Hey guys!

I got a new graphics card yesterday, a much better one... and when I took a look at the clothing skins I nearly got a heart-attack!
Some of the stuff is so ugly now I can see all the detail! I had to throw out some things I made for myself too!

Let me show you something that´s changed....

The first is before, with a fx5200 and all settings high.
The second is a Radeon 9800 pro with all settings high....

The bikini was not made by me. It looked fine before, but now it looks pretty weird!
Is that bumpmapping or something?

And the bikini I made seems to be ingraved in the skin now, and before it looked fine...

But... now I see alot more detail on clothing, and some of them look stunning now

Did anyone experience this? I thinks it's pretty funny :D


Greetings from Anouk

Yes, the other day, and I didn't even need a new graphics card, something was stopping me from going to high detail, but now I can, and seen it all for the first time.

Its nice having 10 fingers and you can even see their fingernails if you zoom closer!

The only thing I don't like about the high-detail, is their hair blows around too much, like indoors when there shouldn't be a breeze around what-so-ever.

But the high detail has opens lot more opportunities for me, I use bodyshop and recolour objects a lot more often now.

Once your in high-details, theres no going back...

heehee well they always had ten fingers... well, nasty sharp claws! I didn't check on those, I'll do that the next time I play. heheh didn't notice the unnatural breeze either !
What I DID notice is that NOTHING lags anymore! The game is sooo much faster... it's amazing!
I didn't think it would make that much difference :D

*Checked out the fingers... they actually have round fingertips now :D

I recently upgraded from an FX5200 to a GeForce 6600GT and I noticed the same thing.
The Sims 2 looks like a whole different game.

Wow- I need a new graphics card!!! I have a Radeon 9200 series - split. I think SHOPPING is in order today....rainy :weep:

wow thats cool and strange (well notstrange cause u got a new graphics card lol) hey could u maybe give me the link for the swimmers i wanna c if mine does the uncrinckled version or the crinckled version lol um neways thats pretty amazing how it does that.

I think it's the grey texture file that does it... maybe I can change it myself...
Oww man I don't remember where I got this, it's one of the first I downloaded... probably right here on this site! I'll go take a look okay...? :P

* It's called The Janice and made by WooHoo, but I can't find this username on this site...

Wow! I'm so impressed with the differance in quality that I have just gone onto ebay and bought a Radeon 9800 pro graphics card!
I cant wait to get it hooked up - I can see me making skins with coloured fingernails!!!!

But I have a question when you installed your new graphic gard had you uninstalled the sims2 and your downloads before ?

Depends what hair you pick, from your screenshot, that type of hair blows around quite a bit.

But I still need a new graphics card, all I need to stop now, is the occasionally lag now and then.

Hi Nouk,
Yes that is bumpmapping you can see! Unfortunately there are disadvantages to it- if you get an outfit that someone has re-coloured without changing the bumpmap you may get a strange shadow or line- you can often see this if someone has changed the Maxis v-neck sweater into a round neck!
I have a Nvidia fx5200, but I can see the bumpmapping because I enabled it... If anyone would like to see how to do this, read this thread.

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=43273

Semloh also created a bumpmapped body skin which is excellent as you can see pores and wrinkles properly. However, this is in the adult forum- if you're over 18 you can find it in the adult skins and genetics section.
Please bear in mind that enabling bumpmapping uses more system resources, so if you have a card like mine but your game already runs slow it may be better to leave it off. However it does add an extra dimension to the game as Maxis bumpmapped many of their objexts and clothes, and even some walls and floors.

Great Signature! <Rush fan too. So, you are saying turning on bmap could do more worse than good? Depending on system' resources?
That's something to think about.

Nope! That's not nessecary! It's hardware that doesn't effect the state of your gamefiles...
except making it look better :P

I experienced that when I recoulored a dress.... it looked lovely before, now it looks like someone bashed with a hammer in a red candle or something :D

Yikes! :argh:

That's quite a change! I am working on a laptop now with a Radeon 9600 (is that supposed to be good?) but I am really missing my Nvidia FX 5200 - so does this mean it's time for me to see an optometrist? lol :wtf2:

That's pretty good compared to a fx5200, makes a huge difference! I was gonna go for that one first, but I heard that the Radeon 9800 has a better engine and better preformance. I got it for 100 euro's. very cheap! The 9600 is older, but it was 125 euro's, because it wasn't on sale

When i got my 9800 pro i did the same thing you did...just about died at the change because some of the skins/objects i had looked so much more awesome, and some of them looked kinda funky....its worth it though...ahh such awesome graphics..i think the thing that gets me now is looking at TS1 screenshots and how different they are...cause even on a low end video card like i had before i bought this one $200 us dollars, the sims 2 looks amazing compared to sims 1...

Yeah... I can't get over it how much faster and better everything is... usually the screen would do the 'chopping thing' when I moved around... now I have to be careul not to be oo fast :P
And... the 'fast forward' thing, when you push '3'... is ACTUALLY FAST now! LOL

Yeah i know how you feel i used to have to put it in 3 to make it run normally most of the time!

Definately SHOPPING now.....<am interested(scared) of my' uploads as measly as they' are - but quality' is policy.

I'm heading over to eBay for a new card right now! I upgraded my memory first (went from 512MB to 1GB) noticed a big change in speed but not detail. The game didn't freeze when the maid, school bus, repairman, etc. showed up. Search button here I come.....

Sims2germany, yes, bumpmapping uses extra system resources so if you have a slow game to begin with and you change the game settings to enable bumpmap rendering, you could notice a lag in performance. If, however, you upgrade your graphics card you should notice better performance even with bumpmapping! The Sims2 recognises certain graphics cards as being 'high performance' and so therefore enables bumpmapping automatically, as Nouk found. But a card like my 256mb FX5200, even though it is perfectly capable of bumpmapping, for some reason Maxis thought that people using a card like that would have rubbish computers and turned the bumpmapping off. All I had to do was tell the game to enable bumpmapping for all graphics cards, and it worked. And because my computer is quite good otherwise, I noticed no change in performance- just an improvement in quality.
By the way, thanks for noticing the signature- I've had quite a few people comment on that now, it seems there are a lot of Rush fans out there!

If you can't do bumpmapping yourself, you can open up the outfit with body shop and grey out the file in your image editing program to remove it. In some cases, no bumpmap is less annoying than the wrong one.

That's from TSR

I luv my popsy too.... he's white (red during the summers) and knows nothing about computers :D
Heehee