Simcity 4 rendering isssue

[Mjel72 2]

Thinking about playing again after some years and I was just wondering if a fix for this has been found. To be more specific I was wondering if when you zoom in and out or scroll across you cities do you still experience lag with the graphics rendering fast enough.

I run a first gen Core I3 2.9ghz, 8gb ram and an Nvidia GTX 460. Does the newer hardware now fix this problem?

[GMT 389]

long story short: no.

[vortext 573]

slighty longer story: maybe.

First of all turn of the shadows! Yes, it doesn't look as pretty but it will make zooming and scrolling go much faster. Turn them back on when taking pictures.

Secondly check if your graphics card allows for profiles, most likely it will. So, create a profile for SimCity and play around with different settings. Specifically anything to do with anti-aliasing, interlacing, opacity/alpha/transparancy and buffering can make a big difference. I used to have all kinds of weird graphic glitches and CTDs up to the point the game became unplayable. However, since I've done some tweaking the game runs smoothly and the only CTDs that occur are due to human error (i.e. the puzzle piece - TE lot crash).

And for those reading along, graphic issues can be the cause of seemingly totally unrelated lags and bugs (menus taking for ever to open, switching from zone/underground view, delays when plopping RTM and rails, etc) so it might pay of to do some trail-and-error.

  Edited September 19, 2012 by vortext  

[smf_16 1,835]

What I do to avoid carsh-to-desktop when zooming, is in task manager set the priority of SimCity to high, and assign it only one processor core (affinity).

I know the crash-to-desktop is not your issue, but since I started doing this, the zooming and scrolling also seem to be less laggy.

[GMT 389]

slighty longer story: maybe.

[...]

actually the answer, to the question whether this improved hardware does improve performance when scrolling/zooming by itself, remains no.

without tweaking here and there, you can't improve the ingame performance beyond what the coding is capable of, and this is considerably limited.

I elaborated this matter at hand just a few days ago in a different thread on hardware vs performance, but I'm reluctant to go through it again in detail as these questions seem to pop up more frequent lately.

in short, I play since the day it was released and went through many hardware but the most noticeable improvement that came only by improved hardware was the loading times.

consider this: the game won't use anything more than one single core, not a byte more ram than a 32bit architecture can handle and also a GTX690 in 3-way SLI won't change a thing compared to 2003's middle class GPUs.

period.

of course, compared to release date hardware, today's hardware does also slightly improve on the game's performance itself, but don't expect no wonders due to afore mentioned reason.

anyways.

here's some tweaking stuff I strongly suggest to do:

since you use a gtx460, go to the nvidia control panel and create a custom profile for sim city 4 with all the settings you can apply listed in this post:

Anisotopic Filtering: Off

All Antialiasing Options: Off

Maximum pre-rendered frames: 0 (Leaving this at the suggested 3 caused me issues)

Multi-dispay/Mixed GPU acceleration: Single Display Performance mode (I have dual monitors so forcing this to singe helped)

Texture Filtering - Anisotropic: Off

Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias: Clamp (This setting was also causing issues)

Texture Filtering - Quality: High Quality

Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization: On

Threaded Optimization: On

Triple Buffering: Off (This was an absolute requirement to have off)

Veritcal Sync: Force Off (This was also an absolute requirement to have turned off)

I use a GTX560ti and yes, I know you can't apply all the settings anymore, but also those that are possible help a lot. in fact, they not just help on performance, but even waaaaay more important, these settings dramatically improve stability on today's graphic cards. ever since I applied this profile, my CTDs reduced by way over 90%... imho, such a dramatic improvement renders the suggested profile settings an absolute must-do.

further, familiarize yourself with the command line parameters you can add to your sim city 4 shortcut, this also helps a bit with the game's performance. there's a bunch of threads handling and experimenting these settings.

I, for one, use:

[code] "exe location" -w -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -intro:off -eh:off -d:directx -cpucount=1 [/code]

exe location is of course where you installed the game, the next gives me a windowed game in custom resolution set to my screen's native resolution (one of the best things about SC4 is that it supports a hell of a lot of custom resolutions very handy for todays screens), I disabled the intro, force directx rendering and a single cpu processing of the game. I don't know exactly what eh:off does (i know it as exeption handling, not sure if that's what it does), but someone suggested this in the steam forums to SC4 and it seems like the game runs better with it for me. next thing you can do is working within the graphics rules.sgr file (where SC4 is installed). what really helps with scrolling is adding the line

[code] property usevertexbuffers false [/code]

to the standard hardware rules section.

(if you want, also add a comment behind so you know what you did there and why, really helps if you happen to go back to the file after years and wonder whats going on)

you can also try changing other settings in here, but don't go nuts and also keep a backup if you experiment around

and of course like vortext said, at best disable the shadows when playing (and if you'd ask me, there's no need to turn them on when taking photos either; there's no such thing as direct lighting ingame anyway, it's all done with color tone and prerendered images). this also does improve scrolling.

some threads also suggest to do nothing but to set rendering to software mode. I myself didn't achieve as much by doing this as I did with afore mentioned tweaks, but still worth noting that this settings change does something good to your gaming experience.

  Edited September 19, 2012 by GMT  

[vortext 573]

slighty longer story: maybe.

[...]

actually the answer, to the question whether this improved hardware does improve performance when scrolling/zooming by itself, remains no.

Strictly speaking you're right but 'no' sounded so definitive since, as you go on to show, there're some things that can actually improve gameplay, which is what the OP is after, right?!

further, familiarize yourself with the command line parameters you can add to your sim city 4 shortcut, this also helps a bit with the game's performance.

Good point, totally forgot about that.

and of course like vortext said, at best disable the shadows when playing (and if you'd ask me, there's no need to turn them on when taking photos either; there's no such thing as direct lighting ingame anyway, it's all done with color tone and prerendered images).

Without shadows it just looks so flat and lifeless but that's just a matter of personal preference I guess.

some threads also suggest to do nothing but to set rendering to software mode.

Though keep in mind HD automata and HD terrain & water mods will only work in hardware mode.

[GMT 389]

Strictly speaking you're right but 'no' sounded so definitive since, as you go on to show, there're some things that can actually improve gameplay, which is what the OP is after, right?!

The OP didn't ask for solutions but about improvements with the new hardware.

Oh I love university. makes you all numb and hairsplitting over the exact meaning of questions...

Without shadows it just looks so flat and lifeless but that's just a matter of personal preference I guess.

I like it that way tbh. the static shadows don't appeal to me. also you can run into weird shadow issues with custom content. the day I got rid of shadows, I had a nice lot made but the main installation didn't cast shadows at all, on a bright surface and with everything around it casting shadows... eeeww.

Though keep in mind HD automata and HD terrain & water mods will only work in hardware mode.

yep. forgot to mention that.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

It's a shame but all the technological advances since 2003, which are many and varied, won't do anything for this legacy program. It just wasn't programmed to take advantage of any of them. People with modern expectations of game are naturally disappointed unless they take the trouble to understand that, while the game is old and not very fashionable, it is still the best city simulation game around.

I am sorry to say that I don't expect anything better from the new effort being put out by EA's Maxis Studio. Adding all that 3D will remove features we all want in the new game.

[vortext 573]

Oh I love university. makes you all numb and hairsplitting over the exact meaning of questions...

So you must be a real academic than?!

Seriously though, I wasn't after a silly argument (in a foreign language for me at least) and yes, I read between the lines so to try to be of help. . shame on me I guess?

  Edited September 20, 2012 by vortext  

[GMT 389]

Oh I love university. makes you all numb and hairsplitting over the exact meaning of questions...

So you must be a real academic than?!

Seriously though, I wasn't after a silly argument (in a foreign language for me at least) and yes, I read between the lines so to try to be of help. . shame on me I guess?

no! you wanted a silly argument, you'll get a silly argument then!!!!!1111oneoneeleven

and yes, shame on you! don't tell what you know, just answer exactly and only what question asks!!!!!11111oneonepointoneleven

cmon dear, just say I was right and everythings fine again

:rofl:

[Mjel72 2]

Thanks all for your replies. I will try out those fixes. @Nonny Moose I too am sad that the next SimCity is not going to be what we all were hoping for, it is sad to see the way the gaming industry is going. Consoles have really screwed up things as well as these app games for smart phones which are just huge money grabs.

This need to make everything multiplayer also bugs the heck out of me. I understand having the functionality but, too much time is invested in this aspect of games now which causes the core experience of actually game play to falter, in my opinion anyway.

Again Thanks and Happy Gaming.