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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 5th Jan 2021 at 10:28 PM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default Shadows Flickering for Objects Placed Above Carpets
Hello! I am having a bit of a problem with my game. I own the Sims 2 Ultimate Collection and I think it is worth mentioning that I am using Gunmod's radiance lighting system. For some reason, any object placed above a carpet casts a flickering shadow. It's incredibly irritating, and I am not sure what to do to solve this problem. Turning off shadows completely obviously takes care of the problem, but it's JUST shadows of objects placed over carpets... so that's just unfair. *Just to clarify, I am not talking about the weird shadows that appear when placing a carpet while using the snapobjectstogrid false cheat. I have installed a mod to take care of that problem. * Please help!
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Lab Assistant
#2 Old 8th Jan 2021 at 12:24 PM
I'm having the same issue as you, I assume it's a graphical issue, it's most likely to do with shaders. I doesn't really bother me that much.

Perhaps try removing the mod that fixes the rugs placed off the grid to see whether it still happens. I have a hunch that it is what causes it.
Mad Poster
#3 Old 8th Jan 2021 at 3:52 PM Last edited by simmer22 : 8th Jan 2021 at 9:44 PM.
Most likely the shadow and rug are at roughly the same height, possibly due to the shadow being at the wrong height, especially if it's a CC item. If so it's most likely a minor "flickering surface" graphical glitch that happens when two meshes with different textures overlap.

Does the problem happen when you place rugs on the grid (no cheats), or just off-grid, or both?

Does it happen with both EAxis items and CC items, or CC items only? (Reason I ask is because CC-items sometimes have custom shadows, which could be placed too high/low).
Me? Sarcastic? Never.
staff: administrator
#4 Old 8th Jan 2021 at 9:19 PM
The issue, as stated by the OP, is objects and not the rugs.  Most likely part of the lighting mod.  If it's only cc, then it could be the shadow mesh placed incorrectly on the Y-axis.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 9th Jan 2021 at 6:41 AM
To me it's very annoying haha. I'll try your suggestion and see what happens.

Quote: Originally posted by colazocker13
I'm having the same issue as you, I assume it's a graphical issue, it's most likely to do with shaders. I doesn't really bother me that much.

Perhaps try removing the mod that fixes the rugs placed off the grid to see whether it still happens. I have a hunch that it is what causes it.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#6 Old 9th Jan 2021 at 6:44 AM
Hi! Yes, the problem persists whether or not I am using the snapobjectstogrid false cheat. I do not use any CC rugs, so I haven't been able to test whether or not it would have an effect on them. Although, all EAxis rugs are effected.

Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
Most likely the shadow and rug are at roughly the same height, possibly due to the shadow being at the wrong height, especially if it's a CC item. If so it's most likely a minor "flickering surface" graphical glitch that happens when two meshes with different textures overlap.

Does the problem happen when you place rugs on the grid (no cheats), or just off-grid, or both?

Does it happen with both EAxis items and CC items, or CC items only? (Reason I ask is because CC-items sometimes have custom shadows, which could be placed too high/low).
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retired moderator
#7 Old 9th Jan 2021 at 9:52 AM
I've seen this in my game too, so I did some testing.








As a control, I tested with a completely vanilla game, except for the Rug Mod and my amended Graphics rules file so that my card worked.

Again, shadows were fine without the rug mod, but with the rug mod I had the broken shadows and flickering.


GIF:


My conclusions are that this appears to be z-fighting which is apparent when the rug mod is in-game. It is not affected by lighting mods and occurs with a vanilla set-up in which the rug mod is the only CC. I hope this helps, I consider it in my game to be a small annoyance far outweighed by the benefits of the rug mod, which is why I never bothered to troubleshoot it until now. Perhaps others can confirm if they see this, maybe it's only apparent with certain video cards?
Screenshots
Lab Assistant
#8 Old 29th Jan 2021 at 3:00 AM
I can confirm that I have this issue as well! Unfortunately I don't have any solution to fix it, though

Ultimately I prefer to keep the rug mod in my game because I like being able to place rugs anywhere on the grid. I tend to avoid placing furniture over the rugs because of the flickering shadow issue. If I do want to put furniture above a rug, though, I usually try out a lot of different pieces of furniture to find something that makes the flickering shadows less obvious. For example a coffee table with a shelf underneath that is really low to the ground can hide the flickering shadows (for the most part). Also, darker coloured rugs can sort of avoid the problem because the dark shadows are less obvious on them.

Anyway, the rug mod in question is here https://modthesims.info/d/399650/ru...g-off-grid.html
Perhaps we should let @HugeLunatic know about this?

I imagine there's not really much that can be done except for OP and I (and anyone else who has the problem) to get a new video card, but still.

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Me? Sarcastic? Never.
staff: administrator
#9 Old 29th Jan 2021 at 10:51 AM
If the vanilla lighting is causing this, then it must be the graphics card and/or card settings.  I have no lighting issues or flickering in my game with the rugs, unless I try to layer them.  My GPU is GTX 460, and I use the lighting mod by spookymuffin.
Screenshots
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retired moderator
#10 Old 29th Jan 2021 at 11:10 AM
@HugeLunatic Could well be, I've had this card for a long time now and always had this issue (with the mod) so possibly not driver related. Although, my card is NVidia GTS450 and there have been no new drivers for that for a year or so. The fact that no-one else has reported it in the download thread shows that it's possibly not that common.
Which video card do you have @Natpop ?
Lab Assistant
#11 Old 31st Jan 2021 at 6:58 AM
@simsample AMD Radeon HD 7610M. Which doesn't match up with yours, hmmm.....

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retired moderator
#12 Old 31st Jan 2021 at 11:18 AM
@Natpop Interesting, trouble is there are so many variables in people's game setups, it's hard to make any sense of it. Perhaps if anyone else is reading who uses the Rug mod, they could post their graphics card and whether they see the shadow flickering or not. Perhaps a pattern would emerge.
@HugeLunatic I notice in your picture you have no shadows overlapping your rug, if you place a coffee table does the shadow look okay?
Field Researcher
#13 Old 15th Apr 2021 at 7:13 PM
I also have this flickering issue with the rug mod in place. My graphics card is the Nvidia GTX 1650. Should we also post our graphics rules override settings?
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retired moderator
#14 Old 15th Apr 2021 at 7:42 PM
I don't know what, if any, information would be useful to @HugeLunatic

For me at least, it's such a small issue that I wouldn't stop using the mod because of it, so if others feel this way HugeLunatic may not want to bother looking in to it.
Me? Sarcastic? Never.
staff: administrator
#15 Old 15th Apr 2021 at 9:22 PM
So I do get the shadows flickering when placing some objects on top of the rugs.  It appears to vary based on objects, so my guess is the height of the groundshadow mesh.  Not all objects have the groundshadow mesh the same distance from the floor. 

So there is a cheat, boolprop useshaders, maybe try setting it to false?  This is one of the suggestions I've seen for fixing the pink flashing.  Without actually having the flickering due to the mod, it's near impossible for me to even try to fix it.
Field Researcher
#16 Old 20th Apr 2021 at 9:11 PM
Quote: Originally posted by HugeLunatic
So I do get the shadows flickering when placing some objects on top of the rugs.  It appears to vary based on objects, so my guess is the height of the groundshadow mesh.  Not all objects have the groundshadow mesh the same distance from the floor. 


With that in mind, it's probably not so much that the mod is causing flickering, as much as its changed which objects' groundshadows intersect with rugs, making that very normal bug more obvious. Right? I'm not misremembering that the rug mod changes rug height...?
I'd totally down to test turning shaders off for science, if anyone's interested in seeing if that has any effect; but I'm pretty satisfied with that explanation. Intersecting meshes is exactly what it looks like.

(Also thanks for being chill about me bringing this up again. It had me worried for a split second.)
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retired moderator
#17 Old 24th Apr 2021 at 3:03 PM
@AlfredAskew Yes, that is what I concluded in post #7 above- it's the shadows interfering with the surface of the rugs, which are raised slightly by HL's mod. I think this must be why EA chose to make the rugs sink into the floor in the first place, as throughout the EPs the ground shadows are different heights. They look rubbish without HL's mod though so I choose to keep it!

@HugeLunatic disabling shaders destroys bumpmapping, which is a no for me! But I really have no problem with this shadow issue, I wouldn't expect you to want to fix it.
Field Researcher
#18 Old 25th Apr 2021 at 6:37 AM
Quote: Originally posted by simsample
@AlfredAskew Yes, that is what I concluded in post #7 above- it's the shadows interfering with the surface of the rugs, which are raised slightly by HL's mod. I think this must be why EA chose to make the rugs sink into the floor in the first place, as throughout the EPs the ground shadows are different heights. They look rubbish without HL's mod though so I choose to keep it!


Yeah, I thought there was a chance (especially since I've been having a heck of a time with my gpu drivers recently) that it wasn't that, but so it goes!
I guess for the the objects I like the most, I can just default those meshes real quick.
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