clear the least used worst offenders 1st. As @iCad wrote above - it's not entirely about quantity, it's about the texture size (and the level of model details, though it's much less concerning). In *very* simplified way: one hair CC with 2048 texture is worth at last [toddler-math scratched] 16 with 512 resolution. Frankly, aside infinite beautification quest, there's really no sane reason to put anything with bigger than 512 texture res. on the game, at last, not in prolonged, active gameplay in mind. And many textures in game are much, much smaller.
Taking pretty screenshots that's another matter.

^ By going one size up on a square texture, they quadruple in size.

1024x1024 textures are 4 x 512.

2048x2048 textures are 4 x 1024. (if horizontal/vertical, often for hairs and for a lot of 4t2 CAS conversions, they're 2x1024)

So if you can avoid anything with any side as 2048, do so. Some people remap 4t2 meshes so they only take up the space they actually need (I tend to do that because there's no point in keeping the huge texture if the item only uses a small part of it - I have so far not seen any TS4 CAS parts that ended up bigger than 1024x or 512x or 256x in size when the empty parts are chipped away). TS3 tends to keep to 1024x1024 as the biggest size.

Some computers have difficulties reading the big 4t2 textures and have issues with 4t2 hair conversions, particularly high-poly CC ones (they may show up bald if you play without shaders), so maybe be careful with those. Try keeping hairs below 15.000 polys as a rule, preferably closer to 5.000-10.000 polys if you can, and same with objects (preferably less than 10.000).

For anything else than environmental textures (the only places TS2 uses 2048x2048 maps by default) 1024, 512 and below is perfectly fine. I've had 2-3 objects with 2048x2048 textures on a couple objects for closeups (they also have smaller textures for regular use) and quite honestly you need to fill the entire camera with the object before you start spotting the differences, and most of the time you don't do that anyway, so there's absolutely no reason to go more HQ than 1024 on TS2 textures.

Again, when it comes to pink flashing, it's what you use in a neighborhood that matters, NOT how much CC you have overall. You could have 5000 custom hairs, but if you only use 10 of them in a neighborhood, then it's only those 10 that "count" in terms of texture memory usage when you're playing that neighborhood. Stuff doesn't get loaded into texture memory until the game has to render it, not just because its read the file.

And, as ElainNualla said, it's not even necessarily the total number of things you use but rather the texture sizes of the things you use. Large texture size is nice because it means a less blurry, crisper-looking game, but it comes at a cost, and you need to decide what you're willing to pay. If you can run SimPE, you can find out how large an item's texture size is by simply opening it SimPE and looking at the texture image. Its size is displayed in a window next to the image itself. The majority of custom hairs, for instance, have 1024x1024 textures. That's big. (For reference, most Maxis hairs have 256x256 textures, which is 16x smaller than 1024x1024.) Recently, I have seen some hairs -- mostly conversions of hairs made for TS4 -- that have 2048x2048 textures. I, personally, would not touch those with a 100m pole. Clothing also needs to be watched. In the past, most custom clothing had 512x512 textures. Nowadays, with TS4 conversions, that's crept up to 1024x1024, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's some 2048x2048s lurking out there.

Another thing to be wary of is high-res neighborhood stuff. (This is my own weakness; I mean, I MAKE high-res neighborhood stuff. But at least I warn people that it's high-res.) Those pretty custom skies? Their textures are either 4096x1024 or 2048x2048. High-res terrain defaults? A lush one'll have 7 1024x1024 (at least) images, and road defaults are even worse. Those pretty seasonal skylines that lots of people use? Are made of 6 2048x2048 images. I have seen little neighborhood-deco houses with 2048x2048 textures. For one little house! That the average user who doesn't know about this stuff will plunk down 10 of (because they look SO PRETTY!)...and then wonder why their game flashes pink. This is why. I love pretty neighborhood views, I really do. That's why I make the stuff. But I know that there are trade-offs and sacrifices that must be made to have them, and I make them.

In short, it would really behoove you -- and everyone else, really -- to learn how to look at textures in SimPE or some other program that will display them. (Perhaps Clean Installer? I don't know; I'm most familiar with SimPE, so that's what I use.) Then you can make informed decisions about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of or at least not use a lot of. You might decide you want to keep some really high-res stuff and not use it a lot and/or make sacrifices elsewhere. And that's OK. The point is being informed and not just dumping stuff in your game because it's SO PRETTY!

As a note: high-poly is a completely different thing than high-res. You can have a low-poly object with an insanely-large texture image (like custom skies/skylines), and you have high-poly objects with a small texture image. Or you can have an item that's both high-poly AND high-res. They're different characteristics. Both affect your video card. Polycount affects rendering time and the computing power necessary to render it so if you're playing with a weaker card having to render a lot of high-poly stuff will slow down and even possibly crash your game, but it doesn't contribute to pink flashing. Resolution has a greater affect on, obviously, texture memory and running out of that is what causes pink flashing. Generally speaking, in both cases, pretty much all modern graphics cards can handle the sort of high-poly objects that are made for TS2 nowadays, so long as you are, again, aware of polycounts and don't go completely insane with high-poly stuff in your game. (Watch out for those 40K+ hairs that are out there these days. ) They can also handle the high-res. It's the GAME that doesn't particularly deal well with high-res because it was never meant to and because of the fact that it caches textures so conservatively in order to reduce load-screen time. So, again, you (general "you" here, not just you personally) need to be aware of what you're putting in your game and, more importantly, how you use it in your neighborhoods.



Yes, it does. I'm not at my Simming computer or else I'd take a screen shot for you, but if memory serves there's a section of the log that's called "Graphics Device Info" or something like that. There's a line labeled "Texture Memory" and the number shown there is the amount that your game is set to use. (Default is 32MB which with modern graphics cards is far too low but was fine for average cards that existed 15 years ago. ) If that number is lower than the amount of texture memory your card has (which isn't exactly the same as the overall memory that it has), then you can raise that number, which will allow the game to use all/more of your card's texture, which means that it'll stave off pink flashing longer, yes, but it's not a magic cure. You can adjust this using the Graphics Rules Maker. If you need help with that, let us know.

Hmm my game crashed twice after playing 1 hour and then half an hour... Free memory is way above 3000 so that's new.

And wow, so many new comments in languages I don't fully understand, heh! Do I understand you correctly that I can have as much CC installed as possible (lol) but it's when I use it for many households and houses that it's getting slower? When I get new hairstyles and clothes I tend to restyle a lot of Sims... I'm on generation 8 with sooooo many households and families on the side so there is a lot of CC on all characters, also I style a lot of NPCs

My texture memory is 4088MB

Sort of. I think the game does have upper limits as to how many files it can read. Though I've heard of people who have 70+GB of stuff, so I don't know what that limit would be. But if you have a truly insane amount of CC, then of course it will take longer for your game to load and in game it'll probably take longer for the catalogs to load and it will make it more difficult to find that one thing you want. And if you're into the CAS stuff, it'll take a long time to scroll through all your stuff when you're making or making-over a Sim. And, on a technical note, it will probably mean that your thumbnail cache file is really big and will probably need to be deleted often because that can contribute to both crashing and pink flashing.

But overall, I think the real issue when it comes to having a crap-ton of CC is your tolerance for slowness and general difficulty of use, and that's going to be different for different people. I like "clean" catalogs where it's easy to find what I want and pretty neighborhood views to take pics of, but I'm not really fussy about how my Sims look, so most of my CC is object recolors/retextures, default replacements for CAS stuff, and pretty neighborhood-view stuff. Other people are into different things...and some people are masochists who are willing to spend a lot of time scrolling through catalogs in order to have pretty Sims.

But in terms of pink flashing, specifically, and how well a particular neighborhood runs when you're playing it, then yes it's only what you use in the neighborhood that matters.



Is that how much your card has or how much it says in your log that the game is allowed to use? If the latter, then you're good to go. Like I said, it doesn't guarantee that you won't experience pink flashing. It just means it'll take longer to happen.

Skins have a max texture of 1024x1024 for child through elders and 512x512 for infants and toddlers. When you use max settings in the game and are in a close-up situation I'm pretty sure those are the ones showing. Clothes have the same size as the skins because they don't work otherwise (especially bump maps). Bodyshop seems to pull those sizes for recoloring (most likely from the LIFOs, and not the TXTRs since they're smaller). There are however different texture sizes baked into TXTR resources, so it shows a smaller texture if you're further away (it's why improperly made texture files change to default if you haven't updated sizes or used DXT/DDS). I think the game uses the larger textures if you're close up to the sim or item, but I'm not 100% sure. They are default Bodyshop sizes, anyway.





There are tons of 2048x2048 textures (or 2048x1024) out there. The smart people resize the UVmap and texture to a smaller size. I tend to chop off the top half because it's usually empty anyway, and fit the UVmap to the texture (quite easy with a chopped-down UVmap in the correct size and Blender). I'd say it's also a good idea to resize a 2048x2048 map (if it's filled with texture - CAS items are a different matter) to 1024, because the difference ingame is minimal.

The game handles 1024x1024 and down pretty well since that's one of the common sizes it uses, but anything bigger where it's not supposed to be will eventually clog the texture memory. A lot of 1024x1024 textures, particularly where you don't need them, can also be bad.

Not entirely sure if file size matters for texture memory (probably does), but a 1024x1024 PNG filled with different colors and shades is often 1 mb in size.



Not sure if the Clean Installer shows the actual size of the texture, or just a thumbnail. I much prefer using SimPE for checking sizes because it tells you the exact size.


Just a few random notes which might be helpful for both downloaders and creators:

yay, it's a great thing to pull a math with worse result than a toddler, I feel young again, and strangely confident to pull a trigger for a presidential race!
--
there was limit in file read cache - IO buffer in more exact way - in 32-bit systems (and it's still inside game in regard to an actual overall file path length, that's why packages deeply buried in subfolders, especially with long names are sometimes not read at all), but in 64 bit environment it's not really a case anymore.* Still - reading and in particular: processing data, even from SSD takes some time. If you attempt to read and produce index of 10GB worth CC folder, do not expect it will be instantaneous.

*though W10 still have hard times with long filenames, like >190 characters long

I moved all my default hairs many of which are 1024x1024 down to saved Sims. I haven't seen pink flashing since. I also removed a large ocean overlay because I noticed anytime sims went to one of the beaches in that sub hood and came back home, guaranteed their home lot would be pink flashing. I also upgraded to 32 RAM. While we can argue that this or that should help/make no difference or that 8 RAM should be enough, none of those should be's were working and so far this is.

Well, upgrading to 32GB of RAM isn't going to help with pink flashing. TS2 is 32-bit, which means it can only ever use 4GB of RAM, max, no matter how much system RAM you have. (And, really, that means that it can only use ~3.7GB, when you factor in other things.) 32GB of system RAM will help if you do other things while you run the game, sure, especially if you run a web browser, all of which eat RAM like a 6-year-old eats candy, but it's not going to help with pink flashing. For that, you're better off with a graphics card with more texture memory and the game set up so that it can use it properly.

The ocean object you speak of, though: Is that Gwenke's ocean overlay? Because I use that plus Voeille's water mod and my game rarely flashes pink. I think it does have a pretty big texture, though, so if you're on the edge of pink flashing for other reasons, that could push you over the edge.