Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[pairedeciseaux]

Are you guys using the new UI scaling feature? How do you like it?

Personally I am disappointed.

I have played Starsector in 2560x1440 since version 0.8.1 and have always found text to be too small but have enjoyed the wider view when zoomed out. I though UI scaling would bring the best of both worlds: higher magnification for text and UI controls, keep existing magnification (high-ish resolution / lowish magnification) for main content. But unfortunately this is not the case: it looks like the main content is also scaled by the same factor as the text & UI controls, so if player increases UI scaling, it also increases the magnification of the main content.

Screenshots done with the game set at different resolution + UI scaling combo, fully zoomed out. Player fleet is in the center. These were captured by macOS, so are all recorded in the native display resolution, 5120x2880. I then converted them to 512x288.

2560x1440 - 100%

Spoiler

[close]

2560x1440 - 150%

Spoiler

[close]

2880x1620 - 200%

Spoiler

[close]

Notice how the main content area view got narrower when going from 100% to 150% in 2560x1440. Star disapear, player fleet gets bigger. Same when going from 2560x1440 - 150% to 2880x1620 - 200%.

If it’s not obvious enough, look at the following.

5120x2880 - 100%

Spoiler

[close]

5120x2880 - 200%

Spoiler

[close]

5120x2880 - 300%

Spoiler

[close]

My preference would have been:

• set game resolution to 2560x1440
• set game UI scaling to 150%
• main content view rendered the same as in the "2560x1440 - 100%" screenshot above
• text & UI controls rendered the same as in the "2560x1440 - 150%" screenshot above

[pairedeciseaux]

I wish Starsector would work the way RimWorld does: UI scaling does scale text & UI controls, but does not change the magnification of the main content.

(I tried to post RimWorld screenshots, but got database error message from the forum)

[pairedeciseaux]

2560x1440 - 1x

Spoiler

[close]

2560x1440 - 1.5x

Spoiler

[close]

Notice how the magnification of the main content stays the same, the same area is covered, elements have the same size (tree on the left, room on the right).

[Alex]

Part of the problem with handling 4k is that for example combat shows you way more of an area that you're supposed to see at that point, so, at least in as much as that, this is intentional. For the campaign, too; scaling up the play area makes sense - otherwise at 4k, the fleets etc can get kind of tiny. However... I could see adding tweakable campaign zoom limits in settings.json, much like there are for combat. Since functionally that amounts to what you're asking for, a different set of zoom levels for the campaign.

Edit: there we go, added in:
   "minCampaignZoom":0.5, # zoomed in all the way
   "maxCampaignZoom":3.0, # zoomed out all the way

[Sarissofoi]

I will just add the the text is even less readable in bigger UI scale.
I would expect it to use bigger fonts but it looks like it just upscale the default one which make them blurry.

[pairedeciseaux]

Edit: there we go, added in:
   "minCampaignZoom":0.5, # zoomed in all the way
   "maxCampaignZoom":3.0, # zoomed out all the way

Wow, thank you very much! 

Here are the results, game running in 2560x1440, "UI scaling" set to 150%, no AA.

Campaign

Spoiler

maxCampaignZoom 3.0


maxCampaignZoom 4.5

[close]

Combat

Spoiler

maxCombatZoom 2.0


maxCombatZoom 3.0

[close]

[pairedeciseaux]

I will just add the the text is even less readable in bigger UI scale.
I would expect it to use bigger fonts but it looks like it just upscale the default one which make them blurry.

Maybe some tweaks on your side might improve the situation. How are you currently playing?

• Native display resolution
• Operating system
• Game resolution
• UI scaling
• Antialiasing setting

[Patrick Swayze]

So on a technical level, is the entire game being upscaled? Not just the interface, hence the altered zoom states?

Would that alter the ship sprites at all, leading to them feeling... smudgy?

As a solution for the game... would it be better for the game to render the interface at 4K then have the game scale it downwards from 4K assets, or would that be too complicated for the engine?