Colouration and Window Size problems on Dell XPS 15

[CoreyM]

Hello,

I'm trying to play on a Dell XPS 15. On fullscreen mode my game had very bad colouration, dark colours especially look shiny and plastic and it is making the game very unappealing to use. It's like everything is hugely over saturated and I've tried fixing this by adjusting all the colour settings I have on my laptop but nothing fixes the problem.

What is really weird is that in windowed mode the colour is perfect and looks great no matter what screen size I make it, but smaller screen sizes the window is too small to play on and when I make it bigger the window size increases but all the menus and text stays tiny, so I can't read anything and don't know what I'm playing.

I'm happy to just play in window mode if it means the colour problem is fixed, but I can't play it if I can't read anything! I've been looking up a solution for either problem for hours and have found nothing.

Please help if you can! Thanks so much!

[MrsFlynn]

This sounds like it may be a graphics issue. Have you updated your graphics card?

Make Sure Drivers Are Up To Date
http://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=20732.msg401815#msg401815

The laptop maybe using it's onboard graphics, instead of the dedicated card, the link below can help with that.

Topic: How-To: Get Sims 3 to Recognize a New Graphics Card
http://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=26753.msg446248#msg446248

[CoreyM]

Because my computer is new I first tried making it recognise the graphics card, I followed the steps and it is now using the graphics card, but unfortunately it didn't make any difference to the game quality. I then checked the drivers are up to date and they both are.

Thanks so much for trying to help though I appreciate it hugely!

[MrsFlynn]

I'm sorry that didn't help.  Hubby reminded me that he's run into a similar problem with Sims 3, but we haven't found a fix for it.

[Candyd]

Sounds like your screen's gamma is too low. The problem is that the game overrides your settings with its own settings. I've always had the same issue too. The solution is to play in windowed mode and to lower the game's resolution in options. It doesn't look too small (even in 1024 * 768, it's still fine) and can't lower the gamma this way.

[CoreyM]

Thanks again MrsFlynn

Hi Candyd, I've attached a photo of what my screen looks like with the screen size at 1600 x 1200. I've tried lowering settings and it doesn't make the window get any larger. At this size I can barely read the text so if you have any ideas how to increase it that would be amazing!

[CoreyM]

This is the screen with the window at 3840 x 2160 (16:9), the size of the screen. I'm not sure why there isn't an option to increase menu/text size anywhere!

[MrsFlynn]

Try lowering your desktop resolution to 1920x1080 and running the game again. The text should appear larger. The issue is Sims 3 was not built with UI scaling. So when you change resolution in game the text appears smaller as the in-game text size does not change.

Also try running fullscreen again to see if it runs better.

[CoreyM]

I've now tried with the desktop resolution to 1920x1080 (and many other sizes larger and smaller) and the text and menus are slightly larger but still very small (the cursor is especially small now.) I think if I could fix the blotchy colours while it is in full screen the game would be playable but I've spent such a huge amount of time looking for solutions now it's starting to seem like it may not be worth the time.

I just tried to show what the blotchy colours look like but when I screenshot the screenshots come out looking clear and normal how it looks in windowed mode.

If anyone thinks of anything else let me know, thanks again!

[MrsFlynn]

I'm not sure if this will help, but I was thinking the tip might be worth looking into.

General/Other - Screen is too dark while in fullscreen mode?
http://modthesims.info/t/511820