Shader error with GMA 950 in The Sims 3

fredb219 · Post by **fredb219** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 4:23 am

I have an Intel GMA 950 and I installed Sims 3 on vista. It works but crash after 10 min. I reinstalled Sims 3 on Ubuntu 9.04 with playonlinux script.

Install works fine but when I start the game, I have this error :

" impossible de démarrer le jeu. L'appareil 0 ne peut pas exécuter ce titre. Votre carte vidéo ne semble pas prendre en charge Shader Model version 2 ou ultérieure. Veuillez mettre à jour votre carte. "

in english :
"Starting the game is impossible. The 0 device cannot executed this title. Your graphic card seems to not take Shader Model version 2 or ulterior. Please update your card."

I try to configure shader but in winecfg, i only have "hardware" or "none".

The GMA 950 should support shader 2.0 and the game « works » on windows.

Do you know the reason ? There is a mean to disable shaders in sims config before to launch the game ? There is a mean to emulate shaders 2.0 ?

Thanks !

lspci :

VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller

James Huk · Post by **James Huk** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 5:10 am

2009/6/23 fredb219 <[email protected]>

I have an Intel GMA 950 and I installed Sims 3 on vista. It works but crash
after 10 min. I reinstalled Sims 3 on Ubuntu 9.04 with playonlinux script.

Install works fine but when I start the game, I have this error :

" impossible de démarrer le jeu. L'appareil 0 ne peut pas exécuter ce
titre. Votre carte vidéo ne semble pas prendre en charge Shader Model
version 2 ou ultérieure. Veuillez mettre à jour votre carte. "

in english :
"Starting the game is impossible. The 0 device cannot executed this title.
Your graphic card seems to not take Shader Model version 2 or ulterior.
Please update your card."

I try to configure shader but in winecfg, i only have "hardware" or "none".

The GMA 950 should support shader 2.0 and the game « works » on windows.

Do you know the reason ? There is a mean to disable shaders in sims config
before to launch the game ? There is a mean to emulate shaders 2.0 ?

Thanks !

lspci :

VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML
Express Integrated Graphics Controller

Wine can't emulate Pixel Shaders (there was emulation for Vertex Shaders

but it has been removed quite long ago...), I think it would be possible for
PS 1.x (although verrrrry fast CPU would be required) but for PS2.0 or
above, even Intel i7 would probably be to slow, not to mention that any kind
of emulation would probably work poorly because of totally different
approach to processes on GPU and CPU (in short – for GPU it is recommended
to create as many processes as possible because process switching is
extremely fast, but for CPU it is recommended to create as little processes
as possible (but not less then number of cores) since switching is slow).

And as for your problem... I think drivers are to blame – If I remember
correctly – none of the open drivers (that uses MESA for OpenGL) doesn't
support Pixel Shaders yet... somebody correct me if I'm wrong...
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Thunderbird · Post by **Thunderbird** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 6:31 am

Correct the opengl drivers are to blame. They don't offer glsl support which is needed for decent sm2.0 (and sm3.0) support. Further the cards are not able to support this properly while it supports pixel shaders in hardware it implements vs 3.0 in software on windows. I believe the drivers have some basic ARB_fragment_program / ARB_vertex_program support but I don't know how well the driver implementation is and how it performs. I expect poor performance and a lot of bugs.