I've been looking for similar posts about this for a while but have yet to find anything similar to my situation.

Some time ago I had to switch my graphics rules and download new due to a lost backup copy. Since then I noticed that the in game snow looked much more detailed than from my old previous settings and in addition, my sims now have weird shadows that can be seen through the snow covered ground. So in short I'm wondering what settings do I need to adjust to fix the shadows and get the snow back to my old preferred "softer" and less grainy look?

edit: This occurred after I mistakenly used Graphics Rules Maker. If that has anything to do with why I can't change shaders and bump mapping options.

Below are screenshots of my previous settings with softer snow compared to my current ones (more detailed snow and with see-through sim shadows).

The second one seems to have bump maps enabled, so that's one thing you might want to turn off. Could just be shaders in general.

You can do a quick test with these in the userStartup, and see if you get the effect you want:
boolProp UseShaders false
boolProp bumpMapping false

Turning these off will turn all the bump map and shader effects off for your entire game, just so you know. I'm not entirely sure if there's any special settings you can turn on/off for snow/weather effects.

If that works (and doesn't cause any other issues), you can edit the GraphicRules file.

Solved the issue! Turned out to be shaders causing it after all.
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