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Instructor
Original Poster
#1 Old 15th Apr 2020 at 3:11 AM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default How high a resolution is possible?
I have got my UC running in Windows 10. And I have it displaying at 2560x1440. But on my 4K monitor it is way too small, making it tough to play. I specified a resolution of 3840x2160 in Graphics Rules Maker. Is there some limit I am running into, limiting the resolution? It can’t be insufficient video ram, not with 11 gig of it.
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 15th Apr 2020 at 1:04 PM Last edited by simmer22 : 15th Apr 2020 at 1:24 PM.
Is your 4K screen big? As in how many inches is it? If you're on a 15-17'' laptop without a separate screen there's rarely a point in having full resolution (around 1920x1080 or thereabout looks fine on a laptop), but if you're on a 30-50'' screen or larger, you may notice a difference with a higher resolution.

If you're running a high resolution on a small screen with 4K, everything will look very small. You'll usually have to set the resolution lower to make things bigger. High resolution also means the game/computer/graphic card(s) use more memory, so it's a balance between quality and performance.

The game has a 2-4 GB limit on RAM use, depending on whether you've done the 4GB fix. It does help with more RAM, and/or a dedicated graphic card (I'm not sure exactly how the 2-4 GBs are calculated, or whether screen resolution has anything to say), but it's an old 32-bit game with some issues when running on 64-bit soft/hardware, so at some point you are likely to hit the max capacity in some way.

Personally I set both my game and my laptop to around 1920x1080 even if I can have much higher (a little bit narrower for the game, because I play windowed and like having access to a couple icons). I use a screenshot program and didn't want huge pictures (it captures in screen resolution size), and it bothered me that the UI ingame was so small. I have a 17'' screen, so this size is more than enough for me. 4K resolution is only really useful in a laptop if you're planning to connect a much bigger external screen to the laptop, which I don't have any plans to do (the 4K happened to be a package deal).
Instructor
Original Poster
#3 Old 15th Apr 2020 at 4:38 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
Is your 4K screen big? As in how many inches is it? If you're on a 15-17'' laptop without a separate screen there's rarely a point in having full resolution (around 1920x1080 or thereabout looks fine on a laptop), but if you're on a 30-50'' screen or larger, you may notice a difference with a higher resolution.

If you're running a high resolution on a small screen with 4K, everything will look very small. You'll usually have to set the resolution lower to make things bigger. High resolution also means the game/computer/graphic card(s) use more memory, so it's a balance between quality and performance.

The game has a 2-4 GB limit on RAM use, depending on whether you've done the 4GB fix. It does help with more RAM, and/or a dedicated graphic card (I'm not sure exactly how the 2-4 GBs are calculated, or whether screen resolution has anything to say), but it's an old 32-bit game with some issues when running on 64-bit soft/hardware, so at some point you are likely to hit the max capacity in some way.

Personally I set both my game and my laptop to around 1920x1080 even if I can have much higher (a little bit narrower for the game, because I play windowed and like having access to a couple icons). I use a screenshot program and didn't want huge pictures (it captures in screen resolution size), and it bothered me that the UI ingame was so small. I have a 17'' screen, so this size is more than enough for me. 4K resolution is only really useful in a laptop if you're planning to connect a much bigger external screen to the laptop, which I don't have any plans to do (the 4K happened to be a package deal).


It is not a laptop, but a gaming desktop. Dedicated video card, the RTX 2080TI, 11 gig version. (Why yes, I do play other games) It is about a 25 inch screen. Not huge, but not small. The problem is that the game only uses the portion of the screen that corresponds to the resolution - so roughly half the screen. The UI is tiny! Yes, I did the 4 gig fix.

It occurs to me that changing my screen resolution to something lower might be a good workaround. I’d still like to know why I can’t get 4K, though.
Mad Poster
#4 Old 15th Apr 2020 at 6:05 PM
You can try to set it up in the GraphicsRules file. I think you can add custom resolution there.
Instructor
Original Poster
#5 Old 25th Jun 2020 at 10:01 PM
Graphics rules has max and default both set to 3840x2160, but the best I can actually get is 2560x1440. I am wondering if I need to change the graphicsrules.sgr memory settings, up near the beginning of the file. Where it says this:
seti memoryLevelHigh 512
seti memoryLevelMedium 384
seti memoryLevelLow 256

But I am unsure if that would adversely affect the 4 gig of ram the game can use. Shrug. I can just change it and see what happens. Worst case scenario is it doesn't work. Interesting that the highest resolution it will use needs just under 4 gig of video ram.
Scholar
#6 Old 25th Jun 2020 at 11:21 PM
You would go to the Graphics Rules.sgr file in the C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Config\ directory (and the equivalent directory of your latest expansion or stuff pack), and change this section:

option ScreenModeResolution
setting $Low
uintProp maxResWidth 800
uintProp maxResHeight 600
uintProp defaultResWidth 800
uintProp defaultResHeight 600

setting $Medium
uintProp maxResWidth 1280
uintProp maxResHeight 1024
uintProp defaultResWidth 1024
uintProp defaultResHeight 768

setting $High
uintProp maxResWidth 1600
uintProp maxResHeight 1200
uintProp defaultResWidth 1024
uintProp defaultResHeight 768
end

The maxWidth/defaultWidth would be the length of the resolution from left-to-right, and the maxHeight/defaultHeight would be screen's height from top-to-bottom.

You can theoretically set the resolution to max size of your screen, but as has been said above, if your screen is only 25" diagonally, I don't think having the game set at 4K resolution would be much noticeable, unless you're inches away from the monitor.

Like I have a BenQ EX3203R monitor that's curved and 31.5" diagonally. I sit about 2 feet away from it. At such a large size, pixels are noticeable for me on a 1920x1080 pixel resolution. Thankfully the BenQ monitor is a 2K monitor with 77.77% more pixels. Not too taxing on the graphics card, and much smoother at 144Hz versus 60Hz.

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Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#7 Old 25th Jun 2020 at 11:40 PM
What is your config-log.txt reading? Does it see your graphics card?

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