Graphical issues under Win10

[Mytzenka 106]

Trying to get back into the game after a while.

As I am starting my new city - only a couple 1000 population right now - I notice my streets are almost empty. No cars, no people and my parks are usually quiet as well.

The only cars I see are construction vehicles.

There are two - oddly they are both diagonal - streets where I do see some cars and people.

Rarely I see a person somewhere else.

What is happening here? I remember from before my streets were much more lively, even in these early stages.

I checked my graphics options and everything IS set to high. Colors = 32 bit. Resolution = 1920x1080. I tried both hard- and software acceleration.

Am I missing something or is this normal. Note: I have all streets. No roads yet.

[rsc204 21,805]

1 hour ago, Mytzenka said:

I tried both hard- and software acceleration.

Software Rendering is only intended for use when Hardware doesn't work, it is best avoided.

Check the in-game graphics options, make sure the setting for # of Cars/Sims is on High. In fact, with the possible exception of Shadows, I'd set everything here to Max, because unless you've an old PC, you should have no problems.

If SC4 has defaulted a number of these to lower settings, it might have not detected your GPU correctly. This is a problem sometimes because its list hasn't been updated since 2003, so many modern cards fall through the gaps. Open the Installation folder for SC4 and the Apps folder there, then look for a file MYCOMPUTERNAME-config-log.txt. This file contains details of your currently detected system and game configuration, scroll through and look for "Applying Fast Card" amongst its contents. If you see that, everything is optimal, but if you don't, take a look here for instructions on how to force the game to use it.

Also bear in mind, it's early days and the number of cars is representative of the number of sims commuting by car on a given road. So if all your sims walked or took a train to work for example, you couldn't expect to see many cars. Additionally, if you are using the NAM, there are different options (under 4 Automata Controller) in the installer which can boost the number of cars and other vehicles you see.

[Mytzenka 106]

@rsc204

Thanks a lot for your tips

I am already using hardware acceleration and all settings are set to high. But the "Applying Fast Card" was not there in the file you mentioned so I followed the post that you linked to. I am on Windows 10 - not 7 - and I didn't see the hex-value for my card as in the example screenshot. But I think I found it here, and so I updated my "Graphics Rules.sgr" and "Video Cards.sgr" like so.

Unfortunately I don't see any difference in-game (like the map is still very slow to open) and afterwards I still don't see the "Applying Fast Card" so I must have done something wrong?

Note: I also tried "stringMatch cardIdentity "GeForce*GTX*770*"" after I made the screenshot below. Also no luck.

[CorinaMarie 29,566]

2 hours ago, Mytzenka said:

Note: I also tried "stringMatch cardIdentity "GeForce*GTX*770*"" after I made the screenshot below. Also no luck.

I believe I read somewhere that you can use "*" and that'll take care of forcing any video card to be called fast. While I'm not 100% certain of that, it seems to me it ought to work. (I didn't try it myself because I was able to find the info for my card.)

[Mytzenka 106]

@CorinaMarie

You mean like this? That didn't work either. I tried other ways of spelling and they also didn't work. Didn't work as in: I don't get the "applying fast card" in the config-log.txt

The game runs okay tho. Only loading up a city takes several minutes.

My original question why we got here was why I see almost no cars in the streets. I loaded up a bigger city which also have roads and those show plenty of cars. So maybe it's just that streets that always show little?

[rsc204 21,805]

Sorry I moved your posts to a new thread yesterday, then got distracted and didn't get a chance to come back to you.

4 hours ago, Mytzenka said:

The game runs okay tho. Only loading up a city takes several minutes.

Load times work as follows, upon loading the game itself, it must index all your Plugins, the more you have the longer it will take to get to region view. When opening the first city, another operation continues loading your Plugins, so again more mods = longer load times. However, if you exit a city, all subsequent city loading should be a lot faster, since the mods are now loaded and this process only needs to happen again if you restart the game itself. No mods can result in almost instant loading times, whereas the NAM with a Full Controller might need 2-3 minutes, since it adds millions of new lines of code the game must load. If you are not using an SSD, times will be greatly increased too.

4 hours ago, Mytzenka said:

My original question why we got here was why I see almost no cars in the streets. I loaded up a bigger city which also have roads and those show plenty of cars. So maybe it's just that streets that always show little?

I think it's more to do with the low population, the more utilised a tile of network is, the more relevant activity you'll see. If it's working fine in a bigger city, there clearly isn't anything wrong with your setup.

Whether or not you bother with the Fast Card thing isn't necessarily important, provided your game is running smoothly, it may not make a huge difference. But for some systems, it's the difference between good and bad performance overall.

14 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I believe I read somewhere that you can use "*" and that'll take care of forcing any video card to be called fast.

You did, I recently discovered this is what they did for the Mac version of SC4, logically it makes sense that it would work, but I never got the chance to test it in Windows. Bizarrely though, from what I see it doesn't look like the Mac version even uses these files, suggesting something in the code was altered elsewhere.

4 hours ago, Mytzenka said:

Didn't work as in: I don't get the "applying fast card" in the config-log.txt

Honestly this is a bit odd, because your GeForce GTX should be picked up from the default script, certainly that works for my GTX960 (and other NVidia cards). However, if you could attach a copy of your config-log file to a follow up post, it might help to understand what's going on.

[Mytzenka 106]

No need to apologize . You are already very quick and overall you guys on this forum are always super helpful!

Sorry for posting in the wrong place.

 

I figured that about load times, but thank you for confirming it. As it is only on when starting up it doesn't bother me much. Only in debugging sessions like when you restart a lot to try things out is it a bit annoying. But I realize my graphics card isn't going to help with that.

6 hours ago, rsc204 said:

If it's working fine in a bigger city, there clearly isn't anything wrong with your setup.

Hmm... maybe you are right, however even in the big city I only see cars on the roads, not the streets. And in my own city I tested this out by upgrading a straight street with no visible traffic (which according to the data view was blue in terms of traffic volume) to a road and then instantly it had visible traffic.
I also find it very odd that the only streets where I DO see traffic (aside from one exception near a church)  are the diagonal ones (which are not even from the original game).

6 hours ago, rsc204 said:

However, if you could attach a copy of your config-log file to a follow up post, it might help to understand what's going on.

I attached it below.

DESKTOP-EDJKOGG-config-log.txt

[Mytzenka 106]

So I just figured out that my empty streets are definitely caused by the NAM.

When I uninstalled the NAM all my streets were full of cars again. When I re-installed it the streets were empty again, except for the streets that are NAM-specific like the diagonals and the SAM streets.

I tried a few different automata settings but that didn't help. Installing an older version of the NAM (that I still had) also didn't help.
Installing it without the automata controller option also didn't help.

Conclusion: the NAM just removes all cars (except from some specials like busses and construction, from all streets (not roads). It is a big difference actually. Maybe I never noticed it before, but I can hardly believe I am the only one who experiences this.

[rsc204 21,805]

5 hours ago, Mytzenka said:

Conclusion: the NAM just removes all cars (except from some specials like busses and construction, from all streets (not roads). It is a big difference actually. Maybe I never noticed it before, but I can hardly believe I am the only one who experiences this.

That might be correct, but you have to factor in which Traffic Simulator you installed with the NAM. The default capacity for streets is so woeful, they almost always end up jammed up, which is bad overall for your game. The NAM Simulators are all designed to increase the capacity of all networks, the basic one (default) to a point where they should stand up to typical usage at later stages of development. Because automata show based on how congested streets are, rather than the actual numbers using them, that's probably why with NAM you see less. Simply because the capacity of the streets is higher, more usage is needed before cars appear. Do check using the Route Query tool that sims are able to use the streets.

There is an option for to use the "Classic" SC4 values, but I wouldn't recommend that since they are, especially for streets, very low.

[Mytzenka 106]

I understand what you are saying and what the NAM aims to do. I still really think what I'm experiencing is a bug though because I tried pretty much all different installation options by now and they all have the same empty streets as a result.

I tried the Classic version of the traffic simulator, even with the automata controller set to radical with the same results: empty streets.

And what is particularly note-worthy is that it ONLY happens for the Maxis street. When I change them to any street from the SAM they are full of cars again. And yes, even with the Classic version of the traffic simulator. If I then change the SAM street back to a Maxis street: empty again.

Diagonal streets - which are also NAM specific - also do not have this issue. So I find it particularly jarring to see a busy diagonal street section and then nothing on the straight street before and after that.

And finally, this happens even when installing only the core component of the NAM. So no traffic simulator at all.

Sorry if I am complaining too much, but I find it pretty game-breaking by now as it also gives me no visual clue as to when a street would need upgrading. I can look at the data view and it would show a street as congested: red, but if shows as just empty.

 

[Tarkus 6,932]

@Mytzenka, I've been able to replicate your issue, and it is indeed not related to the Traffic Simulator, the Automata Simulator, or the graphical options.  I was able to narrow it down to something in NetworkAddonMod_BaseContent.dat.  Originally, I thought there may have been some sort of stray exemplar, but I then decided to pull the modified Street paths out of it, which had been there in order to allow direct PedMall access.  For some reason, there was something wacky with the path for the base ortho Street tile, that wasn't happening with the SAM Street equivalent, despite the SAM versions also having the PedMall connection paths.  I copied out the path from the SAM 2 Ortho tile and re-IIDed it to the base Street ortho, and it seems to be working on my end.

Try this file out--you can stick the .dat file contained in the .zip right in the 1_Core folder, and it should load after the apparently faulty one in the BaseContent file.  Hopefully, it does the trick for you.

-Tarkus

z-NAM Street Ortho Path-09022021.zip

[Mytzenka 106]

I can't wait to try this out, but I'm at work now. I'll update you with my results as soon as I can!

[Mytzenka 106]

@Tarkus
I just re-installed the NAM again with full default options, added your patch file and, low and behold: it works!

I now see cars everywhere and it makes my city feel like an actual city again!

Thank you so much for resolving this, and so quickly at that!

But this isn't something you ever heard of before? Sounds like it may need a permanent fix in the next NAM release?

 

And if I may ask one final question: if I would want to see more or less cars I would have to tweak with the automata controller settings right? As only those deal with the visuals?
The traffic simulator setting shouldn't change the visuals?

[CorinaMarie 29,566]

6 hours ago, Mytzenka said:

if I would want to see more or less cars I would have to tweak with the automata controller settings right? As only those deal with the visuals?

Yes. When installing NAM, it's the choices for the automata like 24 Hour and Radical and such. One thing of note, the more traffic you ask the automata to produce, the more likely they will be to to appear, drive a wee short distance and fade out again. I believe I've read somewhere that part of this is related to a property either in that exemplar or another where the maximum vehicles is (iirc) 5,000. When it reaches that limit it does the fade and remove way more often.

Somewhat related: A tip from @Cyclone Boom I use now when grabbing pics to post is to always pause the game so any cars which are in the process of fading out will fully disappear. This prevents having ghosted cars and trucks in the screenshot.

[Tarkus 6,932]

19 hours ago, Mytzenka said:

But this isn't something you ever heard of before? Sounds like it may need a permanent fix in the next NAM release?

You were indeed the first to report it--and from the looks of version history, it looks like it's probably been like that since NAM 32 (January 2014--almost 8 years ago!) without anyone really noticing.  Thank you for catching it, and I've already merged fixed file into an updated version of NetworkAddonMod_BaseContent.dat, and copied that file into my working build installer for NAM 43, so there will indeed be a permanent fix in place once we finish that version.

-Tarkus

[Mytzenka 106]

Thanks @CorinaMarie

@Tarkus I'm actually a software tester by profession so maybe that helps
But then.... I never noticed this before either when I played around with the NAM. But now that I didn't it became a little frustrating. Once you see something you can't unsee it.

[rsc204 21,805]

On 02/09/2021 at 3:57 PM, Mytzenka said:

But this isn't something you ever heard of before? Sounds like it may need a permanent fix in the next NAM release?

Indeed why I was skeptical that the NAM was behind it, since you'd expect we'd have heard about such basics by now. Glad at least we could get to the bottom of it though.

On 02/09/2021 at 3:57 PM, Mytzenka said:

if I would want to see more or less cars I would have to tweak with the automata controller settings right?

I'd start by seeing if one of the various included Automata Controllers work better for you. Options for Persistent or 24h automata exist, which tries to keep vehicles on-screen longer or show both morning and evening commuting respectively. Then there are a couple levels of automata numbers which also include the previous two options. If none of those are quite to your liking, then you could start poking around the Exemplars to customise them. However such vehicles are one of the few proper 3D parts of the game, to prevent GPU meltdown (in 2003), Maxis put limits in place including one that means you can't stop disappearing cars completely.