Maximizing Resolution/HD Capabilities on Mac

[Herschel 10]

Hi all -- 

I've seen some HD content listed here. I tried to install some BATs but they crashed my game, and in reading the comments am guessing that the resolution/picture quality was not high enough to support the files. The comments suggested DirectX, which I understand is incompatible with Mac. So, my question here is threefold:

1. Is there a way to improve the resolution/rendering from the default on Steam? I tried updating the resolution once but had that issue of not being able to click in the bottom of the screen that I know a lot of us have encountered. Was I using the wrong dimensions or am I just wrong to mess with the dimension in the first place?

2. If resolution can't be imrpoved to HD in Steam, is there a Mac-compatible add-on like DirectX that I can use instead?

3. Or, if neither of those are options, should I avoid installing any HD plug-ins, and just accept that I am playing with a SD version of the game? 

Thanks in advance? If not clear from my post, I am not very tech-savvy. Most of what I know about computers I have learned troubleshooting this game and various mods. So apologies if using incorrect terminology here. 

[Jasoncw 11,840]

HD BATs aren't actually HD in the normal sense of the word. The graphics in SimCity 4 are mostly pre-rendered, meaning that each building has a 2D render for each rotation and zoom. Except for zoom 6 (the closest zoom) which reuses the renders meant for zoom 5. This is why when you are in zoom 6, the buildings look pixelated. HD BATs do the opposite, zoom 6 has dedicated renders, and zoom 5 reuses those, just scaled down. They also have opposite tradeoffs, instead of zoom 6 looking pixelated and zoom 5 looking good, zoom 6 will look good and zoom 5 will look pixelated (because the game is bad at shrinking the image).

High resolution monitors is a different and unrelated issue. Since these resolutions didn't exist when the game came out, there's not an option for them in settings, and you need to use one of those other solutions. Since the buildings in the game are pre-rendered, there's not any more detail to create by increasing the resolution. Instead, you're just increasing the amount of your city that you can see. And then depending on the size of your monitor and its pixel density, it will effectively shrink your city. For example, I have a 4k monitor, whose resolution is twice as big as a 1080p monitor, which means the pixel density is twice as high, which means all of the buildings on the screen are half as big on the screen. My zoom 5 is physically the same size on the screen as a 1080p monitor's zoom 4. It has the same detail as zoom 5, because it is literally zoom 5, so it's more detailed than zoom 4 even though it's the same size on the screen.

[rsc204 21,808]

I'm pretty sure that whilst the Mac version ultimately uses OpenGL in some form, it is emulating DirectX and so use of 'HD' BATs should not in and of themselves cause problems. That specific issue occurs when DirectX rendering is NOT used for SC4, because the Software renderer simply can not display a texture larger than 256x256px in size, which triggers the crash. However it's not possible to make a BAT or Model for SC4 that uses a larger texture than 256x256px, if the BAT is large enough, it will contain multiple textures that get stitched together kind of like wallpaper, so this issue doesn't affect BATs at all. However there are a handful of Terrain mods using textures as large as 1024x1024px and even a sidewalk mod that used 512x512px textures, but again for all intents and purposes the Mac game is still using the DirectX renderer, so there is nothing to stop you using these on a Mac.

So then you might be wondering what is the real cause of the crashing when using certain content, there are a few well known issues that are unique to the Mac version.

These are very easy to fix, but require Windows based tools to do so, which if you have Apple Silicon are just not practical to make work on a Mac IMO. But if you give us an example of a download that is causing problems, ideally with a link to it, someone can see if it's affected by these problems and hopefully update the download.

Note that there are two issues, one will prevent the game from loading a city, the other usually only crops up when trying to plop an item from the menus.

[Herschel 10]

18 hours ago, Jasoncw said:

HD BATs aren't actually HD in the normal sense of the word. The graphics in SimCity 4 are mostly pre-rendered, meaning that each building has a 2D render for each rotation and zoom. Except for zoom 6 (the closest zoom) which reuses the renders meant for zoom 5. This is why when you are in zoom 6, the buildings look pixelated. HD BATs do the opposite, zoom 6 has dedicated renders, and zoom 5 reuses those, just scaled down. They also have opposite tradeoffs, instead of zoom 6 looking pixelated and zoom 5 looking good, zoom 6 will look good and zoom 5 will look pixelated (because the game is bad at shrinking the image).

High resolution monitors is a different and unrelated issue....

 

@Jasoncw - thanks for explaining both the rendering of Zooms and the separate High resolution matter -- that clarifies a lot for me. Based on your explanation, it sounds like I might be better off sticking with 'standard definition' where available as I tend to favor Zoom 5 over 6. 

As for the high resolution, that makes a lot of sense too. I am playing through steam and tried adjusting the resolution early on thinking it would improve picture quality, but I ran into the issue that I've seen other players post about where I put an incompatible ratio that kept me from being able to click the bottom field of the screen. I copied and pasted the a custom resolution someone commented as a fix into my prefrences for the game in Steam, which was this:

-CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32

But per a comment below I updated it to 1920x1080x64 and seem to be running the game fine still. 

I checked and it looks like my device resolution is 2560x1600 with 227 pixels/inch. If I preferred seeing more of the city at each zoom level, could I do that by updating my custom resolution to 2560x1600x64?

[Herschel 10]

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

These are very easy to fix, but require Windows based tools to do so, which if you have Apple Silicon are just not practical to make work on a Mac IMO. But if you give us an example of a download that is causing problems, ideally with a link to it, someone can see if it's affected by these problems and hopefully update the download.

Note that there are two issues, one will prevent the game from loading a city, the other usually only crops up when trying to plop an item from the menus.

 @rsc204 thanks for explaining the differences between Windows/Mac so clearly, and for linking the thread. I am playing on an Apple M1 chip, and given my general lack of tech-savvy it sounds like those Windows fixes might not be super feasible, but also not necessary except in a few rare cases. 

The issue that I've been into now is the first you describe--the one preventing the game from loading a city. It crashes before the city opens. I've been trying to get some of @WannGLondon's incredible flats and homes on my game. I had been using the sc4pc download manager to install 20 of them at once, so I don't know if my game set-up is incompatible with one or multiple. 

I've tagged WannG in this chat in case they might have any insight, but the good news is that after uninstalling them all, I was able to install one and get the game working. So I will install the ones I'm hoping to use one at a time so I can see which one(s) my computer might be having issues with. 

 

[bhmantan 2,047]

Just want to confirm, did you apply this beta channel for Apple Silicon yet? I suggest you do if you haven't already.
https://support.aspyr.com/hc/en-us/articles/12168615035405-How-to-access-the-Apple-Silicon-update-on-Mac-Steam-SimCity-4-Deluxe-Edition

Also, there are some issues with WannGLondon's lots that cause the game to crash when you load a city.
It's related to the "float32 rep value" mentioned by rsc204 above.
I submitted some fixes before, but there are still some that have that problem.
And right now, your best option is to report that mods (there's a link on the mods page), so either the staff or WannGLondon can fix them.

[Herschel 10]

@bhmantan - yes, have the Beta Channel update recommended. And thanks for the tip about reporting mods! 

Hersch 

[rsc204 21,808]

Performance on my M1 Mac is bonkers after installing the Beta version, which bizarrely is given to AppStore users by default! No Windows computer could dream of running SC4 that well, but the flip side is that running on a Mac, especially a highly modded game, is frankly so tedious I still play under my old Windows system.

5 hours ago, Herschel said:

it sounds like those Windows fixes might not be super feasible, but also not necessary except in a few rare cases. 

Well step 1 you need to understand what you are looking at, whilst practically speaking you'd be changing 1's to 0's (all the fix is), you both need to know where to look and have access to iLives Reader. I don't know anyone who's got that running with WINE or other tricks and after upgrading last year to Apple Silicon running Windows in a VM is off the table too.

Problem is we really don't know how many mods are affected, because even though the data is wrong, the Windows version ignores it. Since the 64-bit update though, the Mac version got really picky and hence the crashes. In my experience, I just gave up trying to put complete Plugin's folders on my Mac, because it's just problem after problem. Bear in mind I'm a skilled modder, it just broke me. OK, mostly because I'd always played SC4 on Windows and the adjustment was too much, but not in small part because the Mac version is incredibly unstable and has other annoyances you don't suffer in Windows. But the CTD thing, you will keep coming across it and tracking down the problem file each time is tedious.

[Herschel 10]

14 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Well step 1 you need to understand what you are looking at, whilst practically speaking you'd be changing 1's to 0's (all the fix is), you both need to know where to look and have access to iLives Reader. I don't know anyone who's got that running with WINE or other tricks and after upgrading last year to Apple Silicon running Windows in a VM is off the table too.

Less than a sentence into step 1 and I'm already lost. lol!

I don't have a PC to play with, so I guess I'll be stuck with the Mac (at least for now.) But luckily I am new to the game and am just discovering mods. I've learned to only install mods from one creator at a time, so that if the game crashes I can easily narrow down where the problem might be. This is actually the first time that the mod has one of these Mac-specific issues, the rest of the time it's just been an error on my part with how I installed it. I'm sure a lot of these files initially had the Mac issue, but were fixed by admins or modders before I even got here, so thankful for that!!

[bhmantan 2,047]

The case for the issue similar to WannGLondon's contents is really rare.
So far, I only found it in their content since they probably reuse it as a template, and I think one of Bombardiere's houses, which has already been fixed.

The other case, which is more often, is related to transit-enabled lots.
It's usually found on stations or parking lots. Basically, buildings where you can connect a network to or through them, so you need to watch out for that.
I often found them on some of the Simmer2 (SM2) and Pegasus contents.

A tip from my experience is that it's really recommended to be organized about your downloads.
Put your batch of downloads into a folder or something, so you can easily identify which mods caused an issue.
Test and make sure what you added works properly and doesn't cause the game to crash.