and highly-populated neighborhood and you'd be fine. The thing is that most CC nowadays is higher-res, since a lot of it is converted from newer games, and people tend not to like the look of TRULY Maxis-match low-res these days, with today's much better graphics. Very few people that I know of play with little (like less than 1GB) or no CC and even those people who don't have a lot of CC will tend to have newer, higher-res stuff. But, like I said, if you've got things set up right -- aside from issues that may (or may not!) be caused by newer software, you can stuff a lot into a neighborhood before it pinks out. And when it does, exiting and rebooting will generally fix the issue until the cache fills up again. It's not like pink flashing causes damage or corruption or anything like that. Ultimately, it's an annoyance.

I'm mostly found on (and mostly upload to) Tumblr these days because, alas, there are only 24 hours in a day.
Muh Simblr! | An index of my downloads on Tumblr.
Forum Resident
#24 Old 31st Mar 2019 at 8:30 AM
Quote: Originally posted by iCad
You need not be afraid @vegan-kaktus. If you have a decent video card with a good amount of texture memory and you've set up your graphics rules so that the game is forced to use all of it -- or at least a lot more than the 32MB it'll use by default -- you can shove a lot in before you flash pink. For me, with a 4GB graphics card and the game set to use all of it, I only have the issue in one of my neighborhoods, one that is deliberately designed to push the limits in terms of this issue AND that has a ruleset that requires lots of community lot visitation. Even then, I can play that neighborhood for several hours before it starts to flash pink, and when it does I save, exit the game, reboot the computer, and re-enter the neighborhood and then I can play for another several hours if I want to. But I only have the issue in that one neighborhood. I've never pinked in any of my other neighborhoods, and I certainly don't skimp on the high-res stuff, considering that I MAKE high-res stuff!

Now, I DO have an hypothesis (totally unsupported except by anecdotal evidence reported by other players) that the combination of Win10 + TS2 or maybe Win10 + new graphics drivers + TS2 somehow makes it such that the game can't access all the texture memory it's set to access. I think this because newer computers seem to be more vulnerable to the issue. Also, the UC seems to occasionally be more vulnerable. For instance, I know that after the update that removed SecuROM from the UC, many people who were fine before the update started flashing pink without changing anything else in their set-up, until another update fixed the issue. My Simming computer is an older model with a 3.2GHz Core2Duo processor (state of the art...in 2009 ), upgraded to 8GB of system RAM (its max) and a 4GB NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti video card that's using a driver that's about three years old, I think. (The game didn't like newer drivers, so I rolled back.) It runs Win7. My graphics rules are set to force the game to use all of the graphics card's 3.7GB of texture memory. My game has all EPs/SPs, but it's installed from good ol' disks, not the UC. So, I don't have any possibility of EA "helpfully" updating my game. My CC runs about 8.5GB these days in my "general" Downloads folder that isn't specifically for a certain type of neighborhood. And like I said, I generally don't have pinking issues. But, people who have newer machines/OSs/driver software seem to have issues more often. I don't know if those things actually cause issues or if the users just haven't correctly optimized their set-up. That's the unknown when it comes to my hypothesis.

For the record, the total amount of CC you have in your game doesn't affect pink flashing. Nothing gets cached in texture memory until it's actually used, meaning placed on a neighborhood terrain or a lot or put on a Sim that is then released into a neighborhood. So, what matters is what you've used in the neighborhood you're playing and on the Sims who inhabit it. (And I believe it's actually Sims that ultimately cause the most drain, because heavily-populated neighborhoods -- those with lots of playables + lots of townies/downtownies/etc. + lots of NPCs -- seem to be more vulnerable than heavily-decorated but lightly-populated neighborhoods.) If you don't use any high-res stuff and just stick to the (mostly) low-res Maxis objects and CAS stuff, then you can probably have a huge, infinitely-decorated and highly-populated neighborhood and you'd be fine. The thing is that most CC nowadays is higher-res, since a lot of it is converted from newer games, and people tend not to like the look of TRULY Maxis-match low-res these days, with today's much better graphics. Very few people that I know of play with little (like less than 1GB) or no CC and even those people who don't have a lot of CC will tend to have newer, higher-res stuff. But, like I said, if you've got things set up right -- aside from issues that may (or may not!) be caused by newer software, you can stuff a lot into a neighborhood before it pinks out. And when it does, exiting and rebooting will generally fix the issue until the cache fills up again. It's not like pink flashing causes damage or corruption or anything like that. Ultimately, it's an annoyance.


Thank you for the explanation @iCad! Truly appreciated! Now I'm much calmer haha :-D
Field Researcher
#25 Old 5th Apr 2019 at 12:53 AM
I'm on Win7 but I would say that I do have a lot of CC (which I use and use on most lots)/and all those objects&mods etc to make the game look prettier. However most of the pink flashing happens in bigger-sized lots (50+) where there is only Maxis content/Maxis addons. I don't switch between lots too much (I play mostly one family, occasionally two when I open the game) but probably the thing that I do that I shouldn't is that every time I have the chance to play I keep the game open for hours.

What I realised the other day however is that most of my pink-flashing episodes happen when winter starts. I don't really get why. A long time ago I had Voeille's snow texture mod but I took it out because I thought that was the problem... but I guess it really wasn't that.
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