The Sims looks have a major impact on how much I fall in love with them in game I got quite emotionally attached to certain Sims in 2, and yeah they have got sillier and too goofy in 3 and just ' a thing' that had no personal attachment. I would love a different look and if I had Sims looking like those I would be in dream land! and pre-ordering! I agree totally a new look would have been fantastic! a little more complexity would have been a great way to go, even the furniture looks humdrum

I'm very deflated about TS4 since they haven't come up with a full new concept - so now the only thing we can do is hold our breathes for amazing gameplay ......... at the moment we have emotions? and things like they can stand in a group and turn to knowledge someone else joining the group - two Sims can use the stairs at the same time - routing issues fixed in doorways - they can talk and cook at the same time - doesn't sound like an upgraded series - sounds more like a fix up

I agree they needed to make a all round change and for all you who say you love the Sims and their cartoony looks - hey guess what you already have it!

Those pictures are rendered from Poser or DazStudio. Even those program can't render in real time like a game. Reason: Sheer mass amounts of polygons from quality meshes, alpha mapped and textured with high resolution skin, vast material options such as glossy or metallic, true reflections on reflective material and image reflections for eyes. Let's not even take into account the light types and sources, Those clothes and hair likely came from daz3d.com, I wouldn't expect an EA employee to create and rig meshes of that quality on a time schedule. Go download DazStudio and try to render a scene with one dressed character holding a prop, and you will see that EA has plenty of excuse not to be able to have an engine that can play with those professional quality graphics in real time.

We may expect this look in the Sims5 or 6 :D

Having read and looked at all pics since the start of the sims 4 thread I am so disappointed I was hoping for something to take from sims 3 and so far far I've seen nothing to make me want to buy it. I love these graphics they are what I want from my game they are cartoony enough to appeal to those who want that, I want good graphics with a hint of realism this is what would make me buy sims 4.

No to me the look should have noticeably upgraded and different, inspiring and interesting I just don't agree that sticking to what we have already had, this just does not inspire investing in the next series.

Now I am with everyone else about the love of TS2 totally the best game so far but I don't want TS4 to be a reincarnation of that game with just added features because they tried that in TS3 and it failed.

EA should have took a step back with this series and said hey the fans love TS2 'got that' but we need to step ahead and create something different and unknown that has the best elements or for a better word dynamics (underlying force) of TS2 'but in its own right' with a difference, this is where half the excitement has failed to ignite because they are relying on small bits of changes which is what we actually get in EPs not The Sims with a new number attached to the title.

*sigh* Hopefully, the uber-talented of the modding community will pick up where EA is severely deficient and make new skins and default face replacements that look like OP's insanely beautiful pictures. (except for the clown ugly cartoony Sims 3 one to the left in the first pic, ha ha!) It's about time that our sims become the kind of sims that make us (the players) jealous that we don't look like them/want to design new looks for them. Right now, I can't make the best "ideal me" in Sims 2 and with Sims 3, even less so.

Also, the sims should start to look diverse without resorting to gorilla/lemur*/half-assed Asian faces** (sims 2, as another poster has stated). My cousin looked over my Sims 2 game once (was a combination of default replacements and non-defaults, along with face kits, tons of eyes, hair, etc.) and commented that all my sims were starting to "look alike". If you look at the faces in OP's second "hooker" (wow, insecure much?) pic, they're both beautiful, realistic AND actually manage to get diversity right, without resorting to looking like a non-human race/species.

If you want ugly, manly and plain sims, then OP's vision can also create them, OP just happened to alienate the "ugly sim" fans by only posting pretty women. Asymmetry/wonkyface is possible with the new facial sliders shown in the Sims 4 videos.

*Freaky looking and unrealistic sims like these are why I have a very shallow gene pool (default faces) to mold my custom sims from:
http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/_...a_Cleveland.jpg
http://static3.wikia.nocookie.net/_...ady_Rotarra.jpg
http://static3.wikia.nocookie.net/_.../JulieMonif.png
http://static3.wikia.nocookie.net/_...f/Toby_Siew.png
http://static4.wikia.nocookie.net/_.../Etokas_Cho.jpg <---Sarah Rhome's long lost relative?

**Not every Asian looks like this:
http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/_.../Swan_Teens.png
http://static3.wikia.nocookie.net/_...e_GilsCarbo.png
http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/_...don_Lillard.jpg
http://static4.wikia.nocookie.net/_...Sally_Riley.jpg

I like anything that will make the game run in older computers than the sims 3. Everyone deserves to be able to play. Graphics are not everything.

Also, the sims look better than the ones in sims 3.

And I want to be able to play Titanfall on my old, trusty PS2, but no one is falling over themselves to make that a reality. And it's not just graphics.

Reasonable simulated AI to provide the illusion of lots of sims running around doing things in real time is processor intensive. That TS3 still only "requires a single core P4 CPU", and expect TS4 to run even better on lower hardware requirements (if your current hardware is struggling with 3) would require major revisions to known physics.

Unless you want to run it as a cloud app with something like the Steam Engine doing the heavy lifting while you're sitting around with inexpensive hardware as a client, there's no way to create a modern game that will run smoothly on 5 to 7 year old hardware (then again, go price out a basic Steam box, they're not that cheap, or underpowered, either).

It's my opinion that this was the original direction the game was going to go in, just like Sim City. Nothing saved on your computer, everything done in the cloud, including save files. This would have made it extremely difficult to mod, and would have enabled EA to shove ads for the Store, or EP's, or whatever down our throats constantly, forced Origin downloads, all while being required to be logged in to their servers to play.

Eh, it's not exactly the same as the Sim City disaster. While interactions with other players' towns and saves were handled by EA's servers, a lot of the heavy lifting, that is, running your city, still occurred locally. With something like the new Steam Engine, a lot more is offloaded to reduce local resource requirements. And the ability to do so under real time heavy load situations, with the wide variation in net connection speeds and latencies users might bring to the table, is still unproven. When it really is in the hands of hundreds of thousands of players all banging on the servers and demonstrating real world performance that allows for seamless play, then there will be something to look at for future game development, and certainly not just for the Sims franchise. Until then, local processing capabilities will still determine the complexity of game play that can be achieved.

I could be happy with almost any point on the spectrum between realism and cartoony provided that a) the game is moddable enough to allow me to customize to my personal taste, sometimes more PIxarish, sometimes more real-life, depending on my mood and current storyline. b) gameplay is complex and sophisticated enough to satisfy a wide range of playstyles. But what we've seen so far seems such a step backwards, hardly any textures or patterns on clothing and furnishing, hardly seems believable that this is an $80 game being released in 2014. Looks more like something I would have bought for my first grader , four-five years ago.

These are awesome

I would really enjoy playing The Sims 4 if it looked this good these are awesome

A lot of the 'awesome graphic' games out there are mostly in the category where there's not much freeplay. You have 'one' task meant to be followed through, and you can't do much else than following it through, with a varying degree of freeplay. You also get sets that can't be moved around much (most often they can't be moved around at all). These games are often meant to be used on high-end computers (and we're not talking the average 'good enough' computer you can get in the local electronics shop, but more often than not custom-built thugs with power enough for anything, because they really do need that power to run the games smoothly.

The limits of these kind of games offer a wide range of stuff the developers can do, precisely so that it can look awesome without crashing the computer upon rendering. Scenery can be background paintings and you can do things like copying trees or other much used items an infinite number of times without the computer registering more than the main tree when rendering, and you can use other ways of meshing if the game is hardcoded and difficult to mess around with, and meshes don't have to be extremely high poly if the textures have bump maps and a very high level of details. Single characters will often have 3-10 levels (or more) of texturing and maps just to get that realistic look. They will also often have a level of extra detailed meshing laid on top (with a normal map or similar) so they look extra smooth and detailed. It works fine when you have a limited range of characters doing mostly what they're programmed to do, but may not work that well if you plan to have 20 controllable characters with distinctive looks doing different actions. Things like lights, shadows and reflections are also difficult to control in a freeplay game, particularly when they're controlled somewhat by the player. Sims also have a certain amount of AI, so while you tell 10 sims to do what you want them to do, the other 10 does whatever they have to do to 'survive'. The 'growing up' factor is also a distinct feature of the sims games. and in a way the game remembers their looks from toddler to elder. There's character info to keep track of, and lots of other things. The game may not look that advanced, but I think there's a lot more in the internal workings of the Sims games than we actually appreciate.

The thing is that Sims is a freeplay game, meant for teenagers/young adults who most likely have an average computer. While the game has limits, they are much wider than, say, shooting games or car racing games. In Sims you can model faces, you can put clothes on the sims, you can build houses anyhow you want, you can control 1-20+ characters if you want, and (depending on which game we're talking about) you can roam the 3D neighborhood. In TS3 they used particle trees and bushes, and in both 1 and 2 they also use ways of hiding geometry and make textures go smaller when seen from a distance, which are common methods of not having to say bye-bye to your computer immediately. I'm pretty sure they kept graphics on a lower level than 'awesomegraphics' games for a good reason.

Freeplay games tend to benefit from having slightly worse graphics than the wowzy ones, because you can play the games on an okay computer. You also get less lagging, and you can let your creativity loose. Not all games will let you shape faces or even change clothes separately. Almost none lets you furniture surroundings exactly the way you want it. And very few are (for the most part) creator-friendly(ish).

I'm not saying that EA should continue doing crappy games, of course. I wouldn't at all mind if they did some more realistic touches in TS4, made the animation a whole lot smoother and made the character bases less cartoony, along with actually adding proper features to the basegame. They may even benefit from it. But I see some of the reasons why they've kept to a simpler style. The more elaborate you make a game, the less freedom there will be, and the more resources it will demand from the computer. Yes, there are several ways of getting great graphics into a game, but it often costs in other ways. If you need ten texture maps just to make a character look half decent, they will look half decent, but they may be laggy or lacking in other ways.

In some 10-20-ish years we'll probably all get powerful enough computers to a reasonable price that can without any troubles run 'sims 10' with awesomegraphics. We're already pretty close to 100% realistic 3D graphics that looks realistic. By that time, they've probably also finished those VR glasses, so you can walk around in a Sim town of your own creation. If they bother to continue the Sims games, that is...

(I so have to stop writing long posts at 4 am... )

Their faces look alienish too me. It's abit creepy. But yeah, anything is better than the blurry skin & blocky hair that The Sims 4 has.

Those renders look a bit over sexualized to me, also look plastic. I can't see these characters doing simly things. Showing emotions on something like that would be really hard

Too much detail. Come back when Maxis has learned how to optimize games.

When it comes to optimization, Bethesda can run circles around EA.

I doubt "everyone" in the terms the Sims 4 dev team considers it have graphics cards that support bump mapping. The average cabbage has a computer that's at least 2 years old, if not 5 or more. I think the majority of people who buy a computer buy it for staying power and affordability, with graphical power being their third consideration. I bet over half of Sims 3 players who bought a new computer when their old one couldn't handle Sims 3 don't want to have to upgrade 5 years later. Another reason Sims 4 or future games will never look that way is a little thing called "uncanny valley." Sims go too far into uncanny valley and it will be too personal, players will get skeeved out playing the game and stop buying it. Realism isn't for everyone.

what game is this by the way??? anyone??

Not very difficult to get the source of the pictures:
http://torqual3d.deviantart.com/
Looks like 3D render for me, so no game actually.

For the Sims 4, yes i would be happy for some better grafic aswell. Yes, might be true, that Sims 4 should work on older pcs aswell. But in the time from PS4 and XBOX-One, the game industry will move on aswell. Many games in development are already focused on high end pcs, because of the larger output of the new consoles. For the modding, yes well, let's see what the modding community can do. The mods for Sims where actually aswell the reason i made an account here long time ago. Ok, i was a bit quiet before. ^^

Intresting is, that the characters are looking most time way better from modders as from the developers. In the Elderscrolls games, the characters are on of the ugliest things, at least for me. ^^
Serana an vampire lady as example:
Before:
http://x3.fjcdn.com/comments/For+wh...f6969d6723c.jpg
after:
http://static-2.nexusmods.com/15/im...-1393617293.jpg

Sometimes i think the devs should hire some modders. But possible would be, that the quality would drop then aswell. Its a difference, if the work was made of passion or because of profit.

i like the first example. the second one strikes me as a bit off for some reason. i don't really have a problem with slightly cartoonish sims, but at the same time i really do want realistic (or more realistic) sims. there must be a middle ground. i feel like they can be more realistic (or at least more appealing?) while still being a little quirky.

I can't say I like the photos, but I'll say color me unimpressed with the seeming ignorance of bump mapping for hair in TS4 as far as we've seen. There is no excuse for that, no reason why EA should possibly be unable to figure out a way to get TS4 running well with higher quality textures on the hair. IMO so far TS2 hair looks better than the hair in TS4.

The Sims is not meant to be a realistic game. The cartoony, stylized visuals are what make it fun and different. Let's be honest, if the graphics looked like that and everyone looked real, then exaggerated/cartoony animations and over-the-top gameplay like what we have now would not fit well at all. If you want amazing graphics, look out of your window (to quote beyondsims). If you want charming, relaxed, and fun gameplay, play games like The Sims. Those graphics and this series do not go well together.

Plus someone earlier made a good point: What would the uglier Sims look like? Also, what would the animations that aren't realistic like swirling to change clothes etc look like? You'd have to simulate everything ultra-realistically for this to work and that would not be a Sims game. That would be a poorly-running sandbox watch-a-pretty-person-figure-out-how-to-turn-on-the-shower game.

I have always liked the stylized cartoony aesthetic; I think that it ages better and fits in with the overall game more, at least in my opinion. But that said, I am a bit disappointed with the TS4 hair.