Magic Hole No Longer Crashes the Game
The A Hole in the Ground object could crash with a SimAntics error and leave your Sim invisible and stuck after choosing one of its old Magic Town travel options.
Those travel interactions have now been removed because Magic Town does not exist in NewSO.
The hole itself remains available as decoration.
This also blocks the old Sims 1 travel screen from being opened by anything else on a live lot, closing the underlying crash rather than only fixing this one object.
For actual magic travel, use the Clown Magic Portal from the Magic Starter Kit.
Cars Now Have Accurate Catalog Stats
Some cars advertised motives and skill benefits they did not actually provide.
Those incorrect claims have been removed.
All cars now correctly list their Room value, and cars that previously provided little or no decorative Room score have been brought in line with the rest of the vehicle catalog.
Nothing has been reduced on cars you already own.
Elevators No Longer Get Permanently Stuck
Elevators could become permanently marked in use if a ride was interrupted, blocking access to upper floors even after the lot was reloaded.
Elevators now detect when they’re marked busy without anyone actually riding and automatically free themselves.
Lots that are already affected will repair themselves automatically without needing the elevators to be moved or replaced.
Ghost Revival Works Again
Ghosts could become trapped in their idle animation and stop processing anything in their action queue.
That prevented every normal revival method from working, including automatic revival and Revitalize.
Ghosts now process queued actions properly again and can be brought back normally.
The same idle stall could occasionally affect living Sims too, causing them to ignore commands temporarily. That has been corrected as well.
Revival time is based on Sim time spent on a lot, not real-world time while logged out.
Major 3D Graphics Quality Improvements
Graphics Options now include proper quality presets, including High and Ultra.
Higher presets can render the 3D world above the game’s native window resolution and resolve it back down for smoother object edges, roof lines, roads, and fine details.
The updated rendering path also improves:
- Image sharpness and resolve quality
- Directional lighting
- Contact shadows
- Preset migration and consistency
The Leave Lot payphone and Founders Gazing Ball also received cleaned-up 3D models with improved geometry, normals, and lighting.
Planned: Next 3D Rendering Improvements
The current graphics update is only the start. Several renderer-wide improvements are planned for future patches, including:
- Ambient occlusion for softer shading where furniture meets floors and around corners, stairs, and tightly grouped objects.
- Filmic color and exposure to preserve detail in bright and dark areas and keep daytime, nighttime, and weather lighting more consistent.
- Better anti-aliasing, including investigation into SMAA as a faster alternative to full supersampling.
- More stable soft shadows with improved filtering and less movement while the camera pans.
- Cleaner distant textures using improved anisotropic filtering and mipmaps for floors, roads, fences, and foliage.
- Surface-aware lighting so glass, metal, foliage, fabric, and ordinary opaque objects react differently to light.
- Subtle reflections for windows, water, polished appliances, and metal.
- Improved atmosphere and weather rendering with haze, sky contribution, fog, and weather-specific color.
- Improved water rendering with better surface detail, depth-based color, shoreline fading, and transparency handling.
These are planned renderer improvements, not features included in this patch. The goal is to improve existing objects and lots globally without requiring individual replacement models for everything.
City Map Markers No Longer Shake
In 3D city view, nearby location markers such as you are here, your house, and roommate-house markers could rapidly jitter while the camera moved.
Markers now maintain stable spacing while panning and rotating around the city.
New: Property Activity Logs
The fourth button in the House panel is no longer Coming Soon.
It now opens a full Activity Log for your property.
The log records property-related actions including:
- Objects bought and sold
- Build costs and service charges
- Objects moved into inventories or placed on the lot
- Lot name, description, and category changes
- Roommate changes and invitations
- Build permissions and door access changes
- Ownership changes
Owners and roommates see the same history.
You can filter by Money, Property, or Access, select a specific housemate, and view activity from the last 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days.
Property history is retained for 30 days, while money entries are kept for 90 days.
The log does not record motives, skills, autonomous Sim behavior, or chat messages.
New Social: Play Tag
Sims can now Play Tag with each other.
You’ll find it under Play… when clicking another Sim.
The interaction existed in the original game but was restricted to children, which meant it was inaccessible in NewSO. It has now been opened up to everyone and connected to the correct game logic.
Both Sims need to be reasonably Playful for the interaction to appear.
3D Objects No Longer Look Shattered or See-Through
Some solid objects in 3D Mode could render as if they were made of glass, exposing their back faces and making them look broken or inside-out.
This affected objects such as coffee makers, toaster ovens, Christmas trees, aquariums, showers, and hot tubs.
Transparency is now determined per shape instead of treating an entire object as glass because one part of its texture contains transparency.
Solid pieces stay solid while actual glass pieces remain transparent.
Resident NPCs Stop Mourning Themselves Into the Ground
Resident NPCs could spend nearly all of their time repeatedly trying to mourn an urn or tombstone, causing their needs to collapse while they ignored useful objects around the lot.
Residents now choose need-solving objects more intelligently and skip actions the game is only going to reject.
Beds, showers, toilets, sofas, and fun objects are once again considered properly.
Residents also won’t be sent to turn off a stereo when they actually need rest, and waking a fully rested resident now works immediately.
Wide Paintings Need Walls Again
Several two- and three-tile-wide paintings had lost their wall-placement requirement and could be dropped in the middle of a room.
Affected artwork now requires a wall again at every rotation.
This includes the Forest Living Room artwork, Superstar paintings, World Map and Mia Mode posters, the Essentials whiteboard, and A Gift of Flowers.
Single-tile paintings were unaffected.
Imported Catalog Icons Now Match the Rest of the Game
Hundreds of imported objects still carried the darker catalog-square color from the game they originally came from.
480 catalog icons have been repainted to match NewSO’s standard catalog colors, including their object edges.
Only the catalog icons changed; the objects themselves are untouched.
Eyedropper Roof Picking Improved Again
The Eyedropper could still select wallpaper through a roof made from floor tiles when the cursor sat exactly along the seam where a wall met the floor above it.
At those roof seams, the tool now correctly gives priority to the floor tile instead of the hidden wall below.
Normal wallpaper picking remains unchanged everywhere else.
Magic Portraits No Longer Disappear After Purchase
Four animated Makin’ Magic portraits could take your money and then vanish immediately after being placed.
The catalog was accidentally selling the hidden gift-shop rack that distributes the portraits instead of the paintings themselves.
The listings now point to the real portraits, which place on walls and animate normally.
Room Lighting Is More Accurate
Connected rooms could inherit nearly the full light level of a neighboring lit room, even when the room itself had no windows or lamps.
Each room now calculates lighting from the lights, windows, and doors actually inside it.
Light can still spill naturally into neighboring rooms through openings, but it now fades instead of making every connected room equally bright.
Floors, walls, and furniture also use matching room lighting so rooms no longer look inconsistently washed out.
Floors Can Be Built Above Diagonal Walls
Diagonal walls could leave missing floor tiles above them depending on which direction the wall faced.
Floor tiles can now be placed correctly above diagonal walls in every orientation.
Daily Login Bonus Window Cleaned Up
The Daily Login Bonus window has received a UI cleanup.
- The stray scrollbar shapes beside the Sim list are gone.
- Proper scroll arrows now appear only when needed.
- The Apply Bonus button is centered again.
- The Sim list now has a Funds heading with aligned values.
- The window is now correctly titled Daily Login Bonus instead of Achievement Bonus.
Pie Menu Sim Head Stays a Head
Minimizing and restoring the game while an interaction menu was open could make the floating Sim head in the middle of the pie menu grow a torso and arms.
The head-only view now survives window minimize and restore correctly.
Blackjack Win Messages Are Clearer + Duplicate Bets Refunded
Blackjack previously announced the total amount returned to you after a win — your original bet plus your winnings — which made it look like you had been underpaid.
The message now leads with the amount you actually won and shows the total payout separately. Pushes are also labeled clearly.
NewSO also reviewed recent Blackjack records for the earlier duplicate-bet bug and refunded confirmed charges that never resulted in a played hand.
A total of §239,350 was refunded across seven affected players, with the credits appearing in Bills history as Blackjack duplicate-bet refund.
Pet Interactions No Longer Trigger Infinite-Loop Errors
A cat or dog that became stuck waiting for the other half of a social interaction could throw a SimAntics Exception – Thread entered infinite loop! when clicked.
Interacting with a genuinely stuck pet now safely ends the abandoned social and starts the action you requested instead.
Pets that are still participating in a valid social interaction continue normally.
Resident NPCs Can Have Jobs and Duty Stations
Resident NPCs can now be assigned a job role and a duty station.
Roles include receptionist, employee, caretaker, maid, host, cook, scholar, and standard resident behavior.
Each role changes what that resident prioritizes. A receptionist pays more attention to arrivals, a cook focuses on kitchen work, and a scholar prefers studying.
A duty station gives the resident a seat to treat as their default post. They’ll leave it to handle needs and responsibilities, then return afterward.
Stations remember their position and survive lot restarts, so rearranging the office doesn’t erase the assignment.