Made the above PR
This only really has a permanent impact on the shadow quality from what i can tell. All the other options set based on cardLevel seems to just be what the default graphical options are first time you launch the game (or change GPU).
In regards to VRAM then the game doesn't seem to care for any of the configs we have to mess with those numbers. So i am not sure it queues it through d3d. But looking at the Graphics Rules file it also just seems to set default graphical options.
Nothing extracted yet.
Could we get custom settings for the game to override GPU detection? Similar to how DXVK does it for The Sims 2.
Currently, we have to manually edit the GraphicsRules.sgr file to make the game properly detect our GPUs and adjust in-game and hidden settings appropriately. The game also uses GraphicsCards.sgr, which contains a list of GPUs the game can detect. The last update to this file was in 2013, so any newer card gets flagged as unrecognized.
Another problem is that EA gave AMD users worse graphics and shadows compared to NVIDIA users. This comes from the ShadowMode setting in the config file. The game forces it to 2 for NVIDIA cards but 1 for AMD cards. Changing it from 1 to 2 fixes the issue. Currently, the workaround is to either edit the .sgr file to force ShadowMode to 2, or spoof your card as an NVIDIA card.
Looking at what's in the .sgr file, the "uber" card level would be the GeForce GTX 580. I will provide both GraphicsRules.sgr and GraphicsCards.sgr if you want to check it out yourself.
GraphicsCards.sgr.txt
GraphicsRules.sgr.txt
There's also a texture memory detection issue. The game doesn't properly recognize VRAM on cards released after 2013 (possibly even earlier). It defaults to 0, which triggers fallback mode and limits you to only 32MB. Is there any dxvk config setting that could fix this?
(See GraphicsRules.sgr, lines 8-11)
Also worth mentioning: the game executables are TS3.exe for the EA App and macOS versions, and TS3W.exe for the Steam and CD versions.