By default The Sims 1 supports only 800x600 or 1024x768, which is annoying since most monitors nowadays aren't 4:3.
There are ways to manually patch the Sims.exe by changing the file with a hex editor, however that causes video artifacts in the game (example: when opening the buy/build menu, the items in the list go outside of the UI) because the original UI images aren't resized to match your resolution. The widescreen patcher automatically patches and resizes those UI images for you.
It also installs DDrawCompat (or DGVoodoo2) for you, which is useful because vanilla The Sims 1 on Windows 10+ is choppy for some reason, using DDrawCompat or DGVoodoo2 fixes the choppiness issue.
By default The Sims 1 supports only 800x600 or 1024x768, which is annoying since most monitors nowadays aren't 4:3.
There are ways to manually patch the Sims.exe by changing the file with a hex editor, however that causes video artifacts in the game (example: when opening the buy/build menu, the items in the list go outside of the UI) because the original UI images aren't resized to match your resolution. The widescreen patcher automatically patches and resizes those UI images for you.
It also installs DDrawCompat (or DGVoodoo2) for you, which is useful because vanilla The Sims 1 on Windows 10+ is choppy for some reason, using DDrawCompat or DGVoodoo2 fixes the choppiness issue.