jasonr71

I've had the final release version of the collectors edition for one day now, and it's not as good as I expected it to be since the last version was released almost 10 years ago! One thing the guys at Maxis mentioned over and over again in interviews; as if they're were so excited about adding this visual effect to the game, was to make the buildings look like real modelled buildings, like the type you would find on a model train set. The effect they've added is a Tilt-Shift DSLR Camera focus effect (Basically a shallow depth of field), so when you zoom right in on your city, it's blurs out all the objects around and behind the subject whilst kepping the subject in focus. This is just a lame reason and a load of crap as to why they added this feature, because the main reason why they've added this ugly effect is so that it wil basically help with the frame rates like a blur effect does in racing games, in which it reduces the resolution and pixel per sq inch, that would otherwise have a huge impact on the performance within the game on mid range PC's, as well as protecting the servers from crashing! Now with the Maxis team applying this Tilt-Shift Camera effect, this is one way of keeping the frame rates up for most PC users as well as making sure the servers can handle the large chunks of data being transmitted back and fourth. In other words for those who aren't that technical, if they did not add this effect, once you have created a massive city and you're able to see the city in great detail from one end of the map to the other, as well as when you zoom in close to a building, and the subject and the surrounding objects were not blurry, on a majority of PC with average graphics cards, SimCity would run terribly slow, and would probably crash the servers if there was a lot of users viewing a lot of the large cities on the servers that were only mid range PC's. So Maxis, just be honest with the SimCity fans who are your customers and don't come up with some lame reason why some crappy effect has been added to the game, when the effect makes the game look like crap! I'm personally a landscape photographer and I do not see the purpose of using this effect when you're playing SimCity or Cities XL because one of the great aspects of the game, is how you can create such beautiful landscaped cities and even within the game you can take photo of your cities. I know I would prefer to take a great landscape snapshot of my city than a blurry portrait photo of small section of my city. Portrait photographers always use a shallow depth of field so everything around the subhect (A face for example) is blurred out so the subject is the centre of attention and the only thing in focus within the photograph. I think I will take it back to EB Games and get a refund, and stick to playing Cities XL Platinum!

Yes this is correct. I wonder why someone from EA's technical support team would state that you cannot run Simcity 5 under Windows 8. Windows 8 is basically Windows 7 with a new start menu and has a couple of other small features. The new start menu was designed with touch screens in mind, and to keep a certain amount of consistency between the Xbox and PC menu layouts, as well as making it easy for novices and PC users who prefer to navigate by using touch screens instead of a mouse. Like Freshman has stated above, Windows 8's system core is basically Windows 7's system core! It's using the same source code as Windows 7 with some minor inclusions. To install Simcity on Windows 8, It's actually better to uninstall the game and reinstall it again, and when you go to reinstall it click on the setup or install file, right mouse click and select 'Run as administrator' and then you game should work as long as this is what's really causing the issue. If you're still having trouble, go to the exe file also known as the application file, click on the file using the right mouse button and select properties, then click on the tab up the top that has the title 'Compatibility', then click on compatibility mode box and select Windows 7. Only do this as a last resort if the game is not running under Windows 8 for you. I haven't purchased the game as yet, but I had the same problem with another game in which I resolved the issue by using the above two options! All the best Jason